The drizzle fell on the Invalides as the Republican Guard stood by wearing their immaculate gloves. A violinist played Maurice Ravel's instrumental version of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, as the president performed his duties as master of ceremonies. In the middle of it all, the 42 smiling, sunny photos of the dearly departed: children, husbands, wives, uncles, aunts, loved ones. Immense emotion overwhelmed the families of the French citizens killed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, in Israel, when their portraits, carried by gendarmes, emerged into this very special ceremony, on Wednesday, February 7.

Four months to the day after "the biggest anti-Semitic massacre of our century," Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the victims of October 7. On that day, "the unspeakable resurfaced from the depths of history," said the president, evoking the "savagery" and "barbarism" of this "massive and odious attack." The French-Israeli victims followed in the footsteps of the victims of the terrorist attacks "at the Bataclan, Nice and Strasbourg," he added. "Our country has been touched to its core" by this attack, he continues, the deadliest since Nice in July 2016. The 42 victims "did not fall under the sky of France" and "were not all born on French soil," but "they were of France," said the president.

At the head of a country where the number of anti-Semitic acts increased fourfold in 2023, Macron urged people not to give in to "rampant and uninhibited anti-Semitism." France, home to Europe's largest Jewish community (around 500,000 people), was the foreign country that lost the most nationals in Israel on October 7, 2023. And it was also the first to honor its dead in this manner. "It's important for us, we've been given a place, it's a great honor," said Micky Brodash, who lost his daughter Shiraz. He was moved to note that France "hasn't forgotten any of its children," as Macron put it.

Brodash, a former elite policeman in Israel, made his aliyah (emigration to Israel) when he was just 8 months old and speaks French with a Hebrew accent. But he is proud to have had a father who "fought for France in the war in Algeria" and a grandfather who was a supporter of the Resistance during the Second World War. At the Invalides, he discovered the plaque that bears witness to the "sacrifice of tens of thousands of Jewish volunteers in 1939-45."

At the end of the ceremony, Macron and his wife spoke at length with the families in a room at the Invalides, where a buffet had been set up. Galit Brodash, Micky's wife, found the French president "moved," listening to the families' stories "with great empathy." Sabine Taasa, who lost her husband and 17-year-old son, thanked Macron "for welcoming us and giving us the opportunity to tell the world the story of our victims," stories that have been overshadowed for the past four months by "this tornado of suffering," in the words of the French president, caused by the war between Israel and Hamas.

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