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Interview: David Gerbi

Fighting on, the man who wants the Jews back in Libya

December 29, 2011 11:26
Gerbi received death threats for praying in a Tripoli synagogue.
5 min read

It's official - Dr David Gerbi still has his sense of humour. And given what happened to the 56-year-old psychiatrist earlier this year, that is quite surprising.

Two days after Yom Kippur, Gerbi had to leave Libya in a hurry after hundreds of protesters called for his deportation. He even received death threats. His crime? Defiling an "archaeological site". In fact, he was trying to pray in Tripoli's sealed-up Dar al-Bishi Synagogue, where no Jew had worsphipped for decades.

The Libyan-born Gerbi had returned to the country from Italy, where, as a 12-year-old, he went into exile with his family when the last remnants of the community were expelled in 1967. On arriving back in the land of his birth, he had joined up with the revolutionary forces and provided them with specialist psychiatric care. With the fall of Gaddafi he seized the moment to reassert the Jewish presence in Libya.

The angry reaction of some of his erstwhile comrades-in-arms might have shaken his resolve, but far from it. In fact, he can still see the funny side.