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‘Jewish life goes on’: Djerba Jews and their supporters show resilience after deadly attack
(JTA) — The day after a gunman killed four people outside an ancient place of Jewish worship on the Tunisian island of Djerba, men gathered in the same synagogue not to mourn, but to celebrate.
They were there to witness the blessing of a new life: a brit milah, or ritual circumcision. Not long after, a recording of the ceremony, complete with the men chanting in Hebrew as they surrounded the eight-day-old baby, made its way to the phone of Isaac Choua, a Sephardic rabbi living in New York.
For Choua, watching the ceremony was a relief from the horrors that had emerged the day before, when a rogue security official at the Tunisian synagogue killed two Jewish cousins, Aviel Haddad, 30, and Benjamin Haddad, 43, as well as two security guards before being gunned down.
“Something beautiful happened,” said Choua, the Middle East and North Africa communities liaison for the World Jewish Congress, in an interview. “They had a brit milah in Djerba, even with all the chaos. Jewish life goes on.”
Tuesday’s deadly shooting came during the Hiloula, an annual pilgrimage and celebration of Jewish sages held on or around Lag b’Omer, which takes place a little more than a month after the beginning of Passover. The annual festivity attracts thousands of Jews from around the world, many of Tunisian descent. It is held at the El Ghriba synagogue — a 19th-century building constructed on a site believed to have been a Jewish house of worship for as long as 2,500 years.
The pilgrimage has grown substantially in recent years, after trepidation following an attack on the synagogue by Al-Qaeda in 2002 that killed 20 people, and a suspension of the pilgrimage in 2011 amid security concerns in the wake of the Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia.
The Tunisian government has invested in the pilgrimage, billing it as a symbol of the country’s tolerance, and has provided intense security. Last year, Tunisia was one of six African countries that signed the “Call of Rabat,” an initiative of the American Sephardi Federation that sought a commitment to preserving Jewish heritage on the continent.
Jason Guberman, the executive director of the American Sephardi Federation, said the numbers that the Hiloula attracts today have not yet reached the 10,000 or so who attended before the 2002 attack. The Arab Spring and COVID-19 pandemic, he said, “have also deterred pilgrims in the past decade.” He estimated that fewer than 5,000 people attend annually now.
Additionally, Tunisia’s authoritarian president Kais Saied remains unfriendly to Israel and has rebuffed efforts by successive American administrations to join the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries.
Djerba, nonetheless, remains an oasis of coexistence, said Yaniv Salama, the CEO of the Salamanca Foundation, which seeks to reinvigorate Jewish communities in Muslim lands.
”You have to understand something about Djerba,” Salama said. “The community there has very, very deep ties with the local municipalities. Everything is done in conjunction — there are joint [security] watches” between the Jewish and larger communities, “and joint communication between the Jewish community leaders and the local police.”
Jason Isaacson, the American Jewish Committee’s chief policy and political affairs officer, who has frequently visited Djerba, said it was significant that two Tunisian security officials died protecting the Jewish community.
“It’s obviously now going to be a source of shame for the country that this happened, within its own military forces, but this happens within military forces” everywhere, he said. “The fact that the country deploys a huge protective cordon around the synagogue and around the festivities and around the worshipers who come, to assure that it all goes off smoothly and proper in a celebratory spirit, is significant.”
Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank whose expertise is Islamist extremism in Tunisia, said the attack appeared to be an outlier, unlike the carefully planned 2002 attack.
“It wasn’t really a sophisticated attack,” Zelin said. “So it’s plausible it could have just been one person that just decided to do something on their own accord, and there wasn’t some broader plot or planning in the same way.”
Choua said the Tunisian Jewish Diaspora would not be deterred. “Jewish Tunisians are still going to either visit family [or] visit this pilgrimage site,” he said. “Jews are resilient.”
Djerba has the attention of the world, at least for the moment. The day before the attack Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. envoy monitoring antisemitism, alongside U.S. ambassador to Tunisia Joey Hood, joined Tunisian officials in a ceremony launching the Hiloula.
“I am sickened and heartbroken by the lethal, antisemitic attack targeting the Ghriba synagogue in Djerba during the Lag B’Omer celebrations, with thousands of Jewish pilgrims in attendance,” Lipstadt said on Twitter.
That may be the silver lining, the World Jewish Congress’s Choua said: The predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish Diaspora tends to forget the communities that persist outside the Western world.
“The Jewish world is noticing that there’s still Jews in the Middle East and North Africa,” he said. “This might even spark more tourism in the country itself.”
