Several gatherings were also organized in major cities in Occitania. Processions which brought together more or less people, but always with the same force in the message.
“La Marseillaise” was sung this Sunday in the main towns of Occitanie. From Nîmes to Toulouse, via Montpellier, Perpignan, Mende, Carcassonne or Rodez, some 15,000 people responded to the call from the association of mayors of France, supported depending on the department by Licra or Crif , to express their refusal of anti-Semitism.
“Here perhaps more than elsewhere…”
Eleven years after the terrorist attack by Mohammed Merah at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school, it is in Toulouse that the largest number of demonstrators has been recorded. There were 7,000 of them surrounding Mayor Jean-Luc Moudenc. “Here perhaps more than elsewhere, in view of our history and our shared values, we cannot, nor must, remain silent in the face of the upsurge in hateful acts observed in recent times,” he said. call for a large gathering of Toulouse residents on the Place du Capitole, “whatever their political sensitivities”. He was heard.
Dreyfus, Ilan Halimi, Mirelle Knoll
An hour earlier, the Place de la Comédie in Montpellier was not as full. There were only 2,000 of them in front of the Opera, including around sixty mayors of the department and several parliamentarians. The message from Mayor Michaël Delafosse, who evoked the memories of Alfred Dreyfus, Ilan Halimi, Mireille Knoll, the children of the Ozar Hatorah school or the survivors of the Buchenwald camp, was no less strong. . “We have the feeling that in this country, something unfaithful to our values is at play. It is time to summon our history. Many of our fellow citizens, because they are Jews, live with a feeling of fear. The foul beast and its venom are there. They appear on the walls, threaten even the homes of some. But anti-Semitism is not France, it is hatred of others,” insisted Mr. Delafosse.
“This crowd feels good”
In the morning, in Nîmes, only the departmental president of Licra, Daniel Benfredj, spoke. “We are here for the freedom and tolerance that founded the Republic. Anti-Semitism is not the problem of Jews alone. It constitutes, like racism, an attack on the principles and values of the Republic and a threat to our individual and collective freedoms,” he said, then confiding in an aside: “This crowd feels good.” More than 1,000 Gardois gathered in front of the Maison Carrée, including the mayor of Nîmes Jean-Paul Fournier.
The swastika “on the wall of a house in Collioure”
Like 2,500 other citizens, the president of the Region Carole Delga had chosen to join the gathering organized in Perpignan on the Sadi-Carnot quay. Edmond Jorda, mayor of Sainte-Marie and president of the department’s association of mayors, prefect Thierry Bonnier and Daniel Halimi, president of the Jewish community of Pyrénées-Orientales, took turns at the microphone. “I want to be outraged by the swastika that I saw on the wall of a house, not in southern Yemen, but in Collioure,” said the latter with emotion. In the morning, he was also alongside Mayor RN Louis Aliot, who brought together 500 people at the foot of Castillet. “I launched an appeal on Wednesday, then others did the same afterwards. But let’s move on. The most important thing is the message of coming together and defending our Jewish compatriots throughout the country and in the world”, indicated the elected official, who was seen in the afternoon on the Sadi-Carnot quay, even if he was not welcome.
In the other departments of the region, the gatherings were not as large. There were 400 in Rodez, 80 in Carcassonne (despite the absence of elected officials), a little more than 60 in Mende, between 200 and 300 in Gaillac in Tarn, 500 in Tarbes and even 250 in Auch. But each time, there was the same dignity in the message of unity. And La Marseillaise.
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