Injustice does not

go into prescription

David Gerbi

Since 2014 the date of November 30 has been established by the parliament of Israel, to remember the Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran. On November 30, Jews around the world will remember the fate of over 850,000 Jews who were persecuted and driven out of Arab countries and Iran. All of this started in the 1940s.

The vast majority of Jews from Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Syria and Yemen have faced persecution and violence, have fled from their homes and left the countries where they lived for centuries, even millennia, solely because of their Jewish identity. They migrated to Israel, as well as to North and South America and Europe, where they sought to preserve their rich heritage and unique history, bringing with them the traditions, liturgy, customs and cuisine. Unfortunately, this is a tragic and little known chapter of modern Jewish history.

I am one of those 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran who fled Libya, with the family and the whole community after the last pogrom in Tripoli and Bengazi in June 1967. (photo 1 Gerbi family). In Libya we grew up under the monarchy of King Idris who, after the pogrom of 5 June, told us that he could no longer guarantee our safety as a Jewish minority and then helped us escape from Libya which had become extremely hostile to Jews thanks also to propaganda of the Nasser-related movement of Egypt. After the Six Day War of 5 June 1967 between Israel and the Arab countries, the Egyptian radio incited hatred against Jews and encouraged people to eliminate them. It was thus that the enraged mass got to the streets in search of the Jews holed up in the house in the dark and in the utmost silence. They started burning houses and shops and killing many Jewish families.

The anger increased even more due to Israel’s victory and the loss of the war by the Arab countries. At that point there was no choice but to leave Libya to save our life. The entire Libyan Jewish community has mostly moved to Israel and Italy. Among the brutally killed families, there was also the Luzon family of Bengazi. Father Shalom Luzon z.l. his mother Zachia Luzon Hackmun z.l. and six children, David z.l. Rafael z.l. Yosef z.l. Meir z.l. Ariel z.l. and Avraham z.l. were exterminated. Only one daughter, Luzon Giohra Perla, was saved because she lived in Tripoli with her husband Simon Haggiag and their two daughters Vivien and Gladys. They moved to Rome in 1967 where their third son Shalom, grandchildren and great-granddaughter was born. Despite the tragedy she experienced and by which she was marked, like many Jews in history, today thanks to God, Giohra Perla Luzon became a great-grandmother, proudly continuing her Jewish descent. As a child I remember her as a sunny woman aware of her pain, who never felt sorry for herself, and who, on the contrary, faced life with her head held high and with the utmost dignity as only one true Eshet Hail (woman of worth) may be able to do.

53 years have passed and so far there has been no recognition and no compensation for moral, psychological and physical damages from Libya. No compensation was given for confiscated assets, both individual and collective. We are not allowed to return or even to sell our individual and collective assets. But as resilient Libyan Jewish, without asking for help from the Jewish community of Rome, so as not to weigh on anyone, also because the roman Jews recently emerged from the tragedy of the Holocaust, we rolled up our sleeves and committed ourselves to rebuilding a new life with honesty and with dignity starting from scratch, both in Italy and in Israel. We committed to study and learn new languages in order to integrate into the social fabric of those who welcomed us, without asking for and obtaining any privileges.

In Israel, Jews were welcomed not as plitim (refugees) but as Olim Hadashim (new emigrants) and received Israeli citizenship and benefits, both for study and for work, to fit into the nascent Israeli society. The Joint (The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee): the largest Jewish humanitarian organization in the world and the HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) gave us help to leave the country and support for an initial integration in Rome by offering us a one week stay in a hotel. Bino Meghnagi, an enterprising and generous Jew from Libya who had just arrived in Rome on 7 July 1967, immediately contacted the Joint, which gave him carte blanche to help a thousand refugees to be welcomed in the refugee camps of Naples, Capua and Latina, including the wounded and sick ones. The colonel of the camp was delighted to see the initiative of the Libyan Jewish refugees in lending a hand to the farmers in the area and starting to earn some money. Bino Meghnagi himself, together with the committee of the Jews of Libya, also managed to organize Kasherut (the only meat allowed for us to eat) thanks to the help of the colonel who made an entire warehouse available. The OSE organization took care of health care. Bino Meghnagi with The Jewish Assistance Committee of Libya worked through the Joint’s support to enroll young people in Jewish schools. In Italy we received the UNHCR refugee certificate.

