David Gerbi, a returned exile, finds synagogue shut again a day after he forced it open and says he received threats
Associated Press in Tripoli
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 October 2011 08.23 BST
Article history
Libyan Jewish exile David Gerbi breaks the sealed entrance to Dar Bishi synagogue. A day later, he found the front door locked. Photograph: Suhaib Salem/Reuters
A Libyan Jewish man who returned from exile in Italy to join the revolution against Muammar Gaddafi has been blocked from trying to restore Tripoli's main synagogue.
David Gerbi said he went to clean rubbish from the building on Monday, a day after he broke through the entrance with a sledgehammer to great fanfare. A messenger at the scene warned him, however, that armed men were coming from all over Libya and would target him if he did not leave the area.
Gerbi said he was told a mass anti-Jewish demonstration was planned for Friday in Martrys' Square, which used to be named Green Square under Gaddafi's regime.
Breaking down in tears, he criticised Libyan authorities for withdrawing their support, calling his efforts a test of the post-Gaddafi regime's commitment to democracy and tolerance.
"If they want to prove that it's different from Gaddafi … they need to do the opposite," Gerbi told reporters after leaving the synagogue in Tripoli's walled Old City.
The head of the National Transitional Council that is governing Libya was dismissive when asked about Gerbi at a news conference, saying it was too early to worry about rebuilding a synagogue when revolutionary forces were still fighting Gaddafi supporters.
"This matter is premature and we have not decided anything in this regard," Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said. "Everyone who holds Libyan nationality has the right to enjoy all rights, provided that he has no other nationality but Libyan."
Libyan-born Gina Bublil-Waldman, president of the San Francisco-based Jimena, or Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, agreed it was too soon to try to return.
"I really do not believe that the Libyan people are ready to reconcile with the past and their history and the wrongs that they have done to the Jewish community," she said, although she called Gerbi's efforts sincere and honourable.
Gerbi, who fled with his family to Italy in 1967, said he was surprised because he had permission from the local sheik and verbal permission from NTC representatives. Gerbi's colleague Richard Peters said several men armed with assault rifles later appeared to guard the building, although none were visible later that day.
It was not clear who was ultimately behind the warnings of violence against Gerbi, although he said the man who gave him the message said there was a Facebook and YouTube campaign against him.
It was a bitter disappointment for Gerbi, coming a day after he had taken a sledgehammer to a concrete wall and entered the crumbling Dar al-Bishi synagogue, which has been filled with decades of rubbish since Gaddafi expelled Libya's small Jewish community early in his rule.
He and a team of helpers carted in brooms, rakes and plastic buckets to begin clearing the debris. But on Monday, the wooden door was again closed with a chain and padlock. Gerbi said people who had supported him were now distancing themselves.
The 56-year-old psychoanalyst appealed to the new leadership to set an example of tolerance, saying that while Gaddafi "wanted to eliminate the diversity, they need to include the diversity".
Libya's new leaders have promised to lead the oil-rich North African country to become a democracy after toppling Gaddafi in a civil war that began in mid-February. Abdul-Jalil and the de facto prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, promised on Monday to step down after the country is fully secured in a bid to reassure the public they will not suffer under another dictatorship.
Gerbi's family fled to Rome in 1967, when Arab anger was rising over the war in which Israel captured large swaths of territory from Jordan, Syria and Egypt. Two years later, Gaddafi expelled the rest of Libya's Jewish community, which at its peak numbered about 37,000.
Gerbi said his fellow rebels called him the "revolutionary Jew" and that he was thrilled when he rode into the capital with fighters from the western mountains as Tripoli fell in late August.
Gerbi refused to give up, saying he would stay in Libya and press his case with the government.
"I don't want to be a hero, I don't want to play martyr, I just want to be here to support the new Libya and the democracy and to build this," he said.
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