Foreign Policy In Focus

Cross-posted from the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

Read part 1.

Ennahda’s Non-response to the Salafist Offensive

How has the transition Tunisian government responded to this wave of attacks? Virtually not at all. While calling for 'dialogue' between Salafists and more moderate Islamic elements and secularists, Ennahda, the key political force in the ruling coalition, has let the Salafists run amok, attacking cultural events, political rallies calling for democracy and protection of women’s rights. To make matters worse, despite the fact that religious-based political parties are illegal by Tunisian law, a Salafist party has been certified.

On March 29 of this year, an openly Salafist political party was granted legal status by the Ministry of Interior. 'Insah’ -- as it is called in Arabic, 'The Reform Front' openly pushes for the establishment of an Islamic state, the imposition of sharia law and a return to the 'purified' Islam of the time of the prophet Mohammed (630 A.D).

Salafists did not play any role in the mass movement that overthrew Zine Ben Ali’s government in January, 2011; a Salafist ran in Tunisia’s October 2011 elections for a constituent assembly as an independent list but came up empty, not winning any seats -- an indication of how isolated and irrelevant Salafist themes are to the Tunisian body politic. That election did result in the Ennahda Party -- an openly Islamic based political party -- pulling down some 42% of the vote. Insah will be eligible to field candidates in the parliamentary elections scheduled to take place next year. The legalization of Insah would not have been possible without the firm support of Ennahda and particularly its leadership, Rachid Ghannouchi and Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali.

In public statements Insah spokesman and founder Mohamed Khouja was careful to emphasize that “the party’s platform does not impose anything, such as dress or other personal conduct concerning Tunisian daily life.” Khouja insists that Insah is committed to “the civil values of the State” and that it respects the particulars of the democratic experiment in a peaceful framework removed from all forms of violence and hatred across the political spectrum”¹ At the same time, as if his movement represents the whole of Islam, rather than a minor splinter group, Khouja pompously comments: “We will not accept any assault on our religious sacraments and we will seek to express the demands of the Muslim people.” But then who is this representative of a splinter group to be speaking for 'the Muslim people'?

Islamophobia at Home, Alliances With Islamic Fundamentalists Abroad

While a wave of Islamophobia poisons the political atmosphere here in the United States, in the Middle East, the Obama Administration finds itself lining up with and making alliances with, to one degree or another, the same forces it criticizes so vociferously at home. It has been going on for more than a century. Funny thing that the 'enemy at home' turns out to be an ally abroad and a consistent and tried and true one at that! On the surface it certainly appears that different U.S. administrations oppose Islamic fundamentalism -- isn’t that what the war on terrorism is all about? Opposing -- nay -- wiping out Al Qaeda and like groups? No question that anti-Islamic hysteria -- Islamophobia -- has been whipped up since 9/11 (and even before).

But appearances can be deceptive. First the British and later the U.S. have had longstanding histories of cooperation with Islamic fundamentalist elements whom they use as a foil against more secular Arab nationalism. These continue and remain important today. Bizarre as it might seem to American audiences, Salafists are playing key roles in support of U.S. Middle East policy.

1. They represent nothing short of the counter-revolution on the ground -- meant to defuse the democratic upsurge and turn back the Arab Spring from resulting any new political developments that might challenge U.S. economic priorities (neo-liberal access to the region) or strategic concerns.

2. Their actions in Tunisia and Egypt accomplish something else, rarely discussed these days: in tandem with Israel’s campaign against Iran -- takes the focus off of the Israeli occupation. Thus they will be tolerated and encouraged -- albeit from a distance and through Saudi and Qatari proxies.

While claiming to oppose Salafist brownshirt tactics, once again, the U.S. is playing what appears to be Salafist card and not just in Tunisia. Supporting Salafists throughout the region are two key U.S. allies -- Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who work in tandem with the United States to secure U.S. strategic interests and neoliberal economic policies throughout the region, policies more and more being closely coordinated with NATO. Arms shipments from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to Salafist elements in the Syrian opposition have been intercepted in Lebanon recently. There are reports of Iraqi jihadists also working with the Syrian opposition, their activities coordinated by the Saudis and Qataris, in some form of coordination with the U.S. as was done in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Several weeks ago, reinforcing Syrian government claims, a Tunisian human rights group exposed the open recruiting of Tunisian Salafist elements to also fight in Syria, calling for an investigation, suggesting that the Tunisian Ennahda-led government is coordinating its Middle East policies rather closely with Saudi and Qatari religious conservatives.

U.S. Playing the Salafist Card Throughout the Middle East

The British and the U.S. prefer the more placid and 'west-oriented’ face of 'moderate Islamic parties' like Tunisia’s Ennahda which claims to respect democratic processes. But when necessary, London and Washington have not hesitated to cooperate with more fanatical elements -- be they Saudi Wahhabists or now Syrian jihadists. Besides the anti-Arab secular nationalist bond that unites U.S. foreign policy with Islamists, there is a bond of another kind: they see eye to eye economically. The Moslem Brotherhoods in Egypt, Ennahda in Tunisia, and Salafists throughout the region are all comfortable with and support the kind of neoliberal economic policies the United States and Europe pursue. They have opposed trade union rights, strong state-directed economic policies. When it comes to neoliberal economics, openness to foreign corporate and financial penetration, the Islamists and U.S. policymakers are in complete harmony.

As Ennahda in Tunisia cozies up to its Salafist brethren to neutralize the Tunisian Arab Spring from turning into anything that might substantially shift the country’s neoliberal economy policies and its strategic alliance with the United States, Washington calmly looks on with virtually no critical comments from the State Department, no sense of criticism -- to say outrage -- from the country’s media as the Islamic fundamentalist wave takes hold in the country. Most of the dirty work, the political support and financial flows are in the hands of the Saudis and Qataris, neither of which can even go to the bathroom without U.S. approval. The idea that the Obama Administration is not aware of the Tunisian developments is not credible.

Cross-posted from the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

All Is Not Well in Tunisia

Although it -- the Arab Spring -- began in Tunisia, much of the media attention here in the United States has moved on to Libya, Yemen, Egypt, and Syria, where in some ways the stakes are higher and the dangers multiplying. True enough Tunisia did have relatively peaceful, democratic elections in October of 2011 and a political process continues to unfold. Strangely, during the Ben Ali years, Tunisia was put forth as a poster child for IMF structural adjustment programs, programs which helped undermine the country’s economy and trigger the uprising. In the post Ben Ali period, Tunisia is again being held up as a model! -- this time a model of transition (but from what to what?).

