There she was, standing apart from the crowd, arms folded, face closed, as if frozen. She didn't move forward when the procession started. Ana (her first name has been changed, as is the case for those mentioned by their first name only) is 38 years old, and this was the first time she had taken part in a demonstration. It was October 9, 2023, in Paris, two days after the Hamas massacre in Israel. Several organizations had called for a march to condemn terrorism and show their support for the Jewish state.
Ana hesitated for a long time before coming. She disagreed with part of the rally's slogan, which she felt was too political: "Solidarity with Israel." She doesn't support the policies of the Israeli government, which is far too right-wing for her. But she loves Israel unconditionally. "And I don't feel I have the right to," she said. "I feel I don't have the right, here in France, to say I'm sad because no one around me wants to hear my grief, because to share my grief, for many, would be to take a stand in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's absurd." It's as if the victims and hostages of Hamas were "not human beings," she said, but "only political objects."
So, to feel "less alone" and express her pain, she finally decided to go to Place Victor-Hugo, in the capital's 16th arrondissement. "But there aren't that many of us, and there are only Jews," she said, sweeping her eyes over the crowd. "There aren't many people to support us." There were "only" 16,000 people, according to figures from the Paris Police Prefecture and 20,000 according to the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, CRIF).
This feeling of isolation pervades many citizens of the Jewish faith who feel alone in the face of hatred, alone in the face of fear. "A system has developed in which French Jews have compensated for their relative confidence in the ability of the French state to protect them from anti-Semitism with absolute confidence in Israel's ability to welcome them in the event of a problem," said Danny Trom, a director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (French National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS), a specialist in the Jewish world and co-founder of the online magazine K. "This is what was destroyed on October 7. When Israel is attacked and there's a wave of anti-Semitism in France, Jews feel attacked from both ends." With the Hamas attack, the "refuge state" represented by Israel is no longer a fallback solution.
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