I might be told, and even I have already been told, why are you still concerned about the issue of Moroccan Judaism? Let emigration strip this community of every meaning? Then, the stubborn group[1] will not cause any trouble.
In reality, this research refers to the dilemma of Moroccan Judaism in its aggregate. The one that came out here [and] was then scattered in the West and alienated from its culture, and the other found itself immersed in a country whose name was, in the past, a symbol for every Jew, and today, the criminal act behind it has been discovered. It is an act that aims at peoples’ impoverishment and cultural genocide, and it is a racial and military adventure.
This act, which also misinterpreted Moroccan Judaism within the framework of a general misinterpretation of Judaism, topped the colonial act of alienation that began a hundred years ago. Through this research, if we share it with people, we can see what is supported by studying past and present documents and what indicates that this misinterpretation is inevitable, for Judaism is a prisoner of Zionism in the Arab World. Sooner or later, Moroccan Judaism will realize that the extent of its solidarity with the Arab revolution in contributing to the demolition of the last historical, capitalist project, which aims to isolate Jews in a ghetto. What a ghetto it is! It is on the global level.
In order to bring about this realization, a detailed investigation for the truth is needed.
The writer does not claim he is more qualified than others in this endeavor. The nature of adopting the scientific methods and principles of socialism can keep us away from subjectivity and prejudice. This does not mean that we will neglect the difference between cultural, ideological, and religious factors. The history of Zionism itself is built on its crises, confirmed and developed day by day. We cannot put these factors aside or distort them.
Additionally, we will attempt to refer to the least number of names. History will not disregard settling scorn with some of them. This hour will chime when the past Arab-Jewish unity is restored. Nevertheless, we will shock all who are following their misleading work as well as those who joined the Zionist country.
To further this awareness, the national movement should check its endeavors characterized by a national bourgeoisie that interpreted Zionism as an isolated factor related only to religious factors. Fatah’s organization showed the way to the Arab world in June 1967 to commemorate this event burdened with meanings because this political organization, which struggled in complete isolation for an extended period, is now supported by all national organizations gathering around it. We, in turn, should make it one of the facts of our daily lives to rebuild our national reality.
1. Moroccan Judaism Before Its Alienation
To clarify, this alienation is not historically chronicled, just scribbled. The Jewish community in Morocco is now self-contained and increasingly close-knit in Casablanca, which was the first city to experience alienation. Just a decade ago, communities were still vibrant and lively, with celebrations in the mellahs of cities like Fez and Sefrou and Sale, as well as outside of cities. This still persists in communities of the High Atlas and the South, representing the solidarity between Muslims and Jews [there], despite the challenges posed by a century of colonialism that were further compounded by Zionism when it arrived.
Everything about this past has been said, but more things have yet to be tackled. Colonial and Zionist researchers, all alike, often deliberately depended on Western references to distort this past while the patriotic ones, or more accurately, the more objective researchers, built upon the same references to put this past in a so-called historical impasse, similar, of course, to the era of prosperity. Still, it is only connected to the future by emotional ties.
Reconsidering the Western references and offering a new perspective for the future, bearing in mind that this perspective has begun to clearly appear in the Arab World since 1967, will, in turn, restore the past, flourish it, and connect it to the future. Now that we have wrapped up with this, our next step is to refute the lies of colonialism and Zionism alongside the broader community of deceivers. In some publications, André Chouraqui, Secretary General of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, addressed Judaism in North Africa and the Maghrib. He enabled one of his publications, Noir, the Zionist journal that brainwashed the Jewish youth between 1952 and 1945, to claim that thanks to France, “the Jew liberated against the unrestrained oppression of his masters.”
What is the opinion - not that of Chouraqui, who held a high position in the Zionist state -but that of those he misled? In a lecture delivered by the vice president of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1947, he declared that when the alliance desired to build a nation that embraced victims of Nazism, it also questioned the destiny of Arab Palestine. Even though the Alliance did not have a detailed answer, it was very optimistic that everything would work correctly through pretext. The speaker adds, “the contrary would be a real catastrophe” (Noir, no. 9, May 1947).