Salama said he did not expect the community of about 1,400 people, which includes a number of institutes of religious learning, to be broken following the attack.
“They’re all they’ll do their grieving and they’ll continue, they’ll push forward,” he said. “They really have got a stiff upper lip.”
Robert Ejnes, the executive director of CRIF, the umbrella body for French Jewry, said the French Jewish community is close to the Tunisian Jewish community because France colonized the country beginning in the 1800s, and because the community speaks French. He said that the Hiloula attracts French Jews of all ethnic origins.
“It’s really affecting the whole of the community of France because on the Hiloula, there are a lot of people going [from] the French Jewish community of all origins,” he said.
Ejnes found it notable that even after the attack, French Jews who attended the Hiloula posted photos of the festivities on social media. He said he expected the same number of people to attend next year’s Hiloula.
“People will be resilient,” he said. “They posted pictures of them[selves] at the Ghriba, saying, ‘We’ll be back.’”
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A 19-Year Name vs. 3,000 Years of History: Judea vs. ‘West Bank’
The Jewish community of Beit El in Judea and Samaria. Photo: Yaakov via Wikimedia Commons.
Read a story about Israel from almost any major news outlet and you’ll see the same convention: “West Bank,” stated as fact, and “Judea and Samaria” treated as controversial.
In fact, these outlets all treat “Judea and Samaria” as a label used by Israel, often with a caveat that it is “biblical,” “right wing” or even “far-right.”
One term is presented as neutral. The other arrives with a warning. That is not linguistic housekeeping. It is a political choice, often made in a conscious way that reshapes history.
“West Bank” is a directional term. It describes where the land sits relative to the Jordan River. It was coined in 1949 by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after its army crossed the river in 1948, seized the territory as part of the Arab League’s declared war to annihilate Israel, and later annexed it. East Bank, West Bank. It is a geographic label attached to a military and political act. Jordan’s 1950 annexation was recognized by only a handful of countries and never produced a Palestinian state.
“Judea and Samaria” are not modern inventions, and they are not merely “biblical” in the dismissive sense often implied.
They are the names by which this region was known across centuries of rule, from antiquity through successive empires. They appear in ancient records, persist through administrative usage, and reflect a continuous historical vocabulary.
Even the 1947 UN Partition Plan — the plan that proposed to create the first independent Arab state in the Holy Land — referred to this area as the “hill country of Samaria and Judea” in describing the territory proposed for this new Arab state.
One can debate the modern implications of that 3,000+ years of history. One cannot plausibly claim it is recent, or invented.
Yet for the media, a term born of a 19-year Jordanian occupation following an offensive war becomes the unmarked standard. A name used across millennia is treated as ideological.
That inversion is not limited to vocabulary. It reflects a broader pattern in how the Arab-Israeli conflict has been framed since at least 1947: history is compressed, revised, or ignored, and cause and effect are routinely severed.
Start with 1947. The UN proposed partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Jewish leadership accepted the plan despite its limits and the British creation in 1921 of the Arab Kingdom of Transjordan out of almost 80% of the territory originally allotted after 1917 for the British Mandate for Palestine.
The local Arab leadership rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan and chose war. That decision matters. It explains why the map did not follow the proposal — and why there is no Arab state today.
Yet in much contemporary coverage, that sequence disappears. The rejection of what would have been an independent Arab state –- in close to 80% of the arable land west of the Jordan River — followed by a multi-state war aimed at destroying the nascent Jewish state — is flattened into a vague “conflict” with outcomes detached from their cause.
Move to 1948–1967. Jordan controlled what it called the “West Bank,” while Egypt controlled Gaza. No Palestinian state was created in either territory. There was no serious effort to create one. That absence is rarely emphasized, though it is central to claims about what the conflict has always been “about.”
Then there is June, 1967. Israel took control of Judea and Samaria, and Gaza, because its neighbors tried to wage a war to destroy it and kill or subjugate all its Jewish residents. However one evaluates the legal debates that followed, the sequence is not credibly in dispute. Yet retellings often begin later, presenting outcomes without any reference to the threats and actions that produced them.
None of this resolves the conflict. But it does something more basic. It restores sequence. It places events back in order and returns language to its context.
That context is what is lost when “West Bank” is treated as neutral, while “Judea and Samaria” is treated as suspect or extreme.
