In view of some current publicity about the
Farhud of 1941 and the latter’s ripple-like repercussions for the Jews of the
Arab world, I’ve decided to focus in this week’s column on the pogroms that
occurred in Libya in November 1945.
Born in northern England, the son of
Lithuanian-born rabbi and scholar M. H. (Moshe Zvi) Segal, who made aliya in
1926 and became a renowned professor at the Hebrew University – Judah Benzion
(Ben) Segal (1912-2003) would himself become a distinguished academic.
His knowledge of Arabic ensured that at the
outbreak of the war young Segal, with the rank of lieutenant, was appointed to
British Intelligence in North Africa; he served, as a captain, at the general
headquarters of the Middle East Force from 1942-43, and in 1943 helped to
achieve the surrender to the Allies of the Italian garrison at Derna, the
second largest city in Cyrenaica, a feat for which he was awarded the Military
Cross. From 1945-46 he served as
Education Officer in the British Military Administration in Tripolitania.
‘It
was 9.30 on Friday morning, a holiday for the Moslem members of my department,’
he would recall regarding events that erupted in Tripoli in the first week of
November 1945 and spread.
‘But none of the Christian officials had
arrived either. There was an ominous silence in the air. I realised suddenly that there was no traffic
on the roads. Ill at ease, I brushed aside my correspondence, and went out into
the crisp sunshine. I saw that one, then another, and finally a succession of
the concrete houses of the New City carried on their walls the freshly painted
legend “Italiano.”
The message was clear.
If I had not understood I was to be
enlightened soon enough. A low growl could be heard from the distance. Suddenly
they appeared – young hoodlums in their hundreds, sweeping along the road some ten
or fifteen abreast screaming “Yahud, Yahud”…’
Standing firm on the spot – owing not to
any feelings of bravery but to sheer amazement at what met his eyes and ears –
Segal, evidently appearing stern and resolute in his captain’s uniform, was
unmolested by the mob. The yelling
procession snaked around him, single-mindedly intent on causing havoc in the
Jewish quarter: ‘Then the looting started, shop windows were smashed, and doors
battered down.’
Jumping into his military vehicle, Segal
‘visited the Jewish schools in the
ghetto area. There was little panic. The children who lived nearby had been
sent home; they had nothing to fear, for the Jewish district was too densely
populated to be penetrated by even the most daring of the mob.
The staff, mostly Italian Jews,
stood in a little knot, speaking in whispers, making their plans calmly with
their leader, a professor from Rome, a small ungainly woman with an aquiline
nose and nervous smile. I put some children on my lorry and returned them to
their mothers in the New City.’
Then,
‘From a remote building I heard
moaning. In the bare courtyard, an old Jewish woman in Arab dress sat on the
ground, her face streaked with blood, swaying to and fro, keening rhythmically.
Some yards away a man lay wrapped in
his coat; his head had been battered like the cheap pans beside him.
Where had the mob gone? Where had
they entered here? It was useless to question the woman; God had given and God
had taken away.’
Knowing that the police and the military
had been alerted, Segal drove back to headquarters:
‘In the palatial villa of the mess
everything appeared normal. The fountain played in the sunshine, deck chairs
were set out, as usual under the arches, aperitifs stood on the table. The
servants reminded me that the Brigadier [Temple] had gone on leave to Cairo.
And only a few hundred yards away murderers were hunting down their victims’.
He later wrote:
‘It was the unsuspecting Jews of the
outlying villages who were helpless, and the killings were many – in all, I
think, more than 130. We could chart on the map the progress of murder, rape
and looting passing from Tripoli across the countryside – east, west and south,
like a well-organised contagion.
At some points it needed only one or
two men to halt the onset – as at Homs where a brave British officer and a
Jewish doctor from Alexandria stood at the entrance to the Jewish quarter and
threatened to blow out the brains of the first rioter to approach.
