2023-11-22 19:19:26
Time.news – It is not well known that under King Idriss, the kingdom of Libya was not distinguished by some form of persecution against the Libyan Jewish community. It is certainly at least unthinkable that the Libyans, previously accustomed to relative tranquility under the ruling dynasty, would ever suffer real, particularly fierce persecution.
King Idriss he had somehow managed to ensure a certain coexistence in Libya between the Arab, Jewish and Italian populations (and there was also the largest American base in the Mediterranean). The Jews had been there for almost two thousand years. The fire smoldered and when Idriss got sick he had to leave, at the outbreak of the Six Day Warthis brazier explodes in Libya but also in other North African countries.
In everything over 900 thousand Jews had to leave their countries. The Six Day War in 1967, which then destabilized the country, triggered a real hunt in Libya for the Jews of the large community present in the African country where thousands of people were suddenly forced to flee quickly with a suitcase and a few coins with them, abandoning everything in what they had always considered their country, causing a new diaspora like Spain in the 16th century.
Ruthlessly expelled from their home, the Libyan Jews sought refuge in a land that was creating a problematic space and a harbinger of new conflicts. Raffaele Genah, journalist born in Libya always belonging to that community, in an agile and lively book, published by Solferino and entitled “Notturno libico” – The persecution of the Jews of Libya”, paints a realistic picture of the days of persecution under the revolution of the Nasserite officers led by Colonel Gaddafi (remained in power for 42 years until 20 October 2011 when he was brutally killed by rebels in Sirte).
Gheddafi (afp)
In addition to the brief and concise summary of the events that upset the peaceful life of an entire community, the book narrates the dramatic events of a couple, a man and a woman, Giulio and Jasmine, who tell us their stories in two voices.
The one, arrested without charges of any kind and locked in prison for over four years, the other the wife who dedicates her life, through the thousand traps of a jungle of relationships and relationships, with the sole aim of freeing the husband free of any accusation and completely innocent even in the environment.
The description of the thousand ways that Giulio adopts to survive thanks to a steely character, his firm will not to give in and above all to the courageous and determined Jasmine, his wife in love, who leaves no stone unturned to find the key that unlocks the chains of the unfortunate but determined and tenacious husband. The reader is almost dragged to follow the couple’s ups and downs with the same anxiety and emotional participation as an intensely lived story with a happy ending.
Ma It is precisely the happy ending that gives this book an aura of hope in the strength that can deploy the will, intelligence and mutual trust of two people who love each other and want to fight the fight for their lives to the end.
“Like many in my community I knew in broad terms the story of Giulio – Genah told Time.news – a young engineer who ended up, just because he was Jewish, in Gaddafi’s prisons, where he was locked up for almost four and a half years. However, I knew nothing of the battle of his extraordinary wife Jasmine, who for almost three years doesn’t even know where they took the father of their two children (one two years old, the other a few months old) or even if he is still alive”.
“But she fights like a lioness – explained the journalist -, she moves heaven and earth, she addresses various international organisations, the Vatican, ambassadors and ministers of various countries and in the end she returns completely alone, with extreme courage, to Tripoli and manages to free her husband. Well, I was missing this part of the story: so I decided to intertwine their stories, alternating voices in a single plot, and the result is what I consider a true reportage on the dawn of Gaddafi’s revolution , in the story of two protagonists who see the story flow from two different observation points”.
An engaging work: “Very much – stated the author -. That story belongs to an entire community of which I feel part and which cannot be erased as they tried to do, even building buildings, streets and supermarkets on the tombs of our dead precisely so that no trace of a two-thousand-year presence would remain. This story not only responds to a duty of memory, but finds a tragic relevance in today’s events.”
And this is because, Genah explained further, “what happened last October 7th in Israel recalls, in obviously much larger proportions, the pogroms that occurred in Libya in ’45 and ’48 with the same cruelty, the violence against women who even had the fetuses they were carrying torn away from them. And then partly also in 67 with the attacks on Jewish homes, the burning of their shops and synagogues. Two entire families – women, children, elderly – exterminated and their bodies burned. The deaths and the persecutions. Scenes that were repeated in other North African countries from which 900 thousand people had to silently leave. And as an old adage goes: ‘Jews are like canaries in the mines: when you no longer see them around, it means that the air is now unbreathable’.
Prejudices and ignorance walk arm in arm…”And to the stratifications that have sedimented over the centuries – the writer added – I would add that post-ideological ideology that already arises with ancient roots and spreads, multiplying like weeds”. Who would you recommend this book to? “I would recommend it to anyone who is sincerely interested in learning about a page of our contemporary history that has so far been too little known. And in the words of Edmond Burke, ‘he who does not know history is condemned to repeat it'”.
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