2023-11-09 12:10:02
The increase in anti-Semitic acts in France – more than 1,000 recorded since the outbreak of the conflict between Hamas and Israel – calls for a collective start that is long overdue. The President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, and her Senate counterpart, Gérard Larcher, finally took the initiative on Tuesday, November 7. They called for a civic march against anti-Semitism on Sunday, November 12, “uniting all those who recognize themselves in the values of the Republic”.
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The symbolic route will connect the two Assemblies, from the Quai d’Orsay in Luxembourg, to Paris. No speeches will be organized, in order to avoid any attempt at political recovery. The message of these two senior figures of the State, elected under different labels – one Renaissance, the other Les Républicains – is as follows: when the essential is at stake, fraternity is undermined , the entire Republic is threatened. She must unite. The Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, will participate in this march, alongside other members of the government and almost all of the country’s political forces…
Mélenchon’s dangerous reading
The justness of the cause does not exclude political calculations. The National Rally (RN) now wants to be the most zealous defender of French Jews, although heir to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, habitual of anti-Semitic remarks and condemned for provocation of racial hatred and negationism. On Tuesday, his party was one of the first to respond to the call to demonstrate against anti-Semitism, seeing it as a way to clear itself of its troubled past. Questioned a few days ago on BFM-TV, the president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, went so far as to deny the anti-Semitism of Jean-Marie Le Pen. The announced presence of Mr. Bardella in the procession alongside Marine Le Pen, the confirmed presence of Eric Zemmour and Marion Maréchal caused great concern.
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Rightly, Emmanuel Macron warned those who “claim to support our compatriots of the Jewish faith by confusing the rejection of Muslims and the support of Jews.” The Socialist Party, the Communist Party and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts have published a joint press release to call “widely the citizens” to participate in the march. The left-wing parties propose to achieve “a republican cordon” to distinguish itself from the RN and other far-right forces. For their part, Yaël Braun-Pivet and Gérard Larcher specified that they “ will parade at the head of this procession”, more “not next to the National Rally”.
La France insoumise made a more radical choice, announcing that it would not participate in the parade on November 12, due to the presence of the RN. In a tweet published Tuesday, Jean-Luc Mélenchon went much further, citing another reason. He condemned the very spirit of the demonstration against anti-Semitism, equating it to a “unconditional support” to the bombings of the Israeli army on Gaza and once again seeking division.
This reading is not only absurd but dangerous. It amounts to communitarizing society by reproducing the antagonism between Jews and Arabs and by assimilating French Jews to the Israeli government. It indirectly results in putting the fight against anti-Semitism into perspective, since the values of citizenship and fraternity are no longer invoked. In these confused times, the parade of November 12 appears to be an essential reminder: the rejection of anti-Semitism is not negotiable.
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