Ghannouchi has promised that there will be no Sharia in Tunisia — we’ll see about that — but even if he is sincere in that promise, that doesn’t mean he is the Western-looking democratic pluralist of media myth. I tried to tell you: “Tunisia Islamist leader rules out normal ties with Israel, from AFP, April 1 (thanks to all who sent this in):
The head of Tunisia’s governing Islamist party has said the country cannot normalise ties with Israel, the official TAP news agency reported Sunday.
Rached Ghannouchi said that “Tunisians’ problem is with Zionism, not with Judaism” [yeah, surrrre — Ed.], but TAP said “the president of Ennahda stressed … there can be no normalisation with Israel.”
The party won the most seats in an October 23 election,
TAP said Ghannouchi told a ceremony Saturday in the northwestern town of Beja that the only way for Palestinians to reclaim their land now occupied by Israel is through “the victory of democratic regimes in the Arab World.”
He added that Tunisia’s toppled leader Zine el Abidine Ben Ali was “a collaborator with the Zionists.”
Ben Ali, who clung to power through strong-arm tactics and widely discredited elections “betrayed the Palestinian cause,” TAP quoted Ghannouchi as saying….