Everywhere the bloodshed continued
for two days. Jewish refugees were brought to a hastily constructed camp in the
capital, I escorted a cortège from Zawiya – one lorry heaped with the bodies of
the dead, others with their relatives and friends, some wounded, all dazed and
silent, clutching their mean bundles. There was no passion, but submission to
the inevitable.’
Reported The Times (8 November 1945):
‘Reports up to yesterday gave totals
of 74 Jews and one Arab killed, and 183 Jews, 36 Arabs, and two Italians
injured.…
The disturbances began on Sunday
night, and were repeated the next night when the mob attacked the Jewish
quarter in an eastern suburb. It was
here that the heaviest casualties were caused, 40 Jews being killed and scores
wounded. The Tripolitanian provinces
generally remained quiet, but in the eastern provinces there were riots at
Cussabat and Zliten…
Stern measures have been taken to
prevent further outrages, including a curfew, intensive patrolling by troops
and police, who have orders to shoot all looters and to open fire, if
necessary, to disperse groups of more than five persons.
The curfew at first was from 9 p.m.
to 5 a.m., but was confined to the city of Tripoli, but yesterday it was
extended throughout Tripolitania and prolonged till 6 a.m. Plundering has been proclaimed an offence
punishable by death, and the British administration has publicly announced that
it will not hesitate to increase its measures until peace is restored…
Brigadier Temple, the British
military commander in Tripoli, yesterday
received the members of the Arab Advisory Council, headed by the Grand Cadi,
and informed them that they must exercise their influence and authority to
re-establish law and order.’
The following day the paper advised:
‘The death roll in the Tripolitania
riots is now over 100. A statement
received in Cairo tonight from the public information office at Tripoli says
that though the city is quiet further attacks against Jews are reported from
the provinces. On Tuesday night rioting
occurred at Zliten, in the eastern province, and at Zavia and Zanzur, in the
western province.
There was a particularly brutal
assault in the Jewish quarter of Zanzur, where Arabs looted and set fire to
houses and a synagogue. Over thirty
Jews, including children, were killed in this attack.
At Zavia six Jews lost their
lives. Troops were forced to open fire
on the mob several times …’
It added:
‘The Governor of Cairo today called
on the Grand Rabbi and expressed the Government’s regret at the attacks on Jews
in Cairo last Friday [instigated by the Muslim Brotherhood and rightwing
nationalists, apparently trying to whip up anti-Jewish feeling on the
anniversary of the Balfour Declaration].
He said that the Egyptian Government had decided to rebuild at its own
expense the [Ashkenazi] synagogue that was looted and burned by the rioters.
An official statement issued last
night forbids the holding of meetings and demonstrations on November 13, the
Egyptian national day.’
The murders, sexual violence, looting, and
incendiarism in Libya subsided as the British restored order.
To quote Ben Segal:
‘After a couple of weeks, the
situation – in the words of the Army authorities – was under control. The
Governor had returned to his post at Tripoli. I suppose there was an official
inquiry – there usually is. Arab extremists who had been detained after the
outbreak of the riots were released. And within a few months (was it by
coincidence?) three Jewish officers in the Military Administration had been
transferred to duties outside Libya – the major responsible for the
municipality (who had been outstandingly successful in his dealings with Arab
officials), a doctor, and myself.’
Some 700 Muslims in all were arrested for
taking part in the disturbances, which in addition to taking Jewish lives, left
hundreds of Jews injured, caused panic among Libya’s non-Muslim minorities, and
triggered a refugee crisis.
Reflected Segal:
‘From 1949 the Jewish community of
Libya – even the ancient settlement of cave-dwellers at Tarhuna – virtually
ceased to exist. Many emigrated to a new life in Israel. Only a handful
remained in Tripoli and Benghazi to become the target of anti-Israel malice
after the Six-Day War.
