Sunday, March 06, 2011

The Jews of Libya

I was watching the sorta funny SNL clip below in which "Charlie Sheen" interviews "Qaddafi" and Charlie asked Qaddafi if he's anti-Semite.

It made me ask just how anti-Jewish Qaddafi was, so I looked it up and found this in Wikipedia:

"The history of the Jews in Libya stretches back to the 3rd century BCE, when Cirenaica was under Greek rule. During World War II, Libya's Jewish population was subjected to anti-Semitic laws by the Fascist Italian regime and deportations by German troops. After the war, anti-Jewish violence caused many Jews to leave the country, principally for Israel, though significant numbers remained in Rome and many later emigrated to various communities in North America. Under Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, who has ruled the country since 1969, the situation deteriorated further, eventually leading to the emigration of the remaining Jewish population. The last Jew of Libya, Rina Debach, left the country in 2003."

1 comment :

David All said...

Thanks, Mojo, for this post. Had no idea there were that many Libyan Jews or that as late as the 1940s they made up one-fourth of the population of Tripoli.