Let’s get back to this “oppression.” What an oppression it was! One that enabled groups isolated in the mountains and the south to live peacefully, enjoying their traditions, properties, and rights for ages.
Jewish-Arab solidarity was not just the cohesion of a prosperous civilization that pushed a contemporary Jewish writer to say, “Islam is made up of the bones and flesh of Judaism; it is a renewal of the latter on a large scale. Similarly, Arabic is so close to Hebrew. This is how Judaism was influenced by the surrounding civilization, maintaining its essence and independence in a simple way not experienced in the Greek or Alexandrian societies or even the modern world. Judaism has never experienced similar relations and has never found generous solidarity except during the medieval Arab Islamic civilization” (Gottein, 1957).
Though Jewish-Arab culture witnessed the lag of the Arab world when it was surrounded by capitalism, this did not prevent the continuation of [Arab-Jewish] cohesion through the daily life of the two religions.
The time has come to shed light on the status of “the people of the dhimma.”
Both communities coexisted through a comprehensive vision of the fully immersed individual, and agreed-upon structures organized this coexistence based upon mutual respect between these big groups:
The Muslim community was the dominant one as it was responsible for the country and the tribe on both political and military levels. This responsibility, in principle, was committed to respecting the Jewish minority. To rebuild Arab-Jewish solidarity, we should, of course, remove all types of discrimination, including the political one, but not from the automatic perspective that aims for a sterile religious liberation, which is the case in the West. The concept of a secular Palestine that refuses Arabs will not contribute to building the Arab world on the surface or in-depth, except when it is related to the theory of “the democratic state”[2] that Karl Marx tackled in “On the Jewish Question,” unless it is tied to “the political state,” as envisioned by the democratic bourgeoisie (Marx).
As for the historical fact that we portrayed, historians of colonization or of colonial assimilation ـــ ideologues of the “Contrôle Civil”[3] about whom one of the descendants of the great colonial conquest said in a racist and despising tone that they were “advanced, ambitious, and worrying” (Mouillefarine, 1941) members of the Jewish community ـــ searched for texts that confirmed their colonial theories and combated the abuse caused by a local renegade here or an authoritarian functionary there. They forgot, like what happened to the Secretary Generals of a former president of the Jewish community in Casablanca (Abbou, 1952), that this abuse extended to Muslims, as well. They also forgot that the Muslim community was resentful of it.[4]
However, how can we prove that a theory is more appropriate than another? Can this be attained by comparing texts? Or by comparing isolated events, according to approaches in historical research itself, with other isolated events? Of course not. Moroccan Jews, who experienced this solidarity, and their offspring, who were ideologically and culturally alienated from the nation by the Zionist organization, can highlight the clear-cut facts again and the previously mentioned coexistence and the intimate friendship after realizing the true nature of Zionism.
We ask people with common sense who have not experienced this friendship to reflect on the following tangible facts:
Legal texts rarely succeed in shedding light on the origins of non-Muslims’ status that appear clearer through the analysis of the evident reality before it was distorted by the structure of capitalism and colonialism and before Zionism understood it. That was the case for rural communities in the southern mountain provinces, in the high Atlas, and in the sub-Saharan highlands, which were home to a quarter of Moroccan Jews. In the cultural framework of these communities, the relationship between Jews and Muslims developed away from every external obstacle.
A rare study of this fact was investigated, [focusing on] the Tafilalt tribes’ traditions. It showed that no Jew in these ancient agricultural communities searched for a “master,” as some people alleged, “nor did he search for a protector or a savior, but a ‘surrogate’ to be responsible for him” (Molinari, 1955). The traditions of the two communities required as such. Seeking justice, in particular, required the Jew to vow before a judge while paying homage. In disputes between a Muslim and a Jew, the Muslim surrogate vowed before the judge on behalf of the Jew. The surrogate was obliged to carry guns to defend his client and take revenge for him in case of crimes.
