This gathering mobilized around 1,000 people on Tuesday, while the emotion aroused by the anti-Semitic rape of a 12-year-old girl in the Paris region, ten days ago, was still palpable.
“We are strong, we are proud, we are Jewish and angry”. A rally against anti-Semitism in the center of Lyon mobilized around 1,000 people on Tuesday, according to the prefecture, ten days after the anti-Semitic rape of a 12-year-old girl in Courbevoie (Hauts-de-Seine). The demonstrators returned from Place des Jacobins to Place des Terreaux, brandishing flags in the colors of the Republic and signs saying “Jewish woman raped, Republic in danger”.
In mid-June, a young girl was raped by teenagers who called her a “dirty Jew” and threatened with death in this suburban town northwest of Paris. “What happened to this little girl is infamy”lamented the Renaissance deputy of 13e Rhône constituency, Sarah Tanzilli, who held at the head of the procession a banner “No to anti-Semitism, yes to the Republic”. “Anti-Semitism and racism are not opinions, they are crimes.” she recalled, deploring that “some keep blowing on the embers”.
In the procession, Nathalie Levy came to demonstrate for “show our support as Jews to the entire community, in France, but not only”in front of “anti-Semitism and the importation of a conflict thousands of kilometers away”. “There are almost only Jews” in the demonstration, noted Daniela Touati, rabbi of the liberal Keren Or synagogue in Villeurbanne, seeing it as a sign of the isolation of her community. Marching with a French flag in her hand, she said she “fear of both extremes”, “on the eve of such a crucial election”. “Even if the extreme right doesn’t talk too much about Jews, we know very well that it will come if they are in power,” she estimated.
