“Danger signals” regarding the Jews in Tunisia were enumerated today in the influential Tunisian newspaper, Afrique Action, which ran a symposium on the Jewish situation in Moslem North Africa.Five Jewish writers and two Moslem students contributed to the symposium.
Serge Guetti, prominent Tunisian-Jewish writer, summarized the principal “danger signals” as the fact that Tunisian Jews, unlike the Moslems of the country, are not required to serve in the army; the inability of Jews to obtain certain administrative positions; and the barring of Jews from enrollment in institutions of higher learning, especially the Teachers Training Institute.
The failure to make army service obligatory upon Tunisian Jews, said M.Guetti, “may make the Moslem population distrustful of the Jews. ” The writer pointed out that, while one Jew is usually included among the members of various public bodies, that practice is followed only so that the country might not be charged officially with anti Semitism.
A large part of the 120,000 Europeans who left Tunisia since that country won its independence in 1956,are Jews, most of them now living in metropolitan France, Jewish circles said here today. The statement was made after a Tunisian newspaper, La Depecha, reported that, since 1956,120,000 of the country’s 180,000 European residents have departed.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
