Jews in Tunisia

Then on Monday night unidentified assailants set fire to a synagogue in the town of Ghabes and burned the Torah scrolls. In an interview with AFP, Trabelsi Perez, President of the Ghriba synagogue said the crime was made all the more shocking by the fact that it occurred as police were stationed close by.

The day after the attack Roger Bismuth, President of Tunisia's Jewish community disputed the view that the scorching of Torah scrolls had anything to do with anti-Semitism. The man responsible for representing Tunisia's Jewish community before the evolving new regime told The Jerusalem Post that the attack was the fault of the Jews themselves, "because they left [the synagogue] open…This is not an attack on the Jewish community."