A new record of fraudulent acts, ahead of a solidarity march on Sunday. On Friday, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced on BFMTV a new tally of 1,247 anti-Semitic acts since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas. A new increase in acts of hatred a few days before a major march against anti-Semitism, which will mobilize thousands of gendarmes and police.
A total of 1,247 anti-Semitic acts were recorded by the authorities between October 7 and Friday, Darmanin said. 539 people have been arrested for similar acts, and more than 8,000 reports of anti-Semitic messages and content have been made via the Pharos platform, he said. "We must stop hiding our faces, there is anti-Semitism that is very important in France," commented the minister.
This is the reason why Gérald Darmanin has announced a major security arrangement for the march against anti-Semitism organized this Sunday in Paris. "More than 3,000 police and gendarmes," including riot police, the BIS and intelligence agents, will flank the parade, which will start from the Esplanade des Invalides, near the Palais-Bourbon, to the Place Edmond Rostand, near the Luxembourg Palace, in the south of the capital. In addition to the Paris march, the Association of Mayors of France also called for rallies "in front of each prefecture of department".
"We need to come together"
Minister Gérald Darmanin nevertheless considered it important to participate in this march, a "very nice republican initiative" according to him. "I ask all French people to go there. (...) On Sunday, we must say no to anti-Semitism, we must come together," he insisted.
The Paris march, with no speeches or stage, is intended to be "a cry from consciences to declare to the world that the French Republic does not allow, and will never allow, anti-Semitism to prosper," wrote its organizers, the presidents of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet and the Senate Gérard Larcher, in their joint appeal launched Tuesday.
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The march will be attended by many political figures, such as Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, whose father, a Jew, was deported, as well as former French presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. The announced presence of Marine Le Pen and the National Rally, heir to a National Front with a history marked by anti-Semitism, has however been castigated by the left, and is also embarrassing in the presidential camp.