{"id":128235,"date":"2026-02-21T17:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=128235"},"modified":"2026-02-18T09:26:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T07:26:41","slug":"21-05-123","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=128235","title":{"rendered":"France Needs Jews in Order to Remain Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"<hr \/>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"center alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.reunion68.com\/Biuletyn\/img\/tablet-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"35%\" \/><\/a><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #000080;\"><span><strong><a style=\"color: #000080; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/sections\/news\/articles\/france-needs-jews-emmanuel-macron\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">France Needs Jews in Order to Remain Itself<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>A tribute to<\/em><\/span><strong> Ilan Halimi <\/strong><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>by <\/em><\/span><strong>Emmanuel Macron<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/ada94cc36e162cc7cafccaed47086c5f6609b991-2501x1741.jpg?w=1250&amp;q=70&amp;auto=format&amp;dpr=1\" width=\"100%\" \/><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>France&#8217;s President Emmanuel Macron (L) during the ceremony commemorating the 20th anniversary of the murder of Ilan Halimi, a French Jew, accompanied by Ilan&#8217;s sister Anne-Laure Abitbol (R), at The Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris, Feb. 13, 2026 \/ Bertrand GUAY \/ POOL \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Good morning to you all, and welcome.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"ArticleContentSwitch ArticleView__content-switch bradford text-article-body-md font-300 mxauto\">\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Ilan Halimi had his whole life ahead of him. A loving family\u2014his mother, Ruth, and his sisters. Friends, dreams. Dreams like those you have at 23, and the smile of someone who looks at others as a promise.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Ilan Halimi was Jewish. And it is because he was Jewish that, for 20 years now, he has been missing from us all.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">It is because he was Jewish that he was subjected to an unspeakable ordeal, a 24-day calvary straight out of the darkest ages.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Everything about the barbaric horror that unfolded 20 years ago inspires dread: Ilan\u2019s abduction\u2014conceived, premeditated, organized. His confinement in a cellar in Bagneux. The belief that, because he was Jewish, he must have had the means to pay unimaginable ransoms. The absurdity of antisemitic prejudice, the machinery of torture, the denial of his humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Everything is dreadful. The barbarity of the murderers, the cruelty of their accomplices, the cowardly pact of those who pretended not to see.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Everything is dreadful. And this dread cannot fade, because over the past 20 years, antisemitic barbarism has not retreated. On the contrary, it has continued to regenerate.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The barbarism of those who, by desecrating a memorial, vandalizing places erected in his memory, uprooting his tree, sought to kill Ilan Halimi a second time.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The barbarism of the terrorists of Ozar Hatorah, who, in 2012, took the lives of Myriam Monsonego and Jonathan, Ari\u00e9, and Gabriel Sandler.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The barbarism of the jihadists of the Hyper Cacher, who, in 2015, murdered Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, and Fran\u00e7ois-Michel Saada.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The barbarism of the murderers of Sarah Halimi, of Mireille Knoll, of Ren\u00e9 Hadjadj\u2014and I do not forget S\u00e9bastien Selam.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The barbarism beyond our borders of those who attacked the synagogue of El Ghriba, that of Heaton Park.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The barbarism of the murderers of Bondi Beach.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Yes, in 20 years\u2014and despite the determined action of our police officers, gendarmes, magistrates, teachers, and elected officials\u2014the antisemitic hydra has continued to grow. Constantly taking on new faces, it has infiltrated the intimacy of our societies, every crack and crevice, once again too often accompanied by the same cowardly pact: not to speak, to refuse to see.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Islamist antisemitism\u2014the one at the origin of the pogrom of Oct. 7\u2014which preachers of hatred attempt to spread on our soil, in physical spaces as well as online, sometimes with the complicity of foreign media, seeking to reign through terror.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The antisemitism of the far left, which seeks to replace class struggle with a supposed racial struggle, through chilling amalgams, competing with that of the far right and its clich\u00e9s about power and wealth.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Antisemitism that wears the mask of anti-Zionism to advance quietly. The kind that exploits criticism of Israeli government policy to delegitimize, assign, and deny the right to exist of the Hebrew state\u2014and ultimately denies Jews themselves the right to live. The same antisemitism that, in a vertiginous historical inversion, seeks to portray Jews as genocidal perpetrators, in an unacceptable and odious manner.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Digital antisemitism, fueled by algorithms and the culpable inaction of platforms, reaching ordinary people, corrupting our youth, multiplying itself, harassing thousands of our fellow citizens deep into their private lives\u2014haunting days and nights, dreams and imaginations.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">All these contemporary expressions of antisemitism, recombining with its older forms, make possible the intolerable banality of evil.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Yes, a young woman is nicknamed \u201cthe Jew\u201d in a student group chat; an elected official called a \u201cdirty Zionist\u201d at a demonstration; Jewish feminist activists pushed aside during the March 8 marches; classrooms where teaching the Shoah is abandoned\u2014too sensitive, too dangerous; a synagogue set on fire in Rouen; another attacked in La Grande-Motte; a rabbi assaulted in the street in Orl\u00e9ans; another\u2014dear Elie Lemmel\u2014assaulted twice in a single week.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">So many attempts to dehumanize our Jewish compatriots. So many insults, blows, threats, anxieties\u2014so many that statistics on antisemitic acts, which have sharply increased since Oct. 7, capture only imperfectly. These figures already describe the unacceptable, yet they obscure the unbearable daily reality: insults, stares, humiliations that exclude and oppress.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">France forgets itself when it allows these everyday barbarities to develop within it\u2014the breeding ground of the gravest crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">France forgets itself when some of its children are forced to change their names on apps, remove their mezuzahs, hide their kippahs, or lie about who they are.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">France forgets itself when some of its children hesitate to go out at night out of fear, as a high-school student told me just days ago, of becoming the next Ilan Halimi.