Thousands demonstrate in Paris following anti-Semitic attacks
PARIS: Thousands of people, some carrying banners proclaiming ‘ That’s enough’, took to the streets of the French capital Tuesday evening to protest a spate of recent anti-Semitic attacks, including the daubing of swastikas on nearly 100 graves in a Jewish cemetery in eastern France.
The Paris rally, in the city’s central Place de la Republique, was one of about 70 staged nationwide Tuesday in response to a surge in anti- Semitic hate crimes which have triggered a deluge of outrage in France and Israel.
Eighteen political parties urged citizens to attend the protests, with Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and more than half his cabinet attending the rally in Paris.
Two former presidents, the socialist Francois Hollande, and the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy also turned up.
Parliament suspended its work for several hours to allow MPs to attend the rally, while religious leaders met with the interior minister to affi rm their unity.
Speaking on television Philippe said it was necessary to punish those who “because of ideology, because they think it’s an easy option, because of ignorance or hostility call into question what we are — a diverse but proud people”.
Earlier in the day President Emmanuel Macron also promised to crack down on hate crimes when inspecting a cemetery in Quatzenheim in the Alsace region near Germany where 96 Jewish tombstones were spray-painted with blue and yellow swastikas the previous night.
“We shall act, we shall pass laws, we shall punish,” Macron told Jewish leaders as he toured the cemetery.
“Those who did this are not worthy of the Republic,” he said, later placing a white rose on a tombstone commemorating Jews deported to Germany during World War II.
Another grave bore the words ‘ Elsassisches Schwarzen Wolfe’ ( Black Alsatian Wolves), a separatist group with links to neoNazis in the 1970s. — AFP