But all is not well in the country.

The socio-economic crisis continues to deepen by the day. Throughout the country there are daily strikes, demonstrations, protests. Virtually every sector of the economy has been on strike be it in the public or private sector, but unemployment continues to rise and is worse than during the Ben Ali period. Outside of the main cities social and government services remain crippled; infra-structural relief to the interior is virtually non-existent. While Ben Ali’s old ruling party, the Rassamblement Constitutionnel Democratique (RCD), was dissolved, many of its former cadre and players have found a home, or made their peace, with the main party in power, Ennahda, a moderate Islamic party that supports neo-liberal economic policies and U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East and Africa

The economic program of the new government is virtually no different from that of the deposed one; the ministry of interior-- the source of repressions, if not crimes against humanity against the population in the Ben Ali years -- has hardly been touched -- nor has the police force, both of which are now being integrated and mobilized to serve Ennahda’s interests and to solidify its control of the Tunisian political space.

Tunisia’s Arab Spring is shaping up to be a case of  'all the change necessary to maintain the status quo' despite all the formal celebrations of 'the revolution'. Now, to make matters worse, something  novel and unfortunately insidious, at least in the Tunisian context, is taking place: the emergence and dramatic growth of the country’s Salafist (Islamic fundamentalist) movement, a movement that had virtually no popular base in this North African country known for its political and religious moderation.

The Salafist Shadow Over Tunisia

The Salafists are casting a larger and larger shadow over Tunisia. Some were victims of Ben Ali’s prisons whose righteous rage has been manipulated. Others have joined from the ranks of the large Tunisian lumpen proletariat -- the permanently unemployed, whose numbers are growing. Although Salafists remain essentially a fringe group, mostly foreign to the Tunisian political experience, their numbers and influence are growing. Money to support their activities is streaming in from abroad.

It started before the October 24, 2011 national elections to determine Tunisia’s constituent assembly. Given Tunisian recent history and its generally mild, tolerant forms of Islam, an Islamic fundamentalist crusade, an overall offensive, appeared rather odd, out of character. Indeed most observers -- myself included -- wrote it off as a limited campaign of fringe zealots, heavily funded by outsiders, be they Saudi or Qatari, who should not be taken too seriously.

True enough, the Salafists had come to the fore in the months after Zine Ben Ali and family fled the country on January 14, 2011. Several hundred had protested in front of Tunis’ main synagogue with their twin themes of Shari’a and virulent anti-Jewish chants. The taunting of women began almost immediately as did the threatening phone calls and anonymous letters to leading journalists, cultural figures.

Then a few weeks before the October, 2011 elections, a Salafist campaign exploded in opposition to an Iranian animated cartoon 'Persepolis' which showed an image of God as a kindly old man. True the image of God in human form is considered taboo in Islam -- something the filmmakers must have been cognizant of -- but oddly enough several years prior the film had played in Tunisia with very little controversy. This time, what I would call a 'pre-fabricated' political storm erupted, and as it did, the pre-election discussion shifted away from the socio-economic crisis, which had triggered the Tunisian uprising in the first place and focused instead on the requirements for being a good Muslim rather than a good citizen.

From the elections until today (early June 2012), the situation has only deteriorated and at an alarming rate. Salafist mobs - little more than the brown shirts of the Tunisian Revolution - have attacked media outlets, burned down bars and liquor stores, intimidated women, physically attacked anyone with whom they disagree. The number of incidents has multiplied while the transitional government has done little to nothing to intervene, giving the Salafists a free hand nationwide.

Ennahda’s Approach: Face Left While Moving Right

While the current government consists of a coalition of three parties, two of which are secular, one of which considers itself politically moderate Islamic, it is the latter, Ennahda, that essentially runs the show and controls the government. With the powers of the president having been essentially eviscerated, it is the prime minister and the minister of the interior, both Ennahda men, who have considerable powers concentrated in their hands.

Ennahda’s approach is becoming clearer -- make surface alliances with secular parties (Marzouki [CPR] and and Ettaktol) while making informal -- or secret alliances with Salafists...together they share more and more key posts in the new Tunisian government and are consolidating their hold on power. The formal (and legal) alliance that Ennahdha has with the Congress Pour la Republique (CPR) and the Democratic Forum for Labor and Liberty (called Ettakotal) has been for little more than show, for foreign powers, to show a smiling and 'liberal' face to the West. Far more important to Ennahda to date has been its informal alliance with the Salafists who they have essentially let run wild and whose actions Ennahda either tolerates or excuses.

A division of labor between the two Islamic strands has been worked out. Ennahda concerns itself with the political and legal system while the Salafists have not so much through 'dialogue' but instead through thug tactics quickly strengthened its position in the country’s mosques, schools and media. That such a marginal group as the Tunisian Salafists could make such dramatic gains and in the process, polarize the country as never before, could not be possible without the tactic and oftentimes open support of Ennahda. Television stations have been attacked; the government did nothing' bars and liquor stores burned down in many places as police and military stand by watching. Demonstrations of more secular elements have been attacked; the government blames the victims, not the attackers. A university dean was beat up, nothing done to stop the Salafists attackers, etc. etc.

And as often happens with cowards and brown shirts like the Tunisian Salafists, having been given the green light by the Tunisian government, these elements have only gotten increasingly emboldened, their tactics more and more aggressive and violent, so that now it becomes more difficulty to reign them in.

Ennahda's cozying up to the Salafists might have more to do with its global and regional relations than with internal Tunisian dynamics. Although the United States -- the Obama Administration in particular, but a number of European countries as well -- celebrated the Tunisian political changes, this support did not materialize into a great deal of financial aid. The sums offered by the U.S. and U.K. are more symbolic than real. Ennahda has made it clear in its actions and statements that it preferred a closer relation with the U.S. and a somewhat more distant relationship with France. It had hoped such actions would translate into a major U.S. aid package. Didn't happen.

While pleased with the Tunisian shift, the Obama Administration did not match its words with financial deeds. But Tunisia is in deep crisis -- in real trouble and in need of a great deal of financial help. The aid that did not come from the U.S. and its European allies did come from Qatar and the Saudis...but with strings attached, the strings being an agreement that Ennahda -- which is not an Islamic fundamentalist movement -- permit Tunisia's Salafists to operate far more openly and with more impunity than in the past. Caught between its own political vision and its dire need for financial support, Ennahda chose the 'practical' rather than the more principled path. If this hypothesis is correct -- and I believe it is -- the Obama Administration's financial inactivity is at least in part responsible for Ennahda's political shift to the right.

