"Jews planning to take over Libya" - and the Jewish history behind the fears

I see wild Arab rumors all the time, but it is fun sometimes to find out if there is a grain of truth behind them.

Earlier this year I reported that Libyan media was claiming that a million Jews were planning to move to Libya. Now the theory has been repeated, with interesting new details.

Egyptian newspaper Al Wafd now asks why Israel has never defined its borders. The answer, of course, is that Israel plans to take over the entire Middle East - even beyond the "Nile to the Euphrates."

In fact, Israel is after everything from Libya to Yemen!

The article tells a true story that early Zionist leaders considered the Libyan area of Cyrenaica as the location of the Jewish State around the sane time they were looking at spots all over the world like Uganda and Canada.

I even found a book about it.

An appendix to this book describes the Jewish history of Cyrenaica as a reason for Jews to return, claiming that the original Jews there had helped liberate part of Israel before the Bar Kochba revolt. It is very interesting,

I don't know how embellished this is. But it explains Libyan paranoia about Jews.