The Jews of Libya, of which I am a part, have lived in Rome since 1967 and have successfully integrated into the Jewish community of Rome. In June 1967 we were told to leave the country with 20 pounds and never return. In 1969 with the coup of Muammar Gaddafi our assets were confiscated forever as enemies assets, places of worship destroyed and cemeteries 2000 years old destroyed, where our loved ones rest under the current buildings and highways. Fortunately, there are still three synagogues and three cemeteries in Libya which testify to our millennial presence of Libyan Jews. We have spent fifty-three years of life in Italy, many of us got married to Jews of the roman jewish community, had children who did the religious ritual as brith milà bar and bat mitzwa, studied in Jewish schools, became intellectuals, entrepreneurs, freelancers, doctors and, in time, our elders left us and were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Rome. And so we, with our thousand-year history behind us, are continuing our life in Italy, a democratic country that welcomed us with open arms in a moment of extreme difficulty.

For both my collective and personal history, as a Jewish refugee from Libya, I have always committed myself to keeping the memory alive, as a representative of the World Organization of the Jews of Libya (photo 8 and 9 Or Jehuda museum in Israel) so that injustice does not go into prescription and the wrong suffered is not forgotten and so that what happened does not happen again. I pledged to pay tribute to this memory and the memory of so many Jews killed, persecuted and expelled from Arab countries and Iran.

Both the Libyan Jews now Italian citizens like us and all the descendants who live in Israel and other countries of the world, are not allowed even to go to Arab countries to pray for our loved ones buried in those few cemeteries that are still safe, as many were destroyed and transformed into buildings and highways. They remain in our common prayers, in our commitments for the future of peace in the Mediterranean.

The UN, which has limited itself to recognizing Palestinian refugees, must recognize Jewish refugees from Arab countries because, like them, we have suffered too. Communities in Syria, Libya, Algeria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Iran and others have almost all been wiped out after centuries of relatively peaceful coexistence. Unfortunately we are the forgotten refugees and our stories will not be heard in the European Union meetings nor we will ever see, exhibited in the corridors of the United Nations, photographic exhibitions of all these communities, as well as, among the thousands of resolutions discussed and approved in the last seventy years since the United Nations, the names of our communities, our families, our dear ancestors and our collective confiscated and destroyed capital will not be found anywhere. At the UN there is no special day dedicated to our communities or to the memory of us, 850,000 Jewish refugees, expelled from Arab countries and Iran after the creation of the state of Israel. Unfortunately we are forgotten refugees because we have not made enough noise. The reason for our silence is to have invested the time, energy and effort to rebuild a new life honestly without disturbing anyone.

For organizations such as the United Nations, we are forgotten refugees that should not be remembered, because now, thanks to G.od we have got up and rebuilt a life with honor and dignity. But for us the fight will go on, because history cannot be forgotten so that, one day, justice will be done and the wrong suffered repaired. It is important to remember that there are also people open to democracy and willing to admit unresolved historical injustices such as the president of the democratic party of Libya Ahmed Shebani who, on the occasion of November 30, in 2020, sent a letter condemning the wrongs suffered by Jews of Libya expressing the intention to repair physical, material and moral damage.

History also teaches us that in a show of anger, after failing to prevent the United Nations Partition Plan and the subsequent creation of the State of Israel on November 29, 1947, Arab countries declared war not only on the new Jewish state, but also to the peaceful and thriving Jewish communities that lived among them and which, as already mentioned, were wiped out and, with them, thousands of years of history and culture were erased.

I remember, as a child, when Jewish shops and houses were burned in front of my house. An angry crowd walked into the streets screaming and underlining their intentions with a hand gesture that passed over the throat “Uh Uh al Jehud Edbah al Jehud” (slaughter the Jews, death to the Jews). In silence, in that hot summer, we remained hidden, inside our houses with the windows and shutters completely closed, suffocating from the heat and in fear because we could not foresee our destiny.

