Muammar Gadhafi promised to compensate Jews who were forced out of Libya. “Any Jew whose home had been taken away has to be compensated or given his home back on the condition that he had not taken away the home of a Palestinian in Palestine,” Reuters reported Gadhafi as saying. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to leave their homes in Arab countries in the wake of Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Arab leaders have never responded to Jewish demands for compensation for lost property and assets. Gadhafi did not specify how much compensation former Libyan Jews could expect. His action seems to be part of recent attempts to consolidate diplomatic gains Gadhafi made since his announcement last December that Libya was abandoning its nuclear weapons programs.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
