October 7 & today · Tunisia · 2023–present
Contested Jewish belonging and presidential conspiracy rhetoric formed the background to a synagogue burned in revenge for events in Gaza.
Explore TunisiaPublished by WTJPublication updated
2023–present
October 7 & today · October 7 & today
Contested Jewish belonging and presidential conspiracy rhetoric formed the background to a synagogue burned in revenge for events in Gaza.
The danger began before October 7
In May 2023, a shooting at Djerba killed Jewish visitors and security officers. Tunisia’s Jewish community was already confronting a serious question of protection before Hamas attacked Israel months later.
President Kais Saied subsequently promised religious leaders security. The promise mattered because Jewish worship and pilgrimage were living parts of Tunisian life. Remembering the earlier attack prevents the later violence from appearing out of nowhere: October’s anger reached a community whose vulnerability had already been made painfully visible.
An imagined Zionist hand becomes a local target
Tunisia’s Jews had experienced Vichy restriction and wartime persecution, followed by recurring arguments over national belonging. In September 2023, President Saied connected a biblical Jewish name to supposed secret Zionist influence. The older hidden-controller accusation had acquired a political label at the top of the state.
The following month, after October 7 and the Gaza hospital explosion, rioters burned El Hamma’s synagogue and shrine. A foreign conflict had become punishment of Tunisian Jewish heritage. The link is an interpretation of the climate, not evidence that Saied ordered the attack. Political conspiracy and anger in the street could nevertheless reinforce the same idea: Jewish presence represented a hostile external force. The building’s destruction shows how opposition to Zionism could become an anti-Jewish act without a documented party coalition directing it.
Who protects the history that remains?
The State Department’s account described overwhelmed police during the El Hamma attack, with no related arrests announced by the end of 2023. Destruction had been followed by uncertainty about accountability.
Tunisia’s Jewish history belongs within the country’s civic life, not outside it as foreign property. The damaged shrine therefore raised a question larger than repairing a building: whether the state would protect a minority’s place in the national story. Promises of security had to be measured against what happened when a Jewish site actually came under attack.