Quai des Célestins, in the march for peace, leaving at 2:30 p.m. from the Institute of the Arab World to join Les Arts et Métiers via the Shoah Memorial and the Museum of Art and History of Judaism, Vassili Kolblen, 23 years old, white chechia and traditional white dress, summarizes: “ I’m Muslim, and I’m here like everyone else, because I’m overwhelmed. Innocent people are being attacked unjustly, that’s not how we’re going to establish harmony. So we respond to the noise with tranquility. I am Muslim, I have Jewish ancestors, my grandmother is an Alsatian Catholic, she listens to right-wing types like no other and yet I love her, she is my grandmother. In the family, we talk. » Myriam, 60 years old, next to him listens to him with attention and curiosity. “ We are all Jewish to begin with, Christians, Muslims… » Vassili interrupts him gently: “ I wouldn’t say that, I would say: “we are all human”. »
It is in these small moments that we say to ourselves that the actress Lubna Azabal did not waste her time by calling for this demonstration, silent, without a slogan, without a sign, without a slogan, blocked by a single white banner, which brought together between 15,000 and 20,000 people in Paris on Sunday, November 19, according to the police. On October 7, the Belgian actress, of Moroccan origin, woke up with fear, faced with the deadly violence of the Hamas raid which left 1,200 victims – most of them civilians – in Israel. Since then, the world has turned upside down. “ I needed a silence that would respond to all this noise on social networks, these people who insult each other and tear each other apart, she said before the demonstration. The noise of this world which had turned into a psychiatric hospital was suffocating me. A silence which is also that of meditation. People continue to die. The silence of the communion of all, regardless of their confession, their belief or their origin. I myself come from a practicing Muslim family. When she saw the images of anti-Semitic acts, my mother said to me: “you will see, today it is the Jews’ houses which are tagged, tomorrow it will be ours. There are unhealthy remnants of the 1930s in the air that are coming back.” »
Making the voice of unity heard
So the actress called the playwright Wajdi Mouawad, of Lebanese origin and director of the Théâtre de la Colline in Paris, they gathered around them a small committee (actresses Julie Gayet and Clémentine Célarié, screenwriter Baya Kasmi, director Vito Ferreri, etc.) and wrote this call to demonstrate where every word was weighed: “… In response to this injunction to choose a side to hate, it is urgent to make another voice heard: that of “union”. (…) Urgent that this voice should start and reweave the torn fabrics of our streets, stitch by stitch. »
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