Under the Radar Screen the U.S. Supports Islamic Fundamentalism

Actually 'under the radar screen' most of the time -- but where it really counts -- both the British and the U.S. have had long and enduring political relationships -- cooperation with Islamic fundamentalists -- even the most retrograde among them -- in order to protect their vested interested in the Middle East.

The Salafists in Tunisia are being used, as they often have been in the past throughout the Middle East, to 'divide and conquer'. As in Egypt, first and foremost, their role is to act as a brake on the progressive economic and political momentum of the Arab Spring which forced Ben Ali from power. Although poorly publicized in the U.S. media, they are becoming increasingly brutal in their methods, attacking democratic, more genuinely moderate Moslem and secular elements almost at will. Encouraged and funded throughout the region by the Saudis and Qataris, despite their increasingly bullying and violent tactics, Tunisia’s Salafists seem to enjoy something close to immunity from prosecution. For some time now, they are being given a green light to attack progressive and secular institutions with something close to impunity; to amplify their role, now a Salafist party is being granted formal legal status.

Examples of Salafist tactics have been reported virtually every day for the past year in the Tunisian media, both in Arabic and French, as well as now in the English language press agency, Tunisia Live. To provide just a couple of the more recent examples:

• On this past May 19, in Sidi Bouzid, the town where Mohammed Bouazizi immolated himself in December of 2010 triggering the Tunisian Arab Spring “a large group of Salafists burned down bars as well as the house of a bar owner in their violent campaign against the sale of alcohol” (Tunisia Live! May 20, 2012). The police responded by going back to their offices and locked themselves in.”  Concerning the Salafists a resident commented, “I know [them]; some of them were drunkards a week ago and now they are pretending to be the voice of God in Sidibouzid”, which he referred to as “Bouzidistan”

• The day after the Sidibouzid bar burnings, thousands of hard-line Salafists held their second annual meeting, this time in Kairouan. Some dressed in Afghan military garb and waving swords, others wearing long beards, robes and caps, they unfurled their banner atop the minaret of the city’s mosque, the most ancient in Africa and the third holiest in Islam after Mecca and Jerusalem. Their chants includes lyrics such as “We are all children of Obama [bin Laden], and “Khaybar, Khaybar, Jews, Jews the army of Mohammed is back”. Khaybar is a reference to a place in Saudi Arabia where the Prophet Mohammed led his armies to massacre and expel Jews.

One of the Kairoan meeting’s organizers, Ridha Bel Haj, who leads the banned Hizb Ettahrir political party, in an effort to re-write the history of the Arab Spring commented “The revolution was made so that sharia cold be applied.” (Actually the Tunisian Revolution had little to do with either Islam or Sharia -- it was a protest against socio-economic conditions, extreme political repression, and in the movement that overthrew Ben Ali, the likes of Bel Haj and his ilk were nowhere to be seen!).

These are only the latest in what has been a spree of Salafist confrontations, targeting the country’s women, educational system, media, cultural figures and religious minority communities. Although the elected government has repeatedly made official statements in support of the country’s 1,500 or so Jewish Community, the Salafists have engaged in shrill and virulent anti-semitic language. Their supporters have also attacked and desecrated the country’s only Greek Orthodox Church in Tunis. 

Cross-posted from Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

Notes to a presentation at the Magreb Center, Washington, DC, April 24.

Thank you to the Magreb Center – for Nejib Ayachi for inviting me back. Pleasant surprise. I would note that not accidentally, this panel discussion takes place at the same time as the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund here in Washington DC.

I would add here, that thanks to the help of the Tunisian Community of Colorado – small but active – I was able to spend nearly a month in Tunisia from late November to late December of last year.

My visit to Tunisia was both promising and unsettling. Promising, because the political atmosphere was more open that it has been in half a century.

Unsettling, because the course ahead, as with other great reforms, is not entirely clear and from the point of view of political economy, not much has changed, if anything, but minor tampering with the model that just collapsed.

Classic transition moment

Tunisia is going through a classic transition moment…a moment of opportunity, a moment of risks. Are the changes far-reaching? Systematic? Or are we witnessing yet another example of “all the change necessary to maintain the status quo” more or less similar to what happened in the Philippines in the late 1980s, in Indonesia a decade later: a broad based democratic movement that brings down a dictator but which is followed by little substantial economic or social change?

Has the Arab Spring run its course, stumbled in a sequence of frustrated political reform and civil war, or are we just seeing “Round One” of what will be a long period of turbulence, of struggle for economic and political reform?

A brief rundown of the history of the Tunisian economy is worth noting.

Since the mid 1800s – even before 1881 when Tunisia was occupied by French troops and made into a protectorate – Tunisia has been increasingly integrated into the world economy as a peripheral or semi-peripheral zone providing foodstuffs, basic minerals (phosphates) and tourism to a mostly European core. This relationship has been most accurately expressed in its relationship to its main European trading and political partners – France and Italy – who have long cast an eye on their Magrebian trading partner. A full 75% of Tunisia’s exports go to these two countries and this has been the case for a long time. Both contested to control Tunisia, first as a colony and later within the framework of modern globalized relations.

The challenge ahead

The challenge/goal of the anti-colonial movement before independence and the post-independence Bourguiba years was clear: how to move beyond – to transform this relationship and the Tunisian economy itself, how to move beyond the historic limitations set on the country’s socio-economic structures by colonialism.

One could say that partial yet limited progress was made. Habib Bourguiba, the founder and first president of the Republic of Tunisia, might not have been a great democrat but he gave his newly independent country a number of precious gifts – a modern educational system that took up at times 50% of the country’s budget; a civil code, that admittedly with some limitations was the most liberal vis a vis women’s rights in the MENA countries, and a country where the separation between religion and the state was clear cut. While Islamic texts are respected, the idea that shari’a law would guide the Tunisian legal system was rejected.

The political-economic program that the country implemented during the Bourguiba years is referred to by Stephan J. King in his valuable volume The New Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa as 'the old authoritarianism'. Its aims, region wide, were rapid industrialization, social justice and greater equality; the government Bourguiba established was characterized by state intervention in the economy, redistributist economic policies, 'primary' (or key) coalitional support among the lower classes and the promise to use the power of the state to improve the living standards of the general population.¹

This model did 'deliver' economically in some ways, but stalled by the early 1980s. The slowing of the Tunisian economy was laid at the feet of the state’s intervention in the economy, although the fact that the global economy itself had slowed down and Tunisia’s export possibilities to Europe had shrunk some was downplayed.

