Tunisian Jewish man stabbed in Djerba ahead of pilgrimage to island synagogue
Community representative says victim hurt but ‘doing well’ after being attacked for still unclear motive, says he was ‘bothered a lot’ by FM Sa’ar’s call for Tunisia to protect Jews
A Tunisian Jewish jeweler has been injured in a knife attack in Djerba, days before the island holds its yearly Jewish pilgrimage, community representative Rene Trabelsi said.
The motive for the attack, which took place on Thursday in the island’s Jewish quarter, remained unclear, Trabelsi said.
“At this time, we still don’t know if it was an antisemitic attack,” he said on Thursday night.
The jeweler was “doing well” following the assault, but “he had two damaged fingers” and “wounds to his shoulder and arm,” he added.
The attacker, who was arrested, was armed with a large knife, “the kind used in butcher shops,” Trabelsi said.
Djerba, whose palm trees and beach resorts attract flocks of tourists each year, sits off southern Tunisia and is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the region outside of Israel.
Each year, it hosts a Jewish pilgrimage at the Ghriba synagogue, Africa’s oldest, usually drawing thousands of pilgrims from Europe, Israel and beyond.
But after a 2023 deadly attack on the synagogue that killed two worshippers and three police officers, fewer pilgrims have turned out to make the pilgrimage amid tightened security measures.
On Thursday night, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned the attack on the jeweler and called “on the Tunisian authorities to take all necessary measures to protect the Jewish community.”
But Trabelsi, who is Tunisia’s former minister of tourism, said the statement “bothered [him] a lot.”
“I don’t understand the attitude of the Israeli foreign minister,” he told AFP. “We don’t depend on Israel. We are Tunisians in our own right. We depend on our country, which is Tunisia.”
Tunisian authorities did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment.
This year’s pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue is due to take place on May 15 and 16.
It is at the heart of the Jewish tradition in Tunisia, where only about 1,500 members of the community still live — mainly on the island — compared to around 100,000 in the 1950s, before many left for Israel and France.
Members of Tunisia’s Jewish community have expressed fear of antisemitism following the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza. Ten days into the war, following false reports that Israel had killed hundreds at Gaza’s Al-Ahli Hospital, a mob set fire to a historic defunct synagogue in the central Tunisian city of Al-Hammah.
The Times of Israel Community.