Marches against anti-Semitism will be taking place all across France on Tuesday night, with 14 political parties calling on people to take to the streets at a time when anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise.
"This is the response to the national wake-up call we urged last week," said Francis Kalifat of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish organizations.
A statement from the 14 political parties taking part in organizing the marches said: "Anti-Semitism is not an opinion but a crime, we are all concerned."
Among those demonstrating will be high profile politicians including France's Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer and government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux.
Minister for European Affairs, Nathalie Loiseau has also said she plans to march, saying "there is a leprosy that rises in Europe, we must fight it and we will shoot it down".
Former French President Francois Hollande is set to attend as are former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and the former mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe.
File photo: People attend a gathering in Marseille in memory of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Jewish woman murdered in her home in Paris, AFP
French President Emmanuel Macron will not be joining in the marches however he will be attending the 34th annual dinner of CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish organizations on Wednesday where he will give a speech.
A total of 54 marches are set to take place in 50 departments across France, starting between 5 pm and 7 pm.
Meetings have been organized in a large number of French cities, including in Paris at Place de la Republique at 7 pm, Nice, Strasbourg, Metz, Pau, Lille, Tours, Limoges, Valence, Perpignan, Marseille, Caen, Saint-Etienne, Avignon, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse and Clermont-Ferrand.
On top of the marches, there will be a rally against anti-Semitism on Tuesday evening at Ménilmontant metro in the 20th arrondissement of the French capital and on Twitter, the hashtag #JeDisNon (I say no) is being used to signify the rejection of anti-Semitism.
Meanwhile Marine Le Pen, head of the former National Front party - now National Rally (Rassemblement National), was not invited to take part in organizing the marches and will instead hold a separate event in their honor.
Anti-Semitic acts surged by 74 percent in France, home to Europe's largest population, last year, from 311 in 2017 to 541 in 2018.
In two separate incidents in recent weeks, swastikas were drawn on Paris postboxes containing portraits of late Holocaust survivor Simone Veil and the word Juden (German for Jews) was sprayed on the window of a bagel bakery in the capital (see photo above).
A tree planted in memory of Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man who was tortured to death near the capital in 2006, was chopped down and a protester was caught on video calling the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut a "dirty Zionist" and telling him that "France belongs to us" at the recent 'yellow vest' protests.
Finkielkraut had initially supported the yellow vest movement, before criticising the violence carried out against police forces by a fringe of suspected far-right and far-left demonstrators.
Protesters also launched anti-Semitic abuse at Ingrid Levavasseur, who tried to lead a yellow vest list for the upcoming European Parliament elections, in Paris over the weekend.
Source: thelocal.fr