The years of recently ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali are associated with the rise of what King calls 'the new authoritarian model' which was characterized by one-party authoritarian states, economic liberalization, accepting of World Bank, IMF structural adjustment criteria, extending the prerogatives of the market and limiting the role of the state in economic activities. The old coalitions broke down to some extent and new ones made largely of coalitions between international finance capital and their local partners took shape.

Structural adjustment results hardly earthshaking

To some extent, the new model tried to address some of the limitations of the former one emphasizing a marriage between the state and private enterprise. But a careful analysis of the new model as done by Karen Pfeifer² suggests that the results were never that dramatic. At best, they resulted in growth without development, a lopsided growth in which investment went into overbuilding urban areas, especially the Tunis region at the expense of the country’s interior, a sharp polarization between rich and poor, growing unemployment and stagnant wages for the country’s working class, and the erosion of the position of the country’s smaller agricultural producers.

For all that, Tunisia, along with isolated other examples, was held aloft as an IMF/World Bank poster child, an 'example to be followed', etc. All that came unglued with the social explosion known as the Arab Spring, which as is well known, started in Tunisia. Is it a case of the operation of neoconservative economics in Tunisia was a success but the patient – the Tunisian development program – died?

Other factors that came into play:

True the IMF/World Bank policies are not the only reason for the failure of the Tunisian economy to deliver. Other factors came into play:

• The collapse of communism in 1989 re-directed what might have been infusions of investment capital away from Tunisia to central and eastern Europe.

• A number of Eastern European countries with their technologically advanced industries and educated work forces became Western European trading partners at Tunisia’s expense, especially Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia

• As in the past, Tunisia finds itself trapped in European economic dilemmas. As the European economy stalled and slowed, it affects Tunisian exports and tourism.

• Although far away from the more sensitive Middle Eastern political zones, the Tunisian economy is sensitive to political developments throughout the region. War and instability a thousand miles to its east, to say nothing of the situation in neighboring Libya and Algeria, has dampened investment and tourism.

• Even where aspects of the economy have been successfully modernized and made more profitable, as with the phosphate industry, it has resulted in social upheavals, unrest and environmental crises. In its modernization program, the Tunisian mining work force went from 20,000 to 6,000 in less than a decade. There was little recycling of the profits to fuel other sources of developments in the mining district. And in 2008, a strong precursor to the 2010 uprising took place in the mining district, centering at Redeyef; it was nothing short of a regional rebellion.

What do the changes mean?

What can we say for  'sure' about the changes of the last year? Few trends are clear:

• The old order has been overthrown, a new transitional government has been installed through generally smooth and fair elections – the constituent assembly

• The former dominant political party – the Neo-Destour renamed the Rassemblement Constitutional Democratique – has been dissolved.

• There are certain shifts – I would argue not that significant – in the country’s relations with the United States and France, a tilt a bit towards the U.S., a bit away from France – but given the great number of French economic interests in Tunisia, it is questionable just how much or how little this shift indicates. Strategically, Tunisia’s position remains fundamentally unchanged.

Economic model ignored

On the other hand, less attention has been paid – a least by the international press and from what I can tell from the new Tunisian elite – to the economic model. It is as if the country has gotten 'half a loaf' of change: greater democracy, yes; but the other half, the promise of greater economic development, has not yet been achieved.

There has been far less open discussion of how to get out of the economic crisis – what might be the short term and long term directions, if any. But if the economic crisis is not seriously addressed the whole project of Tunisian democracy could be jeopardized.

Instead, much political energy in Tunisia has focused upon what might be called 'cultural questions', issues which are by their nature, much more divisive.

During my stay there:

• Every day for a month strikes and protests over unemployment, wages and working conditions broke out throughout the country in virtually every sector – public and private,

• The economy was spinning out of control and foreign companies were pulling out in droves,

•  The unemployment numbers were getting worse,

•  And while the Tunis region was generally calm and safe, outside of the capitol there was a pervasive breakdown in law and order.

And the Salafists – whose historic roots in Tunisia are exceedingly weak – were on the move, expanding their base, bullying and threatening many, with virtually no attempt to rein them in on the part of the new government. One could see their targets: gaining a foothold in the mosques, the educational system, the media

Let us recall for a moment, the root causes of the region-wide socioeconomic rebellion called the Arab Spring.

There were three elements that seemed to span the region from Morocco to Afghanistan:

•  Poverty – as expressed specifically in unemployment and low wage rates;

•  Political repression which has been pervasive throughout the region be it in more conservative or more left leaning countries;

•  And truly impressive – one might even say 'world class' levels of corruption.

Religion – whether women should wear veils or whether 'moderate Islam' would be a viable model for national development had little to do with the uprisings. But then, as often happens, those who make revolutions do not necessarily come to power, and the 'revolutions' themselves, evolve economically and politically often into something that is unforeseen by those who took to the streets in the first place.

The concern here is this: unless the economic and political causes of the Tunisian revolt are seriously studied and addressed, it is very likely that there will be another social eruption, this one angrier and more disruptive than the last. The 'window of opportunity', the good will offered to those in power is fast shrinking. As the social crisis continues to grow and expand, the choices of the new government begin to narrow: engage in significantly new economic policies or, as Ben Ali did 20 years ago – intensify the repression.

At the time, the October elections were finished, the three-party coalition led by Ennahdha had taken political control of the Constituent Assembly. The political discussion had turned away from the economic crisis and was shifting in a polarizing fashion to cultural and religious questions, where it seems to have largely remained.

My impressions

For all that, I was convinced of a number of things…five months later, my thinking has not changed much.

