Major, positive change is looking more and more uncertain in Libya despite the recent ouster of dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
In 1967, Gadhafi threw Libyan Jews out of the country. Perhaps hoping that Gadhafi's removal had made Libya a more welcoming place, a Libyan Jew forced out of the country more than four decades ago returned in August and began trying to clean up an abandoned synagogue in the capital, Tripoli. But a crowd of angry protesters, some bearing signs reading, "There is no place for the Jews in Libya," recently tried to storm the hotel where he was staying.
Libyan authorities protected the man, David Gerbi, but they suggested that he should leave Libya for his safety, and to ease the tense situation.
So now, he has had to depart Libya, with no certainty about when or even whether he will be able to return.
Gadhafi was definitely no friend of Libya's former Jewish community nor of the Libyan people as a whole. But it remains to be seen whether there will be marked improvement in freedom and human rights in Libya now that he is gone.