Tunisia's moderate Islamist Ennahda party said in a statement Saturday that Jews living in the north African country were citizens with "all their rights and duties". The party, which emerged as a dominant force in October elections, criticized an invitation last week by Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom for Tunisian Jews to settle in Israel. "Tunisia remains, today and tomorrow, a democratic state that respects its citizens and looks after them regardless of their religion," Ennahda said. It added that "members of the Jewish community in Tunisia are citizens enjoying all their rights and duties". Tunisian-born Shalom on Wednesday called on Jews living in the country "to settle in Israel as soon as possible," speaking at a Jerusalem ceremony for Jewish Holocaust victims in Tunisia. As Foreign Minister, Sylvan Shalom was the latest Israeli politician to visit Tunisia in 2005 at the at the invitation of then Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was toppled in January. Tunisia is home to about 1,500 Jews, mostly on the island of Djerba. Ennahda called Shalom's comments "irresponsible" and "irrational" and said "making this kind of statement at this particular time is very suspicious". The head of the Jewish community in Tunisia, Roger Bismuth, reportedly said that "all this fuss made around Silvan Shalom's statements is a storm in a teacup and an attempt to undermine the process initiated by Tunisia after freeing itself from the yoke of dictatorship".
"No foreign party has the right to interfere in Tunisia's affairs, including those of the Jewish community living in this country for over 3,000 years," he said, according to a report by the Tunisian news agency TAP.
He added that "the Jewish community loves Tunisia and does not consider leaving it", the report said.
At last Wednesday's commemoration at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, several hundred people gathered to hear testimony from Tunisian survivors of the Holocaust and presentations by historians.
"We are here to honor the memory of our dead," said Israeli sociologist Claude Siton, at the annual ceremony commemorating the German occupation of Tunisia (December 1942-May 1943).
According to historians of the Holocaust, 5,000 Jews of Tunisia were transferred in forced labor camps there, 160 were deported to concentration camps and dozens were shot dead.
But Yossi Bariah, an Israeli of Tunisian origin, who attended the ceremony and devotes its activities to demand more compensation for Tunisian Jews, said 671 Tunisian Jews died in the Shoah, a figure which includes those deported from France.
Since 2008, the survivors of the Holocaust in Tunisia can claim benefits to Israel, as survivors from Europe.
"It took almost 60 years before our story was finally recognized in Israel, "said Mr. Shalom, who identified himself as" a son of survivors."