The Sultan's Communists: Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging 9781503614147
The Sultan's Communists uncovers the history of Jewish radical involvement in Morocco's national liberation pr
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T H E S U LTA N ’ S CO M M U N I S T S
Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture
T H E S U LTA N ’ S COMMUNISTS
Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging
o ALMA RACHEL HECKMAN
Stanford University Press Stanford, California
Stanf or d U niv er s i t y Pr e s s Stanford, California
© 2021 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Heckman, Alma Rachel, author. Title: The Sultan’s communists : Moroccan Jews and the politics of belonging / Alma Rachel Heckman. Other titles: Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2021. | Series: Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020021126 (print) | LCCN 2020021127 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503613805 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503614147 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Parti communiste marocain—History—20th century. | Jewish communists—Morocco—History—20th century. | Jews—Morocco—Politics and government—20th century. | Nationalism and communism—Morocco—History—20th century. | Morocco—Politics and government—20th century. Classification: LCC DS135.M8 H43 2020 (print) | LCC DS135.M8 (ebook) | DDC 324.264/0750904—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020021126 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020021127
Typeset by Westchester Publishing Services in 10.25/15 Adobe Caslon Pro Cover design: Rob Ehle
Cover image: Emblem of the Moroccan Communist Party from 1945 French Protectorate Surveillance Report. Source: Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN). Paper background: iStock.
In memory of Lynne Carol Pettler Heckman (1949–2017), the Garden Lady
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CO N T EN T S
Acknowledgments
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Note on Translation and Transliteration xv Frequently Used Abbreviations xvii The Sultan’s Communists: An Introduction 1 1 Choices: Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Interwar Morocco 20 2 Possibilities: World War II and Moroccan Jewish Belonging 65 3 Tactics: Jews and Moroccan Independence 102 4 Splinters: Disillusion and Jewish Political Life in the New Morocco 143 5 Co-optation: The Moroccan Cold War, Israel, and Human Rights 176 Scarification: A Conclusion 224 Notes 231 Bibliography 285 Index 301
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AC K N OW LED G M EN T S
Gratitude is a small word for a big feeling. This book would not have been possible without the mentorship, friendship, solidarity, and generosity of many. Like the word “gratitude,” each name that appears in t hese few pages is a small unit of proper nouns that represents a profound contribution. The genesis of this book lies in my undergraduate years at Wellesley College. Many thanks to Rachid Aadnani for letting me into first-year Arabic by overriding the enrollment cap. Through years of patient Arabic instruction and seminars in modern North African literature, Rachid has s haped a cohort of Morocco enthusiasts. Louise Marlow directed the M iddle East Studies program at Wellesley and taught several critical courses in the Religion Department, giving me a rich background in history and thought in the region. Anjali Prabhu introduced me to the world of Francophone Maghribi literature, as well as the wide, rich world of postcolonial critical theory. Anjali encouraged and challenged me, advising me on an undergraduate senior thesis on questions of Muslim and Jewish exile in post–World War II literature in North Africa. Frances Malino’s course, Jews of Muslim Lands, launched my interest in Jewish history in the M iddle East and North Africa (MENA). Fran was and remains a paragon of critical scholarship, mentorship, and friendship. Fran read this manuscript in its entirety during the summer of 2019 and provided critical feedback and encouragement. More than a mentor, Fran is family.
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Sarah Abrevaya Stein advised me through the PhD program at UCLA and continues to provide unparalleled mentorship and support. This book would not exist without Sarah’s critical eye, uncompromising research rigor, and narrative structuring brilliance (Sarah suggested the chapter title progression for this book). Sarah is a model of scholarly achievement and acumen, as well as generosity. David N. Myers has been a rigorous interlocutor, asking difficult questions and helping me hone this project into one in conversation with multiple fields within Jewish history, including modern European Jewish history and the historiography of Zionism. Susan Gilson Miller, a founding figure in modern North African history, trained me in Maghribi historiography and lent her keen expertise to shaping this project since its earliest stages, generously sharing material relevant to several chapters and reading multiple drafts. James L. Gelvin trained me in the historiography of the modern M iddle East and pushed me to consider how the history of Moroccan Jewish Communists relates not only to the modern history of the region and modern Jewish history but also to the history of other minorities in the modern Middle East; Jim provided invaluable suggestions and questions from the earliest stages of the project. In addition to providing guidance on the project from the beginning, Susan Slyomovics introduced me to Jean and Jacques Lévy, as well as Sion Assidon, for which I am very grateful. A host of other scholars and mentors deserve a great deal of gratitude. Aomar Boum has been a friend and mentor since before I began graduate school, providing support, research advice, archive material, editorial suggestions, and connections. Daniel Schroeter, another founding figure in Moroccan Jewish historiography, read many chapter drafts and provided detailed commentary; he has been incredibly kind and generous with time, resources, and his intellect. Jessica Maya Marglin is a meticulous scholar who has helped shape this project from when I met her in Rabat in 2009 and had not yet started graduate school; she read drafts of this manuscript, providing invaluable guidance and insight. Emily Benichou Gottreich read versions of this project and lent tremendous insight through years of scholarly interactions, as well as giving me access to documents in her possession. Ethan B. Katz read a draft manuscript as part of a UCHRI-funded Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop at UC Santa Cruz in February 2019 and raised important questions and suggestions that have brought the work into its current form.
