Pro-Palestinian activists hold pictures of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Emmanuel Macron as they gather to protest Israeli Prime Minister’s visit to France in Paris, Saturday, July 15, 2017. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
French President Emmanuel Macron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are honouring the victims of a mass deportation of French Jews to Nazi camps 75 years ago. French Jewish leaders are giving speeches at an emotional ceremony at the Vel d’Hiv stadium outside Paris, where French police rounded up some 13,000 people on July 16-17, 1942, before they were sent on to camps. Fewer than 100 survived.
Pro-Palestinian and other activists protested Netanyahu’s appearance, criticising Jewish settlement policy and the blockade of Gaza.
Macron called it a “natural gesture” to invite Netanyahu but insisted in an interview Sunday in the Journal du dimanche newspaper he is “not trying to confuse the subject of the commemoration and Franco-Israeli relations.”
Macron is holding separate talks with Netanyahu later Sunday.
