Pictured: A Jewish neighborhood in Tripoli that suffered a Fascist bombing.

Even before the 1930s, it was usual for the Fascists to assault Libyan Jews, and Fascist antisemitism resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Libyan Jews. Quoting Jens Hoppe in The Holocaust and North Africa, pages 54–5:

The fundament for the persecution of the Jews in Libya was built by the […] fascists. To understand how they treated the Jewish minority, we need to go back to the early 1920s. In this section I also make clear that the “first” responsibility for anti‐Jewish violence in chronological order goes to the [Fascists].

Soon after fascist rule began in Italy at the end of October 1922, skirmishes broke out between Italians and local Jews in Libya, a colony that would to a certain degree be in a state of war until 1931. Thus in August 1923 Italian soldiers and fascists in Tripoli’s Jewish quarter, the hara, violently attacked the Jews, who defended themselves; some of the attackers also suffered injuries. In October 1923 [a Fascist] soldier eventually died from the injuries he had suffered in the hara.¹⁹

Michele Sarfatti points out that the [Fascist] protagonists acted without orders from the government in Rome and represented an extreme trend in the fascist movement. They were, nevertheless, part of the fascist movement, intentionally acting as fascists and specifically attacking Jews.²⁰ Similar sporadic attacks also occurred in Italian towns, for example, Livorno and Trieste in 1923, Florence in 1925, and Padua in 1926.

In Italy the target was Jews (or Jewish facilities, which were also attacked)—and other anti‐fascists—who were considered opponents of the fascist system. In this way, the specific anti‐Jewish line of attack conjoined with the direction of national politics.²¹

Apart from the early attacks (which were attributed to the fascists and took place following the seizure of power and the period in which [Fascist] authority was being secured), further anti‐Semitic actions were also carried out in Libya. For example, in 1932 fascists made several attacks on Jews in Tripoli. At the end of 1936 a decree that forced shops to open on Saturdays resulted in the whipping of two Jewish proprietors who kept their shops closed on Sabbath to observe the prohibition of labor on that weekly Jewish holiday.²²

Renzo de Felice argues that this was not an anti‐Semitic action because Muslim inhabitants were also whipped in Libya as punishment for violating [Fascist] orders.²³ In so arguing, however, de Felice completely overlooks the fact that the requirement to open on Saturdays put only the Jews in a difficult situation and was in fact aimed directly at them. The Jewish side certainly perceived the various attacks by fascists as anti‐Semitic, as Sarfatti can prove of the earliest incidents in Tripoli (with reference to a letter written in 1923).²⁴

Referring to the Libyan events, Thomas Schlemmer and Hans Woller also share this point of view that under certain circumstances the potential violence of Italian fascism was directed at Jews, who were explicitly attacked as Jews.²⁵

The first phase of the anti‐Jewish actions in Italy and the [Fascist] colonies was characterized by occasional violent attacks and by rare anti‐Jewish propaganda, which was spread from the start and gradually increased with time. As Schlemmer and Woller note, an anti‐Semitic fever rose steadily after the fascists came to power.²⁶

This is one of the reasons why the Shoah should not be seen as an (exclusively) ‘German’ crime. In reality, the minimum responsibility goes to the Fascist bourgeoisie, which had a presence wider than both Italy and Germany, but I digress.

Yes, it is sadly true that some Arab gentiles either approved of or participated in violent incidents against Jews, but even in many of these cases the colonizers can still be held responsible; these can be interpreted as part of the old imperialist strategy of divide & impera. Pages 57–8:

With regard to the possibility of becoming an Italian citizen, differences were made between Arabs and Jews: Law 70/1939 of January 9, 1939, availed to Muslims a special Italian citizenship in the colony. Jews, by contrast, were expressly denied the possibility of obtaining Italian citizenship.⁴² Until 1939 no German exertion of influence with regard to the persecution in Libya can be found. [Upper‐class] Italians have to take responsibility for these legal measures.

