“I haven’t slept since this weekend. It’s horrible. » Like nearly 2,000 other people, many of whom struggle to hold back their tears, Isabelle rushes to enter the overheated synagogue of the Espace du Judaïsme in Toulouse, where she “hopes that there will not only be Jews” this Wednesday evening for this “gathering of solidarity with Israel and against terrorism”.
Not far from her, a retired couple cannot refrain from saying with resignation “here we go again”. Because this “stunnedness”, this immense pain at the massacre of innocents, this mourning, the Pink City already felt it in 2012 during the massacre at the Ozar Hatorah school. “Toulouse carries within itself the painful wound of these children snatched by Mohammed Merah,” reminded the audience Thierry Sillam, the president of this Jewish community. “We are determined to keep our heads held high. We are not afraid,” he assures us, while, in the corridor of the building, the line is long at the stand of the emergency fund to help the victims and the Israeli Red Cross.
When his turn comes to speak, Franck Touboul, the president of Criff Toulouse-Occitanie, cannot hold back his sobs. “It’s a pogrom. We were all Americans after September 11, we were all French after the Bataclan. We are all Israelis today. »
The unspoken words of the rebels
Many political figures joined this tribute. First and foremost, Mayor Jean-Luc Moudenc. “It is always the same evil that strikes: anti-Semitism and the deviation of the Muslim religion into Islamism,” he recalls. They are the same ones who hit Father Hamel here in Toulouse, in Nice, at the Bataclan. »
The emotion of contemplation gives way to a certain rage, like a determination to remain standing despite everything. And in this changing atmosphere, each allusion to the semantic cautions of La France insoumise (LFI) is greeted with a round of applause. “Misnaming things is an ultimate error,” says Sébastien Vincini, the socialist president of the departmental council. “We must name the evil: Hamas. This is terrorism. He carried out a terrorist attack against Israel and he is terrorizing his own Palestinian people (…) In Toulouse, we know what anti-Semitism is. We will never forget,” continues Carole Delga, the socialist president of Occitanie. In the Pink City, once again in sorrow, the Capitol facade lights up every evening in white and blue, the colors of the Israeli flag.