182,000 people turned out on Sunday, November 12, to march against anti-Semitism across France, including 105,000 in Paris, according to the Ministry of Interior and the police prefecture. "Our order of the day today is... the total fight against anti-Semitism which is the opposite of the values of the republic," Senate speaker Gérard Larcher, who organized the Paris demonstration with Assemblée Nationale speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet, told broadcaster LCP before the marchers set off.
Tensions have been rising in the French capital – home to large Jewish and Muslim communities – in the wake of the October 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by a month of Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Around 500,000 Jewish people live in France, making up Europe's largest community. More than 3,000 police and gendarmes were to be deployed to maintain security at the march.
At the front of the march were Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, the two speakers and dignitaries including former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as religious leaders.
Earlier Sunday, thousands of people also gathered in major French cities including Lyon, Nice and Strasbourg behind the same slogan as the Paris march: "For the Republic, against anti-Semitism".
"Everyone should feel like it's their business" to combat anti-Jewish feeling, France's chief rabbi Haim Korsia told broadcaster Radio J.
On the eve of the march, President Emmanuel Macron – who did not attend Sunday – condemned the "unbearable resurgence of unbridled anti-Semitism" in the country. "A France where our Jewish citizens are afraid is not France," he wrote in a letter published in Saturday's Le Parisien. Macron condemned the "confusion" surrounding the rally and said it was being "exploited" by some politicians for their own ends.
The hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party boycotted the event which the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party members attended. LFI leader Jean-Luc Melenchon rejected the march as a meeting of "friends of unconditional support for the massacre" of Palestinians in Gaza. A separate rally against anti-Semitism that LFI organized in western Paris was disrupted on Sunday morning by counter-demonstrators.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen – who also encountered protesters as she arrived to the main march – declared the demonstration should also serve to stand against "Islamic fundamentalism", a pet theme of her anti-immigrant party. The RN was known for decades as the Front National (FN), led by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen – a convicted Holocaust denier. Aiming to show the party has changed, "We are exactly where we should be" taking part in the march, Le Pen told reporters shortly before it began, calling any objections "petty political quibbles".
Communist leader Fabien Roussel said he would "not march alongside" the RN. Other left-wing parties as well as youth and rights organisations marched behind a common banner separated from the far right.
Prime Minister Borne said Sunday, "There is no place for posturing" at the march, writing on X that "this is a vital battle for national cohesion". Borne's own father survived the Nazi death camp Auschwitz in occupied Poland, only to take his own life when she was 11.
The march took place a day after several thousand people demonstrated in Paris under the rallying cry "Stop the massacre in Gaza". The left-wing organizers called for France to "demand an immediate ceasefire" between Israel and Hamas militants.