US President-elect Trump’s close ties with Israel enrage founder of popular Tunisian website
Tunisia’s second largest news website, tunigate.net, referred to Israel as a “canine entity” in both its headline and lead paragraph in an article on Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s congratulation of US President-elect Donald Trump.
The headline of the site reads, “The Idea of a Palestinian State is Dead”; Netanyahu Congratulates Trump Asserting: He is a True Friend of the Canine Entity.” (http://tunigate.net/articles/4787) The photo with the article shows a smiling Trump shaking hands with Netanyahu.
Dogs are considered impure, and Islam warns against any contact with the animal. Calling someone a dog, or a “son of a dog” is an insult.
“Referring to Israel in such a way is unusual but when we are angry at it we refer to it in such a way,” the article’s author and tunigate.net’s founder, Osama Aribi, told The Media Line. “Israel should be happy that we tolerate its existence and that we are allowing it to call itself a country, so Israel should just recognize the Palestinian State. We have no problem with Jewish people, there are Jews who live in La Goulette and Djerba in Tunisia, but the problem is that Israel is killing innocent people and children. Official Tunisian state policy is we don’t recognize Israel until it recognizes Palestine.”
Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began in 2010 and continued until the 2011 Tunisian Revolution led to the ousting of former authoritarian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was the only Arab country to become democratic and hold free and fair elections in 2014.
The draft of Tunisia’s new constitution published in 2012 specifically mentions the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Tunisia’s support for an independent Palestinian state. It also condemns Zionism as racism, a comparison Israel sharply rejects. Its preamble states that Tunisia stands “with the peoples of the world; achieving victory for the oppressed everywhere, for the people’s right to self-determination, and for rightful liberation movements including the Palestinian Liberation Movement; and fighting all forms of discrimination and anti-human racism including Zionism.”
The definitive version of the Constitution of 2014 abandoned this harsh anti-Israel stance but the Palestinian question was specifically referenced stating that the Tunisian Republic supports “just liberation movements at the forefront of which is the Palestinian liberation movement”.
Several Middle East analysts said the use of the insulting term “canine state” to describe Israel was not common.
“In my experience across the Maghreb (North Africa), it is common for popular support for the Palestinians to be quite vocal and officially supported, and in this, Tunisia is no exception,” Claire Spencer, Senior Research Fellow at British think-tank Chatham House told The Media Line. “However, even though the more derogatory language you describe may be seen on the kind of fora you describe, it is not commonplace in the published and mainstream media.”
Another major Tunisian news website, aljomhouria.com published an interview with Ahmed Ounaies, briefly Tunisia’s Foreign Minister after the revolution, in which he commented on Trump’s election stating that “we are attached to Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the freedom of the Palestinian people…but today this issue is threatened by the interests of the Jewish lobby and the interests of the American far-right which have placed Trump at the helm.”
Jews have lived in Tunisia since the days of the Roman Empire and once numbered over 100,000 until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Today there are only about 2,000 Jews, mainly on the island of Djerba, in what constitutes one of the only remaining Jewish communities in the Arab world. The Grhiba synagogue, believed to be founded in 586 BCE by Cohanim (priests) fleeing the destruction of the First Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, was attacked by an Al Qa’ida suicide bomber in 2002, and 19 people, most of them German tourists were killed.
“I would not say that condemnation of Israel or denouncing Zionism is common in the press”, Sarah Yerkes, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute told The Media Line. “But there is a strong anti-Israel sentiment in Tunisia. Much of this is due to the fact that Tunis hosted the PLO in the 1980s, so the Palestinian cause is closer to the Tunisians than some other Arab states.”
An Israeli interest office opened in Tunis in 1996 and a Tunisian bureau was established in Tel-Aviv. Israeli citizens and those coming for an annual pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue are allowed to enter Tunisia with their passports. However, the Second Intifada which broke out in 2000 led to the bureaus being closed, although Israeli tourists are still permitted entry.
The Arab spring paved the way for freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Tunisia.
“Free and independent media outlets sprouted and have been instrumental at keeping Tunisia’s democratic transition on track,” said Yerkes. “That being said, following the multiple terror attacks Tunisia experienced over the past two years, there have been some restrictions on the press in the name of security. Some journalists with whom I have spoken have said they can’t cover protests and have trouble getting government officials to talk to them, for example. But Tunisia still has by far the most free press in the Arab world, close to the freedom we enjoy in the West.”
Aribi of tunigate.net told The Media Line that “e-journalism has a special place in the domain of the press in Tunisia. Tunisians want to be involved in what is transpiring in their country, they criticize and call everything into question. But one issue most Tunisians are in agreement on is the Palestinian struggle. We are all for the independence of the Palestinians.”
The future of Tunisia’s relationship with the Israel is tied to “progress being made on a two-state solution,” Spencer from Chatham House concluded. “While there is no active peace process in place, the Tunisian authorities are not likely to be in any hurry to normalize relations with Israel.”
But for now, Tunisians are still allowing citizens of the “canine entity” to enter its country as part of their plan to increase tourism which accounts for 8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.