Tunisian President Blames Israel For Floods In Libya

Tunisia has often been regarded as one of the more advanced Arab states, with a French-speaking elite whose members have often been educated in France. But the current Tunisian president, Kais Saied, has now suggested that the storm and floods in Derna, Libya were caused by the Zionists, and his evidence is the storm’s “Jewish name” — “Daniel.” More on this crazy claim can be found here: “Tunisia hints Israel behind devastating Storm Daniel due to ‘Zionist name,'” by Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, September 19, 2023:

The massive storm that devastated Libya’s Derna is somehow linked to Zionism because it was named “Daniel,” according to Tunisian President Kais Saied. In a conversation posted on social media on Tuesday, he can be heard making a series of comments about the storm and its name.

Storms are often named randomly in line with various methods of naming storms after women and men and using sequential letters of the alphabet. Nevertheless, Saied said the name “Daniel” was evidence of “Zionism’s growing influence.”

Though storms — hurricanes, typhoons, and so on — are named by such international bodies as the World Meteorological Association, Saied seems to believe that Israel was behind the naming of the storm that caused the floods that ravaged Derna, in Libya. It’s a preposterous idea. No doubt in the back of Saied’s mind is the belief that those diabolical Jews not only control the world’s banks and media, but apparently, in his view, also the weather.

And why stop with the floods in Derna? Perhaps the Zionists were behind the earthquakes in Turkey last year, and this year in Morocco, so that — do you put it past the Jews, knowing how diabolically clever they are? — they could then offer to help, sending search-and-rescue teams to Turkey, to great acclaim (the Israelis saved the lives of 19 Turks buried under the rubble) and having those same teams right now on standby, waiting for Morocco to invite them in to help locate earthquake victims, no longer alive, in the towns south of Marrakech. Thus do the Zionists present themselves as samaritans to the world, while all the while they are not only committing atrocities against the Palestinians, but are also behind the so-called “natural disasters” whose survivor they then offer to help.

It’s a preposterous notion, but more preposterous still is the suggestion that Israel may somehow have deliberately caused the storm and flood in Derna as part of its malevolent campaign against Muslim peoples. The damage in Derna was owed in large part to the two substandard dams that collapsed. Not even Kais Saied has suggested that Israelis built those dams.

President Saied’s comments have been mocked, even by fellow Arabs, who suggest that his remark that the name of the storm — “Daniel” — somehow suggests that Jews were behind the flood. was absurd. They point out that “Daniel” is not only a prophet for the Jews, but is also revered in Islam as well, mentioned in the hadith as one of God’s messengers.

Saied has been taking a more extreme line against the West, as Europe pressures his government to prevent the human-traffickers from leaving Tunisian ports, their unseaworthy boats loaded down with Arab and African economic migrants whom they smuggle into Europe. The Tunisian economy is in a downward spiral. With his people facing a world of woe, Kais Saied has chosen to direct their attention away from his country’s real problems that so far has been unable to deal with, and onto a fictional threat from the perfidious Jews, who “caused the disaster” they named “Daniel” — a “Jewish name” — in Derna.

Other Muslims have been critical of Saied’s remarks, claiming that his comments could only increase animus toward Jews in Tunisia, by crazily holding them “responsible for the flood in Derna.” Saied’s comment was particularly disquieting in the wake of the terror attack on Jews outside the synagogue in the island of Djerba this past May, in which five people were killed. Could Saied’s remarks blaming Jews for the massive deaths that resulted from floods in Derna, lead to retaliatory attacks on Jews in Djerba? Of course they could.

Kais Saied’s blaming of Israel for the Libyan storm and flood has, fortunately, not been echoed by other Arabs. Instead, there has been much criticism of his remarks, for their palpable absurdity has made not just President Saied himself, but also other Arabs subject to ridicule. Perhaps this episode, in which he was not applauded but mocked, will lead Kais Saied to bethink himself, and, for the good of his country, to shut up.