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Lior B. Sternfeld read the manuscript in its entirety just before I submitted it to Stanford University Press; he not only improved the manuscript quality with his questions and comments but also provided the last bit of encouragement when it seemed I could no longer read the words on the page. Jonathan Wyrtzen gave valuable critique—he also suggested the title The Sultan’s Communists at a meeting of the Yale Jewish History Colloquium in fall 2018; I am grateful to Michael Rom for inviting me and to the attendees, including David Sorkin and Tsivia Frank. Orit Bashkin, Joel Beinin, David Biale, Constance Pâris de Bollardière, Lia Brozgal, Michelle U. Campos, Julia Clancy-Smith, Julia Phillips Cohen, Paris Papamichos Chronakis, Leena Dallasheh, Naomi Davidson, Omnia El-Shakry, Olivia Harrison, Liora Halperin, Mohammed Hatimi, Oren Kosansky, Daniel Lee, Pierre-Jean Le Foll Luciani, Elizabeth Marcus, Devi Mays, Tony Michels, Bryan K. Roby, Aron Rodrigue, Aline Schlaepfer, Joshua Schreier, Ben Schreier, David Stenner, Nick Underwood, and Orit Ouaknine Yekutieli all played important roles in shaping this work. Between undergrad and graduate school, I received a Fulbright grant to Morocco. It was there that I met Simon Lévy, the Moroccan Jewish Communist who inspired me to write this book. At the time, he was the director of the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum in Casablanca. Lévy’s jokes, conversation, generous lunches, and more launched this project. Zhor Rehihil, the Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum’s curator and, since Simon’s death, its director as well, kindly allowed me to interview her and mentored me. Mohammed Kenbib, the noted and prolific historian of the Moroccan Jewish past at Mohammed V University in Rabat, served as a valuable mentor during the Fulbright year. Jamaâ Baïda, a scholar of the Moroccan Jewish press and director of the Royal National Archives, provided many valuable insights in developing this project. Vanessa Paloma introduced me to the contemporary Jewish community of Casablanca and provided friendship, event invitations, and pro-tips to studying contemporary Jewish life in Morocco. Mohamed Dellal helped with research into Vichy-era forced labor camp sites. James Miller, Saadia Maski, and the whole Fulbright gang of that year enabled this work: they include Sam Anderson, Kristen Johnson, Kimberly Junmookda, Caitlyn Olson, Stacy Pancratz, Megan Pavlishek, Lauren Peate, Weston Sager, Kendra Salois, Rod Solaimani, Rebecca Slenes, Matthew Streib, Anissa Talantikite, Cath Thompson, and Andrew Watrous.
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When I traveled back to Morocco for further research in 2013, Simon Lévy had passed away, but his sons Jean and Jacques Lévy, as well as Simon’s wife Incarnation, were unwavering in their generosity in giving me access to Simon’s personal papers and library and providing interviews. Jean and Jacques also generously read and provided comments and corrections for this book. Incarnation, who has since died, hosted me for two months’ worth of long lunches and stimulating conversation while I worked in Simon’s library. It is with great sadness that I report that Jean Lévy, too, passed away in the winter of 2020—Jean had provided me invaluable access to materials and his own time, in addition to continuing his father’s work restoring Jewish sites across Morocco. Sion Assidon, André Azoulay, Maurice Serfaty, and Fahd Yata w ere generous with their time and stories in agreeing to sit for interviews. The leaders of the Parti du progrès et du socialisme (PPS) of Morocco, in particular Nabil Benabdallah, w ere enthusiastic and helpful in finding rare items for this project, notably the photo of Léon René Sultan. Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh shared with me original documents from his time in the Moroccan Communist Party and allowed me to interview him at his home in Paris. Khalid El Ghali and Myriem Khrouz were generous with their time and resources at the Royal National Library of Morocco. At UC Santa Cruz, Nathaniel Deutsch has been the ideal colleague. Nathaniel read and commented on a full draft of the manuscript and multiple versions of the introduction; in addition, through our discussions about framing, he helped sharpen the book’s argument. Nathaniel provided invaluable mentorship, support, and collaboration throughout the writing process. A number of o thers in the UCSC community provided inestimable support and critique of the project, as well as much-needed moments of levity; they include Mark Amengual, Bettina Aptheker, Murray and Sheila Baumgarten, Dorian Bell, Hunter Bivens, Benjamin Breen, Terry Burke, Vilashini Coopan, Muriam Haleh Davis, Jennifer Derr, Martin Devecka, Lindsey Dillon, Madeleine Fairbairn, Mayanthi Fernando, Renée Fox, Amy Mihyang Ginther, Camilo Gomez-Rivas, Johanna Isaacson, Kate Jones, Peter Kenez, Peter Limbrick, Kristian Lopez-Vargas, Nidhi Mahajan, Marc Matera, Samantha Matherne, Greg O’Malley, Grant McGuire, Sara Niedzwiecki, Roya Pakzad, Maya Peterson, Jackie Sue Powell, Thomas Serres, Juned Shaikh, Ajay Shenoy, Amanda Smith, Elaine Sullivan, and Bruce Thompson. I am grateful to
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Crystal Smith for her expert notetaking during the UCHRI-funded Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop, to the Committee on Research (COR) at UCSC for research support grants, and to the sponsors of the Neufeld-Levin Chair in Holocaust Studies, which has supported research and production of this book. I thank Margo Irvin of Stanford University Press for her participation in the manuscript workshop in Santa Cruz in February 2019, her enthusiasm for the project, and her work toward its completion. I am also grateful to Cindy Lim and Emily Smith of Stanford University Press for their time and help in the publication process. I spent a stimulating sabbatical in the fall of 2018 at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania as part of the fellowship cohort, “Jewish Life in Modern Islamic Contexts.” I am grateful to Professors Samuel Z. Klausner and Roberta G. Sands for supporting this fellowship and to Steven Weitzman for facilitating and convening the group. In Philadelphia, Lital Levy and Heather Sharkey read my work, providing helpful feedback and questions. I am grateful to the other fellows at the center, who gave critical insight on the project and camaraderie: Esra Almas, Nancy Berg, Chen Bram, Dina Danon, Yuval Evri, Annie Greene, Kerstin Hünefeld, Yoram Meital, Aviad Moreno, Hadar Feldman Samet, Joseph Sassoon, Alon Tam, Alan Verskin, and Mark Wagner. At dif ferent stages, my research has been sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Takiff Family Foundation Fellowship, the American Academy for Jewish Research, the Ralph and Sarah Monkarsh Graduate Fellowship, a UCLA Center for Jewish Studies (CJS) Bluma Appel Fellowship and a CJS Roter Research Travel Grant, the UCLA International Institute International Fieldwork Fellowship, a FLAS grant, and the Posen Society of Fellows. The following p eople provided solidarity, editing, research companionship, and encouragement: Ceren Abi, Vanessa Arslanian, Reem Bailony, Beeta Baghoolizadeh, Jenna and Alex Barron, Michal Bornstein, Aubre Carreón Aguilar, Michael Casper, Jaya Aninda Chatterjee, Jeremy Epstein, Vanessa Fernández, Chris Gratien, Peter Haderlein, James Heckman, Jonathan and Darlyn Heckman, Gin Hoffman, Graham Hough-Cornwell, Selah Johnson, Samantha Keefe, Rachael Lau, Katie Levy, Pauline Lewis, Siobhan O’Keefe, Idir Ouahes, Emily Peters, Hanna Petro, Caroline Elizabeth
