Following the initiative of the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan (various left), several town halls in France turned off the lights in their town halls on Wednesday evening, in memory of the victims of Gaza, after the Israeli bombing which left 45 dead in Rafah Sunday night.
“We are all children of Gaza”
“The horror of the murderous strikes on Rafah revolts us and touches us to the depths of our humanity,” published the mayor of Marseille on the social network X, calling on “all Mayors of France” to follow his gesture. The mayor of Montpellier, Michaël Delafosse (PS), immediately indicated that he would respond to this call, as did that of Lyon, Grégory Doucet (EELV), and that of Bordeaux, Pierre Hurmic (EELV). “We turn off the lights and we keep our eyes open,” added the Bordeaux elected official on X.
For her part, the mayor of Lille Martine Aubry (PS) declared that she “shared the anger at the horrors of the deadly strikes on Rafah”. But as the lights in the town hall are already turned off in the evening, for reasons of energy conservation, she announced that she would turn off “the lights in other public buildings” from tomorrow. Earlier in the day, 1,200 people demonstrated in the streets of Marseille in support of the Palestinians, according to the police headquarters.
In Lyon, 1,000 people also demonstrated during the day, singing “We are all children of Gaza”. In the evening, British singer Eric Clapton performed on stage with a guitar in the colors of Palestine. An Israeli bombardment on Sunday evening in a camp for displaced people in the Tal Al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah left 45 dead and 249 injured, according to the Ministry of Health in the Gaza enclave, run by the Islamist Hamas movement. .
The war between Israel and Hamas broke out after an unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 on Israeli soil by commandos of the Palestinian Islamist movement, from the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,189 people, mostly civilians. , according to a count carried out by AFP based on the latest official figures available. On the evening of October 8, the Marseille town hall also went dark to “pay tribute to the Israeli civilian victims of Hamas terrorist attacks.” Israel’s retaliatory operation left more than 36,000 dead, mostly civilians, and caused a major humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory, according to Hamas.