History of the Jews in Libya

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The history of the Jews in Libya stretches back to the 3rd century BCE, when Cyrenaica was under Greek rule. The Jewish population of Libya, a part of the Sephardi Maghrebi Jewish community continued to populate the area continuously until the modern times. During World War II, Libya's Jewish population was subjected to antisemitic laws by the Fascist Italian regime and deportations by Nazi German troops. After the war, anti Jewish violence caused many Jews to leave the country, principally for Israel, though significant numbers moved to Italy and North America. Under Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled the country from 1969 to 2011, the situation deteriorated further, eventually leading to the emigration of the remaining Jewish population. The last Jew in Libya, 80 year old Rina Debach, left the country in 2003. Major Jewish settlement of Libya took place in the 4th century BCE. Ptolemaic Egypt had gained a large Jewish population after Ptolemy I Soter's invasion of Judea, during which many Jews were carried off as war captives before later being freed, as well as voluntary Jewish emigration to Egypt for economic reasons and Ptolemy's tolerant policies which followed afterward. In 312 BCE, Ptolemy settled many Jews in Cyrenaica to strengthen his kingdom. There is evidence of Jews living in Benghazi from 13 BCE. They were considered citizens, but were ruled by a Jewish archon unlike the rest of the Jews in that area. In 146 BCE inscriptions found at Benghazi and elsewhere in Libya, give details about wealthy, well established and organised Jewish communities. During the Greco Roman period, Libya corresponded approximately with Cyrene and the territory belonging to it. Jews lived there, including many that moved there from Egypt; Augustus granted Cyrene's Jewish population certain privileges through Flavius, the governor of the province. At the time, they maintained close contact with the Jews in Jerusalem. In 73 CE, during the First Jewish–Roman War in Judea, there was also a revolt by the Jewish community in Cyrene led by Jonathan the Weaver, which was quickly suppressed by the governor Catullus. Jonathan was denounced to the governor of Pentapolis. In vengeance, the Romans killed him and many wealthy Jews in Cyrene. Several Libyan Jews from around this period are known today, such as Jason of Cyrene, whose work is the source of the Second Book of Maccabees, and Simon of Cyrene, who is believed to have carried the cross of Jesus as he was taken to his crucifixion. According to Jewish tradition, after the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132 135 AD, the Romans deported twelve boatloads of Jews from Judea to Cyrenaica. Approximately half a million Jews are thought to have already been living there at the time. Most lived in farming villages while those by the sea were often sailors. Many others were potters, stonemasons, weavers, and merchants. Data from 1931 indicates that spoken Italian was relatively widespread across the Jewish population. In Benghazi, 67.1 percent of Jewish men and 40.8 percent of Jewish women spoke Italian, compared to 34.5 percent of Arab men and 1.6 percent of Arab women. Until 1936 life under Italian rule proceeded peacefully for the Jews. In 1936, however, the Italians began to enforce fascist legislation, aimed at modernising social and economic structures, based on conditions current in Italy. With the implementation of anti Jewish racial legislation in late 1938, Jews were removed from municipal councils, public offices, and state schools and their papers were stamped with the words "Jewish race." In 1942, German troops fighting the Allies in North Africa occupied the Jewish quarter of Benghazi, plundering shops and deporting more than 2,000 Jews across the desert. Sent to work in labor camps, more than one fifth of this group of Jews perished. Jews were concentrated in the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, with small communities in Bayda and Misrata. In June 1948, anti Jewish rioters killed another 12 Jews and destroyed 280 Jewish homes. In the late 1940s, some 40,000 Jews lived in Libya. The Libyan Jewish community suffered great insecurity during this period. The founding of Israel in 1948, as well as Libya's independence from Italy in 1951 and subsequent admission into the Arab League, led many Jews to emigrate. From 1948 to 1951, and especially after emigration became legal in 1949, 30,972 Jews moved to Israel.

In 2011, elements opposed to Gaddafi demonstrated a distinct divide in their stance toward Libyan Jews. NBC News correspondent Richard Engel, covering the conflict, estimated that as many as one in five of the rebel fighters had taken up arms against Gaddafi out of the belief that the Libyan strongman was secretly Jewish. However, National Transitional Council Chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil invited Libyan Jewish representative David Gerbi to meet with him after the World Organization of Libyan Jews designated him the group's official delegate to the governing body. Gerbi was reportedly warmly received by Berber rebels in the Nafusa Mountains in August 2011, and an Amazigh NTC official was quoted as saying, "We want to create closer relations between Muslims and Jews. Without Jews we will never be a strong country." On 1 October 2011, Gerbi returned to Tripoli after 44 years of exile. With the help of a U. S. security contractor and the permission of NTC fighters and three local sheikhs, Gerbi hammered down a brick wall erected to block the entrance to the city's historic Dar Bishi Synagogue. He declared it a "historic day" for Libya and told the crowd gathered there, "This is for all those who suffered under Gaddafi." However, some residents remained wary of Gerbi's intentions and were quoted by a CNN reporter as expressing distrust for Jews. Gerbi's work on the synagogue ended abruptly after two days when the terms of permission fell into dispute.