More than three million people took to the streets in France yesterday in a rally for unity that was said to rival the response to the liberation of France after World War II with locals pouring into the streets to express their intention to unite and defend itself against the terrorism that left 17 people dead in Paris last week.

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that an estimated 1.6 million people marched in Paris behind an impressive list of world leaders that included Germany’s Angela Merkle, Britain’s David Cameron, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Russia’s’ Sergey Lavrov, all of whom walked arm in arm into Republic Square.

President Barack Obama was conspicuously absent from the march with the U.S. represented only by its Ambassador to France, Jane Hartley.

An impressive roar was said to have been issued by the crowd when the world leaders walked past, with marchers openly weeping and holding up pens and banners saying “Je Suis Charlie!” in honor of the 12 staff of the local newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, who were killed by Muslim extremists last Wednesday.

“Paris is today the capital of the world. Our entire country will rise up and show its best side,” French President Francois Hollande promised.

The Interior Ministry reports that 3.7 million people marched in cities across France yesterday, saying that precise counts were impossible due to the overwhelming size of the crowds.

Large rallies also took place in other major cities around the world, including London, Madrid and New York – all of which were attacked by al-Qaida-linked extremists in recent years. Cairo, Sydney, Stockholm, and Tokyo also saw impressive rallies against the reckless Muslim extremism that is spewing carnage across the globe.

Although it is being reported that President Hollande asked Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu not to attend the march because of the presence of the Palestinian head, Mahmoud Abbas, Netanyahu insisted and was later accompanied by Hollande to the site of the Jewish grocery store where a gunman, Amedy Coulabily, held 15 hostages. Coulabily slaughtered four of the hostages before being killed by French police.

The joint visit to the grocery story was important because the tension between militant Muslim immigrants and French Jews has become so high that nearly 7,000 of the country’s half-million Jewish population have left the country in the last year due to concerns about both their safety and the economy.

As Netanyahu said, “The entire world is under attack” from radical Islam, Netanyahu said, calling the increasing number of attacks part of a “network of hatred” by radical groups.

After world leaders left the march in Paris, President Hollande remained behind to greet survivors of the Charlie Hebdo attack and their families.

“We’re not going to let a little gang of hoodlums run our lives,” said Fanny Appelbaum, 75, to Reuters. Appelbaum lost two sisters and a brother in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz‎. “Today, we are all one.”

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