 Mélenchon's comments came in the wake of a series of protests across France against Operation Protective Edge.Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched on synagogues in the Paris area while multiple antisemitic attacks had been reported across France within the previous month.In July 2017, Mélenchon maintained that France bears no guilt in the Holocaust, and criticized Emmanuel Macron for admitting at a gathering in Paris remembering the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup that Vichy France was the legal French government at the time, thus conceding the French State's responsibility in the deportation of the Jews.