Perspectives and the student movement bore the brunt of the regime’s repression, which became encapsulated by the figure of Ahmed Ben Jannet, for what he stood for more than how he acted during the June 1967 protests. Ben Jannet came from the province and had studied at the Zitouna, the theology university in Arabic, before moving to the university. This was enough to associate him or draw a tenuous link with the events of the Arab East or even suggest his membership to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Ben Jannet became the scapegoat in official media and bore the brunt of a campaign to externalize the events of June 1967. He received an expedited sentence of 20 years of forced labor for being the supposed ringleader of the protests.

This article served two purposes for Perspectives: to counter the regime’s accusations by building another profile for this student that emphasizes his activism within UGET in the previous years; and then to shift the focus back to Tunisian foreign policy under Bourguiba and his alliance with the imperial camp at the expense of the Arab and Palestinian causes.

Bourguiba had stood in opposition to the Arab consensus on the Palestinian question during the 1960s. During an Arab official tour, he stopped in the city of Jericho, under Jordanian control, in March 1965 and pronounced a famous speech to the Palestinians calling on them to take up arms rather than having the Arabs take up the cause, while displaying more realism toward Israel. It lead to Egyptian president Nasser calling on Tunisia’s expulsion from the Arab League, and a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, and an isolation from the region.

For Perspectives, the June 1967 riots in Tunis revealed that a significant portion of the population disagreed with Bourguiba’s policy toward the Arab East.