Netanyahu joins Macron at French Holocaust commemoration

French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are honoring 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, criticizing 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 today.

— AP