The Antisemitism of Tunisian President Kais Saied

Deborah Lipstadt is a former academic historian, the author of many books on Jewish themes, who was sued by Holocaust-denier David Irving for her accurate description of him. She is currently the American government’s Special Envoy on Antisemitism. She recently delivered a well-justified attack on Tunisian President Kais Saied, for his palpable want of sympathy for the two Jews murdered at the Ghriba Synagogue on Djerba Island, More on her remarks can be found here: “‘We’re Very Distressed’: US Antisemitism Envoy Condemns Tunisian President’s Response to Synagogue Attack,” by Andrew Bernard, Algemeiner, May 17, 2023:

Deborah Lipstadt, the United States’ antisemitism envoy, called the response of Tunisia’s President Kais Saied to a deadly attack at a synagogue that killed five people earlier this month “antisemitic,” at a press conference Wednesday.{May 17].

Lipstadt, who had visited the historic synagogue [El Ghriba] on the island of Djerba 24 hours before the attack, as part of an official visit to Tunisia, told The Algemeiner that Saied’s refusal to describe the synagogue attack as antisemitic was disappointing and discouraging.

“We’re very distressed by President Saied’s pushing back – as if we had said Tunisia was antisemitic, which we did not say,” Lipstadt said. “[We] said the attack was an act of antisemitism. And then his pivoting to Gaza…that was antisemitic.”

Not once did President Saied describe the murders of two Jews just outside a synagogue as “antisemitic.” Nor did he see fit even to visit the Ghriba synagogue to express his solidarity with the Jews of Tunisia, who now feel under threat. He never expressed sympathy for the Haddad cousins who were murdered. He never said that antisemitism was a cancer that needed to be eradicated in Tunisia. Instead, in his May 4 speech he deflected his discussion away from the dead Jews on Djerba to the putative sins of Israel in its supposedly “harsh” response to the PIJ in Gaza.

Saied in a speech on Saturday [May 14] instead tried to deflect what he claimed was Western criticism of antisemitism in Tunisia by pivoting to Israel’s recent military response to rocket fire from Gaza.

“These parties do not hesitate to make false accusations of antisemitism, while they turn a deaf ear when it comes to dealing with the fate of Palestinians who die every day,” he said. “The Palestinian people will manage against all odds to triumph and recover their stolen land.”

President Saied claims that accusations of antisemitism directed at Tunisia are “false” – that is, without substance, though his own indifference to the killing of the two Jewish men, his palpable want of sympathy, demonstrates the very antisemitism he now denies. The comments of government officials showed that they were only concerned with the effect of the terrorist attack on the country’s tourism; no human sympathy was expressed. And Saied proceeded in his May 4 speech to level false charges at Israel, as a way to deflect attention from the atrocity at the Ghriba synagogue. The “Palestinians…who die every day” of whom he spoke are overwhelmingly members of the terror groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. They die either in the commission of their terror attacks, or subsequent to those attacks, in shootouts with IDF soldiers or the Border Police who have tracked them down to their hideouts. And those deaths of Palestinian terrorists do not occur “every day,” as Saied claims, seemingly unmotivated, but only in response to the terrorists’ prior attacks.

Israel makes enormous efforts to minimize civilian casualties. Israeli pilots have been known to call off their airstrikes if they perceive civilians, especially children, in the targeted area. Israel uses email, telephoning, leafletting, and the “knock on the roof” technique, to warn civilians away from sites about to be targeted. Some civilians unavoidably die, though very few; Israel always tries manfully to keep their numbers low, while being aware that complete safety for civilians is impossible. It is particularly difficult to avoid civilian casualties because the terror groups  deliberately place their weapons storehouses, their weapons production facilities, their command-and-control centers, their rocket launchers, in the midst of civilian areas, in such structures as schools, hospitals, apartment houses, office buildings. The terror groups use the Palestinian civilians as hostages, their presence helping to ward off attacks by Israeli pilots.

