A demonstration in Paris calling for the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas terrorists. Photo: Reuters/Magali Cohen

A demonstration billed as a “great civic march” against antisemitism will take place in Paris on Sunday amid continued squabbling over the participation of France’s main far right party.

Jointly called by the speaker of the French parliament, Yaël Braun-Pivet, and her equivalent in the country’s senate, Gérard Larcher, the purpose of the march is to demonstrate national unity amid an explosion in antisemitic acts since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, in which over 1,400 people were murdered and more than 200 seized as hostages.

More than 1,000 outrages targeting Jews or Jewish institutions in France have been reported in the interim period — a national record.

However, the march against antisemitism has been mired in political controversy since being proposed earlier this week by Olivier Faure, the leader of the French Socialist Party (PS), over the potential participation of the far right Rassemblement National (RN — “National Rally”), the successor to the neo-fascist Front National (FN).

Far left parliamentarians from the Communist Party and La France Insoumise (LFI — “France Rising”) pledged to boycott the march if the RN was present.

Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel told local media outlets that he would not “march alongside” the RN, accusing the party of being founded by “people who were repeatedly condemned for antisemitic remarks” and who had “collaborated” with Nazi Germany. The RN’s recently-elected leader Jordan Bardella sparked fury last weekend when he denied that the party’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was an antisemite, despite his notorious 1987 comment that the Holocaust was a “minor detail in the history of World War II.”

Roussel added that it was “important that there is a march against antisemitism” and suggested that supporters of the Communist Party would gather at a different location to avoid the RN.

Separately, a statement from LFI — which has itself been accused of antisemitism regarding its response to the Oct. 7 atrocities — echoed the Communist refusal to march with the RN. A post on X/Twitter by the party’s leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, criticized the march for allegedly raising the issue of antisemitism to deflect from calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. “Friends of the unconditional support of this massacre have their date,” he wrote sarcastically.

The RN has remained unfazed, with the party’s former leader — Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen — promising that the party would participate in the march. “I call on all of our members and voters to join this march,” she said on Wednesday.

A spokesperson for the French Council of Ministers expressed concern at the participation of the RN. “In my opinion, the National Rally has no place in this event,” but “it is a public event in which everyone is free, in conscience, to participate,” including “each member of the government,” Olivier Véran told broadcaster France 24.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, whose Jewish father was deported by the Nazis, will also take part in the march. President Emmanuel Macron has not said whether he will attend, sounding a warning against those tempted to conflate “the rejection of Muslims with support for Jews.”