Preface         

The phenomenon of anti-Semitism in Tunisia, as respected Jewish and Muslim historians indicate, was alien to the Tunisian society before the arrival of the French in 1881. What I call the French “Protectorate crisis” not only undermined the relative autonomy the Jews had always enjoyed, but also established an unprecedented concept called ‘Jewish element’ indigenous Muslims and French settlers were taught to circumvent. Determined to “contain” what they considered a “Jewish peril,” the French alienated those already naturalized French (the educated elite and the rich Grana who were won over) and sowed discord in all its forms between the “unwanted” proletariat Jews and their Muslim compatriots. Of such “containment” attempts were the decrees issued not only in 1886-1887, but also in the following years and in the years following the indictment of Captain Dreyfus in 1894. The rising anti-Semitism that characterized the last quarter of the nineteenth-century in France was rigorously seen reflected on politics and politicians in the French Protectorates, in general, and in the Regency of Tunis, in particular. Devoid of prerogatives, the ruling Beys were seen forced to sign anti-Semitic decrees abolishing or reducing the rights they and their predecessors had always allowed their Jewish subjects to enjoy.

     The anti-Jewish mood in France, reflected in Tunisia, accused the Jews of France’s failures in all ways possible (loss of its war with Germany in the 1870s, rise of the controversial 3rd republic and the demise of the monarchists, emergence of Prussia then Germany at the expense of France, loss of the Ottoman provinces in Europe, fall of the Ottoman Empire, and any unrest in the colonies). Anti-Semitist and Jewish newspapers published in the period between the indictment of Captain Dreyfus and WWI were characterized by what may be called a war of arguments in which each side constructed ram-shackle cases against the other. The exculpation of Dreyfus in 1906 did almost nothing to soothe the hearts and minds of anti-Semitist settlers.

     The same anti-Jewish arguments were adopted again to justify France’s defeat in WWI and the indigenous Tunisians’ support of the Ottoman-backing Germany. The French-fomented 1917-1918 anti-Jewish riots in the Regency bore the mark of an endemic anti-Jewish mood among the French that ranged from the gendarmerie, to the army, to the court, to the press, to the General Residency. In spite of these anti-Semitist connivances which continued right into the period between the wars to persuade the public that the Jews were behind not only the immolation of France, but also the scourge of civilizations, Zionists widened their activities, assimilationists exerted pressure to obtain more rights, and promoters of Judeo-Arab alliance joined, though for a short period, the nascent Tunisian Destour party in 1919. As the figures related to naturalisations in the 1920s and 1930s demonstrate, naturalisations became less desirable than in olden days. Europe stopped being luring to the Tunisian Jews.

      But the mid-1930s knew the surge of another unpredictable ordeal that heraded the return of the Jews to the grind of persecution: the uncollaborative pro-Ottoman or Husseinite Zitouna Mosque Sheikhs, affiliates of WWI Jami’a Islamia, who had always repress-ented the unruly migraine for the secular Neo-Destour militants. Much to the disappointment of the Jews, the Hitlerian propaganda knew, as always, which side to butter a few years before WWII started.  

     During WWII, Tunisian Jews found themselves under the tightening grips of the Vichyists, the Nazis, and the Germanophile Arabs. The German propaganda, which promised decolonizing Tunisia, managed to drive almost all the Arabs, all layers of society confounded, to subscribe to the Nazi anti-Semitic ideology and turn against their Israelite compatriots. The involvement of many of the French-backed Neo-Destour adherents in the excruciating persecution of their Israelite compatriots cannot be denied. As both Arabs and Vichyists were the Nazi henchmen, purging any of them was admitting complicity in a crime nobody wanted to be involved in. The post-WWII compensations (for the 1940 lootings and pogroms) were nothing but throwing dust in the eyes.

     The 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the Palestinian question in general forced the religious and political elite in Tunisia to reveal what had herethereto been unsaid. The issue that divided them shortly after WWI and marred the much-sought Judeo-Arab alliance, namely the Islam-ic character of independent Tunisia, surged again in 1948 under another cover: the Jews were denied positions of authority in the country. The adoption of the 1948 Caïdal corps reform, backed by Bourguiba’s Neo-Destour, was much of a nekba for the confounded Zitouna Sheikhs. 

     That the Jews (most of whom seen turned Zionists or assimilationists) collaborated with the Anglo-Saxons during the Nazi occupation, as Arabs collaborated with the Nazis, did not pass unnoticed. That voices among the Jews, just as among some Arabs, were annexationist did not pass unnoticed either. The advent of the autonomy and independence and the aspiration for sweeping changes promoted the sense of pardon and forgetting on both sides. But the broad pitch of the Bizerte crisis in 1961 and the rumour that Jewish informants were collaborating with the French parachutists tolled back dormant disaffections and envenomed the relationship between Arabs and Jews. The Jews felt virtually unwelcome, if not threatened, in their own country. It was a very unexpectedly bitter reality for them to find them-selves the unwanted underdogs.

Dr. Mohsen HAMLI teaches English at IPSI, University of Manouba, Tunis, Tunisia.

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