TUNIS: Tunisian president Kais Saied on Wednesday pledged safety of Jewish citizens and their temples in the country as he met with the country’s chief rabbi in the wake of a deadly synagogue attack.
Last May 9, a National Guardsman killed two Jewish visitors besides two policemen at a synagogue on Djerba island – Africa’s oldest – before being shot dead. He had earlier killed a colleague at a country’s naval installation as well. Saied last week blamed the attack on “criminals” seeking to harm the tourism sector.
On Wednesday president Kais Saied met with Tunisia’s chief rabbi, chief Christian archbishop and a Muslim mufti, saying that receiving clerics sent a “historical message” of tolerance and coexistence. “We will provide you security in your temples. Live in peace and security, and we will provide you with all the security conditions,” Saied said in a broadcast of the meeting.
The Jewish victims of the attack, that occurred during an annual festival, were two cousins, one French-Tunisian and the other Israeli-Tunisian. “The president gave us guarantees that what happened recently would not happen again”, Chief Rabbi Haïm Bittan said.
Mainly Muslim Tunisia is home to one of North Africa’s largest Jewish communities with over 1,800 members. The pilgrimage to the Djerba festival regularly draws hundreds of Jews from Israel and Europe and has operated under tight security since al Qaeda militants attacked the synagogue in 2002 with a truck bomb that killed 21 Western tourists.
