Macron will not attend event but criticises rise of ‘unbridled antisemitism’, as Marine Le Pen says she will participate
Tens of thousands of people, including many senior politicians, are expected to march in Paris against antisemitism amid a dramatic surge in anti-Jewish incidents across France and bitter political rows over whether – and how – to take part.
“I will be marching for the values of the Republic and against antisemitism,” wrote Élisabeth Borne, the French prime minister whose Jewish father was deported during the second world war, on X, formerly Twitter. “This combat is vital for our national cohesion.”
The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said more than 3,000 police and gendarmes would be deployed to maintain security along the route of the “great civic march” from the Quai d’Orsay, on Paris’s Left Bank, to the Luxembourg gardens in the centre of the capital.
Tensions have been mounting in France, which is home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities, since the 7 October attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel and Israel’s subsequent month-long bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
More than 12,250 antisemitic acts have been recorded since the start of the conflict and at least 73 demonstrations against antisemitism were expected around the country on Sunday, including in cities such as Strasbourg, Lyon and Marseille.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has said he will not take part but will be there “in my heart and in my thoughts”, adding that there could be “no tolerance for the intolerable” and France must be “united behind its values, its universalism”.
In a letter published in Le Parisien newspaper, Macron condemned the “unbearable resurgence of unbridled antisemitism” in France.