However, this never prevented Jews from “renting, buying, or selling properties, including houses and agricultural lands, under the tribe’s sovereignty.” They enjoyed the same rights as Muslims. They sometimes even had a right to pre-emption “in the case of an alienation consented to by one of their Jewish parents.” This is how the lives of the two communities were organized before capitalism. “Production was organized for the human and not vice versa,” said Karl Marx.
Some European Jewish travelers who still believe in the humanitarian content of Judaism and have not yet been taken by the Western culture discovered the sense of integration in the urban communities, saturated by the same cultural bases and brotherly cohesion with the Muslim community and felt then the “nostalgia of the Mellah” (Noar, 1947).
This life was walled in and was in solidarity with the Muslim community at the same time. This life did not mean that the Mellah was surrounded by a hostile world. In addition to the events referred to, Muslims did not miss a chance, such as religious feasts, to rush to express the bonds of love and friendship that connected them to Jews, especially presents offered on Mimouna celebration evenings. Then, there is [also] the event[s] that w[ere] documented by [many] European observers who were amazed when they noticed that Muslims respected Jewish holy men greatly (Voinot, 1948).[5]
To be precise, this Judaism was practical. It included the dream of “returning to Israel.” Passover seder concluded with “the next year in Jerusalem.” The ambiguity of this dream and that prayer was exploited by Zionism, which benefited from it. After that, the negative manifestations of this ambiguity materialized in European society, distorted by capitalism and colonial ideology, out of which the Zionist ideology emerged.[6] Regardless of all personal beliefs, objective evidence shows this dream and prayer as part and parcel of vision of Judaism worldwide and [was for] humankind. The dream of Israel is the dream of the wretched sons of war, waiting for the sovereignty of the kingdom of war on this land. This prayer, “next year in Jerusalem,” was associated with the advent of the Messiah and the emergence of this kingdom extending to all humans.[7]
The matter here was unrelated to the golden calf, Rothschild bank, or considering Moshe Dayan the Messiah. This is what Zionism thought, and it did its best to eradicate the belief in the Messiah; In 1944, Prosper Cohen, one of the organizers of Zionism in the West and who was still working in the Zionist state, wrote an appeal inciting the Jewish community to reconsider their hope in the Messiah and humanity: “Who is the Messiah? In reality, neither you nor other people know who the Messiah is or who the Messiah will be. Will this Jewish king come? Will the era of bliss come to the Jews? You know that nothing of this would happen, [you] stubborn people. You know that humanity is lost forever” (Cohen, 1945).
This prophet of Zionism himself showed aversion against the Jewish people after the failure of the 1948 elections, held under the dual patronage of Zionism and the General Residency. “Can anyone call for any action after the failure of the last elections, which evokes mockery? It seems that the dumbness of many individuals of our religion is inherent and there no cure for it” (Noir, no. 14, February 1948).
We witness that Zionism, racial discrimination, Colonialism, and humiliating humans are harmonious things.
As for the people, whether Muslims or Jews, they sensed in their flesh this mutual hope in God’s kingdom. Friendship and mutual Mimouna celebrations, which marked the end of Passover (Pesach) Seder, were among the living experiences that symbolically aimed [to celebrate] a shared end to the desert of oppression through which humans pass.
If all this requires analyses, research, and other assumptions, this does not mean it lacks historical context. We should prepare to build a future in which production for humans is organized again. In this community, the human finds again this integration that was disrupted by capitalism and western culture. Humans can express their cultural ideals to envision the future in this creative community.
2. From the Elite’s Alienation to Zionist Framing
The aim of capitalism’s conquest of the Arab world is attributed to the beginnings of its transformation into modern Imperialism. One of its initial pursuits was an attempt to sow the seeds of discord between Muslims and Jews.
