Guest post by Boushayb
I want to draw attention to this article, which appears to be the only followup story featuring a few Tunisian Jews’ reactions to Gazan Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s recent visit.
Thus far the world’s media and blogs have been largely silent on the discrepancy between what the Ennahda party leader Rachid Ghannouchi claimed were ‘no more than five people [at the airport]‘ making anti-Israeli remarks and the at least four separate (there are more) occasions when Haniyeh, accompanied variously by Ghannouchi, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, other Ennahda goons and clerical fascists, witnessed literally thousands of Tunisians, amongst them many women and children, calling for the extermination of the Jewish people with reference to a seminal event in Islamic history and designed to inflict the maximum amount of terror and misery.
On at least foue separate occasions, inside the airport, outside it, before, during and after Haniyeh’s sermon at Uqba ’slaughterer of infidels’ ibn Nafia’s mosque in Qayrawan, and at an Ennahda/Hamas rally at a sports stadium in Sfax, chants of ‘Khaybar, Khaybar ya Yahud’ and other anti-Semitic and genocidal taunts were made in the presence of leading Ennahda officials, and, in at least the case of Sfax and inside the mosque at Qayrawan, these officials, together with some of the country’s most senior clerics, joined in with the racist nasheeds.
To make matters worse, the world’s media seem to be relying for their information on an amateurish Ennahda press release, signed by Ghannouchi, which plainly contradicts the facts on the ground and by its very existence should prevent him and members of his party from ever being taken seriously or indeed trusted by anyone ever again.
Amongst those aiding and abetting Ennahda are Ikhwanweb, who helpfully translated their fellow Brotherhood organisation’s press release into English; a report which was subsequently churned up in the process and recycled by international media. The translation jazzes up the original and further perpetuates the Ennahda lies.
As if this weren’t bad enough, a journalist by the name of Bouazza ben Bouazza, appears to have written Ennahda propaganda pieces for all the major agencies. He further spins the Ennahda narrative by introducing the Islamists’ favourite Arab Spring compadres, the Salafis, and other perpetually anonymous ‘ultra-conservatives’, as scapegoats. He even manages to get Hizb ut-Tahrir in on the action, a favourite bogeyman to resonate with British and European readers in particular, by blaming a small contingent for the mass chants of ‘Khaybar’ at the Ennahda rally in Sfax.
This should be a major news story all around the world. Those who know Ghannouchi, Haniyeh and their fellow travellers will not be surprised by these events, but more people should be made aware of the sort of contradictory rhetoric we’ve come to expect from movements with totalising religious ideologies. Tonight the tiny population of Jews that compose the Maghreb’s Jewish minority are cowering in fear, because thousands of their compatriots and near-neighbours have called openly for their murder with the acknowledgement of a newly-elected religious mass movement in what is supposedly one of the Arabic-speaking world’s most tolerant societies.
