The first international convention of Jews from Libya will be held in Manhattan June 6-7, it was announced here Thursday.
Raffaello Fellah, founder and president of the Association of Jews from Libya, said in a press conference at the American Jewish Committee (AJC) that the convention is timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the forced departure of the Libyan Jewish community in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War. Almost the entire Libyan Jewish community of 4,500 was forced to leave, including Fellah, a businessman who now resides in Italy.
During the conference, to be held at the Shearith Israel (Spanish-Portuguese) Synagogue on Central Park West, legal experts will seek ways to address Libyan Jewish personal and communal property claims against Libya.
Fellah explained that in 1970, Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s revolutionary regime nationalized the property of Jews who had left Libya indefinitely, promising indemnification in 15 years. In 1985, when payment became due, the Libyan leader failed to fulfill his promise, Fellah charged.
Noting that since the establishment of Israel in 1948 and following pogroms with the outbreak of any new Mideast war, about 40,000 Libyan Jews left, most of them to Israel. Fellah estimated that the total claims of Libyan Jews against the Libyan governments are “some billions of dollars.”
Other events at the up-coming conference, Fellah said, include the premier of a documentary film on the Jews of Libya, an exhibition of photographs of Libyan Jewry and religious objects from the Beth El Synagogue in Tripoli and a history symposium relating to the Jews of Libya.
According to Fellah, whose father was murdered in a 1945 pogrom in Tripoli, only “five-and-a-half Jews” are presently living in Libya. The half, he explained, is a result of a mixed marriage between an Arab and a Jew.
The convention, scheduled to be attended by hundreds of Libyan Jews from Israel, Italy and the United States, is jointly sponsored by the Association of Jews from Libya, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
