Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835-1970
by Renzo De Felice
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Book Summary Information
Author: Renzo De FeliceEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1985-07
ISBN: 0292740166
Number of pages: 406
Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr
Book Reviews of Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835-1970
Book Review: The Jews of Libya
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an extremely detailed and comprehensive account of Jewish life in Libya from 1835 to 1970, in it's social, economic and political components.
Jews had lived in Cyrenaica and Tripolitania from before 300 BCE.
The Jews of Libya, lived under Islamic rule, as in other Arab countries under Dhimni status.
As tolerated but discriminated against and treated as inferiors under the Dhimni status- the special system of apartheid applied to Jews and Christians for centuries in Islamic countries.
From time to time this status quo gave way to outright persecution and pogroms against Jews by Arabs.
A member of the Alliance Israelite Universalle, a teacher at the local Alliance school who was living in Triploi in 1900 described the situation in these communities in a field report mailed to Paris:
"In those out of the way places a Jew may not ride a horse or a donkey in the Arab's presence. On seeing an Arab coming a Jew must dismount quickly and continue on foot, leading his mount until the Arab disappears round a bend in the highway. If a Jew forgets this or takes too long to dismount, the Arab brutally reminds him of 'good manners' by throwing him to the ground. The Jews of the Jebel (one of the regions) told me that over the last twenty years three Israelites had been killed in this way. The testimony of a Jew is not accepted and he would dare to acuse anyone of robbing him. Every Jewish family is under the suzerainty of an Arab, termed the Saheb...They told me that some time ago, Arabs had plundered their little synagogue and stolen the Scrolls. The next day they were dumbfounded to see an Arab riding a donkey with a saddle made of Torah parchment. They claimed it back but to no avail".
While a few Jews had achieved affluence the majority of Jews in Libya lived under wretched conditions in a ghetto known as the Hara.
The last decades of Ottoman rule saw an extreme turn for the worse for the Jews of Libya, with an eruption of violent anti-Semitism.
Synagogues and Jewish houses were attacked and destroyed and several Jews murdered.
It is no wonder that the Jews welcomed Italian rule in 1911.
The growth of the Zionist movement injected new life into the Jewish population, as it did for Jews around the world.
New democratic institutions were founded in the Jewish communities under Zionist influence.
In 1931 there were 24 534 Jews in Libya (about 4% of the total population), with about 15 000 of them in Tripoli. The Jews suffered from racial legislation introduced in Italy in 1938, but were relatively safe from attack until after the British seized control of Libya, and bloody pogroms (under the ifluence of Pan Arabists and Islamists) broke out against Jews, with the British doing nothing to protect the Jews, in 1945 and 1948.
A savage pogrom in Tripoli on November 5, 1945, killed more than 140 Jews and wounded hundreds more. Almost every synagogue was looted.
Jews were burned alive, Jewish women and girls raped and in some cases whole families wiped out.
In June 1948, rioters murdered another 12 Jews and destroyed 280 Jewish homes.
The British pro-Arab policies in the Palestine Mandate extended to British colonies in the Middle East including Libya, where the British did nothing to protect Jews and even covertly encouraged the slaughter.
From 1945 until 1949 the British banned and forcibly prevented any emigration out of Libya, so that Libyan Jews could not migrate to the Holy Land.
Thousands of Jews fled the country after Libya was granted independence and membership in the Arab League in 1951, although King Idris tried to protect the Jews and soften the effects of anti-Jewish measures, he was forced to take these measures by the anti-Jewish Arab population and by neighbouring countries like Egypt, under Nasser.
After the Six Day War of 1967, more bloody pogroms took place against Jews, engineered by Nasserist elements, and the remainder of the 7000 Jews in Libya, were forced to leave that copuntry destitute.
After these same elements seized power under Colnel Muammar Qaddafi, all Jewish property was expropriated and all Jewish debts cancelled.
A cornerstone of Qadaffi's policy was hatred of Israel a reversal of King Idris' moderate pro-Western policy, and support for international terrorism.
The official organ of the Qadaffi regime Ar-Raid thundered on 31 October 1969:
"It is the unavoidable duty of the city councils of Tripoli, Bhengazi, Misurata etc to remove their (the Jews) cemetries immediately, and throw the bodies of their dead, which, even in their eternal rest, soil our country, into the depths of the sea. Where those dirty corpses are lying they should put buildings, parks, and roads. Only thus can the hatred of the Libyan Arab people towards the Jews be satiated".
All synagogues under Qadaffi were destroyed, turned in to mosques, or used for profane purposes such as social clubs.
Qadaffi hypocritically invited the Jews to return back to Libya attaching the following perfidious conditions.
1 "Islam was ordered for everyone and was the last of the divine messages".
2 "Judaism itself is responsible for any opression which may be inflicted, since any action without fail is followed by reaction in other places".
3 Jews who migrated to Israel after 1948 could not be tolerated and if they were opressed in Arab countries the Jews "must have commited in Palestine some act against the Arabs which caused an adverse reaction against them.".
The book serves as another documentation of persecution of Jews in Arab lands, the pogroms of the late 1940s against Jews in Arab countries, and the perfidy of terror-mongering tyrants like Qadaffi.
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