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Tunisian President Kais Saied has claimed that last week’s attack near a synagogue in Djerba, in which two Jews and three police officers were killed, was not antisemitic, JPost reports. Saeid made the comments on Saturday, according to the report. According to the Tunisian newspaper La Presse, Saied spoke during his visit to the Ariana district near the capital. A video of the visit and the president's statements was published by Saied's office as well. According to La Presse, Saied said that "here, in this place where I stand now, Tunisian Jews fleeing the Nazi forces who had pitched their...

SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT: Some Arab countries are trying to get the Jews they forced out to return FEBRUARY 7, 2020 BY BARENAKEDISLAM More than 850,000 Jews lived in Arab countries in the 20th century. With the creation of Israel in 1948, all but a few thousand Jews were forced to leave the Arab countries where they had lived for generations and centuries. But today, there is a palpable longing in most Arab states for the Jews to return. Many believe that only with a Jewish presence will their countries blossom and develop as they did in the past. World Israel News...

As part of a DFG-funded project, a German-Tunisian team co-directed by LMU archaeologist Stefan Ritter has surveyed the ancient city of Meninx on the island of Jerba and reconstructed its trading links in antiquity. The port of Meninx was unusually situated and well protected. Incoming ships first had to negotiate a deep and broad submarine channel in the otherwise shallow bay, before approaching the city itself via another channel that ran parallel to the coast for much of its length. They then had to traverse a wide stretch of shallow water to reach the city's wooden and stone quays, which...

Exit polls show that independent law professor Kais Saied has won Tunisia's runoff presidential election against Nabil Karoui, a media tycoon recently freed from jail... Saied secured 72.53% of the vote while media mogul Nabil Karoui got 27.47%, the polling firm Emrhod Consulting says, citing exit polls... Karoui is a 56-year-old media tycoon, who up until Wednesday had been jailed on charges of tax evasion and money laundering, and Saied is a 61-year-old jurist and law professor with no political party but backed by the moderate Islamist party Ennahda. In the first round, Saied took 18.4% and Karoui 15.6% among...

The Tunisian city of Sousse has decided to name four streets for local prominent Jews, JTA reported Friday. According to the report, the municipality will recognize Claude Sitbon, a lawyer; Daniel Uzan, a physician; Yvonne Bessis, a midwife; and the Ghouila-Houri and Ichoua families of city developers. The streets are located in a new neighborhood of villas in the city’s north. Sousse, a coastal resort city which is a popular vacation destination for Westerners, was attacked by Islamist terrorists in 2015. A gunman killed 38 tourists, mostly from Britain, in the attack that was claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS)....

Once again an illusion of a moderate Islam is unmosqued. And it is ugly. Why do civilized men tolerate this barbarity? Why do civilized men walk on eggshells for fear of insulting savages, as if they had human sensibilities? They don't, and we'd be wise to buck up and fight this gruesome fight. We will have to. Instead, the media quislings allow Islamic supremacists and stealth jihadists to smear, defame and libel those who challlenge jihad and dare to speak the truth about the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the earth. To what end? Tunisians greet...

Monday, 22 April, 2002, 18:40 GMT 19:40 UKTunisia says Djerba blast was deliberate Tunisia has confirmed that an explosion which killed at least 16 people, including 11 German tourists, was deliberate. An official statement said the driver of a fuel lorry which blew up outside the Ghriba synagogue on the resort island of Djerba was responsible. It was "a premeditated crime perpetrated by a Tunisian, Nizar Ben Mohamed Nasr Nawar, with the aid of one of his relatives resident in Tunisia," the statement read. Nawar, a 24-year-old resident of the French city of Lyon, is believed to have died in...

Tunisia blast was attack, says Germany The blast blackened the white walls of the synagogue Germany has said it believes a lorry explosion at a synagogue in Tunisia that killed 13 people, including eight Germans, was a deliberate attack and not an accident as first reports suggested. Taking into account the latest developments in the inquiry it was probably an attack Otto Schily Interior Minister Otto Schily said the latest information obtained by the German and Tunisian governments indicated that the blast on the resort island of Djerba had been planned. He said the explosion appeared to be a...

The German government said yesterday it was certain that terrorists were responsible for the blast in Tunisia earlier this month that killed 17 people, most of them German tourists. There is persuasive evidence that the explosion, originally described as an accident, was al-Qaida's first operation after the September 11 jetliner attacks on New York and Washington. Links between the key suspect in the Tunisia attack and an alleged member of the Hamburg cell at the heart of the September 11 conspiracy have been traced. Speaking after talks in Tunis with President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the German interior minister, Otto...