In other regions, imposed modern labels — often by conquerors — are distinguished from older ones. Here, that instinct disappears. The origin of the dominant term is rarely mentioned. Its recency is almost never acknowledged. A label from the mid-20th century is presented as if it were timeless. It is not.
The question is not which term must be used. It is whether the current asymmetry can be defended as neutral. A 19-year name replaced 3,000 years. The least we can do is acknowledge that before arguing about what it means.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.
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Words of rescue: Yermiyahu Ahron Taub’s new book of poetry
עס זײַנען דאָ פּאָעטן װאָס זײַנען נבֿיאים, ווי למשל משה קולבאַק און חיים־נחמן ביאַליק. פֿאַראַן פּאָעטן פֿילאָסאָפֿן, װי עמילי דיקינסאָן אָדער אַהרן צײטלין. און טײל פּאָעטן זײַנען קינסטלער פֿון אימזאַש, װי רחל פֿישמאַן. זעלטן װען אָבער זעט מען אַ פּאָעט, װאָס איז מסוגל דורך זײַנע לידער צו באַלעבן אָדער באַװױנען עטלעכע פּערזענלעכקײטן, פּאַרשױנען, און דערבײַ אױפֿצובױען אַ גאַלעריע פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע מענטשן־טיפּן.
דער פּאָעט איז אָפֿט מאָל אַ שרײַבער פֿון ליריק, דאָס הײסט, פֿערזן װאָס װערן אַרױסגעזאָגט פֿון אַ געװיסן „איך“ װען לידער זײַנען אינטערעסאַנט, װיל מען הערן אַלץ מער פֿונעם „איך“. נאָר אַ פּאָעט װאָס קען באַשילדערן פֿאַרשײדענע פֿיגורן טוט אױף עפּעס ברײטערס.
אין זײַן נײַסטן ביכל פּאָעזיע, „עלות־הלילה אױפֿן בױדעם,“ שטעלט ירמיהו אַהרן טאַוב פֿאָר סײַ קאָמפּאָזיציעס פֿון לירישן „איך“, אַ נאַראַטאָר װאָס איז אין געװיסע אַספּעקטן ענלעך צו טאַובן אַלײן, סײַ דיכטונגען פֿון אַנדערע װעלטן, גאַסן און געגנטן. דאָס אַלץ טוט ער אין פֿאַרשײדענע זשאַנערס (לידער, פּראָזע־מיניאַטורן) און פֿאַרשײדענע שפּראַכן: נישט נאָר ענגליש מיט ייִדיש, נאָר אױך (אין אײן פֿאַל) ענגליש צוזאַמענגעפֿלאָכט מיט לשן־קודש.
לײענערס װאָס זײַנען שױן באַקאַנט מיט טאַובס װערק װעלן דאָ דערקענען פֿריִערדיקע מאָטיװן, װאָס זײַנען עיִקר־טעמעס פֿאַרן דאָזיקן מחבר. ער איז דער מײַסער־פּאָרטרעטיסט פֿון סעקסועלע דערװאַכונג, אַנטױשטן באַגער (סײַ רעליגיעזער, סײַ קערפּעלערכער), ריסן צװישן דורות, פֿאַרװעלקטער פֿרומקײט. נאָר זיכער האָט מען שױן אין אַנדערע קאָנטעקטן באַרירט די פֿאַרבינדונגען צװישן „קװירשאַפֿט“, אָפּגעפֿאָרנקײט פֿון פֿרומען דרך, און ייִדיש, װי טעמעס פֿון פּאָעזיע און ליטעראַטור בכלל. די דאָזיקע צװישנשײדן זײַנען גאָר װיכטיק פֿאַר טאַובס שאַפֿונגען.
באַזונדערש רירנדיק דאָ זײַנען די בילדער פֿון משפּחה־רײַבונגען, פֿון באַגעגענישן װאָס ברענגען נישט צו קײן עמאָציאָנעלע פֿאַרשטענדיקונגען.
אין אײנעם אַ ליד טרעפֿן מיר דעם נאַראַטאָרס פֿאָטער, אַ פֿרומען ייִד, װאָס סע װילט זיך אים גאָר שטאַרק לערנען זײַן קינד װי אַזױ צו װאַרפֿן אַ בײסבאָל. צום באַדױערן, טױג דאָס קינד צו דעם אַזױ פֿיל װי ער טױג צו לערנען — דאָס הײסט, גאַנץ שװאַך.