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Robertson, Chris Silver, Eoghan Stafford, Onyx (V.) Starrett, Anoush Suni, Nefertiti Takla, Caroline Tall, Anna Thieret, Ying Wang, Jess Weyer, Jennifer Willis, and Murat Yildiz. David Joshua Epstein was a constant source of support, humor, encouragement, editorial acumen, and unconditional love throughout this process. Although he is a medical doctor, he has become one of the world’s foremost experts in modern Moroccan Jewish political history and is available to answer any reader questions. Finally, I dedicate this book to the memory of my mother, Lynne Carol Pettler Heckman (August 8, 1949–July 8, 2017). She was my first and best editor, my most constant source of encouragement and support, who died of cancer before the completion of this work. Her favorite word was “calamity.”
N O T E O N T R A N S L AT I O N A N D T R A N S LI T ER AT I O N
For Arabic transliteration, I followed the guidelines of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES). For Hebrew transliteration, I hewed to the system used by the Library of Congress. In cases of names or some newspaper titles, I deferred to the most common representations as they appear in archival documents or in publication. I chose not to use diacritical markings in transliteration. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.
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F R E Q U EN T LY U S ED A B B R EV I AT I O N S
ADATAM—Association de défense des anciens travailleurs au Maroc (Association for the Defense of Former Workers of Morocco) AFASPA—Association Française d’Amitié et de Solidarité avec les Peuples d’Afrique (French Association for Friendship and Solidarity with the People of Africa) AFSC—American Friends Service Committee AG—Association Générale (General Association), est. 1919 AIU—Alliance Israélite Universelle (Universal Israelite Alliance), est. 1860 ALN—Armée de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Army) BAHAD—Brith Halutzim Datiyim (Alliance of Religious Pioneers) CAM—Comité d’Action Marocaine (Moroccan Action Committee) CCIM—Conseil des Communautés Israélites du Maroc (Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco) CGQJ—Commisariat Général aux Questions Juives (General Commissariat for Jewish Questions), est. 1940 CGT—Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor) FDIC—Front pour la Défense des Institutions Constitutionelles (Front for the Defense of Constitutional Institutions), est. 1963
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FLN—Front de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Front) HIAS—Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, est. 1881 JDC—Joint Distribution Committee, est. 1914 LDH—Ligue des droits de l’homme (League for Human Rights) LICA—Ligue international contre l’antisémitisme (International League Against Anti-Semitism), est. 1928 MENA—Middle East and North Africa OCP—Office Chérifien des Phosphates (Sharifian Office of Phosphates), est. 1920 ORT—Organisation Reconstruction Travail (the most common English translation is derived from the original Russian of the group’s name; hence “Association for the Promotion of Skilled Trades,” although literally in French this translates to “Organization Reconstruction Labor”), est. late nineteenth-century Russia, activity extended to North Africa in the 1950s OSE—Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (Organization to Save the Children) PCF—Parti Communiste Français (French Communist Party) PCM—before 1939, Parti Communiste du Maroc (Communist Party of Morocco); after 1943, Parti Communiste Marocain (Moroccan Communist Party) until its ban in 1960 PDI— Parti démocratique de l’Indépendance (Demo cratic Party for Independence) PLS—Parti de la Libération et du Socialisme (Party of Liberation and Socialism), est. 1968 PPS—Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme (Party of Progress and Socialism), est. 1974 SFIO—Section française de l’internationale ouvrière (French Section of the Workers’ International) UFM—Union des Femmes du Maroc (Union of Women in Morocco) UGSCM—Union générale des syndicats confédérés du Maroc (General Union of Confederated Syndicates of Morocco)
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UMT—Union Marocaine du Travaille (Moroccan Labor Union) UNEM—Union Nationale des Etudiants du Maroc (National Union of Moroccan Students), est. 1956 UNFP—Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (National Union of Popular Forces), est. 1959 WJC—World Jewish Congress
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T H E S U LTA N ’ S CO M M U N I S T S
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T H E S U LTA N ’ S CO M M U N I S T S : A N I N T RO D U C T I O N
“Jews don’t do politics.”1 The Moroccan Jewish writer and former Communist Party leader Edmond Amran El Maleh wrote this provocative statement in his 1980 semiautobiographical novel Parcours immobile (Motionless Journey). The statement was tongue-in-cheek: El Maleh had been a prominent figure in Morocco’s anticolonial movement, much to the chagrin of most members of the Jewish community, who sought to stay out of political trou ble. He was not alone in his activism. In the 1960s, Abraham Serfaty, a fellow Jewish Communist, proclaimed his “Arab-Jewish” identity as a way of underscoring his Moroccan patriotism.2 Serfaty, who had worked with El Maleh in Moroccan Communist politics, had also been rejected by the majority of the Jewish community. More recently, Simon Lévy largely withdrew from Communist politics in the mid-1990s a fter having been a leading figure in the party since the 1950s. Lévy then established the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum in Casablanca, an institution that expressed his most dearly held belief: that Moroccanness and Jewishness are inextricable from one another.3 Lévy, too, would struggle in his relationship to the Moroccan Jewish community in service of what he saw as his patriotic duty to his homeland. Outcasts of the Moroccan Jewish community, persecuted by the colonial authorities and the postcolonial state, by the end of the twentieth century these three men would be hailed by the Moroccan monarchy itself, held aloft as national heroes and emblems of Morocco’s Jewish heritage.
