Tale of Two Marches Is Set To Split Europe Over the Question of Israel — and There Are Some Surprises

PARIS — Call it a Tale of Two Marches. On the anniversary of the weekend the cannons went silent to end World War I — at 11.11.11 — two marches, one at London against Israel, the other at Paris against antisemitism, will highlight how the Jewish state’s war against Hamas means that the fate of the Jews is once again consuming Europe.The speakers of France’s two houses of parliament have called for a “great civic march” against antisemitism for Sunday. This comes in the wake of a tally by the country’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, finding that there have been more than 1,000 antisemitic incidents since the war began last month. He reflects that “the number of antisemitic acts has exploded.” The scale of this is startling. Last week, dozens of buildings at Paris and its environs were daubed with blue Stars of David, intended to mark where Jews allegedly lived. The city’s public prosecutor promises to investigate “the antisemitic nature of the perpetrators’ intentions, particularly in view of the geopolitical context and its repercussions in France.”The march on Sunday will begin at the national assembly or Les Invalides and march to the senate. France’s prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, whose father survived the Holocaust, has committed to attending. Le Monde reports that President Macron, like Shakespeare’s prince of Denmark, is weighing whether “to go or not to go” and that he has “been on the fence” about attending. Earlier this week, Mr. Macron opened a Gaza aid conference by intoning that “fighting terrorism can never be carried out without rules. Israel knows that.” He urged delegates to “work toward a ceasefire.” Representatives of the Jewish state, in an important moment, declined to join the president of the Republic at the Elysee Palace.One of Mr. Macron’s rivals, Marine Le Pen, will be at the march — even, she says, if she has to bring up the rear. Ms. Le Pen has been the runner-up to Mr. Macron in the last two presidential elections, and is expected to mount a strong challenge in 2027. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is a long time leader of France’s far-right who has been convicted for antisemitic speech.His daughter, though, changed the party’s name to “National Rally” from “National Front” and is attempting to take it mainstream. She promises that “all of our elected officials will be there.” A spokesman for Mr. Macron says that National Rally “does not have a place” at the rally but that “everyone is free, in his conscience, to participate or not.”National Rally is the largest opposition party in France. Ms. Le Pen has called the October 7 attacks “pogroms on Israeli soil” and her party’s president, Jordan Bardella, maintains that “for lots of French Jews, the National Rally is a shield against Islamist ideology.” Ms. Borne, the prime minister, calls Ms. Le Pen “an inheritor of Pétain” — a reference to the leader of Vichy France.The Sun spoke on the telephone to a French politician and activist, Philippe Karsenty, who said that Ms. Le Pen “split with her father” over his antisemitism. He adds that in France the “main problem for the Jews is not the far right, it is the far left and Muslim antisemitism.” Mr. Karsenty adds that French Jews living in Israel overwhelmingly have voted for another rightist candidate, Eric Zemmour.Mr. Zemmour, who is Jewish, is expected at the rally on Sunday. When asked why the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France, the umbrella group of French Jews, has come out against Ms. Le Pen’s attendance, Mr. Karsenty took a deep breath and proceeded to criticize this stance. He said the group “doesn’t represent the Jewish people.” CRIF hasn’t commented.Across the channel, a rally in support of the Palestinian Arabs is planned for Saturday. Prime Minister Sunak has called that plan “provocative and disrespectful, given the solemn nature of the weekend,” which includes Armistice Day on Saturday and National Remembrance Day. The chief of the Metropolitan Police, Mark Rowley, has rebuffed entreaties that it be canceled.The police, though, have announced that an “exclusion zone” will be in place around the Cenotaph — that is the memorial to the British war dead unveiled in 1920, and rededicated in 1946 — and a large swathe of Whitehall through the weekend. Anyone who breaches that perimeter can be arrested. The march’s organizers claim that their route will bypass the sites. The rally is becoming a political headache for Mr. Sunak. His home secretary, Suella Braverman, has accused the Metropolitan Police of “playing favorites” and failing to treat “pro-Palestinian mobs” the same as they would other groups. Mr. Rowley responds that cancellation requires a “real threat of serious disorder and no other way for police to manage the event.”Ms. Braverman took to the Times to venture that the demonstrations that have become regular occurrences since October 7 are not “merely a cry for help for Gaza. She says they are an assertion of primacy by certain groups — particularly Islamists — of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland,” a particularly sensitive point given the legacy of the Troubles. The home secretary also labeled the series of demonstrations that have bloomed since October 7 as “hate marches.” She accused the police of employing “double standards” and having “played favorites when it comes to demonstrators,” with those of the right-wing variety being subjected to stricter scrutiny. Ms. Braverman is a rising, if polarizing, right of center Conservative minister. Ms. Braverman’s assessment was not cleared by 10 Downing Street. Mr. Sunak is supposedly investigating how such an unauthorized article was published. Her view, though, is shared by the erstwhile leader of Brexit, Nigel Farage, who calls the police response — this is not the first such rally — as “all over the place” and who reckons that the potential for violence is “pretty obvious and pretty clear.”

Tale of Two Marches Is Set To Split Europe Over the Question of Israel — and There Are Some Surprises

Tale of Two Marches Is Set To Split Europe Over the Question of Israel — and There Are Some Surprises

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