TUNIS, April 14 (Reuters) - The Tunisian government said on Sunday it had no new information suggesting a truck explosion that killed at least 17 people outside a synagogue on the southern resort isle of Djerba was a deliberate suicide attack. The government was reacting to remarks made by German Interior Minister Otto Schily on Saturday. He said that based on the latest information both German and Tunisian governments had obtained, it appeared that Thursday's blast had been planned. A total of three Germans died overnight of their injuries, raising the death toll from the explosion of a tanker filled...

In Tunisian Island of Djerba, Five Killed, 20 Injured When Truck Blows up Near Ancient Synagogue Suspected Terrorist Attack on Jewish Shrine.

TUNIS, April 12 (Reuters) - Tunisia sought on Friday to deflect suspicions that a blast which killed at least seven people outside North Africa's oldest synagogue site might have been a suicide attack. The country's eight daily newspapers all reinforced the official line that the blast was an accident and not linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Tunisian tour guide died overnight of injuries sustained in the blast, a tourism official said, taking the confirmed death toll to seven. Four German tourists, a policeman and the driver of the tanker, which was filled with cooking gas, died when the truck...

RANKFURT, April 16 — Evidence continued to accumulate today in Germany and elsewhere that the deadly explosion on Thursday at a historic synagogue in Tunisia was an attack rather than an accident, despite Tunisia's assertions to the contrary. In Duisberg, Germany, federal investigators arrested and later released a man they said was suspected of having received a telephone call from the driver of the propane-filled truck that set off the explosion. At least 16 people died, including 11 German tourists. Two London-based Arabic newspapers published front-page reports today saying a group with possible links to Al Qaeda, Osama bin...

Germany has for the first time raised the possibility that a truck bombing at a Tunisian synagogue that killed 16 people was an al-Qaida terrorist attack. If confirmed, the blast on Djerba island would be the first terror attack by Osama bin Laden’s terror network since September 11. ‘‘We are considering all possibilities, but those that we must consider include al-Qaida structures,’’ Interior Minister Otto Schily said. Schily said he will travel to Tunisia this weekend to meet investigators and President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, possibly on Monday. The number of dead in the attack rose to 16 today with...

18 minutes ago MADRID (Reuters) - Spain arrested five suspected Islamic extremists on Friday in what court sources said was a swoop linked to a synagogue truck bombing in Tunisia last year in which some 20 people died. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the bombing of the El Ghriba synagogue on the southern Tunisian island of Djerba on April 11. Fourteen German tourists were among those killed. The Spanish Interior Ministry said police arrested four of the suspects near the Mediterranean port city of Valencia and the fifth in the northern town of Logrono in the Rioja region. Police...

PARIS (AP) - French authorities investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States have arrested two men - a Moroccan and a German believed to be a top al-Qaida recruiter - in the last two days at the Paris airport, judicial officials said Thursday. The officials said they believe there's a link between the two suspects. On Sunday, Karim Mehdi, a 34-year-old Moroccan, was taken into custody at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, the officials said on condition of anonymity. He had arrived from Germany and planned to leave to the French island of La Reunion...

Suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network claimed responsibility for the blast near a synagogue which killed 15 including ten German tourists last week in Tunisia, the Al-Qods Al-Arabi newspaper said.The London-based Arab daily, which did not say how it obtained the claim, said "the Al-Qaeda netowrk of Sheikh Osama bin Laden claims the operation against the Djerba synagogue.""This suicide operation is a response to the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," said a document, which the newspaper claimed was a genuine Al-Qaeda statement.The statement said Tunisian Nizar bin Mohammed Nawar, aka...

BERLIN, Apr 18, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Germany has for the first time raised the possibility that a truck bombing at a Tunisian synagogue that killed 16 people was an al-Qaida terrorist attack. If verified, the blast would be the first terror attack by Osama bin Laden's terror network since Sept. 11. "We are considering all possibilities, but those that we must consider include al-Qaida structures," Interior Minister Otto Schily said on ARD television Wednesday. Schily said he intends to travel to Tunisia this weekend to meet with investigators and President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, possibly on...

Berlin, Apr 16, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- German security services on Tuesday arrested an alleged Al Qaeda terrorist suspected of involvement in last week's bomb attack on a historic Tunisian synagogue in which ten German tourists were among the 16 people killed. The Federal Criminal Investigation Department (BKA) said they had taken into custody in the central city of Duisberg a person they believe had been in contact with the driver of the truck loaded with natural gas canisters that crashed into the synagogue. Tunisian authorities had said they believed the blast on the island of Djerba was...

Tunisia’s elected assembly accepted a petition Wednesday to question the tourism minister over a decision allowing Israelis to use their passports to enter the country for an annual religious pilgrimage. While Israelis and Jews long have traveled to Tunisia for an annual pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba, this is the first year that Israelis have been allowed to use their passports rather than a special document issued by Tunisian embassies. Tunisia does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. …