French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said that anti-Zionism feeds anti-Semitism in a speech at a rally in Paris to mark two years since the murder of four Jews, including three children, in a Jewish school in Toulouse.
On March 19 2012, a 23-year-old Islamist terrorist, Mohammed Merah, killed at the Ozar Hatorash school Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his two sons, Arieh, 6, and Gabriel, 3, and Miriam Monsenego, 8. Before that, he killed three French soldiers.
The old anti-Semitism of the French extreme right “is renewed,” Valls said. “It feeds off hate for Israel. It feeds off anti-Zionism. Because anti-Zionism is an invitation to anti-Semitism.”
“Criticism of Israel that is based on anti-Zionism — that’s anti-Semitism today, this is the refuge of those who do not accept the State of Israel,” Valls added.
The rally was organized by CRIF, the umbrella representative group of French Jewish organizations, on Trocadero Square near the Eiffel Tower, where the organization says more than 10,000 participants gathered to remember the victims and to say: ’Stop to Jew-hatred.’’
Memorials were also held in Toulouse and Bordeaux.
In Toulouse, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault spoke, affirming his government's commitment ‘’to fight tirelessly racist and anti-Semitic acts.’’
''Two years after the murderous attacks, the time is for meditation, union and remembrance but also for action,’’ Ayrault said, mentioning that recent years have seen an upsurge in anti-Semitic and racist acts in the country.