While Libya’s Jewish population was expelled over 50 years ago, with community members slaughtered and their possessions stolen, the plight of the survivors remains ignored by the world community.
There are no United Nations agencies dedicated to helping Libyan Jews, despite the fact that a population of 40,000 in the 1940s dwindled to just 20 by 1974. Despite the fact they were driven out of the country through deadly pogroms and legal decrees, they remain barred for the most part from visiting their relatives graves or visiting other important sites to the Libyan Jewish community.
The U.K.-based President of the Union of the Jews of Libya, Raphael Luzon, is working to change that, demanding passports and the right to return to Libya for visits. While Jews are permitted to travel to locations of their former communities in countries like Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt, Libya still denies its former Jews their rights.
As UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer once famously asked at the United Nations, “Libya, where are your Jews?”