The UN has never offered any help either to us or to those who have been forced to leave their homes and it has since done nothing to acknowledge the enormous injustice suffered. There has been no international condemnation of us Jews being attacked and murdered, our properties plundered and our resources stolen, often by our neighbors and with the support of the authorities.

The following decades since this tragic expulsion, the United Nations has worked to assist only Palestinian refugees by providing economic support with billions of dollars being handed over to UNRWA, a section that deals only exclusively with Palestinian refugees, which takes care of the education and welfare of families, which simultaneously encourages hate speech against Jews through its school programs. How it is possible that there is no UNWRA section that deals with Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran?

Why was created an exclusive agency only for Palestinians and not a correspondent for us? Contrary to other refugees, with an unprecedented method, Palestinian refugee status is passed on as a legacy from generation to generation. For me it is a moral obligation to our parents and the most distant ancestors to correct the wrong that has been done to the Jews of the Arab countries. As a psychoanalyst I realize how important awareness and the danger of remaining silent when we are given the opportunity to speak are, and that is why I am committed - and those who know my personal history know that I have always been committed as far as I can and even at the risk of my own life - to ensure that our tragic events now become part of international consciousness.

We are in 2020 and fifty-three years have passed since our expulsion, but I ask you: how would you feel if, today, from the place where you are, they told you that you have to leave everything suddenly, otherwise you could be persecuted, jailed or put to death? What if you were given a few hours to pack, cramming your world into as many things as possible? How would you feel if from one night to the next you were suddenly in another country?

This was the tragedy of the Jews being persecuted and expelled from Islamic countries. But perhaps it is the tragedy of all the refugees who suffer in silence and the only thing they care about is to save themselves together with their families. As a current example, since 2012 we have all witnessed, especially in recent years, the tragedy of refugees who constantly arrive from Africa and in particular from Libya and land on the Italian coast, especially in Lampedusa. They are partly refugees fleeing war and hunger who risk their lives to arrive in Europe and hope for a better future; others are fake refugees who are only looking for the shortcut to immigrate to Italy, others, as unfortunately happened, are fake refugees who join the masses to export terrorism to Europe. Unfortunately, the Mediterranean has turned into a refugee cemetery and this too must be another injustice that does not go into prescription and such tragic stories must not be forgotten.

We Libyan Jews are considered traitors by Libyan extremists, because we support Israel and not the Palestinian cause. They kicked us out of Libya and told us to go to Israel. They told us that we cannot have the right to land. A contradiction that depends on the image one wants to have of the Jew: on the one hand that of the victim and the helpless and defenseless scapegoat and, on the other, that of the banker who controls the world through economic power and who, for this reason, must be opposed and eliminated. Times have changed and Jews no longer allow themselves to be led to the slaughterhouse to be sacrificed just because they are “guilty” of being Jewish and therefore different. Obviously, Palestinian refugees must also be helped, but there is an imbalance between the attention paid to Palestinian refugees and Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Over the past 70 years, the whole world has heard of them: for evil, because of terrorism, for good, thanks to their efforts to find a peace agreement. They cared about them, they stood up for them, but they never heard of us. It was the culture of silence and convenience that made us forgotten.

Today, thanks to G.od and thanks to the day of November 30, through education, events, concerts, visits to museums, these tragical events that risked being forgotten or sucked into history, have been revitalized in order to give a voice to history to obtain justice, to educate future generations to peaceful coexistence, to freedom of religion through the respect for human rights.

Speaking of the international charter of human rights, it was only in 1957 when the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) first declared that Jews who fled Arab countries as refugees were entitled to protection. On November 22, 1967, five months after the expulsion of our Community from Libya, the United Nations Security Council unanimously accepted Resolution 242, which defined the guidelines for establishing peace in the Middle East, including a just solution for the refugee problem.

