The Arab Spring, often inspired by those hoping to replace authoritarian leaders and establish popular government and respect for human rights, may be settling into an intolerant winter having little regard for such secular values. Islamist parties seem destined to dominate in Tunisia and Egypt, where attacks on the latter’s Christians Copts have become more violent. Nor should a World Jewish Review description of an incident in postwar Libya inspire confidence in Arab tolerance.

When Libyan revolutionaries began their campaign against Maummar Gaddafi, Dr. David Gergi, a Libyan-born psychiatrist living in Italy, promptly cast his lot with the rebels. During the summer’s fighting he treated soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and trained Benghazi medical personnel in that specialty. Grateful for his assistance, members of the National Transitional Council talked about making the doctor Libya’s “official voice for religious tolerance,” an antidote to Gaddafi’s forty-two years of “virulent anti-Semitism,” seizure of Jewish property, and expulsion of the country’s Jews.

With the fighting ended, Gerbi went to Tripoli and attempted to re-open and pray in the city’s once glorious but then blocked up and desecrated Dar Bishi synagogue. While a group of ten cleaned its interior and journalists and photographers observed, Gerbi kept close touch with the police and his friends in the rebel army.