A strange calm reigns in Djerba. On the eve of the Jewish pilgrimage of La Ghriba, it is usually time for celebration and joy on the island. But the 2024 edition, from Friday May 24 to Sunday May 26, is organized discreetly. Due to the “international context” linked to the war waged by Israel in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, all festivities were canceled and only “religious rituals inside the synagogue are maintained”, announced the organizers in a press release.
“With the war, it is very difficult to celebrate anything,” explains René Trabelsi, former Tunisian minister of tourism and co-organizer of the pilgrimage, contacted by Le Monde. It is a wise decision that we took in agreement with the authorities who supported us in our approach. »
The pilgrimage, a major event in Tunisian Judaism, usually welcomes, each year, thousands of faithful from abroad to visit the island’s synagogue, the oldest on the African continent built, according to the story, by Jews fleeing the destruction of Solomon’s temple (in 586 BC). Traditionally, the event is accompanied by music, songs, a procession and celebrations around grills and other specialties of the Judeo-Tunisian culinary heritage. But not this year. “The La Ghriba synagogue remains open, as usual,” says Mr. Trabelsi, but “only to come and pray and light candles.”
“We avoided a slaughterhouse.”
The shadow of the war in Gaza is not the only one hanging over the island. Members of the Tunisian Jewish community and those coming from abroad remain deeply marked by the attack on the synagogue, perpetrated by an agent of the National Guard (gendarmerie), during the closing of the pilgrimage in 2023. It had made five dead: three law enforcement officers and two pilgrims, in addition to the attacker. “What happened last year is still on all of our minds. We have not yet healed from this wound, assures Daniel Cohen, the rabbi of the La Goulette synagogue. It is only thanks to God and the police that we avoided a slaughterhouse. »
“We are still afraid,” he adds, specifying that he will not go to Djerba this year, however assuring that he feels “protected by the Tunisian authorities” thanks to the “great efforts put in place by the State”. . Since the attack perpetrated by Al-Qaeda against the synagogue in April 2002, killing 19 people, the majority of them German tourists, the Tunisian authorities have ensured the establishment of a security system to protect the country’s Jewish community.
But the amalgam between Jews and Israelis existing within certain fringes of Tunisian society, committed to the Palestinian cause up to the top of the State – Kaïs Saïed had mentioned the Palestinians “killed every day” in a declaration after the attack of May 2023, without establishing a formal link between the two events – increases the risk of riots and anti-Semitic acts with each jolt of the conflict in the Middle East. The precedents are numerous: “1967, 1982…”, lists Mr. Cohen.
These repeated episodes of violence pushed many Jews toward departure; the community, with more than 100,000 people before independence in 1956, has been reduced to only 1,500 souls today, mainly distributed in the south-east of the country, in Djerba and Zarzis. “The majority of Muslim Tunisians understand well that we are Tunisians like them, that we have nothing to do with these wars. But there are still some people who mix the two,” summarizes Mr. Cohen.
“What could happen tomorrow? »
Since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 in Israel, Tunisia has not been spared from anti-Semitic acts. On the night of October 17 to 18, after the announcement of a bombing on the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, then attributed by Hamas to an Israeli missile, hundreds of young people descended on the mausoleum of Youssef El- Maarabi, a 16th-century rabbi, located in El-Hamma, in the center of the country. The religious site, frequented a few times a year by faithful, was vandalized and then set on fire. Its access is now blocked by two police vans, as noted by Le Monde in February.
A climate that leads Joseph, a Tunisian Jewish business leader who prefers to use an assumed first name, to regularly ask himself: “What can happen tomorrow? There may be a madman on the street who attacks you. We may say that this is an isolated act, but the fact is that it can happen. » “That said, I don’t think that’s the mentality of people here,” he reassures himself. In Djerba, the situation must be put into perspective with the rest of the world, believes René Trabelsi. “Here, people make their lives. They go out, they go to cafes, the children wear the kippah without problem whereas this is no longer the case in London or Paris. I feel more worry in France than in Tunisia. »
In this context, lower attendance than usual is expected. Some still wanted to come. Elie Lellouche, a Parisian lawyer and direct witness to the 2023 attack, swore to Le Monde that he would return “every year”. He did not fail. “It was out of the question to miss the pilgrimage and I’m sure it will go well,” he exclaims on the phone, happy to find La Ghriba.