Unfortunately, too little has been done about it so far, too little has been said about it, too little has been raised on the negotiating table and silence has become the accomplice of all who have chosen the most comfortable and unjust path. Today we are entering a new period in which peace agreements are signed between Israel and the Arab countries. Agreements in which the issue of Palestinian refugees is no longer a priority condition as it has been until now. This new framework gives us all hope for a better future based on peace and security. However, the question of Jewish refugees is not yet on the agenda, as is the question of the restitution of individual and collective property.

For my part, I am trying, together with member of the Israeli parliament Moshé Arbel, archaeologist Amir Genah and Rabbi Hiski Calmanovich and other friends residing in Libya, to solve the problems related to the destroyed and abandoned cemeteries to restore the Jewish history that is also part of that of the Arab countries and let our loved ones rest in peace. Since there are no longer anyone in those countries, not being able to enter, because Jews are forbidden to enter and it is highly dangerous, does anyone protect the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries? At the cost of losing all our assets, do we want to forget the past to make peace with other Arab countries too? What will be the real price we will have to pay to find peace in the Middle East and North Africa? Do we all want to go back to the places we were expelled from? I personally would like to return to restore the synagogue and cemeteries, to create museums and monuments in memory of our ancestors and, if possible, to return on vacation in peace and safety.

Only in 2014, after so many efforts on the part of many representatives of the Jews of Arab countries, the attitude of the State of Israel towards Jewish refugees changed. It also took care of this heavy burden neglected for all these years. Only in 2014 was the law was enacted to remember every November 30 the day of the departure and expulsion of Jews from Arab and Iranian countries. It is important to remember that the initial historical clash, when Jews suffered under Islamic rule, was between Judaism and Islam, and only much later, with the establishment of the State of Israel, the issue became a political debate linked to the confrontation between Israel and Palestine. With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, Jews became dimmi citizens (lower class), through laws that deprived them of citizenship and many other rights. There were massacres, pogroms, property expropriations and deportations against Jews residing in Arab countries: against Jews who were loyal citizens who had never declared war on the countries they lived in, nor who harbored any hostility to the Muslim world.

So over the centuries, Jews have experienced difficulties which forced them to leave their places of birth and made many of them refugees. We can say that Israel is a country of refugees who then, once the Alia (Jewish immigration by law) was made, transformed from refugees to olim hadashim (new immigrants).

Many people were not Zionists, they loved the homeland they lived in and were patriots of their country of origin, they lived in economic well-being, did not try to leave for economic reasons or were interested in the possibility of immigrating to Israel. These people were mostly refugees forced to flee to save their lives and take refuge in Israel. Some were deported. Some were living under threats, harassment and persecution before their displacement. Their property was expropriated or confiscated.

Jews displaced from Arab countries (of which my family is a part) and from Iran have become victims who suffered blatant human rights violations in the countries where they have suffered a historical injustice that has remained unresolved. Some were forced to leave, to sign a document that allowed them to leave the country by confiscating all their possessions, when all the possessions. All the possessions they could take with them on their escape were confined to a single suitcase and twenty pounds.

There were also good times shared in Arab countries and Iran. I remember a rich and diverse world of different cultures, of different ceremonial rituals, of successes, prosperity and flowering, of customs, sounds, tastes and smells. I myself remember as a child the three monotheistic religions that in some moments lived in peace. We only went to school four days a week because Friday was a day of rest for Muslims, Saturdays were rest for Jews and Sunday for Christians. Libya, being an Italian colony, it was full of Italians. All of this shows us a whole world of thriving cultural, economic, social and communal wealth of communities in their countries of origin. For over 2,500 years, hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in ancient and prosperous communities in North Africa and the Middle East; Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Jews were integrated into the country’s economy, tradition and culture. They dealt with trade, crafts, art, singing, music, banking, private business and freelance professions, they were doctors, pharmacists, journalists, lawyers and teachers. Many years have passed and today we are in 2020. November 30, was the day when the departure and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries and Iran was remembered with a prayer, the Kaddish made throughout the world to remember our loved ones. This anniversary was celebrated in Israel and around the world, with ceremonies, academic lectures, concert evenings, talk shows and prayers in memory of all the murdered Jews whose burial place was known or not known.