Since Napoleon was at the forefront of the European left and Imperialism, he ـــ from Gaza in 1799 ـــ addressed African and Asian Jews explicitly in name of the French revolution, [but implicitly] in the name of bourgeois greed for conquest, which was closer to the truth.
In the second half of the last century, the colonial conquest became organized and focused on driving a wedge among citizens with the help of Jewish bankers. Edmond Rothschild built the first colonial institution in Palestine. As a new master of humans, he brought to it five thousand Russian Jews. Depending on resources stemming from the same source, the Alliance Israélite Universelle was established, and its first scholastic institutions were built in the Mediterranean Sea basin, specifically Morocco. The English banker Moses Montefiore went on a “love-and-friendship” journey to Morocco, revealing his “concern” about the status of Jewish communities all over the Arab world. European Colonialism will show this concern later on.
Let’s give the floor to our friend, Edouard Mouillefarine, who says: “We would be mistaken if we believed that the protectorate resulted from military conquest. On the contrary, it was a political summary marked by care, with much caution, intelligence, and coordination, written on the wall as an ‘occupation in pain.’ Armament enhanced and authorized things that had been gained, in reality, after the long contact that resulted from economic relations with authorities and chieftains of barbarous tribes. This occupation was a result of the work done by French officers and traders with the help of Jews from the country whom Zionism molded” (Mouillefarine, 1941).
Indeed, this racist conflated those loyalists with all Moroccan Jews. In reality, one of the students of the Alliance’s first schools, the school of Tetouan, became the founder of Zionism in Morocco. However, Jewish manufacturers in the countryside worked for the armament of Abdul Karim al-Khattabi’s soldiers.
Beginning in 1920, the few thousand Jewish graduates of the Alliance’s schools were considered the unique “elite” of the Jewish community. The traditional community would have overcome its shortcomings to resist colonialism. National resistance that came out of the people’s depths was actual resistance. Still, despite the prevailing ambitions, it was never, in one way or another, a “revolution” that rejected colonialism and simultaneously, surpassed the traditional community. Despite almost being prepared [for revolution], the national ideology fluctuated between confinement to the traditional community and adopting the ideals of the Western bourgeois society. Before the efforts made in recent years, the Socialist Movement only provided a formal perspective unrelated to the [practical] dimensions of Socialism.
Henceforth, it is no surprise that such a Jewish elite, alienated from the very beginning and belonging to Western culture in terms of their way of life and interests, did not represent the entire Jewish community, and that did not steer it towards Zionism. This community, totally displaying zeal for its culture, found itself exposed to oppression by this elite. Also, those Moroccan Jews who adopted the national movement within the framework of the sole party that integrated the national conflict into the aim of establishing Socialism did not realize the need to fight a particular battle inside the Jewish community because of an automatic application of the scientific principles of Socialism. They, in turn, left this community [vulnerable to ] deprivation.
Therefore, the conditions of June 1967 marked a century of occupation and colonial segregation and half a century of abuse from Zionist frameworks [imposed upon] neglected Moroccan society.
The stages of alienation appear as follows:
1) Up until 1940, the Formation of the Moroccan Jewish Bourgeoisie and its Integration into Western Civilization
A special issue of the monthly newspaper L’Avenir Illustré, which was dedicated to the rise of Moroccan Judaism, published by European Jews living in Morocco and some Moroccan Jews from this Westernized ‘elite,’ is typical of this stage.
This issue, dedicated to the General Resident Steeg, was an initiative “under the auspices of France,” as written in the editorial. One of the editors, who was also one of the promoters of the Zionist Federalism in Morocco, wrote: “What were our brothers of the Maghreb only twenty years ago? A tribe of Israel, isolated from the rest of the Jewish world, on the margins of the Western civilization… One day, by integrating into the ‘big French family,’ will then necessarily form a ‘spiritual province’ there.”
The “big French family” would, in 1940, “curb” these ambitions.
