The violence roiling Tunisia hasn’t put the country’s 1,500 or so Jews in serious jeopardy, but Jewish organizations are increasingly concerned about their fate as massive anti-government protests continue.
In many ways Tunisia is unique in the Arab world. Tunisia\’s president promotes education and protects Tunisian Jews from the chaos and religious extremism enveloping much of North Africa. Tunisia has also played a very constructive and positive role in the Middle East peace process. However, stability in Tunisia — for its Jews and for the country as a whole — has come at the expense of democratic rights.
On Monday morning, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center observes Yom HaShoah, commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, a place of honor will be reserved for the daughter of the late Khaled Abdelwahab. Abdelwahab is the first Arab to be nominated for official recognition by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations, and his story adds a new dimension to the 6 million stories of horror — and occasionally nobility — rising from the ashes of the Holocaust. His acts also shed light on the little-known fates of Jews in the Arab countries of North Africa during World War II.
Throughout much of the Arab world and Europe, three and a half years of intensive Israeli-Palestinian violence has deepened anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic sentiment among populations, recent polls have shown. But in Tunisia, home to one of the last significant Jewish populations in the Arab world, Jews there say their lives have continued peacefully.
Jews here persevered with their annual Lag B\’Omer celebration this week in spite of a recent terrorist attack that rocked their tiny island community. The numbers were down from past celebrations, but still hundreds of tourists came to join the 1,000 Jewish Jerbans for the pilgrimage festivities.
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