די זעלבע פֿיגור, דער פֿרומער פֿאָטער װאָס איז נישט צופֿרידן מיט זײַן אָפּגעפֿאָרענעם קינד, באַװײַזט זיך אין נאָך עטלעכע לידער אין באַנד, אַלע מאָל אין הינטערגרונד, בעטנדיק נאָך אַ קדיש, נאָך אַ בלאַט גמרא, כאָטש אַ מנחה, און אַלע מאָל דעם שטױס נאָך פּרו־ורבֿו. דער נאַראַטאָר, װידער, פֿאַרצײכנט זײַנע פֿאָטערס באַגערן. זײַנע אײגענע באַגערן ליגן אָבער ערגעץ אַנדערש.
טאַוב פֿאַרברײטערט אָפֿט זײַן קוק צו באַקענען אונדז מיט אַנדערע פּאַרשױנען: פֿרױען אין פֿאַרשלאָפֿענע שטעטלעך, ערשטמאָליקע „גײ“־ליבע־באַגעגענישן, אױסשטאַרבנדיקע מנינים. אױך חיות באַלעבט ער אין זײַנע פֿערזן:
די װילדע קאַץ װאָס האָסט געראַטעװעט פֿונעם הינטערגעסל
קאָרטשעט זיך, אומרויִק אונטערן גלעט פֿון דײַן האַנט,
ניט אין שטאַנד אױסצוהאַלטן, ניט אין שטאַנד זיך אַװעקצודרײען פֿון אַזאַ הנאָה.“
אַ באַמערקונג װעגן שפּראַך: װי אין זײַנע פֿריִערדיקע ביכלעך, װערן דאָ אַרײַנגענומען לידער אױף ענגליש און אױף ייִדיש. די ייִדיש־נוסחאות זײַנען אַלע מאָל באַגלײגט מיט פּאַראַלעלע ענגלישע װערסיעס. (איך דערלױב זיך דאָ אַ פּאָר אײדעלע טענות װעגן די גרײַזן װאָס זײַנען אַרײַנגעפֿאַלן אין די ייִדישע טעקסטן, און דאָס, װאָס טײל פֿון די ייִדיש־װערסיעס װערן געדרוקט אין קלענערע אותיות פֿון די ענגלישע.)
מע װאָלט דאָ געקענט זיך אַרײַנלאָזן אין אַ לענגערער דיסקוסיע װעגן די באַציִונגען פֿון די דאָזיקע װערסיעס. זײ זײַנען איבערזעצונגען אײנס פֿון אַנדערן, נאָר אױך אינטערפּרעטאַציעס. די ייִדישע לידער זײַנען (װאָדען?) מער אַדורכגעדרונגען מיט דער דראַמע װאָס באַגלײגט דאָס גאַנץ ביכל: די רײַבונגען צװישן דעם טראַדיציאָנעלן לעבן־שטײגער, פֿול מיטן שטרענגען דין, און דער בענקשאַפֿט פֿון דעם נאַראַטאָר, אַן אָפּגעפֿאָרענער װאָס װיל זיכער נישט זיך אומקערן, און פֿאָרט בענקט זיך אַהין. אינעם ליד „מילך־און־האָניקדיקע לבֿנה־האַרבסטונג“ לײענט זיך אַ ביסל טרוקן די ענגלישע שורה And, in that way, the Day of Rest lived up to its name
בשעת דאָס ייִדישע „און אַזױ טאַקע האָט דער יום־מנוחה אונדז נישט אַנטױשט“ גיט איבער אױף אַ קלאָרן אױפֿן װעגן װאָסער מין רו גײט דאָ די רײד.
איך האָב דאָ באַװיזן איבערצוגעבן נאָר אױפֿן שפּיץ מעסער די טעמאַטיק פֿון די דאָזיקע לידער. כאָטש טאַוב, בדרך־כּלל, גיט די בכורה עמאָציעס און געפֿילן, נישט קאָנסטאַטירונגען און אידעאָלאָגיעס, איז דאָס ביכל נישט קיין אומפּאָליטישע. פֿאַרקערט, די (ענגלישע) לידער „דער אָפּרו פֿון אַקטיװיסט“ און „פּערמאַנענטער אײַנװױנער, אָן קײן גרינעם קאַרטל“ גיבן איבער אױף אַ האַרץ־רײַסנדיקן אופֿן, װי זײערע טיטלען זאָגן אָן, די אָנשטרענגען און קאָמפּראָמיסן פֿון הײַנטיקן פּאָליטישן מאָמענט.
