GADDAFI OFFERS COMPENSATION TO SOME LIBYAN JEWS

Gaddafi offers compensation to Libyan Jews
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has spoken publicly for the first time about the possibility of compensating Libyan Jews whose properties were confiscated after his 1969 revolution. But he made this conditional. "We have to separate between the Jews and Zionism, therefore the Jews who were in Libya and whose properties were unjustly confiscated should be compensated... but those Jews who seized properties from Palestinians in Israel do not deserve compensation," he said, in a speech Tuesday, the eve of the anniversary of the September 1, 1969 coup that brought him to power.

Prof. Harvey Goldberg, a professor of anthropology at the Hebrew University and a researcher and historian specializing in Libyan Jewry, has said he considers this a positive move on the whole. "In 1970, approximately a year after Gaddafi came to power, he issued two decrees, one against the Italians living in Libya, the other against the Jews in his country, irrespective of their nationality. He confiscated their property and expelled them, with the promise that after a period of 15 years there would be a process of restoration through the assignment of Libyan bonds. He never followed up on this, although within the many shifts in his policy there have been occasional indications of reconciliation with the Jews and with the West. Now that serious efforts are being made to become acceptable in the West, this gesture towards the Jews is timely," Goldberg said. .....

In a television interview five months ago, Gaddafi's son, Seif al-Islam, said Libyan Jews could be compensated and that those in Israel should return to Libya because "it is their land, and the land of their ancestors." "This is just lip service," said Haggagia-Liluf. "Gaddafi has a strong opposition within his own country so it has now become diplomatic to refer to the Jews as 'children of Libya.'"