2) Putting Zionist Framing in Practice
Though, during the years of the application of Vichy racial laws, Mohammad V’s opposition to these laws and the brotherhood of [Judaism with] Islam should have confirmed to the mass of Moroccan Jews their reasons for attachment to the country, this ‘elite’ could not limit its ambition there. One of its members wrote, “We witnessed some Moroccan Israelis who Europeanized their customs, standards of living, and culture. In disputes with an Arab, they would rather be condemned by default rather than going to the Makhzen and having to take off their shoes and crouching humbly in front of the Pasha.”
However, the arrival of the American military in November 1942 opened new horizons.
As early as 1943, with the collaboration of American and English officers, an amalgam similar to that which had created L'Avenir Illustré, laid the foundations of Zionist organizing. The Moroccan Jewish bourgeoisie abandoned the assimilationist objective to rally, in its quasi-totality, to the Zionist objective. The same author who referred to the Pasha's court as a "moral ghetto" situated these two currents as follows: "The two positions can be summed up in this way: if the Alliance, working to give the Jews, with education, dignity and the possibility of conquering a more honorable place in their country, thus fought in the political and diplomatic domain, ‘so that the Jews no longer suffer from the quality of Jews,’ S.D. Lévy and the Zionists thought that it was certainly necessary to free Judaism from backward countries, from misery, ignorance and prejudice, but with the supreme hope of providing them with a return to the country of their ancestors." (Sikirdji, 1955).
Building on the same writer’s statements, the second trend prevailed over the first in 1945, especially among those organizationally and ideologically accountable to the Jewish community.
Built on funds from the “Joint,” an American organization whose activities in the world in support of Zionism have forms parallel to those of the CIA, Zionism, set up, in particular, the supervision of Moroccan Jewish youth.[8]
However, the masses of Moroccan Jews still adhered to bonds of friendship that tied them to Muslims and their cultural roots. Zionism was introduced to youth as an enterprise of contesting Westernization and assimilation, and of renovating cultural sources, while proclaiming friendship with the “Arabs.” The Secretary General of the Zionist Federation in Morocco, a European Jew whom Noir described as “the soul of Moroccan Zionism,” declared: “We insist on the fact that relations between Jews and Arabs must be cordial as they already are in Eretz (Israel)…All the Jews of Morocco must know that Zionism is not an ideal contrary to the interests of anyone, nor directed against a group or a country or any interests, but the human solution to the Jewish problem and the end of a two-thousand-year-old tragedy, which was revealed to our terrified eyes after the sad experience of Nazism, sourced from anti-Semitism” (NOAR, 1946).
A. Colonial Incitements
Zionists’ efforts were not only tolerated, but moreover, supported by Protectorate authorities who sought to divide and divert the national movement from the right path. The old complicity between Herzl and the Tsarist Minister of the Interior was thus renewed (Löbel, 1969).
However, in February 1948, the elections to the Jewish communities of Morocco, organized while the repression of General Juin suffocated the national movement, were, despite the combined efforts of the Residence and Zionists, a real fiasco. Though the number of Jews in Casablanca was 70,000, the number of those who voted was no more than 352; Out of the 20000 Moroccan Jews in Marrakech, only 153 voted. The newspaper Noar, which reported the results under the title “You did not fulfill your duties,” added that “the results of other centers are hardly more brilliant.”
Likewise, the Residence moved on to acts more in keeping with its style. After a failed attempt at provocation in the mellah of Fez on the evening of Mimouna, a failure due to the immediate reaction of activists of the Moroccan Communist Party, the civil controller, Chennebault, organized the massacre of a hundred Moroccan Jews in Oujda and Jerada on June 7th and 8th, 1948. The Residence thus succeeded, in the context of the creation of the Zionist State, both in [producing] the first massive shock in favor of Zionism, a shock that led to a first wave of emigration (estimated by a. Chouraqui at 10% of the Moroccan Jewish population), and the dissolution of the Federation of Miners, whose leaders were accused of being the organizers of these massacres.[9]
This process of incitement was not exclusive to French colonial authorities or the sole Zionist organization in Morocco.[10]
4. Compromises and the Failure of Independence
For all Moroccans, including Jews, the second half of 1955 remained linked to an unforgettable, victorious era that witnessed Mohamed V’s return. Yet, from Aix-les-Bains, compromises were being worked out, which would weigh heavily on independence, including integration of the Jewish community.
