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Al-Nijma ( L’Étoile) was a two- to four-page weekly newspaper that appeared in Sousse, Tunisia, from June 23, 1920 to August 1, 1961. Subtitled “Weekly Organ of Israelite Information,” al-Nijma provided regional information in Judeo-Arabic and French. The journal was managed and edited by Maklouf Nadjar (Makhlūf Najjār), businessman and owner of the Sahel (or Najar) printing house in Sousse and of La Dépêche Soussienne (May 1, 1944 to July 19, 1960). al-Nijma began as L’Étoile du Sahel and was authorized to publish a fourth page in French in 1921. It closed down in 1922 …

Félix Allouche (1901–1978), journalist, editor, and Zionist activist, was born in Sfax, Tunisia, in 1901 and was educated at the Alliance Israélite Universelle school there. He began his journalistic career as the editor of the local newspaper, La Dépêche Sfaxienne, and correspondent of La Voix d’Israël , one of the earliest journals of Revisionist Zionism. In 1924, he founded Le Réveil Juif (1924–1935), moving its offices to Tunis in April 1930. In 1932, when the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth Le-Yisrael) of Tunis, of which he was the secretary gen…

The first Zionist monthly paper in Tunisia, Kol Ṣiyyon ( La Voix de Sion), was published by the Agudat Ṣiyyon (Agudat Sion) Society in Judeo-Arabic from 1913 to 1914. Appearing in issues of eight to sixteen pages, it was licensed to Sauveur Sitruk, its manager was Joseph Bejaoui, and its editor-in-chief was Joseph Brami, a young rabbi and educator of the modern type and one of the founders of Agudat Ṣiyyon. The purpose and need for Kol Siyyon were explained by Brami in the Warsaw Hebrew paper Ha- Ṣefira: “Even though the Jewish press—and sometimes the French press—devote articles t…

La Voix d’Israël(Tunis) was a two- to eight-page Zionist newspaper, originally a weekly, then a bimonthly, that was published in Tunis from March 1920 to February 1930. Subtitled the “Political Organ of Zionism and North African Judaism—special service of daily Jewish information,” La Voix d’Israël was directed by Menahem Bellaïche(also Belaïs ), and edited by his son Jacques Belaïche, one of the founders, along with Jules Bonan, of the Yoshevet Ṣiyyon Society,  formed in 1914, which viewed itself as ideologically in line with the religious Zionism of the Mizrachi movement. Georges N…

Al-Ṣabāḥ (The Morning) was a four- to sixteen-page daily in Judeo-Arabic published in Tunis from November 1, 1904 to May 14, 1940. (The French part of its masthead read: Es-Sabah, seul quotidien israélite du Nord-Africain, le plus fort tirage des journaux israélites de Tunisie). As the organ of philanthropic Zionism, al-Ṣabāḥ was the most popular Jewish daily in Tunisia. It was founded and managed by Jacob Cohen, an accountant and teacher at the Alliance Israélite Universelle school, and Simon Cohen, and was edited successively by Jacob Cohen, Daniel Hagège, …

Le Réveil Juif was a weekly, French-language, four-page Zionist newspaper published on Fridays in Sfax, Tunisia, from September 1924 to March 1935. Its founder and director was Félix Allouche (1901–1978), its editors-in-chief were Henri Maarek and Elie Louzon, and its editing managers were Michel Loffreda, Jacques Taieb, and Maurice Sitbon. René Cohen-Hadria, Félix Bijaoui, David Chemla, and Jacques Belaïs (from Israel) were its most famous regular contributors. Considered the most important news organ of Revisionist Zionism in Tunisia in its day, Le Réveil Juif was character…

La Gazette d’Israël was a two- to four-page weekly newspaper in Tunis published from October 1938 to July 1939 with a circulation of two thousand, and from December 1945 to September 1951 with a circulation of fifteen hundred. (Like all such journals, its readership far exceeded its circulation numbers.) An organ of Revisionist Zionism, it was founded by E. Ganem to fill the gap left by the closing of Le Réveil Juif and Kadima, and was managed consecutively by David Boccara, Raymond Cohen, Victor Haouzi, and André Scemmama. Its editors-in-chief were Henri Emmanuel an…