The memory of the history of the Jews of Arab countries is fading, because the elderly are dying and the young people do not know it because it has not been handed down to them, and it has been silenced as a result of the attention of the Ashkenazi world due to the Holocaust which caused the loss of more than six million Jews, (a day of remembrance which is rightly repeated every January 27). The number of the loss of Jews in the Arab world is certainly far lower but, nevertheless, the suffering and atrocities suffered must be remembered. We are lucky because some members of the community have started to tell and share their stories, releasing interviews recorded on you tube, a fact that did not exist before, they have been silent because of the culture and conspiracy of silence and the trauma. They weren’t sure they could talk about it and that it was legitimate to do it. So unfortunately it was silenced.Many of us are doing everything possible to receive moral and material compensation for the historical injustice suffered even in the name of those who are no longer there.

The last jewish person of Libya, was my eighty years old aunt Rina Debach r.ip. was found by chance in a hospice in Tripoli in 2002 and after long negotiations I had with Gaddafi (photo 18 and 19 David Gerbi meeting colonel Qaddafi). I managed to visit her (as a psychologist and as a relative), at the hospice in Tripoli with a visa for humanitarian reasons and, after 13 months I managed to get her to rejoin her family in Rome. After exactly forty days she died in Rome and now rests peacefully in the cemetery of Petah Tikva in Israel.

November 30, 2020 was a big event thanks to a television program organized in Jerusalem, broadcast live from Israel that was followed all over the world. During the event the various communities met and got to know each other, enjoying a show made up of interviews, songs, stories and many beautiful surprises.

Meanwhile in Rome the president of Beth Shmuel Mr. Lillo Naman, president of the Beth Shmuel Libyan synagogue founded by his father, took care to organize the Kaddish which was recited in memory of all our loved ones buried in Libya. He invited me to go alone (due to the ban on gathering because of the Corona virus) to the cemetery to light a lamp in memory of our dead, under the monument dedicated to the Jews of Libya. With the support of the architect Eddy Levy who lives in Paris, who carried out the project conceived by Raffaele Fellah z.l., I went personally to the Verano Cemetery in Rome on 30 November 2020. I was at the monument dedicated to the Jews of Libya buried in Libya where I brought the list of people to remember and which was sent to me by the museum of Or Jehuda of Israel, the largest museum of the Jews of Libya and I lit a large lamp in the blessed memory of our loved ones. Today in Rome, there are seven synagogues with the Eastern Sephardic rite of the Jews of Libya located in various areas of the city that preserve and pass on Libyan traditions and in Israel more then eighty Libyan synagogues. We have in Italy and in Israel kosher restaurants where Libyan foods are tasted; Kosher mini market where you can find the spices and food typical of the Jews of Libya.

Despite the gratuitous and unjustified hatred that has created so much suffering, my wound as a refugee has been transformed into a mission for which I have dedicated my whole life. I will continue to devote myself to the search for justice, because injustice does not go into prescription, to the construction of true and just peace, to the fight for respect for human rights, to freedom of religion and helping Libyan who suffer from trauma of the war since 2011. UNHCR welcomed me as a refugee and now I also contribute as a psychoanalyst to UNHCR through the Italian embassy in Tripoli by helping the Libyan innocent refugees traumatized by the war.

My commitment is also to put a memorial in Tripoli, Homs, Yefren and Jado for the people that are buried there, restore the four cemeteries and the three synagogues with the hope that one day the miracle of peace and stability will happen and that we can go there to pray for our dear one and to visit the place of our roots, from where we have been brutally eradicated.

Today at the end of 2020 we are witnessing the miracle of the normalization of Israel’s relations with the Arab world. United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. The support given to the Abrahamic Accords gives hope that Oman too could soon normalize relations with Israel. I conclude with the hope of soon seeing the rest of the Arab countries normalize relations with Israel and in particular with Libya, the country where I was born and whom I love.