The laws introduced thus far exacted their toll. Numerous Jewish families became impoverished, having lost their economic foundation. Business transactions were difficult and to a great extent impossible. The tensions between Jews and Arabs also increased, because the laws permitted Italians and Arabs to regard Jews as inferior and to treat them accordingly.

An essential effect of these laws was, as Maurice M. Roumani notes, that they “caused the greatest damage to the social life in the country as it strengthened the distinction between Italians, Jews, and Arabs in Libya.”⁴³ With the beginning of military fighting in North Africa in September 1940, the situation for Libyan Jews worsened again.

As The Lion of the Desert showed, the Fascists could also be quite brutal to Arab gentiles when they had no use for them. Page 58:

The attack on Egypt by [Fascist] troops not only met resistance from the British (which led, after December 1940, to the temporary loss of Cyrenaica, including Benghazi) but also led to a rebellion by Arab and Berber tribes in the eastern part of Libya. The [Fascists] consequently faced a double front: They had to quell a rebellion and at the same time drive back the British army. The latter was accomplished only after some British units withdrew to Greece and [Wehrmacht] troops under Erwin Rommel were deployed in Africa, at the end of March 1941.

The following should look especially familiar:

As a result of these events, large parts of Cyrenaica were recaptured by the Axis powers. The [Fascist] authorities reacted to the military development with attacks against Jews, whom they automatically suspected of collaborating with the British, that is, of supporting Italy’s enemy. Individual Jews who were accused of treason were given long prison sentences.⁴⁴

The anti‐Jewish propaganda cannot be handwaved as German (or Arab) responsibility either. Pages 58–9:

Victor Magiar, a Libyan Jew, described the [Fascist] accusations in his essential book E venne la notte as follows: “The Jews soon were accused of speculation and of profiting from the war, of buying and selling all the time by chance to get a permanent increase in value, of concealing food supplies for sale [later] on the black market, of leading Allied air raids by sending light signals.”⁴⁵

The grounds for these anti‐Semitic views of the local Jews were built up by Italian fascist propaganda, not by the Germans. [Upper‐class] Germans did not want to undermine their ally’s imperial ambitions in North Africa, in particular with regard to Libya, and therefore focused their propaganda on Egypt and the Middle East.⁴⁶

Another blow to the ‘Arabs supported the Axis’ exaggeration, pages 59 & 73:

Because they had suffered so much under [Fascist] subjugation, most Libyan Muslims were opposed to the [Axis].⁴⁷ [Berlin was] fully aware of this situation: German diplomats were reporting that in the aftermath of the occupation of Libya and the war in Abyssinia, the Arabs preferred the British to the [Fascists].⁴⁸ […] The vast majority of the Muslim population in the whole region showed no reaction to [Fascist] calls for religious violence, and the Islamic slogans of [Fascist] propaganda had little resonance in religious circles and among leading ‘ulama.¹¹⁸

The author includes quite a few more examples of Fascist antisemitism, but in the interests of saving time, I’ll just quote something that should look very familiar to us. Page 63:

Because of the program of internment, from the point of view of the [Axis] authorities the imagined “danger” posed by Jews in eastern Libya had been to a large degree averted. The living conditions in Giado were extremely bad, because there was neither adequate room for the internees nor sufficient food. “The daily rations in the camp were very poor and included no more than a few grams of rice, oil, sugar and coffee made out of barley seeds.”⁷¹

Because medical care was also completely inadequate, between February 1942 and January 1943 at least 562 inmates died, most of them succumbing to a typhus epidemic.⁷²

To sum all of this up, page 70:

Although the Italian colonists who came to Libya were, from 1922 on, apparently fascist orientated above all, a substantial part of the Italian population in Libya held an attitude that was more anti‐Jewish than what was found in Italy. Renzo de Felice describes the fascism of the Italian colonial society as bigoted and fanatic.¹⁰¹ This attitude encouraged local attacks on Jews as early as the 1920s. And we can understand why the persecution of the Jews in Libya was more severe than in Italy: More Italians were willing to persecute Jews.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Interviews with two survivors.