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Source: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1108437732120
How Marseille Beat Anti-Semitism
(Jerusalem Post) Claire Berlinski - A quarter of Marseille's population is of North African origin, and demographers predict that it will be the first city on the European continent with an Islamic majority. In France's second-largest city, Jewish schools were burned and defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti; Jewish cemeteries were profaned and swastikas painted on Jewish homes. On March 31, 2002, Marseille's Or Aviv Synagogue was reduced to ashes by arsonists. Yet while in other French cities the violence continues, in Marseille the animus soon fizzled out because the city reacted with revulsion to these crimes: City-wide protests against anti-Semitism were immediately organized. Significantly, Arabs participated in these protests.