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ese men were among the most famous Moroccan Jews of the twenTh tieth c entury. All w ere active in the national liberation struggle of Morocco against the colonial protectorate rule of France and Spain; all w ere deeply patriotic and committed to their vision of an idealized Morocco. When Morocco gained its independence in 1956, each was profoundly optimistic for the future of his nation and the place of Jews within it, even in the face of the g reat waves of mass Jewish migration to Israel that had begun in the late 1940s. That optimism would be severely tested. Each man ran afoul of the post-independence regime of King Hassan II (r. 1961–1999), which often resulted in imprisonment and torture, even as the majority of the members of the Moroccan Jewish community at home and abroad embraced the monarch as their primary “protector.” For most Moroccan Jews across the twentieth c entury, Moroccan Jewish Communists such as El Maleh, Serfaty, and Lévy represented political liabilities to the security and stability of the community, first in relation to the French and Spanish colonial authorities and then u nder the authoritarian rule of King Hassan II. How strange it is, then, that these dissidents have since become the international face of the Moroccan state’s much-touted “tolerance” of Jews and embraced as nationalist heroes. Once reviled within the dominant Moroccan Jewish community and regarded as godless Communists in a Muslim-majority nation, their names and faces now appear regularly in the Moroccan press, they are the subjects of documentaries and conferences, and they have foundations in their honor supported by the Moroccan government. How is it that they have become the pride of the nation, the Sultan’s Communists?4 The prerequisite for understanding this apparent paradox is the history of Moroccan Jewish migration and the composition of the pre-migration Moroccan Jewish population. Morocco was once home to a diverse Jewish population, including Amazigh (Berber) Jews who had lived in Morocco since before the Muslim-Arab conquests began in the seventh century, Arab Jews arriving from other parts of the Arab-Muslim world, and Sephardi Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. At its height in 1945, the Jewish population in Morocco numbered approximately 250,000; during the 1950s and 1960s, nearly the entire community left the country, primarily for Israel. This book explores the motivations of the Moroccan Jews who remained, looking beyond the historiographical flashpoints of 1948 (the establishment of the state
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of Israel), 1956 (the year of Moroccan independence), and the subsequent regional wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973. Adopting this temporal focus disrupts conventional periodization to reveal a nuanced story of patriotism and idealism, of quests for belonging and experiences of alienation that challenge triumphalist nationalist narratives that end in 1956 or with Jewish migration to Israel. This study examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves as active citizens in a newly independent Morocco, how Communism enabled their participation in Morocco’s national liberation struggle, and how Communism and political activism sought to resolve the apparent paradox of Jewish political belonging in Morocco. The Jews of Morocco and of the wider region were not passive objects, uprooted by colonialism, Zionism, and Arab nationalism. Rather, they w ere (and remain) active participants in the politi cal life of their homelands—whether in situ or in the diaspora—embracing, resisting, and recombining political affiliations. This story is at once deeply Moroccan and inherently transnational: its characters travel between Morocco, France, Spain, Algeria, Israel, and the United States. I ask several complementary questions across the five main chapters: What did it mean to be a Moroccan Jew under colonial occupation? What political strategies and affiliations w ere available, and how did they change over time? How did Jews of different political stripes relate to each other, to Jewishness and Moroccanness as dynamic categories, and to the state? What happened to those radicalized Jews who remained in Morocco, and what w ere their relationships to those who left? As the chapters that follow reveal, the answers to these questions demonstrate how an examination of Moroccan Jews sheds light on the position of Morocco in the world over time and contributes to regional and global narratives of Communist politics in the twentieth century. The Sultan’s Communists presents the untold story of Jewish radicals’ involvement in Morocco’s national liberation project. In so doing, it challenges standard narratives of the Jewish past, the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as well as international leftist and imperialist histories. Until recently, most narratives have told a story of mass uprooting or Zionist salvation. In Moroccan historiography, most works e ither end after Morocco’s political independence in 1956 or follow the vast majority of Jews who left the country. In contrast, this book examines the Jews who
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stayed in Morocco a fter independence and their political activism, which stood at the intersection of colonialism, Arab nationalism, and Zionism. The chapters extend from the beginning of leftist movements and demographic upheaval in the 1920s, through the high point of Jewish political activism in the immediate postwar period, to Morocco’s repressive post-independence political history in the 1970s, concluding with a discussion of the 1990s and the Moroccan state’s lionization of its Jewish past. This scope, encompassing both the colonial and the Cold War contexts, brings into view the connections between the demographic and ideological shifts within both Morocco’s Jewish population and Moroccanized Communism, as well as the power of the Moroccan state. As such, this book is simultaneously a history of Moroccan Jewish Communists and, more broadly, a history of Morocco and its Jews in the twentieth century.
