Jean-Luc Moudenc, the mayor of Toulouse, France, said during a speech marking the liberation of the city from the Nazis that “antisemitism has not disappeared and is even resurging.”
During the speech, Moudenc denounced rising levels of antisemitism and also attacked those who ignore it “from which it benefits,” the Actu Toulouse French language publication reported.
He mentioned the story of Jules-Géraud Saliège, the archbishop of Toulouse when it was under German occupation. Saliège spoke out against the Nazi treatment of French Jews and went on to have all the churches in his diocese read a letter calling on Christians to help their fellow Jews.
Saliège wrote: “The Jews are real men and women. Not everything is permitted against these men and women, against these fathers and mothers. They are part of the human species. They are our brothers like so many others. A Christian should not forget this.”
For his efforts to protect Jews, Saliège was recognized as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
“So how can the strong words of Jules-Géraud Saliège concern us eight decades later? The answer to this question, we have it unfortunately before our eyes, in the news of our country as sadly illustrated by a series of resounding facts and crimes in recent years,” Moudenc said.
“For a long time the prerogative of the far right, antisemitism is still present there, as shown by the revisionist campaign of a candidate in the first round of the recent presidential election.”
He added: “But it has spread elsewhere: on the far left Corbyn; it is sometimes confused with anti-Zionism; it oozes in the most hateful speeches advocating the delegitimization of the State of Israel; it overlaps other times with Islamism; it infiltrates the movement of yellow vests and then the processions of antivax; it insinuates itself into currents of Islamo-leftist thought that it is such bad form to denounce when they undermine the republican objectivity of this or that institution of higher education,” he said.
Moudenc described today’s antisemitism as “more subtle than that of yesteryear, but just as perverse, since it is in truth sneaky.”
He called antisemitism “not minor racism.”
“Vigilance to discern antisemitism or the new non-assumed complacency from which it benefits is therefore more necessary than ever, as well as the courage to fight these excesses,” he said.
