The march for peace held in Paris on Sunday, November 19, left from the Arab World Institute and passed by the Shoah Memorial Holocaust museum and the Museum of the Art and History of Judaism. Among those walking silently in the procession was Vassili Kolblen, 23, wearing a white fez and traditional white dress. "I'm a Muslim, and I'm here like everyone else, because I'm overwhelmed. Innocent people are being attacked unjustly, and that's not the way to establish harmony. So we respond to the noise with tranquility. I'm a Muslim, I have Jewish ancestors, my grandmother is Alsatian Catholic, she listens to right-wing guys like you wouldn't believe and yet I love her, she's my grandmother. In the family, we talk." Beside him, Myriam, 60, listens with attention and curiosity. "We're all Jews to begin with, Christians, Muslims..." Vassili gently interrupts: "I wouldn't say that, I'd say we're all human."
The march was organised by Belgian actress Lubna Azabal, as a silent walk with no slogans and no placards, just a single white banner. It brought together between 15,000 and 20,000 people, according to the police. On October 7, Azabal, who is of Moroccan origin, awoke in horror to the violence of the Hamas attack that claimed 1,200 victims, most of them civilians, in Israel.
"I needed a silence that would respond to all the noise on social media, people shouting at each other and tearing each other apart," she said before the march. "The noise of this world that has turned into an asylum was suffocating me. [I needed] a silence that is also one of contemplation. People are still dying. The silence of the communion of all, regardless of confession, creed or origin. I myself come from a practising Muslim family. When she saw the images of the anti-Semitic incidents, my mother said to me, you'll see, today it's the Jews' houses that are being tagged, tomorrow it'll be ours. There are unhealthy whiffs of the 1930s in the air."
The actress called playwright Wajdi Mouawad, who is of Lebanese origin and director of the Théâtre de la Colline in Paris, and they gathered a small committee around them – including actresses Julie Gayet and Clémentine Célarié, screenwriter Baya Kasmi and director Vito Ferreri – and wrote the following statement: "[In response] to this injunction to choose a side to hate, it is urgent that we make another voice heard: that of unity. This voice needs to mobilize urgently stitch back together the torn fabric of our streets."
French minister of culture,Rima Abdul Malak told the media that this text immediately appealed to her, having been astonished over recent weeks not to see France's culture sector mobilize in the face of the rising tide of anti-Semitism that is shaking the country. Now, the list of signatories resembles film credits, from A for actor Lionel Abelanski to Z for actress Elsa Zylberstein and some 600 other prominent cultural figures. Also on the march, some taking it in turns to hold the white banner heading up the march were French stars including Isabelle Adjani, Camille Cottin, Joey Starr, Valérie Donzelli, and former Minister of Culture Jack Lang.
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