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Jewish Cemetery, Tatouine, Tunisia

Description

Description

The cemetery is scarcely protected by old stone walls, which are crumbling away by the minute. The only real protection these walls seem to offer are the bird-proof fencing lining the top of them. These walls are marked by graffiti and surrounded by piles of litter, with trash cans lined up beside them. The heaping bags of trash and detritus scattered all around these walls make it clear that the cemetery bears little meaning to the current denizens of the surrounding neighborhood, which appears lifeless and quiet, with nary a person outside in broad daylight.
Inside the walls, the cemetery shows immediate, alarming signs of neglect. Whatever graves remain are obscured by plant overgrowth, with weeds and grasses running rampant in between graves and in entire corners of their own. They are otherwise illegible and broken in places. On top of this, there’s trash scattered absolutely everywhere, with drinking cups dotting every corner of the site and empty bags lying here and there. In one corner, a pile of rubble and debris is stacked upon bricks; along various walls lean miscellaneous doors and planks of wood. All this considered, the site seems less like a cemetery and more like any abandoned yard. It is truly alarming, how stark the neglect is.

Behind Tataouine

Considering Tataouine’s current state, it isn’t that difficult to understand why the cemetery has been so neglected. As of the present day, there are no Jewish residents in the town. After WWII, tensions between Jews and Arabs rose to a point where more than half of the Jewish population elected to make the Aliyah to Israel in 1952. The rest left in the early 1960s. [1]
Then, in the wake of the Libyan Civil War, the town found itself hosting thousands of Libyan refugees in 2011. They arrived in droves over the border, totaling to almost 75,000, with more either being put into refugee camps or simply going missing. These people were primarily families, but there was a fear among locals that some might actually be rebels who are looking for a base of operations. [4]
Unfortunately, their fears were warranted: a few years later, Tataouine became a site for ISIS activity. In the midst of the refugee crisis, ISIS fighters cultivated the city into a waypoint between training bases in Libya. [2] According to CNN, caches of weaponry had been found in the area in such magnitude that it was advised that any and all entry into the city come to a standstill until the issue was resolved. [5]
The tragedy of this is profound. A cemetery is meant to be visited and respected, yet this kind of terrorist activity has prevented any entry into the town. It is a devastating loss to those Jewish families who came from Tataouine that they are unable to pay their respects to their loved ones who were buried in the cemetery.

Tatouine, Tunisia

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