Three or four families left after the revolution that overthrew
President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. “They had large families and not
enough work,” said Youssef Gamoun, who, like many of the Jews here, has a
jewelry shop in Houmt Souk. “After the revolution, there was less work
and a problem of crime. The tourists stopped coming, and there were
burglaries. Things were really tough.”
The
2002 suicide attack signaled that the synagogue had become a target
along with other Jewish sites in North Africa. The people of Djerba are
reticent about what happened, but 21 people were killed, including 14
German tourists, when the bomber exploded a tanker filled with propane
gas at the entrance to the synagogue.
The
attack was hushed up by Mr. Ben Ali’s government — the charred walls
were whitewashed within hours of the explosion — and Tunisia’s
connections to Al Qaeda were never fully explained. That lack of
openness has kept German tourists away to this day, said Rene Trabelsi, a
Jewish tour operator and hotelier whose father is keeper of the Ghriba
synagogue.
The
Tunisian government has nevertheless provided a permanent police guard
to protect the synagogue since the attack. Dozens of police and
plainclothes intelligence agents locked down the entire area during the
pilgrimage last month, and military helicopters patrolled overhead.
“What happened in 2002 cannot happen again,” said Haim Bittan, Tunisia’s
chief rabbi.
Many
Tunisians like to emphasize their cosmopolitan history, yet the country
is predominantly Muslim and Arab and has been affected by the shocks
emanating from the Middle East. Rioters burned shops and synagogues in
1967 during the Arab-Israeli war, causing an exodus of Jewish families.
The massacres at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in
Lebanon in 1982 prompted more to leave, Mr. Trabelsi said. Tunisia
hosted the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat for 12 years, and Israel
bombed the Palestine Liberation Organization’s headquarters near Tunis
in 1985.
So when the newly appointed minister of tourism, Amel Karboul,
decided to promote the Ghriba pilgrimage this year as a way to bolster
tourism and champion the Jewish minority as an example of Tunisian
tolerance and plurality, members of the National Constituent Assembly
gave her a sharp rebuke.
Legislators
threatened to censure Ms. Karboul and a senior Interior Ministry
adviser over the issuing of travel documents to Israeli tourists.
(Israeli visitors are not issued visas but a laissez-passer, which
avoids recognition of their Israeli passports.)
“We
wanted to make the point not to allow people with Israeli passports and
not to establish diplomatic relations with Israel,” said Issam Chebbi,
one of the assembly members who supported the motion of no confidence in
the minister.
The
political furor scared off some Jewish visitors, yet some welcomed
democratic discussion of the issue. For the first time, a Jew, Mr.
Trabelsi, was proposed for the post of minister of tourism in the new
government in December. He did not get the job — “Maybe it is not the
moment,” he said, shrugging — but added that for the first time, many
Tunisians saw a Jew speaking fluent Arabic just like them on national
television and reacted positively.
“Perhaps
Jews before were hidden, and now today people find the Jewish question
is important,” he said. “Tunisians want to show they are tolerant.”
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