The Narrative Power of a Minority within a Minority
This book is about a minority within a minority—Jews in the Moroccan Communist Party—and how they became the most famous of Moroccan Jews. In short, this is a story of how a small group of people gained prominence both within Morocco and internationally, in ways that ultimately conferred benefits on all parties involved. Unearthing this story sheds light on the very mechanics of colonialism and anticolonial agitation, the history of Zionism in the MENA and its detractors, the formation of a modern nation- state out of a colonial legacy, and the Jewish role within the state-building process. Finally, studying Moroccan Jewish Communists demonstrates the possibility of Jewish patriotism in the MENA long a fter independence and regional wars with Israel that contributed to the massive Jewish exodus from so much of the region, including Morocco, during the 1950s and 1960s. In the words of Edmond Amran El Maleh, to write this story of Moroccan Jewish Communists is to play “a game of complex margins.” 5 Historiographically speaking, The Sultan’s Communists straddles four overlapping circles of scholarly debate; first, the formation of Moroccan national identity politics, and the place of Jews within it; second, Jewish involvement in radical leftist politics, both in the MENA region and in other heartlands of Jewish radicalism; third, Jewish Studies as a field that in recent years has enjoyed an efflorescence of writing regarding Jews of the MENA; and fourth, M iddle
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Eastern and North African Studies, which has increasingly included Jewish minorities in narratives of anticolonial nationalist politics. On the first point, The Sultan’s Communists advances previous work in the field by being the first book to recount the sweep of twentieth-century Moroccan Jewish history into the twenty-first through the prism of radical politics.6 Uniquely, this book addresses Moroccan Jewish identity formation and politics in the post-independence, Cold War world of Zionism and Arab nationalism that would have an outsized effect on Moroccan Jewish patriotism and citizenship models. On the second point, The Sultan’s Communists joins a small but growing literature on Jews and radical politics in the MENA.7 These works have largely focused on the M iddle East, with a few exceptions that treat North Africa. Scholarship that purports to address Jews and radicalism on a global comparative level has historically given the MENA little, if any, attention.8 Although this book is not a comparative study, t here are notable similarities across the different colonial contexts of the MENA and even with Ashkenazi Jewish radicalism in Europe and the Americ as. As I have written elsewhere, “perhaps paradoxically, Jewish participation in Communist politics was a unique strategy to achieve normalization through conscious pariahdom, whether in the more traditionally construed Ashkenazi context or in the less examined MENA lands.” 9 Despite its focus on Morocco and its unique context, this book complicates the nebulously defined, yet widespread, phenomenon of Jewish involvement in radical politics in the twentieth century. Third, in studying a minority within a minority, this book engages with some of the most fundamental questions in modern Jewish Studies regarding political emancipation, citizenship formation, and communal affiliation in a nationalizing global context. Over the last few decades, scholarship on Jews of the MENA has boomed, reorienting Jewish Studies in more inclusive directions and greatly enriching the field in the process. The Sultan’s Communists contributes to new work on Jews under colonial occupation and their responses to it, as well as on Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionism in the Arab world.10 Further, because the book focuses on the Jews who remained in Morocco after the mass migrations to Israel of the 1950s and 1960s, it reminds readers that Jewish history in the MENA outside Israel did not end, either in those decades of demographic upheaval or now. Indeed, as this book points
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out, Jewishness in Morocco has become an increasing source of interest and investment in Morocco and abroad, a trend reflected in scholarship and in tourism alike. In short, the story of Moroccan Jewish Communists is an essential component of modern Jewish history, with thematic resonance across Jewish Studies. Fourth, The Sultan’s Communists contributes significantly to the modern history of the M iddle East and North Africa. Within the field of M iddle Eastern Studies, North Africa has often been neglected. Within historiography of the MENA as a w hole, minority groups, including Jews, rarely feature in narratives of anticolonial agitation and the politics of modern nation-state formation during the twentieth c entury. In writing the story of Moroccan Jewish Communists, this book tells the story of Morocco in the MENA and of Jews in MENA political life. It gives nuance to narratives of citizenship formation and MENA nationalism by centering some of the MENA’s most ardent Jewish patriots. In the middle of the 1940s, the Moroccan Jewish population reached its peak at approximately 250,000. Of that number, a small but disproportionate percentage w ere members of the Moroccan Communist Party (hereafter referred to as PCM, after the French acronym for the Parti Communiste Marocain). The mid-to late 1940s also represented the height of the PCM’s popularity in Morocco, although reliable numbers are harder to establish. Across the sources, the number of party members likely rests somewhere between five hundred and the low thousands (though the figures for event attendance w ere often many times more than the basic membership count). Most Moroccan Jews w ere not very politically active throughout the twentieth century; hence, Edmond Amran El Maleh’s cynical comment, “Jews don’t do politics.” Most Moroccan Muslims were part of political parties other than the PCM, including, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, organ izations more radical than the PCM.11 Moroccan Jewish Communists fought for an idealized Morocco that never quite came to fruition. The party emerged out of the French Communist Party and other leftist groups in Morocco during the interwar period, partnered with anti-fascist politics. During the interwar period, Moroccan Jews were drawn to a wide array of political affiliations: it was possible to be simultaneously Zionist, pro-France, and Communist. Anti-fascist activ-