The Jews of Libya had never played
an important part in the life of their country – they were no more than a pawn
in a sinister game of politics. We need not point the finger at the fanatical
ignorant Moslem mob. But it should be part of the training of every Foreign
Office official and of every responsible journalist to witness at first hand
the violence of a rampaging mob – and to learn how fanaticism and violence are
manipulated.’
His account was printed in the Jewish Chronicle of 13 November 1970,
when he was a prominent academic covered with honours. For since 1946 he had lectured in Hebrew and
Aramaic at the School of Oriental Studies (Professor of Semitic Languages from
1961) – that constituent of London University which (as SOAS) is now notorious
for rampant hostility to Israel – retiring in 1978, and serving from 1982-85 as
Principal of Leo Baeck College.
An echo of the events of November 1945 in
the form of the Libyan pogrom of June 1967 was provided to the Jewish Chronicle of 21 February 1969 by
a non-Jewish New Zealander, Miss Joanne Holland, who had in December 1968
returned to London from Libya, where she had worked as a secretary since 1966
and where she got to know a number of Jews.
The pogrom she described entailed harrowing
murders and the burning to the ground of Jewish homes and businesses. Armed police, she said, stood idly by while
Jewish-owned shops were broken into, looted, and set alight. Such premises included a
restaurant-cum-liquor store; Arab rioters ran up and down the street swigging
the drink from the stolen bottles, and going back for more, while four armed
soldiers with grins on their faces looked on.
A family of Jews who barricaded themselves in their apartment for over a
week were shocked when their Arab neighbours, whom they'd lived alongside for
30 years, attempted to gain entry and set the place ablaze.
Children as young as eight were among the
mob, and Joanne Holland was "horrified to see women, under normal
circumstances never seen, except occasionally peeping out from behind their
veils, standing by and watching the destruction and murder with apparent glee".
She herself was several times surrounded by
Libyan crowds, and spat at, and once, when visiting a Jewish family, she was
almost killed by Arabs wielding iron bars and knives.
She recalled that one Jew, who having
hidden in his house for about a week, ventured outside to discover the fate of
the shop he owned. Arabs recognised him
and gave chase, so he ran towards a police car, expecting assistance. Instead of rescuing him, the police ran him
over.
One evening, a jeep-load of armed police
led by a colonel took two Jewish families – comprising a total of thirteen
persons including two young children – from their home on the pretext of taking
them to the airport so that they might reach safety. The families were, however, driven out into
the desert, and put to death.
The murderous colonel later explained that
he had "wanted to avenge my Arab brothers" (i.e. for Israel's victory
in the Six Day War). However, this
appears somewhat disingenuous. To quote
Lucky Nahum, in an observation to me:
‘I am one of the 6,000 Jews in Libya
that suffered through the pogrom of 1967 and ultimately exiled. [T]he pogrom
was not in reaction to Israel's victory in the Six Day War; if so, it would
have started at the war's end. The pogrom began on the very first day of the
war, a typically sunny day in Tripoli that turned out to be the beginning of
the last pogrom in Libya. [S]ince this was not a reaction to the humiliating
defeat of the Arab nations by Israel, it needs to be re-evaluated. I have heard
many "excuses" for the pogrom of 1967 (and those before), none that
are worthy of consideration. Nasser and his Pan-Arab dreams had fed the beast
that desired to not only see Israel destroyed but clearly all Jews.’
The Libyan authorities had finally
permitted Jews to leave Libya on temporary travel documents, which prohibited
them from taking their belongings or more than £20 with them and would not
permit them to return after being away for four months. Those that departed
were herded together at dawn by armed soldiers in the forecourt of a hotel, and
were surrounded by hostile Arabs shouting and swearing.
What particularly struck Joanne Holland
during the pogrom was the unwillingness of westerners stationed in Tripoli to
intervene and try to help the Jews being harassed and hunted. What also shocked her was the apathy of
contacts in London, to whom she recounted what she'd witnessed. "[T]hey seemed bored and showed no
interest," she said. "Many
Britons still had some romantic concept of the Arabs. How wrong they were."