1. That for all its problems that Tunisia has the greatest possibility of emerging from the Arab Spring successfully addressing its socio-economic crisis and to so more effectively than any of its neighbors in the broad MENA region. The relatively smooth political transition was exemplary – much of the rest of the region is now submerged in something approaching civil war
2. That despite having been hit hard by both the global crisis and impact of 25 years of Ben Ali-Trabelsi rule, that Tunisia has a diversified economy, one of the most educated and technically skilled work forces in the region.
3. That improving the overall situation of the country a two-track strategy needed to be developed – one to stabilize the country in the short run; another to develop 'a new vision', a new direction for the Tunisian economy for the long haul.
4. That the model of the past 30 years or so needs – referred to by Stephen King as 'the new authoritarian' – not just 'tinkering' but significant structural changes. Ultimately, despite having garnered a lot of praise, including from the leadership of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that this model has, in large measure, failed on two major scores – it has failed to produce development for broad sectors of the Tunisian population and it has certainly failed to deliver democracy. It was this twin failure, more than any other factors, that triggered the nationwide uprising which quickly grew to a region wide rebellion…for something different.
5. While not placing all the blame for the collapse of the old system on the structural adjustment policies of the World Bank and the IMF, still, these policies aggravated the economic situation, contributing to the social polarization of the country.
6.  That while a 'new direction' is needed to both help the country out of the socio-economic hole within which it finds itself and to strengthen economic position in the future, such a new vision appears to be singularly lacking up until now. The solutions being offered up today, are hardly different from those suggested in the past, which contributed to the collapse in the first place.
7. That the market alone, the private sector, is incapable of addressing the Tunisian crisis which will require both an increased role of the state in the economy and some limitations, regulations on Tunisia’s openness to global markets – financial, export or whatever, to put it bluntly – some form of state-run capitalism resembling in some ways the model under Bourguiba, in some ways original.
8. Perhaps the most important – for whatever changes the new Islamic-leaning Tunisian government tries to make in cultural matters, that it is quite amenable to the neo-liberal economic policies of the government it has just replaced and that the economic model will most probably not change much.

And as this seems rather reasonable and rational, I am not in the least surprised that there is no interest or effort on the part of the new government to move in this direction…at least not now and not yet…Such a direction might be considered if the economic crisis deepens so much more…but then as it continues to be heading for trouble, perhaps, new directions will be considered at some point. A pity it will take an even more sustained social crisis for a change of direction to take place.

The World Bank and the IMF could make an important contribution to re-igniting the Tunisian economy at this critical moment. But it needs to be on a significantly different basis than its past support.

In the past, unfortunately, the structural adjustment policies Tunisia implemented at the World Bank/IMF behest intensified country’s economic crisis, rather than improving the situation. I will cite only two examples of this – but am willing to into much further detail in the question and answer:

Privatization – it just doesn’t work; nor does opening capital markets willy-nilly

• The privatization policies were a disaster – they were used by the Ben Ali/Trabelsi families to confiscate state resources for their own private uses and to in part amass the fortunes for which they are now notorious.

• The opening of capital markets – which was supposed to attract foreign investments – never really went anywhere. This was in part because investment capital stampeded to Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, rather than North Africa. It was also because that investment which did enter the country – as was the case in many other places – concentrated in real estate and the financial sector itself in the Tunis region, neglecting the development of the interior and in many cases what might have been modernization of different aspects of the agro-industrial sector.

• World Bank loans did stimulate agricultural development – but in whose interests and at whose expense? It was the bigger concerns that benefited while smaller farmers were undermine, their sector thrown in crisis.

What stands out at present is how little things have changed since. One sees virtually no self-criticism on the part of the Bretton Woods institutions that their policies contributed to the collapse of the Tunisian order, nor frankly, any change in the conditionality of new loans. And if this is the case, the themes that lead to the structural crisis in the Tunisian economy will flare up again, sooner or later… and I fear sooner, rather than later, with the possibility that a precious opportunity – will be lost.

Nor I might add, has there been much indication on the part of the transitional government to move in another direction.

¹Stephen J. King. The New Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa. Indiana University Press: 2009, p.31

²Karen Pfeifer. “How Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and Even Egypt Became 'IMF Success Stories in the 1990s'." MERIP Reports. No.210. 1999

Also read:
The Amilcar Notes (Part 1): Zine Ben Ali's Sorry Legacy
The Amilcar Notes (Part 2): Tunisia -- Emerging Democracy or Just a Facade?
The Amilcar Notes (Part 3): Tunisia's Forgotten Socio-Economic Crisis
The Amilcar Notes (Part 4): Tunisia -- Profoundly Islamic
The Amilcar Notes (Part 5): Election Exhilaration in Tunisia
The Amilcar Notes (Part 6): Tunisia -- U.S. Recognizes Need to Change Its Mid-East Policy
The Amilcar Notes (Part 7): Tunisia's Jews Then and Now (1 of 2)

The glory that was: Tunisian Jewry

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind
-- Willam Wordsworth

Carthage Dermech -- Andre Abitbol

He wore thick glasses.

He was standing in front of me at the Café Uranium where we agreed to meet, but couldn’t see me.  His first words, and, as I recall, also his last, were apologies. He told me in French, “I don’t see very well, excuse me.” I was sitting right there but couldn’t hear him because my hearing is going. What a team! But we managed to find each other anyway. Call it fate, but more likely the element of luck entered into it too.

Admittedly, it is the case that Abitbol might not be able to see right in front himself. That is not important; he might not be able to see the present, none of us really can see the future, but when it comes to the past, to Tunisia’s 3,000 year old Jewish history, Abitbol has x-ray vision. It is no small skill these day to see back into history. Might even be worth as much as looking forward and in some ways, less depressing!

Even from our brief encounter of less than an hour, I sensed that his knowledge of the subject is encyclopedic. He knows the details, "the facts" as they say. But facts are of little consequence without context. Abitbol has that too, what I would call a feel for the flow of history, for the richness of it all. He understanding the dialectic of Tunisian Jewish history; he understands it "without blinders" and that is something quite special. So it was a delight to sit with him, was very stimulating and if I never see the man again, he’s touched, or better yet, rekindled something in me. Thanks, Andre Abitbol.

He has his theories too, about how Tunisian Jewry came about, about, the connection of Tunisian Judaism to the Phoenicians, its role influencing the birth and rise of Christianity, its growth and flourishing in its three Tunisian Judeo-Islamic centers of learning: Tunis, Kairouan  and the island of Djerba, its contribution to the intellectual explosion that characterized Moorish Spain and its historic "trialogue" between Averroes, Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas, the situation of Tunisia’s Jews under the Ottoman and French colonialism, and a bit about "the unraveling" that took place after the 1956 independence of Tunisia.

And all that in less than an hour!

