PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron on Monday hosted religious leaders for talks on combatting anti-Semitism in France, a day after a Paris march rallied tens of thousands to express anxiety over an upsurge in acts against Jews. There have been growing tensions in France, home to large Muslim and Jewish communities, as the Zionist entity wages a brutal war in the Gaza Strip in a bid to destroy Hamas.

Macron had urged the religious leaders to make an “educational effort to increase the number of measures addressed to young people,” Catholic bishops’ conference head Eric de Moulins-Beaufort told reporters after the meeting. “The president’s aim, which of course we will help pass on, is to spread this message,” said Elie Korchia, president of France’s Central Zionist Consistory.

“Many young people no longer necessarily read the press, no longer watch TV, sometimes they’re shut up in a language of their own, without reaching out to others,” he added. Monday’s talks were a “continuation of the appeal for national unity and brotherhood” Macron had made in a letter published on Saturday in daily Le Parisien, his Elysee Palace office said ahead of the meeting.

France has seen an upsurge in anti-Semitic acts since Hamas’s Oct 7 attack on the Zionist entity, which left 1,200 people, mostly civilians, dead. The Zionist entity has since launched a military campaign on the besieged Palestinian territory, killing more than 11,000, mostly civilians and many of them children. Macron wrote that “a France where our Jewish fellow citizens are afraid is not France”, calling on people to rally around the country’s “values” and “universalism”.

‘No victimhood contest’

While the presidency did not release an exact guest list for Monday’s gathering, France’s chief rabbi Haim Korsia and rector of the Paris Grand Mosque Chems-Eddine Hafiz were also present alongside leaders representing the Orthodox church, Buddhism and Protestantism. Sunday’s march “should have been made into a battle against racism, that was important,” Hafiz said, arguing that as well as “a real increase in anti-Semitism,” France has seen “an outburst of remarks made against Muslims”.

Nevertheless, “I don’t want to get into a victimhood contest,” he added. Over 180,000 people turned out across France on Sunday according to police figures, 105,000 of them in Paris, to join marches “for the republic and against anti-Semitism”.

Macron himself has been criticized for staying away from the march. Jordan Bardella, head of the far-right National Rally (RN) — which controversially joined the column — told broadcaster RTL Monday that the president had “missed a rendez-vous with history”.

Sylvain Maillard, leader of Macron’s party in the National Assembly lower house, defended the president, telling Sud Radio that “a president’s place isn’t at a demonstration”. Macron “will be judged on how effective state action against anti-Semitism is, rather than his presence at the head of a one-day demonstration,” political commentator Guillaume Tabard wrote in conservative daily Le Figaro.

‘Urge (Zionist entity) to stop’

Macron has also been rebuked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after criticizing the Zionist entity’s extensive bombing campaign in Gaza in a weekend interview with the BBC. “Civilians are bombed ... these babies, these ladies, these old people are bombed and killed... there is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge (the Zionist entity) to stop,” he said.

The French leader’s office said late Sunday that he had spoken with Zionist President Isaac Herzog by phone in an apparent bid to calm the waters. Macron “again expressed his solidarity with (the Zionist entity) in the face of the horror of the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas” and “reiterated (the entity)’s right to defend itself and repeated France’s solidarity with (the Zionist entity),” the Elysee said. – AFP