Next Year in Tripoli (Will my people -- the Jews of Libya -- Ever Be Able to Go Home?)

Foreign Policy ^

[nickcarraway]

I am a Jew from Libya.

Although my family and I were forced to flee Libya for Rome after the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, I still consider myself to be a proud Jew, a proud Libyan, and a proud Italian. I have been back four times since 1967, but have been forced to leave each time. Although much time has passed, I still feel the freshness of Tripoli's air and its special light: hot, but not blinding. I want to feel that light again -- but in a stable Libya, a country that affirms freedom, justice, and the rule of law, protects freedom of religion for all its people, and honors its Jewish heritage.

Libya's revolution represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring back the Jewish community into my homeland's social fabric. As I discovered firsthand, however, when a mob prevented my efforts to rebuild Tripoli's synagogue by shouting anti-Semitic slogans, the hateful attitudes that Muammar al-Qaddafi was only too happy to encourage will not disappear overnight. In this post-Qaddafi era, I hope that Libya's new leaders will embrace needed change and that stories like mine will help make that happen.

The history of Libya's Jews stretches back to the third century B.C., through the 1492 Jewish expulsion from Spain, and up to the 20th century. My community saw Romans, Ottomans, and Italians come and go. For hundreds of years, we coexisted peacefully with Libyan Muslims, despite the tensions wrought by political upheaval. As recently as 1931, Libya's Jewish community of about 24,500 people represented 4 percent of the country's population. (By comparison, the U.S. Jewish community, the largest in the Diaspora today, is only 2 percent of the U.S. population.)

[bravo whiskey]

maybe “when the arabs love their children more than they hate jews.”