Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

World Leaders March For Unity Rally In Paris; Benjamin Netanyahu at Grand Synagogue

Aired January 11, 2015 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: The president arrived slightly earlier than we had expected. And there he is. We thought -- we think that he has invited the Israeli prime minister as well, or that the Israeli prime minister is making his own visit to the synagogue.

And, indeed, to perhaps some of the families who lost their loved ones in the attack and the killings at the supermarket the Jewish grocery store on Friday.

All of this, so sadly takes place in an increasingly polarized society. Europe is facing very, very heightened anti-immigration, anti the foreigner, anti-Islamic wave right now. It's very interesting to note at this point that one of the key politicians, Mcqueen Lapel of the National Front here in France. Her father was known for anti-Semitism, she, herself, has had to denounce that, and she has done so. However, she has taken up a different kind of extremism, and that's the Islamic phobic extremism, is very, very ugly, and difficult political and cultural cross currents here.

But certainly Francois Hollande wants to come pay his respects, speak to the leaders of the French Jewish community. And try if he can to re-assure them that France is still a place the Jews can live in peace, because the evidence over the last years and months has shown the spike in the anti-Jewish attack. But it's so interesting when you were speaking to Simone of the Jewish community in Paris she said while she can't advice Jewish community what to do, for her part, she and her children as she said will stay and fight this wave.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Stay and fight, a very, a very defiant statement, and one that is admirable as well.

France of course has had a complicated relationship but historically with the it's Jewish community, although one of the first moves after the France revolution was to give the Jews citizenship which is something that at that point in history was not common throughout Europe. Although the idea that Presidents Sarkozy was said to had some Jewish ancestry.

We are waiting again if you are just tuning in. It is a little after 7:00 o'clock here in Paris, just after 1:00 o'clock in the East Coast of the United States, I'm Jake Tapper, I'm here in Paris, France with Christiane Amanpour.

And we are waiting for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to join his colleague, his fellow world leader, French President Francois Hollande at the Grand Synagogue in Paris a synagogue that for the first time since World War II on Friday night did not hold Shabbat services. Because of the terrorist threat and the terrorist attack at the heart of the Jewish community at a French supermarket where one of the terrorists that stacked last week in Paris, France, shocking this country and indeed the world, killed four individuals, four Frenchmen for nothing more than the fact that they were Jewish in kosher supermarket.

The supermarket incidents prompted many stores and schools in that largely Jewish neighborhood, to shut down for the day, and the Grand Synagogue shutdown in a horrifying symbol of fear and the lack of security for Jews in France. And that is why Hollande and Netanyahu together are attending this event at the Grand Synagogue in Paris -- Christiane.