World Organization of Libyan Jews offers support to Leader of Transitional Council in Benghazi

Moving in step with the 20 countries that have already recognized the legitimacy of the Libyan rebels’ National Transitional Council in Bengazi – or, one might say, perhaps even one step ahead - the World Orgnization of Libyan Jews has offered President Jalil its fraternal backing and cooperation

Lisa Palmieri-Billig
Rome

 

WOLJ, whose main offices are based in Israel, is the organization that gives voice to the approximately 200,000 descendents of Jews who fled Libya after the massacres of 1945, 1948 and 1967. With the advent of the dictator Col. Gheddafi in 1969, their abandoned homes, shops and 44 empty synagogues plus all other communal property and precious objects of the Libyan Jewish heritage, which traces its origins to the third century B.C., were confiscated. The over 2300 years of peaceful interreligious coexistence between Libyans and their Jewish minority thus came to an abrupt end.

 

The Libyan Jewish exiles have not overcome this trauma, and many still yearn for the rich intercultural fabric of the lives they once led, in harmony with their Arab brothers.  In a letter to Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of the NTC,  the Israeli president of WOLJ, Meir Kahlon, offers his organization’s support and assistance to the fledgling democracy. “We feel it is our obligation that Libya become a model state with freedom of thought and religion for all its citizens,” the letter states, announcing the appointment of Dr. David Gerbi as WOLJ’s “legitimate representative”.

 

Gerbi, an Italian Jewish Jungian psychologist born in Tripoli in 1955, is also the new president of the Italian WOLJ Chapter.  He has made several trips to Libya in the past decade in attempts to negotiate reconstruction and reconciliation for the Libyan Jewish Community. Last month,  as the first Libyan Jew to publicly declare his backing for the NTC, he worked as a medical volunteer, teaching methods for healing victims of post-traumatic stress syndrome in Bengazi’s psychiatric Hospital.

 

“The world-wide community of Libyan Jews is proud that its son, David Gerbi, has made his way to Bengazi to provide humanitarian assistance on the ground to the brave people of that city” says Kahlon in his letter to Jalil.

 

“His effort is symbolic of our belief that, in spite of more than 40 years of forced separation, we have good feelings toward Libya….We, sons of Libya, our native land, grew up with the memories of our ancestors, and we open our homes to our Libyan brothers with the hope that your homes will be opened to us.”

 

Italian diplomatic channels facilitated the communication and confirmed to Gerbi that Kahlon’s letter on behalf of WOLJ was well received, and that, however, President Jalil’s secretary had suggested it would be wisest for Gerbi to postpone his projected return to Libya for further volunteer and diplomatic work, until the end of hostilities.

 

Italian officials say they are favourable to encouraging reconciliation between Libya and its former Jewish population in the interests of interreligious relations and democracy.  This line of action has also drawn sympathy from EU representatives, in their common interest of creating democracies that will be respectful of human rights and freedom of conscience in the countries of the “Arab Spring”.

 

David Gerbi openly stresses his triple identity as an Italian, a Jew with vital connections to Israel, and as a Libyan.  He dedicates his life to retrieving and confirming all three identities while working for democracy and reconciliation.  In 2004, he was appointed by the UN High Commission for Refugees to serve as a Witness for Peace mentor, and in 2007, he was named the UNHCR Ambassador for Peace in South Africa.

 

One of his principle aims is salvaging the Libyan Jewish-Arab cultural heritage, from which he and all Libyan Jews now dispersed across the world were so abruptly severed after the repeated massacres related first to Nazi anti-Semitic incitement and then to political propaganda against the State of Israel.

 

Speaking of his volunteer work last May he says, “I was warmly welcomed in Bengazi by the leaders of the rebel government as a returned exile, as a Jew, an Italian, a psychoanalyst, and as a Libyan citizen with full rights to travel and live in Libya.” He hopes in the future he will be able to fulfil his commitment to restoring and re-consecrating the Libyan Jewish heritage and to working for the free movement of people between Libya, Israel and the world. 

 

He plans to propose a proper religious burial of the remains of Libyan Jews in the Bengazi cemetery (whose bones are presently stored in trunks), the reconsecration of the Homs and Derna Jewish Cemeteries, the reconstruction of the synagogues of Tripoli and Jefren (Yafran), and renewed negotiations regarding the collective and individual property confiscated from the Jewish community by the Gheddafi regime.

 

In pursuing these goals for his people, Gerbi has repeatedly risked his life and safety in the past ten years by going on solo missions to Libya (in 2002, 2007 and 2009). During his sojourn in Tripoli in 2007, Libyan police arrested him and confiscated six mezuzot (small religious signposts containing a scroll with the 10 commandments that Jewish people hang inside the portals of their homes) and the money he had hoped to use to begin the restoration of the Sia Dar Bisni Synagogue. The Libyans kept the mezuzot but later returned the money.