Tunisia – Arsonists Burn Synagogue in Gabes, Sefer Torahs Burned

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    FILE - In this picture made available on 05 May 2007, President of the Committee of the El Ghriba synagogue, Perez Trabelsi, walks outside of the synagogue, on the southern Tunisian Island of Djerba, 04 May 2007. EPA/STRTunisia – Arsonists set fire to a synagogue in the southern Gabes region of Tunisia, a leader of the local Jewish community said Tuesday.

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    “Someone set fire to the synagogue on Monday night and the Torah scrolls were burned,” Trabelsi Perez told AFP, criticising the lack of action by the security services to stop the attack.

    “What astonished me was that there were police not far from the synagogue,” added Perez, who is also head of the Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba, the oldest synagogue in Africa.

    Twenty-one people were killed, including 16 European tourists, when Al-Qaeda bombers attacked Ghriba in April 2002.

    Roger Bismuth, the president of the Jewish community in Tunisia, told The Jerusalem Post that the fire which broke out at a makeshift Jewish place of worship in the town of Ghabes was probably not an act of anti-Semitism but of vandalism.

    “It was a room used as a synagogue by Jews who did not want to go to a synagogue which was far away ,” he said. “It is their fault, really, because they left it open. Some one must have. This is not an attack on the Jewish community.”

    Earlier, news wires quoted a member of the Jewish community as saying the fire was politically motivated and that local security forces had willfully ignored it.

    “Someone set fire to the synagogue on Monday night and the Torah scrolls were burned,” Trabelsi Perez told AFP. “What astonished me was that there were police not far from the synagogue,” added Perez, who is also head of the Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba, the oldest synagogue in Africa.

    Twenty-one people were killed, including 16 European tourists, when Al-Qaeda bombers attacked Ghriba in April 2002.

    Since riots broke out in Tunisia two weeks ago, setting off a wave of regional unrest and inspiring the current stand-off between the government and protesters in Egypt, there have been no registered attacks on the Jewish community in that country, despite fears that Islamic extremists may take advantage of the chaos to harm Jews. 
     
    Bismuth said the situation in Tunisia has calmed down significantly in recent days although some protesters still occupy one of the main squares of Tunis.
     
    “The revolution is over but now there are some crowds of people with no jobs and other protesters there,” he said. “Right now we are building the constitution and preparing the next election in the next four months.”
     
    Meanwhile, in Egypt, no attacks had been reported on its tiny Jewish community which numbers around 70 people or any of its institutions. One report from Cairo indicated that the stores on the street where the city’s biggest synagogue is located were all looted although it itself had remained untouched.
     
    Members of the country’s remaining Jewish population, which once numbered over 100,000 people, were extremely wary of speaking to the press on Tuesday, declining to give interviews.
     
    Asked what he thought of the uprising in Egypt, Bismuth said he thought it would go much the same way as the protests in his country have.
     
    “Egypt will follow the same as we do and I believe the president will leave anytime now,” he said. “What’s significant is that for the first time the army refused to shoot the people.”

    **UPDATE**
    The Agency France Press on Monday night killed its story which had announced that a synagogue in the southern Tunisian city of Gabes was set ablaze.

    According to the French news agency, the sources quoted in the story have retracted their statement. The agency didn’t elaborate.


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    5 Comments
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    ComeOn
    ComeOn
    13 years ago

    Boruch Dayan HaEmes.

    13 years ago

    ANIMALS!!!!!!!!!!

    mendoza
    mendoza
    13 years ago

    Does Chabad have any protecion ?

    bubii
    bubii
    13 years ago

    what can we expect from theese mindless vicious animals they are very destructive on top of that they are extreemly stupid and violent they are going to self destruct mark my words theese muslim mindless insane beasts