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Days after synagogue attack, Tunisian president criticizes Israel and says his country saved Jews in WWII
(JTA) — In response to questions about antisemitism in his country posed days after a deadly synagogue shooting in Djerba, Tunisian President Kais Saied said Palestinians “are killed every day” and “no one talks about it.”
He added on Saturday during a visit to the city of Ariana that his grandfather saved Jews during World War II.
“The tents of the Nazi army were here. Jews were hiding in my grandfather’s house; they were inside the house to protect them from the Nazi army. They now talk about antisemitism,” Saied said, according to multiple outlets. “Those who distort history, manipulate the facts, conspire against the state, and seek to undermine civil peace, then level accusations of antisemitism from outer circles — in what age do they live, and why have they lost their memory?”
A coalition of over 20 non-Jewish Tunisian rights organizations immediately issued a statement that, without mentioning Saied by name, denounced what they said was “a formidable confusion between defense of the Palestinian cause and antisemitism” in Tunisian discourse.
“The undersigned associations denounce the poor management of the crisis, which has been characterized by censorship and misinformation, the minimization of the seriousness of the operation and the primacy given to its economic impact,” wrote the coalition, which includes groups such as The Tunisian Association for the Support of Minorities and the M’nemty anti-racism organization. “Ignoring its terrorist dimension, it is described as only a ‘criminal operation’ likely to ‘deal a blow to the tourist season, sow discord and bring down the state.’”
The Conference of European Rabbis, an Orthodox rabbinical group, offered a direct condemnation.
“The Conference of European Rabbis calls on European governments to condemn the inflammatory statements of President Kaies Saied of Tunisia implying that the Jews of Tunisia are responsible for the bombing of Gaza,” CER President Pinchas Goldschmidt said in a statement. “Through such wanton remarks, the president continues to incite further hatred and even attacks against the country’s Jewish community, heaven forbid. … The Tunisian President together with the relevant authorities should instead be offering support to the Jewish community and working to ensure its safety.”
Tunisia’s Chief Rabbi Haim Bitan said Tuesday that he has been invited to Saied’s palace on Wednesday, according to the Times of Israel. Goldschmidt said the community in Djerba, where the shooting took place, had not been contacted by government officials.
A security guard shot and killed five people, including two Jewish cousins from France and Israel, May 9 at the 2,500-year-old El Ghriba Synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba. The shooting took place during an annual Jewish pilgrimage that draws thousands from around the world on or around Lag b’Omer, a break during the 49 days of mourning between Passover and Shavuot.
RELATED: Tunisia’s Jewish pilgrimage and Tuesday’s shooting, explained
In 2002, Al-Qaeda terrorists killed 21 people during the pilgrimage, which has been suspended at times over security and COVID-19 concerns. The pilgrimage had grown to draw as many as 10,000 people during the 1990s.
Nazi and Allied forces fought in Tunisia from 1942 to 1943. According to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust history authority, Vichy French and Muslim authorities were sympathetic to local Jews, whose population before the war numbered around 100,000. Most left after the foundation of Israel led to antisemitic rioting and growing hostility from the Tunisian government. Around 1,000 Jews remain on Djerba, an island of about 200 square miles.
Tunisia and Israel do not have formal diplomatic relations, but reports since the Abraham Accords between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors have claimed that Saied is mulling peace with Israel. Israeli visitors are not usually permitted in Tunisia, but authorities make an exception for the Djerba pilgrimage.
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Mistrial Declared in Case of Students Charged After Stanford Anti-Israel Protests
FILE PHOTO: A student attends an event at a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at Stanford University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Stanford, California U.S., April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in a case of five current and former Stanford University students related to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests when demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the school president’s office.
Twelve protesters were initially charged last year with felony vandalism, according to prosecutors who said at least one suspect entered the building by breaking a window. Police arrested 13 people on June 5, 2024, in relation to the incident and the university said the building underwent “extensive” damage.
The case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court against five defendants charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. The rest previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs.
The jury was deadlocked. It voted nine to three to convict on the felony charge of vandalism and eight to four to convict on the felony charge to trespass. Jurors failed to reach a verdict after deliberations.
The charges were among the most serious against participants in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest movement on US colleges in which demonstrators demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and Washington’s support for its ally along with a divestment of funds by their universities from companies supporting Israel.
Prosecutors in the case said the defendants engaged in unlawful property destruction.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. That is against the law,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement, adding he sought a new trial.
Anthony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, told the New York Times his side was not defending lawlessness but “the concept of transparency and ethical investment.”
“This is a win for these young people of conscience and a win for free speech,” Brass said, adding “humanitarian activism has no place in a criminal courtroom.”
Protesters had renamed the building “Dr. Adnan’s Office” after Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian doctor who died in an Israeli prison after months of detention.
Over 3,000 were arrested during the 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement, according to media tallies. Some students faced suspension, expulsion and degree revocation.
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Exclusive: FM Gideon Sa’ar to Represent Israel at 1st Board of Peace Meeting in Washington on Thursday
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will represent the country at the inaugural meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday, i24NEWS learned on Saturday.
The arrangement was agreed upon following a request from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will not be able to attend.
Netanyahu pushed his Washington visit forward by a week, meeting with US President Donald Trump this week to discuss the Iran situation.
A U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the Board of Peace and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza and build on the ceasefire agreed in October under a Trump plan.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said the board, with him as chair, would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.
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Two Men Jailed in UK for Islamic State-Inspired Plot to Kill Hundreds of Jews
Weapons seized from the home of Walid Saadaoui, 38, who along with Amar Hussein, 52, has been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on December 23, 2025. They are due to be sentenced on Friday. Photo: Greater Manchester Police/Handout via REUTERS
Two men were jailed on Friday for plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired attack on the Jewish community in England, a plan prosecutors said could have been deadlier than December’s mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were both convicted after a trial at Preston Crown Court, which began a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the city of Manchester, in northwest England.
Prosecutors said the pair were Islamist extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jews as they could in an attack in Manchester.
They were found guilty little more than a week after a mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in which 15 people were killed.
Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said on Friday that, had Saadaoui and Hussein carried out their plan, it “could have been very much more serious” than the attacks in Australia and Manchester.
Judge Mark Wall sentenced Saadaoui to a minimum term of 37 years and Hussein to a minimum term of 26 years, saying: “You were very close to being ready to carry out this plan.”
Hussein refused to attend his sentencing, having refused to attend most of his trial, which Wall said reflected Hussein’s cowardice, describing him as “brave enough to plan to threaten an unarmed group with an AK-47 but not sufficiently courageous to face up to what he did.”
POTENTIALLY ONE OF DEADLIEST ATTACKS ON UK SOIL
Saadaoui had arranged for two assault rifles, an automatic pistol and almost 200 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Britain through the port of Dover when he was arrested in May 2024, Sandhu told jurors at the trial.
He added that Saadaoui planned to obtain two more rifles and another pistol, and to collect at least 900 rounds of ammunition.
“This would likely have been one of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out on British soil,” Wall said.
Unbeknown to Saadaoui, however, a man known as “Farouk,” from whom he was trying to get the weapons, was an undercover operative who helped foil the plot.
Walid Saadaoui’s brother Bilel Saadaoui, 37, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism. He was sentenced to six years in jail.