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ism in response to the Spanish Civil War, as well as the rise of Nazism and its attendant propaganda, spurred Moroccan Jews and Muslims to join leftist organizations. These organizations overlapped with the Communist Party of Morocco. During the Second World War, the Communist Party of Morocco transformed into the Moroccan Communist Party, becoming an anticolonial national liberation party with a Muslim-majority leadership and membership. The Moroccan Communist Party was the primary avenue for Moroccan Jewish expressions of patriotism and participation in the national liberation movement. Following the Second World War, Moroccan nationalists, including Jews, took advantage of the newly established United Nations and the relative weakness of France to fight for freedom from French and Spanish colonial rule, which had been established in 1912 and was soon to end in 1956. Under colonial rule, many individuals—including colonial officers, Muslims, and even Jews themselves—saw Moroccan Jews as complicit with colonization. Yet, the anti-Semitic persecutions of the Vichy period undermined Jewish relations with colonial authorities. As a result, Moroccan Jews were increasingly primed to support political alternatives to France, including Zionism and Communism. In rejecting French colonial rule, Moroccan Jewish Communists identified primarily with “Moroccanness.” For them, Moroccanness as a social and political concept evolved into a nationalist patriotic identity predicated on a narrative of precolonial protection u nder the sultan and, with that protection, a legacy of social harmony between Muslims and Jews. That model of social harmony, in turn, drew on romanticized narratives of the Convivencia (living together) of Jewish life in medieval Muslim Spain, mapped onto modern Morocco. The sultan became an important symbolic and then active figure during the war, while the mainstream national liberation organization Istiqlal (Independence) issued its Manifesto for Inde pendence in 1944. The PCM followed suit in short order. In fact, e very viable political party came to support a vision of Moroccanness inextricably bound to the institution of the monarchy. One of the reasons why the Moroccan Communist Party appealed to Jews was its universalist, expansive definition of “Moroccan” at a time when most national liberation parties foregrounded an Arabo-Muslim Moroccan national identity. Although the meaning of “Moroccanness” evolved over time, for Moroccan Jewish Communists it meant embracing Moroccan cultural
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and national identity formations to the exclusion of all o thers. In other words, embracing “Moroccanness” entailed a commitment to “Moroccanize,” to accept Jews as an integral part of the nation and to reject French, Spanish, or Zionist politics as threats to the Moroccan nation; it meant both a pluralistic Morocco free to develop its full potential and a narrative of precolonial Muslim–Jewish peaceful coexistence. In fighting for independence through a universalist party that defined Moroccanness broadly, Jews fought to demonstrate their authenticity as Moroccans and their belonging to the Moroccan nation. As a result, they demonstrated the legitimacy of the monarchy as their “protector,” in the figure of the “Commander of the Faithful,” the sultan- turned-king. During the late 1950s through the 1990s, prominent Moroccan Jews rejected specific policies of the monarchy and its turn toward authoritarianism. They did not, however, attack the legitimacy of the monarchy itself. They fought for an idealized vision of Morocco, while, simultaneously, the majority of Moroccan Jews were leaving the country. By the time King Hassan II died in 1999 and his son King Muhammad VI ascended to the throne, the most prominent remaining Jews were working in the service of the centralized state apparatus known as the makhzan in Arabic. These figures included dissidents who had been welcomed home from exile in France, freed from prison, and rewarded for their patriotism, becoming the “Sultan’s Jews” and thereby the emblems of purported Moroccan “tolerance” of its Jewish minority and of political opposition after decades of repression. The elevation of these Moroccan Jewish dissidents allowed the makhzan to atone for an authoritarian political past, bolstering what Susan Slyomovics has called its “performance of human rights”12 while simultaneously highlighting Morocco’s exceptionalism in the MENA for its commitment to the Moroccan Jewish past and present. The story of Morocco’s Jewish Communists is both exceptional and emblematic of the history of Jews in Morocco and of Moroccan political life across the years of colonial occupation through independence and the Cold War. The legitimacy of the makhzan, of Jews as Moroccans, and of the Moroccan Communist Party as “authentic” to the values of “Moroccanness” all came to support and serve one another. While bolstering their mutual legitimacy, the makhzan and Jewish Communists also proved each other’s Moroccan “authenticity.” As the following chapters demonstrate, a triangula-
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tion of historical contingencies and necessities ultimately enabled both Jewish Communists and the makhzan to combat a legacy of colonial sectarian politics through one another. Each aimed to restore, according to the nationalist narrative, the precolonial and pre-Zionist patriotic harmony between Muslims and Jews, loyal subjects of the sultan-turned-king, the Commander of the Faithful, and the protector of “his” Jews.
“Belonging” and Colonial Complications
Contestations over the “politics of belonging” were at the heart of imperialist incursions in Morocco well before the establishment of the protectorate in 1912.13 In the nineteenth century, some Moroccan Jews received consular protections from European powers and became protégés, as in the well-documented cases in the Ottoman context. As Jessica Marglin has written, Moroccan Jews had considerable agency and fluidity in positioning themselves as either European, Jewish, or Moroccan to achieve optimal legal outcomes, due in part to the mapping of a consular protection system onto indigenous Moroccan Halakhic ( Jewish law) and Shari’a (Muslim law) courts.14 Additionally, Morocco had prohibited Christian Europeans from residing in Muslim quarters, so European envoys and merchants stayed in the Jewish quarters, the mellahs, of Moroccan cities. It was a Jew living in the mellah of Fez who helped disguise the French explorer, Father Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916), as a rabbi so that he might more easily move through the Moroccan holy city of Fez unmolested; the explorer’s observations culminated in his 1888 work Reconnaissance au Maroc (Investigating Morocco), which exemplified the growth of French power leading to the Moroccan protectorate treaty of 1912. French power, of course, had been growing in Morocco and in North Africa more broadly since the beginning of the nineteenth c entury. French Jewish politics and the colonial mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission) also extended into Morocco in the work of the Alliance Israélite Universelle long before the formalization of the protectorate treaty. The Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) encouraged the formation of new Jewish subjectivities, and, consequently, politicized identities. The Alliance was a French Jewish philanthropic educational network founded in 1860 to help Jews of the M iddle East and North Africa, as well as European Ottoman lands, “regenerate.” “Regeneration” was one byword for the mission
