Tunisian Turmoil Threatens Local Jewish Community
The desecration of an ancient Jewish cemetery in Sousse has brought back long-forgotten memories and fears of anti-Semitism in Tunisia, writes Jacky Hugi.
A handful of Jews in Tunisia’s port city of Sousse woke up one day to a harsh scene. The city’s ancient Jewish cemetery looked as if a pogrom had taken place there. Overnight, someone had shattered gravestones, taken others apart and caused general destruction to the site. The attack caught the small Jewish community of a total of thirty people by surprise.
For dozens of years, since the end of Nazi occupation of the area, the Sousse Jews had not felt the long shadow of persecution. In this city that bears relics testifying to a Jewish presence dating back a thousand years, Jews have recently been feeling threats to their safety.
“We are crazy about them, they are crazy about us,” said a member of the community to a local television station about relations with the neighbors, “We are partners in times of joys and in times of sorrow.”
Yet the graveyard vandalism is not the first expression of anti-Semitism in Tunisia since President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was deposed in January 2011. A short time after the coup, a synagogue was torched in Hamma. One Friday, Salafist demonstrators in the capital city of Tunis called for the murder of Jews in the name of Islamic law. Local merchants demanded that the cries of incitement stop, but the voices continued to reverberate for long months in the tense atmosphere. Afterward, the security services exposed a plan to kidnap a Jew for ransom. One of the members of the group planning the crime was a policeman.