Jacob Lellouche

Fortunately I had heard the same outline with slightly different emphasis a few days before from Jacob Lellouche who runs "Mama Lilly’s" restaurant in La Goulette. My great hopes of playing the taped interview on KGNU in Boulder, even though it was in French, were dashed by, well let’s just call it "my technical incompetence." So hearing the rap a second time was not such a bad deal. Besides they have different emphases. Abitbol concentrated on the early history – I can’t emphasize how fascinating I found it. Lellouche on the other hand is more the modernist emphasizing the past 200 years.

I’ll come back to it in a moment.

I knew a little of Abitbol’s hypotheses, particularly the connection between the Phoenicians and ancient Israel at the time of Solomon and their combined role in the founding of Carthage. But I am more familiar with Lellouche’s description of the Jewish Community’s post-1850 history, some of which I have taught, and most specifically the period of "unraveling" (my term) that led to the exodus of the bulk of Tunisia’s Jews to France, Israel, Italy , USA and the community’s rapid decline thereafter.

Therefore it was easier to follow Lellouche as I had more intellectual historical markers with which to gauge his commentary. It appeared that Lellouche does this often, that he has the rap down and it was more or less the same talk he gives to groups of tourists (he told me that). Ok. Still it was stimulating and I learned something…quite a bit actually.

Point one: the general aspect of Tunisian Jewish history

Abitbol produced a short 4- or 5-book bibliography. The books are quite old but I’ll find them. I should have little problem retrieving these books from the University of Denver library or through inter-library loan. I want to read them, to learn more of the 3,000 year history of Tunisian Jewry, because it is fascinating in and of itself, and because its story is much less familiar that that of European Jewry, because North African -Moorish Judaism, Sephardic Judaism, has an older and in some ways more intellectually vibrant character than the Medieval European Judaism, which owes its intellectual origins to it. And because, on some fundamental level, it is my story too!

Although reduced to little more than a rump community today, Tunisian – more generally North African – Jewry encompasses to my mind one of the great human cultural traditions anywhere, anytime. It has produced great intellectual works, philosophy, history, medicine as well as a whole magnificent body of music, art and poetry. The complete cultural package. It kept renewing itself, in different ways, again and again and again and was able to do so in large measure because of its own  great emphasis on education, a bedrock of Jewish culture throughout the ages, on the one hand. On the other, throughout this long period, it was not an isolated culture but one that was in every way connected to the broader world around, so much so that I think it something of a misnomer even to speak of "Tunisian-Jewish" culture.

For here in the Mediterranean, a kind of "fused cultural model" exists, where different streams are in constant interaction with one another – giving and taking at will. Judaism in Tunisia has given so much to Tunisian Islamic culture – and Islamic culture to Tunisian Judaism  that it is impossible to separate the two historically. It is not, for example that the traditions merge into one, although I do think the generic term of "Mediterranean culture" has some merit, but that they feed off of each other in so many ways that it is virtually impossible to cull out one tradition from another.

Take for example the way that Averroes, Thomas Aquinas and Maimonides all took from each other, from the Greeks, from wherever, synthesizing the traditions into a kind of philosophical and sociological intellectual couscous (not an original analogy by the way in any sense). Jews, Arabs, Christians, Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, French, Italian, Byzantine all draw from one another and give back as well. It’s quite an extraordinarily rich integrated heritage. In the same manner, the notion that "European culture" – that which is often dated from the medieval period and the Renaissance – can somehow be separated from the Islamic/Ottoman tradition is an equally false assumption.

Over the past half century an intellectual acknowledgement of the interplay between cultures of the Mediterranean and beyond have appeared. I only mention a few of the better known works which have enriched my thinking: William McNeil’s The Rise of the West, Braudel’s The Mediterranean World of the Sixteenth Century (in two volumes, although I should add here anything by Braudel), Janet Abu Lughod’s Before European Hegemony. There are many others. Why these particular more global works? Because it is within the great traditions and historical shifts that these books detail and analyze where "Jewish history" becomes alive, where Judaism becomes alive as an integral creative element of a broader cultural/historical tradition.

My father had a particular affection for Italians. He loved them. As a boy of 12 or so, I would ask him why but he couldn’t explain. He tried once by telling me that in so many ways, Italians are like Jews, which made no sense to me at the time because if they were like "us," then why did they have names like Macaluso, Corraggio, Fabrizzi and Napolitano (names of childhood friends)? My entire life I’ve lived in proximity with them, from when I was a child to today. Then one day, not long before my father died when I was visiting him, I looked up on his shelf and there was…Braudel, the great three-volume history of 16^th century capitalism (different from the books cited above). My father had read Braudel and not only that, he understood it, had absorbed it, not so surprising because, as a Jew, even one who had changed the family name from Prensky to the amorphous “Prince,” he’d lived it.

In the end Italians, Jews, Tunisian Arabs, Lebanese, Greeks, those Catalans who think they are not in part Spanish, the Armenians, the Turks,  the Slavs, the Turks, the Egyptians, the Syrians and others I have left out, shared a common world, and in some broad ways common values. They still do. The Odyssey, in a sense is not simply a Greek story. It is a Mediterranean story and it is no accident that in the telling a good part of the Mediterranean is touched.

One last point on this first point. All of these people have a rich experience in long distance trade. High risk, high gain stuff certainly in the past. But also something else, it is the trading peoples I am convinced that more likely to produce the sciences, social or hard. This is so not because trading peoples possess more intelligence or any other stupid racist explanation for their insights.

It is because they have travelled.

Traveling people can make comparisons; have the ability to understand that there is a life, a way of doing things beyond their own culture because they have seen it with their own eyes. Explaining the differences between peoples, the comparisons between people – whether it’s Ibn Khaldun or Montaigne or Franz Boaz doing it – that gives rise to technical innovation, to art, philosophy and the world’s great religions.

And who has traveled more in this world than "the wandering Jew"…and for most of history we have not traveled "first class." The history of Tunisian Jewry is a part of this great historic movement through time. Not even the community’s continued dismemberment will ever be able to undo that.

To be continued…

Also read:
The Amilcar Notes (Part 1): Zine Ben Ali's Sorry Legacy
The Amilcar Notes (Part 2): Tunisia -- Emerging Democracy or Just a Facade?
The Amilcar Notes (Part 3): Tunisia's Forgotten Socio-Economic Crisis
The Amilcar Notes (Part 4): Tunisia -- Profoundly Islamic
The Amilcar Notes (Part 5): Election Exhilaration in Tunisia
The Amilcar Notes (Part 6): Tunisia -- U.S. Recognizes Need to Change Its Mid-East Policy 

2008: A socio-economic crisis hits the mining district

In 2008, Act One of what would be the great Tunisian revolt of late 2010, early 2011 broke out in the country’s Gafsa phosphate mining industry region. What had formerly been a work force of 18,000+ was cut to less than 6,000 in less than a decade. The cuts came not because the phosphate industry was suffering but, to the contrary, because it had done so well. It was a result of modernization with high-tech machines replacing people.