In the period that preceded the development of the conflict, including the armed one, against the Protectorate, an increasing number of Moroccan Jews, especially young students and intellectuals, had joined the national movement, thus contributing to the reconquest of a fraternal Morocco.
But abroad, well-known "international public opinion" was "worried" about the "fate" of Moroccan Jews as independence approached. In this context, the Jewish Observer and Middle East Review of August 26, 1955, was able to
announce that the emigration of 45,000 Moroccan Jews would be organized between September 1955 and August 1956. This quantity was the "maximum that Israel could organize the absorption of - except under conditions of acute emergency. Fortunately, such conditions do not exist at present in Morocco thanks to the enlightened approach of the main nationalist leaders to this question of relations with the Jews of Morocco." The newspaper recalls, in this regard, the public statements and a general attitude in "meetings with representatives of the World Jewish Congress, which, it seems, have been taking place for some time."
Material means were already in place. In a study published in Avant-garde on August 23 and 30, 1959, R. Aflalo stated, “that ـــ beginning in 1953 ـــ foreign Zionist movements and their agents established a tight network with ramifications that traversed all the mellahs and reached the smallest localities in the south; They also built host camps on the road to El-Jadida to prepare for the upcoming confrontation with the vast desert. From that time on, servants of these organizations did not hesitate to mingle with the Jewish masses., to attack them relentlessly, to encourage them to abandon everything and obviously took advantage of this period of uncertainty, confusion and unrest to sow panic. It was the golden age of the Zionist movement in Morocco.”
This oppression peaked precisely between the end of 1955 and June 1956. The following description, seen from the inside, should be compared with the objective set in August 1955 by the international Zionist organization. R. Aflalo mentioned that this period experienced “the fastest pace and caused the greatest number of victims. Knowing that the government was preoccupied with urgent and major tasks, Zionist organizations “worked” quickly, conscious of the moment of ephemeral confusion from which they then took advantage. No one has forgotten this fever in which foreign agents roamed Jewish neighborhoods, sowing panic, managing to create a real psychosis of collective fear, helped in this dizzying race against time by numerous and incessant foreign press campaigns that predicted “a new Hitler nightmare” for Moroccan Jews.
This was what the free hand given to Zionism did to independence for many Jews did. The Jewish minister, the Jewish-Muslim friendship at the level of bourgeois organizations like El Wife, a reference to Western-style democracy, were put into another sphere. Moroccan Jewish intellectuals and technicians thought, for their part, that it would be enough to stick to doing one’s job well and dedicating oneself to national construction.
Emigration, however, with the closing of the Zionist “Al-Qadima” camp in 1959, stagnated in the following years. In the 1960 census, the Jewish population comprised 160,000 people. The corresponding figures, including the former Northern Zone and Tangier from 1950 and 1951, are 215,000. Considering births since that date, it is permissible to estimate departures at a little over 90,000 in nine years, including the levy of 45,000 people that we have already spoken about. Outside of this Zionist ‘campaign,’ and despite the pressures suffered by Moroccan Jews, the departures therefore averages, for the eight years surrounding independence, some 6,000 people per year.
Thus, the Zionist grip was far from completing its work. Nevertheless, the community that Zionism had complete ideological control over since 1944 was burdened by the impunity enjoyed by Zionist organizations and the tolerance Zionism benefited from, except for the period between 1959 and 1961.
5. Emigration
Emigration developed and was regular and massive from 1961. Official statistics showed that the number of emigrants was nearly 12,000 per year after this date. The failure of the reformist attempts to build a bourgeoisie democracy using a Western modus operandi was consecrated by the political orientation adopted from 1960 and the economic stagnation that followed.