David Gerbi

This article is dedicated to the memory of the Haggiag family z.l. of Bengazi brutally killed by the Libyans during the pogrom of June 5, 1967. May their memory be a blessing.

"Among the other things I am dealing with and that I care about is the part relating to the recovery of my Libyan citizenship through the help of an Italian Libyan law firm. It is a right that I am entitled to because I was born in Tripoli and I have Libyan citizenship which, however, has been suspended from me. Another injustice that does not go into prescription and that must be repaired, giving me what is rightfully my right. We are Libyan citizens and are still considered Libyan citizens with roots in Libya. All these years have not been a law and a provision in which it was decided to remove citizenship from Libyan Jewish citizens. Indeed, the Libyan legislature has issued a law, number 24 of 2010 article 8, in which all Libyan citizens outside Libya can submit an application for the reacquisition of citizenship."

Part Two of our interview with David Gerbi, Jewish Refugee, Psychologist, Author.

I met Qaddafi when he visited Rome in June 2009 and invited the Libyan Jewish community to meet with him on Shabbat, in a large tent he had erected in a city park. Scheduling the meeting for that day signaled to us that his goal was mostly focused on public relations. While most members of the community could not attend because it was the Sabbath, I was there in my traditional Libyan robe with a Jewish star at my neck.

Speaking in Italian, I pressed him on opening the Dar Bishi Synagogue. While I had little to hope for, given his detached manner and empty promises, I was pleased to discover that the meeting somehow helped me start shedding my fears and gain back some of the dignity I had felt I lost as a refugee: Qaddafi could no longer harm me, and my Libyan, Jewish, and Italian identities gave me strength.

During my last trip to Libya in the spring of 2011, I joined the anti-Qaddafi rebels by volunteering again at the Benghazi Psychiatric Hospital, where I trained the rebels to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I was in the mountains north of Tripoli a few months later, working on PTSD with Amazigh Berbers. Like most Libyans, their suffering resulted not only from the current conflict but also from 42 years of calamities caused by the dictatorship. What they desperately needed was to overcome their fears and find that they could hope again — hope for a better life in freedom.

After Tripoli was liberated, I once again tried cleaning up the Dar Bishi Synagogue. Even though I had received permission from the National Transitional Council (NTC) and the local government to undertake this work, a mob gathered, shouting that "there is no place for Jews in Libya" and carrying signs in both Arabic and Hebrew to make sure, I suppose, that I got the message. Once again, I had to leave. But this time I left with dignity, not fear: I left on the day of my choice and on my own terms. I wanted to signal to the NTC that I would work with it to restore calm and that it needed to work with me. And in so doing, I found more strength.

Despite all these challenges, I still have hope. I will continue to do what I can so that the Jewish presence in Libya is not forgotten and Jews, as well as all minorities, can reclaim their rightful place in Libya. I know that this will take time. Tripoli’s new leadership faces enormous challenges, such as building the essential elements of government and civil life and bridging ethnic and regional divides. But part of this effort must include preserving and protecting Libya’s few remaining Jewish heritage sites. I also urge the NTC and similar bodies to recognize and meet with the WOLJ as the legitimate representative of the Libyan Jewish community.

Hope often needs help. The international community must also act. The United States and its NATO allies played a pivotal role in helping the Libyan people achieve freedom, and now they can help steer the new government toward a path of justice and reconciliation. These countries must send a message to the NTC and other Libyan leaders that they can demonstrate their seriousness about democracy and human rights by breaking with Libya’s past and welcoming back Jews and other minorities. It is a win-win proposition for all interested in Libya’s development and success.

A peaceful, stable Libya is most likely to be realized if it is pluralistic, open, and tolerant. Libya must become a free, just, and democratic country, grounded in the rule of law, in which all of Libya’s minorities — including those Jews forced to flee — are welcomed back into the Libyan family. We can make a difference at this critical juncture, before the cement dries, by making a mark for democracy, human rights, and religious pluralism, so that Libya becomes a model for reconciliation and tolerance - David Gerbi 2012