Live emotion this Sunday in the Halle aux Grains of the Pink City, during the ceremony of tribute to the victims of the attacks perpetrated in March 2012 in Toulouse and Montauban. Ten years after the assassination of seven people by Mohammed Merah, Emmanuel Macron and his Israeli counterpart, Isaac Herzog, were present to recall “that terrorism will not win”, assured the Israeli head of state, with regard to his first official visit to France.
In front of former Presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as former Prime Minister Manuel Valls and the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, Emmanuel Macron recalled that “anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism were the enemies of our Republic”. Just before that came the moving testimonies of students from the Ohr Torah school, friends of the victims, but also of their relatives like Samuel Sandler, who lost his son and two grandsons that day.
“There is a problem with radical Islam in France”
“For ten years, in the face of tragedy, in the face of repetition, we have not lowered our heads, we have given up nothing, given up nothing, tirelessly seeking the balance between defending our freedoms and strengthening our security, continued the Head of State. We are here to remind you that France and Israel are together determined to defeat terrorism in all its forms and on all fronts. And that we are determined to annihilate anti-Semitism, including that which hides under the mask of anti-Zionism. As such, Emmanuel Macron recalled that the government had dissolved, on March 9, “two anti-Semitic collectives, including the Toulouse collective Palestine will win”.
Before these speeches, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of Toulouse, Franck Touboul had paid a moving tribute to Arié, Gabriel and Myriam, the three children killed on March 19, 2012 and to Jonathan Sandler. But for this representative of the Toulouse Jewish community, organizer of this day, the question of Islamism has not been hidden either. “In France, there is a problem with radical Islam, to say so is not to play the game of the extreme right, it is to save lives”, he insisted, pointing to “the refusal of the extreme left to name the real”.
This more political speech, other speakers present carried it this Sunday on the stage of the Halle aux Grains, whether it was the essayist Caroline Fourest or the lawyer Richard Malka. The latter recalled that “the victim ideology” was a common point to all the Islamist terrorists who acted on French territory. “And it is gaining ground,” he noted. “We need a counter-ideology and we don’t have it in our schools”, lamented the lawyer of Charlie Hebdo.