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civilisatrice, based on the prevailing European Orientalist and colonial logic that the p eoples of Muslim-majority lands had somehow “stalled” or “regressed” in their development while Europe had “advanced.” The purported goal of the mission civilisatrice was to “regenerate” the MENA subject into an évolué—an “evolved” subject, at least according to French standards. The AIU was born from the partnership of Adolphe Crémieux, an esteemed French Jewish lawyer, and Moses Montefiore, a prominent British Jewish political figure, in response to two major events: the Blood Libel crisis of Damascus in 1840 and the kidnapping and baptism of an Italian Jewish boy in 1858.15 The two men were of a generation of recently emancipated Jews who embraced citizenship and participation in the nation-state with zeal, seeking to extend these purportedly universal benefits to their beleaguered coreligionists abroad. For Crémieux and Montefiore, the best way to achieve their goal of “regenerating” the so-called backward Jews of the MENA was through French education. The AIU established its first school in the northern Moroccan city of Tetuan in 1862; by 1895; it boasted seventy schools attended by nearly 17,000 students from Morocco to Iran. “Regeneration” also often meant deracination. In the process of becoming évolués, in speaking and thinking in French, in becoming entrenched in French history and geography with a sprinkling of Jewish subjects, Jewish students became divorced from their home languages and home customs.16 Alliance pupils often found themselves, in the words of Albert Memmi, “à cheval sur deux civilisations”—straddling two worlds, unable to be fully of the home community of their non-Alliance-educated parents or their Muslim neighbors while not being accepted as fully French or European.17 In a cruel twist of irony, the very organization that was motivated by the zeal of citizenship and emancipation in France made it much more difficult for MENA Jews to be ultimately embraced as local, “authentic” citizens as movements for national independence developed. In Algeria, most but not all Jews w ere granted French citizenship u nder the 1870 Crémieux Decree established by Adolphe Crémieux himself.18 Although French citizenship was not widely granted in such a blanket fashion in the neighboring French protectorates of Tunisia (established 1881) and Morocco (established 1912), the cumulative effect of French influence in the Maghrib was to further complicate Jews’ position relative to precolonial power structures. Fundamentally, French co-
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lonial policy and institutions redefined and challenged Jews’ relationships to Muslims in the Maghrib, which would become increasingly significant in developing nationalist platforms and models of patriotic citizenship.19 Morocco was the last gemstone in the French North African colonial crown. Following decades of treaties and conflict among European powers as part of the Scramble for Africa (notably the Algeciras Conference of 1906 and the Agadir Crisis of 1911), France and Spain carved Morocco into two protectorates. France held Morocco’s major cities and historic sites (notably Fez, Marrakesh, Rabat, Casablanca, and Meknes), whereas Spain controlled much of the north, including the Rif mountainous region and Tetuan, in addition to its preexisting holdings of Ceuta and Melilla. The Mediterranean city of Tangier became an international zone. After Moroccan sultan Abd al-Hafid signed the Treaty of Fez establishing the French protectorate over Morocco (the Franco-Spanish Treaty establishing the Spanish protectorate followed a few months later), violence broke out. It began as a Moroccan soldiers’ mutiny against the French and escalated across the city. The mellah of Fez became a warzone, as Moroccan Muslims who perceived Jews to be French collaborators attacked and pillaged Jewish homes and businesses. The French Army ultimately ended the uprising by bombarding the mellah, in the process destroying significant portions of it. Meanwhile, the Jews ran to the nearby palace gates of Fez—the proximity of which indicated the historic protective and possessive relationship between the sultan and “his” Jews—and were granted refuge in the sultan’s menagerie. Poignant postcards mailed home by French servicemen featured destroyed mellah buildings and the incongruous pairing of homeless Jews beside the lion cage on the grounds of the royal palace. In Figure 1, the lions—symbols of the Moroccan Sharifian Empire— stand behind bars, like Moroccan autonomy itself, as some displaced Jews lean against the wall that separates them from the big cats. Both the Jews and the lions look into the camera, presumably held by a French reporter or soldier, with wary gazes. All the subjects of this photograph face a representative of France, symbolically and practically. Over the course of the twentieth century, Moroccan Jews, the “Sultan’s Jews,” would perform a critical role in the establishment of the modern Moroccan nation-state and its liberation from colonial rule.20 After independence in 1956, Moroccan Jews, including
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f ig ur e 1 . Moroccan Jews with lions in Fez palace menagerie, 1912. “Evénements de Fez, 17–19 avril 1912. Vue de deux des pièces de la Ménagerie du Sultan dont l’une occupée par les Lions et l’autre par les Israélites.” Source: National Library of Israel, reprinted with permission from the Joseph and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, Folklore Research Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
the “Sultan’s Communists,” would serve the state and help legitimize it on international and national stages.
