Leaders of far-right political parties will be among the tens of thousands expected to attend today’s march in Paris against antisemitism, but not those of the far-left, the BBC reports, wrties The Times Of Israel.
National Assembly speaker Yael Braun-Pivet and Gerard Larcher, the Senate speaker, called Tuesday for a “general mobilization” at the march against the upsurge in anti-Semitism. They are to lead the march behind a banner stating “For the Republic, against antisemitism.”
According to the BBC, Marine Le Pen, a three-time presidential candidate for the National Rally (the party formerly known as the National Front), was among the first to announce that she would join the march, along with party president Jordan Bardella.
However, the report said far-left leader of France Unbowed, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, quickly announced his party would not be attending as the event was a “rendezvous for unconditional supporters of the massacre [of Gazans].”
The report says that a few years ago, the idea that a far-right party would attend a march against antisemitism, and a far-left party would not, would have been “unthinkable.”
More than 3,000 police and gendarmes will be deployed in the French capital to maintain security at the “great civic march,” according to Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.
French President Emmanuel Macron says he will attend in his “thoughts.”
“I’ll be there in my heart and in my thoughts,” Macron says after warning last week that antisemitism was on the rise again in France.
Tensions have been rising in France, home to large Jewish and Muslim communities, after the Hamas terror group’s devastating October 7 assault on Israel, and the war that has ensued in which Israel has vowed to topple the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip.
France has recorded nearly 12,250 antisemitic acts since the attack.