Two days after Israel announced a historic meeting with the Libyan foreign minister, the Libyan government in Tripoli has been thrown into chaos, and the Libyan foreign minister has been suspended and left the country.
Among all the reports about how this came about and whether it was fumbled, there is not much concentration on the Libyan side and how the reactions in Tripoli may be cynical, and exploited by extremists. This would not be the first time that extremists in Libya exploited a political vacuum to create chaos. Under the guise of “protests” in 2012 extremists attacked a US diplomatic outpost and murdered US ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.
Therefore it’s important to look at the lessons from Libya. Antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric has long been a staple of Libyan politics. Therefore, the anti-Israel protests in Libya are part of a much deeper obsessive hatred of Jews and Israel that has been a part of populist and extremist rhetoric in the country.
Libya is divided, and its divisions have divisions
One lesson is that countries that are divided, as Libya is, cannot fully conduct foreign policy. Libya is run by two different competing political forces and armies. One of them is based in eastern Libya and run by Khalifa Haftar, and the other is the government in Tripoli which is backed by the UN and is generally seen as the “government” of Libya. However, even the Tripoli government is divided.
The current Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah has refused to hold elections and leave office. It’s unclear then whether he is actually in charge. There are many other forces at play in Libya and listing them all would be difficult. Only experts fully understand all the competing factions. What is important to know is that in a country that is militarily and politically divided, any kind of controversial foreign policy will be politicized.
Demonstrators gather in front of the state broadcaster’s building in protest against the meeting which was held last week in Italy between foreign affairs ministers of Libya and Israel, in Tripoli, Libya, August 29, 2023. (credit: AYMAN AL-SAHILI/REUTERS)Politicization and extremist exploitation are two factors that underpin what has happened in Libya. The extremists who use the guise of protests to threaten politicians are active and this is why the foreign minister has reportedly fled the country. In no other country in the world would a foreign minister have to flee because armed gangs can take over their ministries or homes at a whim.
Antisemitism: Underpinning much of Libyan politics
Another factor in what has happened in Libya is it reveals how anti-Israel hatred still underpins the activity of some people in countries around the region. A lot of anti-Israel rhetoric and crowds that condemn Israel represent people being enflamed by politicians.
For many decades, the anti-Israel cause, usually clothed with antisemitism, and also “anti-Zionism” was a method used in the Middle East and also sometimes in other places, such as the Soviet Union, Venezuela, and by Islamist extremist groups. Being anti-Israel was a way for politicians to hide their own failures. Many regimes in the Middle East would compete to be more anti-Israel than their neighbors.
This was the case with Saddam Hussein lobbing Scud missiles at Israel in the Gulf War, trying to divide the international coalition by rallying Muslims to his cause. The Iranian regime has also adopted anti-Israel rhetoric as a way to justify its use of militias to harm Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Yemen. The Houthis in Yemen, for instance, adopted anti-Israel and anti-Jewish slogans. Anti-Israel behavior is the fuel that has helped politicians rise for 70 years. It’s profitable and influences average people.
While the Abraham Accords appeared to reverse some of the anti-Israel trends, the accords will take time to catch on. The peace with Egypt and Jordan didn’t generally lead to wider public acceptance of Israel in those countries, for instance. The fact that Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat was assassinated after making peace with Israel was used as a fear tactic against others in the region.
In the past critics of peace deals with Israel have often claimed that authoritarian regimes make peace with Israel contrary to the demands of local people. This claim misses the other side of the coin, which is that authoritarian regimes such as the Iranian regime, Assad’s regime, and Saddam’s regime also were anti-Israel and exploited anti-Israel rhetoric to distract masses of people. This rhetoric seeps into the minds of people. During the Arab Spring, for instance, some of the protesters in places like Libya or Egypt would accuse their political opponents of being “Jews.”
In Libya in 2011 one account published on the Australian website of AIJAC noted “Now that Gaddafi has fallen, many feel that they are finally able to talk freely about Gaddafi. And what many of them are now saying is that he was a Jew. In March, NBC‘s Richard Engel reported from Libya that one in five rebels was fighting Gaddafi because of the belief the Libyan dictator was Jewish.”
Consider this logic that one in five people signed up to fight and die in a chaotic conflict because they were told someone was Jewish and their hatred of Jews is so deep that they feel this must guide them. Often the response to this kind of rhetoric is to note that the person in question is not Jewish, rather than ask why people run to fight just because they heard a Jewish person was present.
Overcoming this tendency of some people to have a knee-jerk hatred of Jews and Israel, based on decades of propaganda and cynical exploitation of these claims, will always be a hurdle for Israel. In divided states like Libya, overcoming the issue is impossible because politicians won’t commit to moderation when they are busy fighting each other.
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