PARIS (JTA) — Jews and Muslims marched through Paris to show outrage at the desecration of more than 500 Muslim and up to 20 Jewish graves.
The French Jewish-Muslim Friendship group organized Sunday’s march, which included local elected officials, imams and rabbis. About 100 people participated in the demonstration.
Between Dec. 7 and 8, on the eve of the Muslim holiday Id al-Adha, a suspected group of neo-Nazis sprayed racist slurs on military gravestones in a northern France cemetery. Muslim tombs were targeted twice in the same cemetery near Arras in the past two years.
The protest called for peace and underlined the links between Jews and Muslims.
"There are so many things uniting the Jewish and Muslim communities," said Bernard Kanovitch, a leading member of the Jewish umbrella group CRIF, to a crowd at the Place de la Bastille.
"What shocks us isn’t just that this happened again, but also the number of tombs," he added.
Investigators are still working to apprehend the vandals.
On Dec. 12, more than 2,000 people gathered at the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery to hear community and political leaders condemn the crime.
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