(JTA) — Dozens of demonstrators protested the entry of Israelis into Tunisia at a Djerba rally against normalizing ties with the Jewish state.
The rally, organized by the Awfia Samidoun association, took place Monday in Djerba Midoun, a municipality of the southern island that every spring receives hundreds of Jewish pilgrims, including many Israelis, the news website babnet.net reported.
The sit-in protest was organized days after the Tunisian parliament summoned Tourism Minister Amel Karboul to explain why she was allowing Israelis to enter the country using their Israeli passports.
Karboul said at a news conference last week that “Tunisia hopes to welcome thousands of Jewish tourists to the pilgrimage of Ghriba. This would strengthen Tunisia’s image abroad as a tolerant country that is open to all religions.”
The Hilula of Ghriba – a feast that features a festive procession on or near Lag b’Omer – brings hundreds of Jews to Tunisia every year. Their procession traditionally ends at the El Ghriba synagogue, a 19th-century building that is among Africa’s oldest existing synagogues.
At the protest rally, Awfia Samidoun President Abdelwaheb Mahdhi said that “it is perplexing that the Tunisian government should link the Ghriba pilgrimage to the success of the touristic season.”
Last year, Awfia Samidoun and other members of Tunsia’s Anti-Zionist Collective – an anti-Israeli umbrella group — held a protest rally in which they urged the government to include a clause that criminalizes ties with Israel in the constitution.
The Echaab movement, a nationalist secular party, also participated in the sit-in, Babnet.net reported. The head of its office in Djerba, Mohamed Bouzidi, reportedly said that anti-Zionism “does not rule out peaceful coexistence with the Jews.”
Approximately 1,000 Jews live in Djerba and another 700 Jews live elsewhere in Tunisia. The nation had 110,000 Jews before the State of Israel was established in 1948, according to the European Jewish Congress.