Old story. Profitability and production went up in the industry during these years (1990 - 2008) but jobs went out the window too. Nor was any of that newfound wealth re-invested in any manner to compensate for lost employment. After all this was not a private but a state-run industry!

The center of the storm was a mining town, Redeyef.

It was a rebellion of major proportions. Literally the entire community rose up in anger and frustration calling for fair hiring practices, jobs, infrastructural development – in short a life for a dying community. If Redeyef was going to die, at least its people were going to go down fighting, fighting for what Tunisian independence from France in 1956 had long promised but never delivered: democracy and development.

There had been other rebellions in Tunisia’s rural areas over the years; in fact, in the rural interior they were frequent but not of this magnitude. Until Redeyef, Ben Ali had  been able to contain and cauterize rural uprisings before they reached Tunis, Sousse, the Sahel region (Madhia) and Sfax, heart of the country’s economy and its tourism industry. He almost succeeded with the Redeyef uprising too, except for one little detail, that being the internet. As a result of cellphone cameras, independent journalism transmitted on satellite, Facebook, etc. I could sit in my basement office in Denver, Colorado and follow the uprising almost day by day.

That is exactly what I did. I watched it all on my computer

• as first Ben Ali tried to ignore the turmoil and when he couldn’t, sent in his security troops.
• as 20,000 people – the entire town of Redeyef – marched on the town jail to secure the release of the protest leaders and was proud that so many of them were teachers!
• as the repression deepened – 200+ arrests, some deaths as the security forces open fired, killing several unlucky ones who just happened to be on the scene.
• as the reports of torture came in, accompanied by photos that would stand up in court most places in the world, excepting Tunisia of course.
• as hundreds of locals, bitter at being crushed by a government they could not believe would turn on them like that, tried to flee the country by leaving for nearby Algeria.
• as those desperate souls having given up on the idea of Tunisia as they were met at the border by armed security forces, pummeled and forced to turn back. Ben Ali was afraid the international media coverage of such an event might negatively impact foreign investment and tourism. Of course, what else?

Enter Roger Bismuth

Enter onto this disturbing scene one Roger Bismuth, advisor to sinc- deposed President of Tunisia, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali; multi-millionaire developer; until recently the only Jewish parliamentarian in the Arab World; and last but not least, President of Tunisia’s small Jewish Community of between 1500 – 1800 persons, most of whom live in the Tunis region and on the island of Djerba. Bismuth’s statements on the repression in Redeyef were, let’s just say, unbecoming.

He did not deny there were "problems" but "a la Mussolini" emphasized  Tunisia was a safe country where people could walk around at night without being robbed or otherwise harassed, i.e., the repression is needed to keep social peace. Bismuth commented that there was some possibility of private investment that might follow to rectify the situation. Nothing happened on that score though for the next few years until Mohammed Bouazizi, exactly one year ago today (I write on December 17, 2011) poured paint thinner over himself and after being thrown out of the Sidi Bouzid town hall, lit a match seen round the world.

Bismuth’s comments gave me such a creepy feeling at the time. A Jewish spokesman for Ben Ali! A Jew on "the wrong side of history." That can have unpleasant consequences. I wondered if this would impact Tunisia’s Jewish Community. The whole thing seemed weird; why would he put himself in such a position? I’m still wondering that.

Here was a major socio-economic crisis that Ben Ali had no intention of addressing, but to smooth things over, he carts in as his spokesman, the president of Tunisia’s tiny Jewish Community? It seemed a cynical attempt use a Jewish face for damage control. Bismuth took the bait and did his best to soften the hard edge of Ben Ali’s repressive apparatus.

2011: Bye-bye Zini and Leila with 40% of Tunisia’s national wealth

Then Zine Ben Ali made his hasty exit from the scene, saying "sayonara" to the Tunisian people, trying to get used to the fact  that he can’t torture people at will anymore. He went off to his post – power retirement in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. With him came his darling wife and some of the members of the two family (Ben Ali, Trabelsi) clans; they were saddened to leave Tunis, a blow softened somewhat by the fact that they took 40% of the country’s wealth with them according to some estimates.

The events of late 2010, early 2011 must have placed Citizen Bismuth in an awkward position, on "the wrong side" of history. It would take considerable organizing talent, good political instincts and probably some sharp advisers for  him not to sink on Ben Ali’s ship. Besides I’ve heard Jeddah, where the Ben Ali family relocated, is not the best place for a Tunisian Jew who not so long ago made his own personal pilgrimage – to pay homage to Israeli General Ariel Sharon, lying in a coma in Israel.

As an advisor to Ben Ali, Bismuth was definitely "up there," a part of Ben Ali’s ruling circle, even if his actual power was limited. It is difficult to get as far as Bismuth economically in Tunisia, especially during the Ben Ali years, "on your own" so to speak. All the more reason why, most likely, Roger Bismuth was a little nervous in the period after Ben Ali was forced from Tunisia. He is quoted in at least one article (March, 2011) as saying that he isn’t taking his options of leaving Tunisia for Israel off of the table!

That was in March; now we are approaching the end of the year. Although it could have cost him, Bismuth has personally come through the crisis of the past year quite well indeed. A modern Tunisian Jewish Fouche? He’s landed on his feet. All in all, so has Tunisia’s Jewish Community. All’s well that ends well?

Roger Bismuth has come through these stormy waters unscathed. He has not been indicted for anything, nor has Bismuth picked up and moved to Israel. He’s still in Tunisia, a Tunisian citizen, although he can no longer claim the title of being the only Jewish Member of Parliament in the Arab World, as he is out of office. Nor have his business interests been touched. Furthermore, Bismuth’s past association with Ben Ali does not appear to have hurt him much as he remains the President of Tunisia’s Jewish Community. I’m not exactly sure how he worked all that out, but if Tunisia functions anything like Colorado, he must have some pretty good attorneys advising and negotiating for him.