This Failure and stagnation enabled Zionism to market, to the majority of Moroccan Jews, emigration as the sole solution. This was made all the easier since the Moroccan bourgeoisie attempted to hide its economic collusion with Imperialism, using nationalist phraseology and latent racism. The business-oriented neo-feudalism that has been organized since then was more consistent: indiscriminate use of brokers, Muslims, Jew, or foreigners; protectionism poorly camouflaging contempt for Jewish masses; and indignant repression against the “Red Levys.”
In 1961, there was a noticeable change in the situation. In January 1961, a Zionist provocation, launched during President Nasser’s visit to Morocco, fueled by the excesses of some (against children!) and racist press articles, was thwarted by the public reaction of a significant number of Moroccan Jews. [11] This showed that the possibility of anti-Zionist explanation and information was still visible. Nevertheless, the heavy mantle weighing on the country’s political life was hardly favorable to its development.
Zionism, for its part, was well-organized. As luck would have it, at that very moment, a small boat, the “Pisces,” 42 emigrants, unable to hold the sea, sank off the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, its captain saving his own skin! When we recognize the efficiency of the Zionist organization, perhaps we should not be surprised by this “fortuitous coincidence” that enabled a Zionist journalist to say that “Morocco now has its Exodus.”[12]
In conditions that still have not been specified, in the face of the “emotion” of “international public opinion,” the doors of emigration opened.
This outcome was thus summed up by an informed and objective observer of Moroccan Judaism: “The Moroccan Jew, in his search and endeavors to be integrated into the Western culture, could not avoid asking himself the question of his identity: The Maghrebi Jew was, for many centuries, “a Jew in a Muslim country.” He accepted this state with its consequences. Yet, in contact with Western civilization, the secular balance was broken. When the high school student began to ask himself: ‘What is a Jew?’, his secular teachers replied: ‘In Morocco, there are neither Jews, nor Muslims, there are only Moroccans.’ When he posed as a Moroccan in front of Muslims, he was told that all the sultan’s subjects were equal. However, he was made to feel, in the reality of existence, that certain rights were not [granted] to the dhimmi. As for the authorities of the Protectorate, they considered him a “Moroccan Israelite.” When he finally decided to emigrate to Israel, he ـــ for the first time ـــ realized that he was considered a ‘Moroccan’” (Bensimon-Donath, 1968).
In fact, faced with the reality of the Zionist State, its economic crisis, and racism against “Oriental” Jews, the decline took shape in 1966 until May 1967.
June 1967 in Morocco made way for new Zionist incitements, where the motivation was nourished even more by the racist reaction of a certain bourgeois press. So, emigration continued.
However, June 1967 contained the emergence of what will bring an end to the Zionist and racist nightmare for the Arab world, and ultimately, History will show it and is already beginning to show it, for Judaism in the Arab world.
6. June 1967 and [The New] Perspective
This paper will not present a meticulous analysis from the socio-political perspective of 1967, although this analysis would be worth doing. Beyond any intellectual construction, the reality of the concept of Arab nation appeared alive. For Morocco, this date will be a new August 1953.
We will be told: if the “the Arab nation” is true, why not the “Jewish people”? We propose to take up these themes in depth. But let us remember this, even if it cannot be understood today by everyone: what makes a sociological fact reality is its becoming.
The concept of the “Arab nation” is part of the historical perspective of the movements of national liberation and the liquidation of imperialism. The concept of the “Jewish people” tends to bring back a tribal approach, and again, at the most primitive stage, an approach that the very philosophy of Judaism, through the Prophets, has helped to overcome by expressing a universalist conception of Man.[13]
It remains clear that the future of Moroccan Judaism, as well as that of the entire Moroccan nation, is henceforth inseparable from the future of Palestine. The failed "elite" that directly or indirectly created Zionism in Morocco and that has been silent since June 67 would doubtless like, with other false elites, to cover this reality with oblivion. But everyone knows that this is no longer possible.