During the five days of Shield and Arrow. Israel hit 197 PIJ targets in Gaza.And according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health itself, only 33 Palestinians were killed in, 22 fighting men, six children, three women and two non-combatant elderly men.That is, 22 fighters were killed, and a grand total of 11 civilians. Of those 11 civilians killed, the Palestinians are very likely wrongly attributing to Israel the deaths of four children who were hit by PIJ rockets that misfired, falling short in Gaza, and the Palestinian worker in Israel who was hit by a rocket from Gaza. That would mean that Israel was responsible for the deaths of only six civilians. An astonishingly small number, and a tribute to the precision of Israeli pilots, and to their policy of calling off their missions if too many civilians are detected too close to the targeted site. No wonder British Colonel Richard Kemp calls the IDF “the most moral army in the world.”

The Tunisian President ought to be reminded that the recent conflict between Israel and he PIJ actually began on May 2, the day that the hunger-striker and PIJ fighter Adnan Khader died, rejecting Israeli efforts to keep him alive. In response to his death, PIJ hurled 104 rockets into Israel. In other words, it was the PIJ that started the hostilities. A week later, the IDF let loose a response to that attack, by taking out three senior commanders of the PIJ. During the ensuing fighting, Israel hit 197 targets in Gaza, including terrorist hideouts, weapons storehouses, command-and-control centers, weapons production factilities, and some terror tunnels.. Meanwhile,the PIJ kept up a steady volley of rockets aimed at towns and cities in southern Israel. In the end 1,468 rockets were launched into Israel during Operation Shield and Arrow; 291 fell in Gaza; and 437 were intercepted by Iron Dome. Almost all of the 470 that landed in Israel fell harmlessly in open fields. A few houses in Israel suffered direct hits; only one Israeli, and one Gazan worker in Israel, died.

Lipstadt’s comments come amidst significant disquiet within the North African country’s Jewish community over the government’s response to the attack.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack on the El Ghriba synagogue in Djerba as hundreds of worshipers celebrated the Jewish holiday of Lag B’ Omer, Saied made no reference to antisemitism or to the selection of a Jewish target by the gunman — an as yet unnamed naval officer who murdered two Jews and three police officers during his rampage.

Speaking to The Algemeiner last Thursday, a member of the Jewish community of 1,500 issued a forthright condemnation of Saied for passing over specifically Jewish concerns regarding the attack and its implications.

“I heard his entire speech, and I realized that it is probably very difficult for him to mention the word ‘Jews’,” said the Jewish community member, who spoke on condition of strict anonymity for fear of reprisals.

“Without a doubt, [Saied] is not only a hater of Israel but also antisemitic,” the person added emphatically.

Saied has caused consternation among Tunisian Jews in the recent past, having been taken to task by Jewish organizations in 2021 after he delivered a speech in which he accused Jews of being responsible “for the instability in the country” — an assertion the Tunisian leader later denied making.

Despite his denial, too many people heard Saied make that claim for his denial to be accepted. His charge was bizarre: how could 1,500 Tunisian Jews possibly be responsible “for the instability” of a country with 12.5 million people? Or did Saied mean that “powerful Jews” outside the country wanted to “destabilize” it? If so, he never explained why they would have wanted to do so. Was it part of some diabolical plot by powerful Jews to keep every Arab state off-balance domestically, so that they would be less prepared to join a pan-Arab alliance that would at long last do away with the Jewish state in their midst?

Were Saied determined to refute the charge that he is an antisemite, there is only one way. That would be for him to address the Jews of Tunisia, ideally with a speech delivered on the island of Djerba, where almost all the 1,500 Jews of Tunisia live, and possibly with the El-Ghriba synagogue as the backdrop. He should fault himself for having insufficiently expressed the sorrow “all Tunisians must feel” at the deaths of the two Jews murdered just outside the Ghriba synagogue, “for which I am truly sorry,” and further express his determination to “ensure that such antisemitic atrocities do not ever happen again in this country.” It might, at least, help to calm those Tunisian Jews who are full of foreboding, and wondering if they have a future in the country their families have lived in for centuries.