French-born singer Shirel, 27, stood on a stage at the train station of Macon, north of Lyon, and sang "Jerusalem," one of the songs on her debut album, which bears a message of peace and brotherhood for people of all faiths. But the performance, which was part of a charity benefit concert organized by the French first lady, Bernadette Chirac, was everything but peace and brotherhood.

Shirel won the right to perform at that unique event - part of a series of programs performed by France's best singers, who travel from city to city aboard a train - thanks to her successful performance of the role of Esmerelda in France's most successful musical in recent years, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." But as she stepped on stage, young people in the audience starting booing and cursing. "Dirty Jewess," they shouted at her - and also "death to the Jews." She continued singing until the end of the song, even though no one in the audience, or in the production team, or even the French first lady bothered to come to stand beside her. The story received widespread press coverage and in the end, the president, his wife and the former French prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, phoned Shirel and apologized to her on behalf of the French people.

"It was just one of thousands of incidents of anti-Semitism in France," she says in an interview that took place recently at a Tel Aviv cafe. "Unfortunately, I don't feel that anything has changed since then. Today, calling someone `dirty Jew' is already part of French slang. It's trendy there to say that Jews are Nazis. It's very difficult today to be a Jewish kid in a French school. In general, it's very difficult to be French and also Jewish. We're constantly on the defensive; we have to explain all the time `why [Ariel] Sharon did and why Sharon didn't [do this or that].' Only the French government can be blamed for this, because if it had dealt with the root of the problem, perhaps the situation would be different."...