To all those, here or elsewhere, Moroccan Jews, who feel deep within themselves, consciously or subconsciously, the anguish of isolation and uprooting, to all those who, as the reality and the impasse of Zionism appear, reflect, we ask them to inform themselves, to break, first in themselves, the monopoly of Zionist information and the mystification by the imperialist West.[14]
Search for the reality of Zionism in the book authored by a Zionist looking, in vain, for a way out of Zionism’s dead ends (Hillel, 1968).
Search for the crumbling of the humanist dream of the Jews whom Zionism manipulated in the book of the other writer who still repeats despite everything that “Jewish people” is a notion “sui generis” (Friedlander, 1969).
Reflect on the ongoing crime committed against Judaism through the work of Emmanuel Levyne and the fight he has been waging since he discovered, on the Exodus, the reality of Zionism (Levyne, 1969).
(Bensimon-Donath, 1968).
The reality of the Moroccan Jew in the Zionist state can be perceived through the objective dryness of studies like that of this Moroccan Jewish sociologist, even if she was unable to go beyond the “Western” perspective. co-authored by citizens from this state; one is a Muslim while the other is a Jew (Bensimon-Donath, 1968).
The reality of racism in the Zionist state is dramatically revealed in two joint studies by two citizens of that state, one Muslim, the other Jewish (Gerics, 1969).
The reality of Zionism as an imperialist enterprise, the reality of Zionism as an enterprise of adventurers who never[15] wanted to create a home for persecuted Jews, but to build a racist and expansionist State, an enclave of imperialism, those who do not perceive it through the current living reality, can read the study of Maxime Rodinson’s (Rodinson, 1967) study and the important work of Nathan Weinstock (Weinstock, 1969).
The reality of fascism at the head of the Zionist state is manifested in the frightening images that Moshe Dayan draws of himself in an interview with L’Express last May, and in this letter addressed to him by Miriam Galili, a Jewish mother.
The reality of the “Western culture” and its “technology” was shattered by the peoples’ pressure, first of all the people of Vietnam, and increasingly for the Arab world, the Palestinian fighters.
The reality of the fruitful "desert," how does it differ from the colonial and neo-colonial reality that we know, how does it differ from the orange groves of Souss? Those who forget that the land of Canaan did not wait for Western technology to become the land of milk and honey, those who attach some value to the new orange groves that have been planted there for twenty years, let them question this cry of Roger Benhaïm, an Algerian Jew who lives the anguish of his uprooting in France: "ON THE LAND OF GOD, OF MOSES, OF THE PROPHETS, OF JESUS, ON THIS LAND WHERE MILK AND HONEY FLOW, WHERE THE ORANGE TREE AND THE GRAPEFRUIT GROW, A MAN DIED UNDER TORTURE AND HIS TORTURERS WERE JEWS, MY BROTHERS" (2nd speech in the desert, dedicated to Kassem Abou Akar, tortured to death by the Zionists).
In the face of this impasse, in front of these crimes committed in the name of Judaism, stands the prospect of the fraternal Arab world of tomorrow. In addition to the Palestinians’ struggle for a unified, democratic, and religiously liberated Palestine, the face of William Nassar, a Palestinian fighter born to a Christian father and a Jewish mother, manifests. He was the Commandant of the Jerusalem sector of Al-Assifah and was tortured to death by Zionists.
Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Sayed Fawzi
Bibliography:
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Bensimon-Donath, D. Evolution du Judaïsme Marocain sous le Protectorat français, 1912-1956. Mouton. Paris, 1968.
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The citation for the Arabic version of this text is as follows:
Serfaty, Abraham. “Al-yahūdiyya al-maghribia wa al-sahyūniyya.” In al-maghrib wa falasṭīn:
falasṭīn qadiya waṭniya, Abdessamad Belkbir, ed, 48-63. al-dār al-baydhā’: al-Najah al-
Jadidah, 2021.
The original French version of the text can be found here [Souffles, 15, 3e trimestre, 1969].