לױט מײַן מיינונג ווערט דאָס ביכל אָרגאַניזירט מיטן דראַמאַטישן בױגן פֿון אַ מענטשלעכן לעבן, פֿון ענגלישן ליד „דאָס ליכט בײַם אָנהײב טונעל“, אין אָנהײב, ביזן לעצטן ליד „צום סוף“, װאָס װענדט זיך צום לײענער אַזױ:
װען איך גײ אַװעק,
רײַס ניט די קלײדער,
און טראָג ניט קײן שװאַרץ,
באַהאַלט ניט דעם שפּיגל….
זײַ נישט קײן אָבֿל אין גאַנצן.
„װען איך גײ אַװעק,“ זאָגט דער נאַראַטאָר, „מאַך פֿאַר זיך אַ שׂימחה.“
נאָכן געזעגענען זיך מיטן דאָזיקן ביכל, װינטשט מען דעם מחבר נאָך לאַנגע יאָרן פֿון דער שׂימחה פֿון שאַפֿן נאָך טיף־גרײכנדיקע און פֿילעװדיקע מעדיטאַציעס װעגן לעבן און טױט, פֿרומקײט און װעלטלעכקײט, סעקס און ליבשאַפֿט, „קװיר“־ און העטעראָ־אידענטיטעט.
אין „געבעט“, דאָס סאַמע ערשטע ליד, װענדט זיך דער פֿאָטער צום נאַראַטאָר: „דער טאַטע רופֿט מיך צו היטן שבת“, צו דאַװנען, צו לערנען, זאַכן װאָס דער נאַראַטאָר װיל נישט, איז נישט מסוגל צו טאָן. קומט דער פּאָעט צום אױספֿיר אַז „נאָר די װערטער קענען מיך ראַטעװען.“
אַ בעסערע װעלטלעכע תּפֿילה קען נישט זײַן. הלװאַי אױף אונדז אַלעמען געזאָגט געוואָרן.
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Israel, US condemn Belgium over planned prosecutions tied to Jewish circumcisions
(JTA) — A diplomatic spat erupted on Wednesday after Belgian prosecutors moved to charge two Jewish men tied to ritual circumcisions, prompting Israeli and U.S. officials to accuse Belgium of targeting Jews for practicing their faith.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, lit into the country in a post on X Wednesday morning, calling the indictments a “scarlet letter on Belgian society.”
“With this act Belgium joins a short and shameful list, together with Ireland, of countries that use criminal law to prosecute Jews for practicing Judaism,” Saar wrote, later calling circumcision a “cornerstone of Jewish faith” and urging the Belgian government to “act immediately and to find a solution.”
Saar’s condemnation was quickly joined by the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, who had previously called on Belgium to drop the “ridiculous and antisemitic” investigation of mohels in February.
“This is a shameful stain on Belgium,” White wrote in a post on X. “The prosecution of these religious figures (mohels), one of whom is American, is WRONG and won’t be tolerated. Belgium will be thought of now as anti Semitic by world. Until this is resolved – there is no way around it.”
White, a President Donald Trump appointee who faced criticism for amplifying social media posts by a far-right Belgian political activist convicted of racism and Holocaust denial, added that the “Trump Administration condemns this judicial action” and called on the Belgian government to “work with the Jewish leaders and communities to find a certification solution immediately.”
The condemnation by White and Saar comes after the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that it intends to prosecute two Jewish men on charges related to performing circumcisions, a practice that is required by law to be performed by licensed medical professionals in Belgium.
Last year, Belgian authorities raided multiple sites, including two in Antwerp’s Jewish Quarter, at the beginning of an investigation into illegal circumcisions. Investigators also requested lists of children who had recently been circumcised, according to VRT NWS, the Flemish public broadcaster.
But the sharp criticism by the two leaders was later dismissed by Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot, who wrote in a reply to White’s post that it was “inappropriate to publicly criticize a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings.”
“I recall that the proceedings in question were initiated by representatives of the Jewish community themselves,” Prévot continued. “To portray those as a country’s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory. This freedom has never been called into question and never will be in our country. Our Constitution protects it. And it is not for an ambassador to dictate the government’s agenda.”
In response to Saar’s post, Prévot wrote, “Enough with these caricatures.”
“Since you yourself recently urged against conducting diplomacy via Twitter, I suggest that we discuss all these issues during a meeting in Israel at a time that suits you best, in order to put an end to any misinterpretations,” Prévot continued.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel, US condemn Belgium over planned prosecutions tied to Jewish circumcisions appeared first on The Forward.