An ugly "anti-Jewish Salafist dance," but no support from broader Tunisian society

Although Tunisia’s Jewish Community seems to have come through the events of this past year intact and generally in good political and social health, this has been a year of uncertainty for them. Recent events  cap what has been a 130-year Tunisian Jewish rollercoaster ride that started with Tunisia becoming a French protectorate in 1881. It continues today.

Since the collapse of the Ben Ali-Trabelsi regime, there have been anti-Jewish incidents in Tunisia as well as  rumors, some of which proved to be unfounded. But a Salafist (radical Islamic fundamentalist) openly anti-Jewish demonstration not long after Ben Ali fled in early February, 2011 did take place in front of Tunis’ main synagogue on Ave. de la Liberte. Several hundred people were involved. There were accusations some elements of Ben Ali’s former security force were involved, attempting to sow seeds of confusion and split the unity of the anti-Ben Ali social forces.

It was ugly, roundly condemned by virtually all elements of Tunisian society, including what is now the influential moderate Islamic Ennadha Party. The Salafist synagogue demonstration did accomplish one thing: it frightened people some, especially Tunisian Jews. Israeli calls for Tunisia’s remaining Jews to leave the country and join the Zionist state fell flat and were publicly rejected by Tunisian Jews themselves.

For Tunisia’s Salafists, who give all appearances to be run by forces outside of Tunisia’s mainstream, demonstrating at Tunisia’s main synagogue was just a warmup round for their real target, strengthening their position in Tunisia’s mosques, its more secular schools and media.

It’s symbolically reminiscent of the Crusaders of yore, "reving up their medieval storm troopers," by killing Jews in Germany on their way to kill Moslems in Jerusalem, a practice round so to speak. For the modern-day Tunisian Salafists it’s a case of slandering a synagogue to prepare for a cultural offensive against the country’s educational system and media in an attempt, using the usual thug tactics, to bring the broader and more open society "in line" with Wahhabist thought.

Kick the Jews in the nuts first for old time's sake and then move on to more strategic targets. Unable to get the Tunisian people roused about anti-Jewish sentiment – the synagogue protest did not win them support – the Salafists have moved on. They have explored other avenues to break into the Tunisian mainstream, so far unsuccessfully, their social base in Tunisian society being quite thin.

In the period both before and after the October 23, 2011 Tunisian national elections, Ennadha leaders Rachid Ghannouchi and Hamadi Jabeli, the latter now the country’s prime minister, went out of their way to meet with Bismuth to reassure him of Ennadha’s good will. The message was clear: that an Ennadha victory would not negatively affect Tunisia’s Jewish community status and that there is nothing to fear. This can be explained both by reasons of principle as well as politically.

The scoop on Tunisian Jews

No need to engage in political fantasy.

There is something amiss about a Tunisian Jewish Community that a century ago was at least 300,000 out of 10,000,000 and is now reduced to 1,500 – or 1,800 at most in a population now of 10 million plus. It hasn’t been all peaches and cream for Tunisia’s Jews although many more of them migrated to France rather than going to Israel. But the details and parameters of that history, and it will be covered, we’ll put aside for another entry (coming soon by the way).

Still, for all that, it is useful to remember that Tunisia is, as I have said repeatedly in this series, a tolerant place. Jews have been a part of Tunisian history since long before the time of Christ, long before there was a European Jewish Community even.

Those traditions of tolerance and of the general integration of Jews into the fabric of Tunisian life run deep. Even as the Jewish Community here (I write from Tunisia) shrank, a lot of this good will remains. Older Tunisians  remember when they socialized with Jewish neighbors, most vividly reinforced in the Tunisian film Summer in La Goulette by Tunisian film director Ferid Boughedir. Tunisian Jews also keep their memories alive through websites (Harissa.com), blogs and some pretty fine scholarship on their own complex history.

Changing U.S. Role

There are also political reasons why some genuine turn for the worse for Tunisia’s Jewish Community is not likely in the offing and that the Salafist outburst of a few months ago is not indicative of a deeper trend here. First of all, Tunisia’s Jews today are a tiny community. Its historic place in Tunisian society is great, but its economic resources and actual population are minimal. The idea that the community is "spying for Israel" is utter nonsense. Those in power as well as many others here know it.

Another factor that comes into play is Tunisia’s improving relations with the Obama Administration. These relations are still in a formative stage, but they seem to deepen daily. They have little to do with Tunisia’s Jews, but a lot to do with a U.S. attempt to find a new cultural wedge in the Arab World where its influence – despite U.S. military might – had declined dramatically as a result of the invasion of Iraq, the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., as well as U.S. support for the Saudis and other medieval Middle East autocracies.

With Tunisia the Obama Administration hopes to open a new page of U.S. Arab relations. I’m convinced of this, probably the biggest surprise of my three-week visit here.  (It could all come unglued if the U.S. and/or Israel attack Iran by the way ). Any efforts to create difficulties for Tunisia’s tiny Jewish minority would only complicate, if not sabotage, this political thaw. Nor is there any will to move in this direction.

The new Tunisian government will do everything it can to avoid such a crisis. This also extends to how Tunisia will deal with the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Tunisians, as I have written elsewhere, have overwhelming sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people. How that is expressed politically is a different matter. When certain draft documents were circulating suggesting condemning Zionism as a part of the new Tunisian constitution, Rachid Ghannouchi immediately cut off the discussion and ended it curtly by killing the idea. Good relations with the Obama Administration apparently trumped official criticism of Israel. To make the point, Ghannouchi made his announcement of this policy in Washington D.C. on his recent visit.

For its own strategic reasons, Tunisia wants to improve its ties with the United States, to lessen its dependency on its former colonial power. It cannot do that tolerating an anti-Jewish policy at home. Its sympathy for the Palestinians will continue to be expressed, but the Tunisians will be careful not to cross an invisible line. They know exactly how far they can and cannot go on this issue.

Meanwhile – and it is of course a good thing – Tunisia’s Jewish Community can breathe easy and I believe this will be the case for some time into the future and I for one am very pleased. I want to end by noting, strange as it might seem for me that it’s here in Tunisia, that I feel as much at home with being Jewish here as any place. But you’ll have to wait for Part Two of this series, for that to make sense…Coming soon, tune in.

Links:

Tunisian Jews Celebrate Death of  Kabbalist Rabbi Hai Taieb

De Carthage a Jerusalem: Histoire des Juifs de Tunisie

Rob Prince is a Lecturer of International Studies at the University of Denver's Korbel School of International Studies and publisher of the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.