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">France forgets itself when anxiety outweighs republican protection, when solitude replaces solidarity, when abandonment eclipses fraternity.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">That is why the fight against antisemitism is the fight of every French citizen. Because French Jews cannot be erased from the family photograph of the Republic. Because when a Jew is in danger in this homeland, the homeland itself is in danger. And let no one doubt this today.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">When questions arise, when doubts surface, when grief overwhelms, never forget this: Your place is here. Not only because this is your country, but because France needs you to remain itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Much\u2014very much\u2014has been done by successive governments to secure places of worship, train security forces and magistrates, strengthen education and diplomacy, including the adoption of the definition of antisemitism recognized by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Often, when confronted with aggression or insults, our fellow citizens stand up, intervene, speak out. But mobilization must intensify.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">To fight the poison of online hatred, France will solemnly demand accountability from major platforms and measurable results in the rapid removal of hateful content. If commitments are not met, we will activate European law providing for significant fines\u2014and I have referred this matter to the president of the European Commission. Regardless of those who wish to lecture us, in the France of the Enlightenment, free speech ends where antisemitism and racism begin. We will demand accountability and results.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Too often, sentences handed down for antisemitic offenses and crimes seem derisory. Too often, the antisemitic nature of such acts struggles to be recognized. We will strengthen training for magistrates in this area. And to ensure transparency and truth, I want precise monitoring of sentences and sanctions to be established. On this basis, the Government and Parliament will work to strengthen penalties for antisemitic and racist acts.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Our elected officials are the sentinels of the Republic and must remain so. Justice has been seized regarding statements made by some of them, and the judiciary is doing its work independently. For the future, I wish to see the establishment of mandatory ineligibility penalties for antisemitic, racist, and discriminatory acts or statements.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">School, justice, elected officials\u2014the mobilization must be general: that of the State, the Government, all public services, and everyone in the Republic. Ladies and gentlemen, there have been too many words; there have been too many deaths. The time has come for action and for an uncompromising patriotic and republican mobilization.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The mobilization that follows in the footsteps of Zola, Jaur\u00e8s, Clemenceau, and Picquart, who defended Dreyfus. And on July 12 next year, for the first time, we will hold a national day of commemoration for Alfred Dreyfus.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The mobilization that honors Robert Badinter, his humanism, and his love of freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">That honors Marc Bloch\u2014who will be inducted into the Panth\u00e9on on June 23\u2014who liked to say that he claimed to be Jewish only in the face of an antisemite.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">That recognizes itself in de Gaulle, who carried the Republic with him, far from the state antisemitism of Vichy, P\u00e9tain, and Laval.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The mobilization of all our contemporary struggles, from which we will yield nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Ilan Halimi had his whole life ahead of him. The oak tree we plant here at the \u00c9lys\u00e9e will not restore the years taken nor fill the void left behind. But through it, Ilan\u2019s memory will live in the hearts and minds of all who pass through these halls\u2014as a reminder and as a demand.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">What does this tree tell us above all\u2014<em>ilan<\/em>, meaning \u201ctree\u201d in Hebrew? That the place of this fight against antisemitism is here, because this fight is existential for France and for the Republic. For as Abb\u00e9 Gr\u00e9goire proclaimed when he affirmed the entry of Jews into French citizenship,\u00a0\u201cFrance without Jews is a tree without branches.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">And the Republic is unrootable, just like Ilan\u2019s memory now rooted here. They may try to uproot them all; they will never exhaust the republican sap or the French spirit. In the end, there will always be one left\u2014and one is enough. And let every French woman and every French man say it to themselves: They are that last person who carries the honor of all and must take up every fight.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">To Ilan Halimi, to his family, to all victims of antisemitism, to all of you\u2014I swear that in this struggle, the Republic will prevail. Because the Republic is you. It is us. It is, at every second, the person who fights for the dignity of another.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Yes\u2014we will prevail.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Long live the Republic. Long live France.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ArticleEndNote BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto bradford text-article-body-md italic font-300\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>Speech delivered at the tribute ceremony for Ilan Halimi, Feb. 13, 2026. Translated by Emily Hamilton.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"AuthorBioBlock col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 w100 mt6 mxauto\">\n<div class=\"AuthorBioBlock__container graebenbach mt1_5 text-section-details-sm font-300 color-red\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>Emmanuel Macron is the President of the French Republic.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\" \/>\n<div id=\"content\" class=\"content-alignment\">\n<div id=\"watch-description\" class=\"yt-uix-button-panel\">\n<div id=\"watch-description-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><em>Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion&#8217;68,<\/em><em><br \/>\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion&#8217;68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.<br \/>\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:<br \/>\n<\/em><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><em><a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"mailto:webmaster@reunion68.com\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr style=\"width: 100%;\" \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>France Needs Jews in Order to Remain Itself A tribute to Ilan Halimi by Emmanuel Macron France&#8217;s President Emmanuel Macron (L) during the ceremony commemorating the 20th anniversary of the murder of Ilan Halimi, a French Jew, accompanied by Ilan&#8217;s sister Anne-Laure Abitbol (R), at The Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris, Feb. 13, 2026 \/ [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[33,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128235"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128250,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128235\/revisions\/128250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}