The “Sultan’s Communists”
As this book explores, Moroccan Communist Jews, once despised by the state and the majority Jewish community alike, ultimately emerged as belonging to the state as icons of tolerance and patriotism. This possessive framework of Jewish relationships to the makhzan is well established in Moroccan Jewish history. The trope of the “court Jew” will be familiar to many: the Jew as go-between, the Jew as moneylender and intermediary to the crown, the Jew as precariously protected politician.21 In Christian European contexts in the medieval and early modern periods, this court Jew figure often served as a means to collect taxes or rent from a restive population, deflecting hostility from the sovereign. In Mediterranean contexts, the court Jew was often accompanied by the “port Jew” of Lois Dubin and David Sorkin’s formulation:
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indeed, these two figures were often lodged in the same person. The port Jew likewise served as an intermediary—at the same time a mercantile and diplomatic emissary between Muslim and Christian rulers, traveling between prominent port cities of the early modern world around the Mediterranean and Black Seas.22 As Daniel Schroeter has illustrated, a similar figure arose in Morocco during the medieval, early modern, and even modern periods in the form of the tujjar al-Sultan, translated from Arabic as the “merchants of the Sultan.”23 This possessive term underscores the dependent nature of Jews on the sovereign; it is a more elevated example of dhimmi or protected status. Similar to the court Jews of Europe, their Moroccan counterparts could serve to deflect criticism from the sultan and bolster his power; if internal political winds were favorable, the sultan’s protection extended to Moroccan Jewry and allowed it to flourish. Moroccan Jews indeed held prominent roles working on behalf of the Moroccan state, engaging in diplomatic and commercial negotiations with European powers. Daniel Schroeter argues that the particular dynamics of the “Sultan’s Jew” w ere unique to the Moroccan context, while acknowledging there were parallel examples of Jews rising to high positions in Muslim courts despite (or indeed, perhaps b ecause of ) dhimmi status governing Muslim legal relationships to religious minorities.24 Of course, dhimmi status was not evenly applied or even rigorously defined across space and time; however, from the earliest years of Muslim territorial expansion it covered the ahl al-kitab, the “People of the Book,” notably Christians and Jews living u nder Muslim rule, pursuant to the Pact of ‘Umar. Some translate the word dhimmi as “protected,” whereas o thers see it as synonymous with a debased social and political status. Both have been true in different proportions, depending on the specific historical and geographical context.25 Nineteenth-and twentieth-century French writers, Jewish philanthropists, international Zionist organizers, as well as some Moroccan Jews themselves, historically used the term dhimmi to denote oppression in order to highlight the benefits of emancipation and equal citizenship or to justify their decision to emigrate from Morocco to what became the modern state of Israel. From a more nationalist standpoint, dhimmi status in Morocco has typically meant “protection,” a position enhanced with citizenship after Moroccan independence that also entailed possession. As the rest of this book will
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demonstrate, it is this latter understanding of dhimmi that informed much of post-independence Moroccan Jewish politics, including the Sultan’s Jewish Communists. The meaning of Moroccanness also evolved over the course of the nineteenth century and beyond the formalization of colonial rule in 1912. As scholars of twentieth-century Morocco have pointed out, “Moroccanness” became a nationalist identity in the course of anticolonial activism and postcolonial nation-building.26 It is necessarily an amorphous term, involving language politics, Islam, and religious pluralism, all of which changed over time. The relationship between Jewishness and Moroccanness was challenged during the colonial period, as Jews, particularly in large urban centers, were encouraged to learn French at the expense of Arabic.27 As support for the makhzan and Arabo-Islamic cultural identity became central to nationalist understandings of Moroccanness, Jews—to shed themselves of the taint of colonial association—drew on nationalist narratives of a harmonious Muslim–Jewish past and of fealty to the sultan. Efforts among Moroccan Jews to learn standard Arabic grew and w ere debated within the AIU itself and in Moroccan Jewish newspapers, although such efforts were not always successful in practice. Moroccan Jewish Communists were mostly active in French, but ardently supported Arabization and efforts to bring Moroccan Jews closer to Moroccan Muslims in language, cultural practices, and po litical aspirations. It was in the process of adopting this narrative of age-old Muslim–Jewish harmony in Morocco, adapted for anticolonial and anti- Zionist Moroccan nationalist purposes, that Moroccan Jewish Communists became the Sultan’s Communists.
Protection and Power
Structurally, the book is divided into two sections: first, the interwar period until the end of the Second World War; and second, from 1945 until the late 1990s and the ascension of King Muhammad VI. The first part treats the period of French (and, to a lesser degree, Spanish) colonial rule in Morocco and the political positions of Jews within Moroccan colonial society. During this half of the book, France laid claim to the loyalty of Jews, and many Jews within the colonial administration embraced France as their primary “protector” rather than the sultan. Indeed, France had partially justified its rule
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in Morocco and elsewhere in the MENA as a purported “protector” of minorities out of an Orientalist understanding of Muslim “despotism.” Organ izations such as the Alliance Israélite Universelle worked as handmaidens to this process of Jewish-Muslim deracination, challenging precolonial po litical and social alliances. During the Second World War, the anti-Semitic policies of the Vichy period undermined the idea of France as “protector,” pushing Jews to begin to reconsider their political and social alliances, including to the sultan. It is within this period that the precolonial paradigm that Daniel Schroeter wrote about, that of “the Sultan’s Jews,” began to gain new strength, transforming into a modern Jewish mode of participation in Morocco’s movement for independence. The second half of the book treats the immediate postwar period through the end of the 1990s. This half-century includes the Jewish mass exodus from Morocco and majority Jewish anxiety regarding the ability of the sultan (“king” after independence) to “protect” the community and the rise of the “Sultan’s Communists” both in the movement for independence and the decades after. As the vast majority of Moroccan Jews left the country, the “Sultan’s Communists” entrenched their loyalty to their homeland in part by condemning those who left as traitors. Despite persecution by King Hassan II, the “Sultan’s Communists” continued to embrace a romanticized vision of a harmonious Moroccan Jewish–Muslim past despite their marginal status as Jews and as Communists. This half of the book charts the transformation of this group from pariahs to heroes as they became international and national representatives of Moroccan exceptionalism in the MENA. Chapter titles reflect this progression.28 The first chapter, “Choices,” discusses the political affiliations that Moroccan Jews had access to during the interwar period, as well as the rise of anti-Semitism, fascism, and the Moroccan national liberation movement. Moroccan Jews embraced an array of political coalitions, including anti-fascist activism and all of the parties that gathered within the Popular Front movement, notably the Communist Party of Morocco, the International League Against Anti-Semitism (LICA; in French, Ligue internationale contre l’antisémitisme), as well as Zionism and French republicanism. The second chapter, “Possibilities,” traces the betrayal of the Vichy period and the resulting rupture of the narrative of France as protector of the Jews. In the wake of these developments, the sultan assumed
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the role of protector and became the figurehead of the empowered national liberation movement, aided by the demonstrable weakness of France and the rise of the United States and the USSR. During this time, the Moroccan Communist Party “Moroccanized” into a national liberation party, with a growing proportion of Moroccan members and Arabic-language propaganda efforts. The Jews who had initially been drawn to the Communist Party for its connections to anti-fascist, Popular Front activities also “Moroccanized” and nationalized in their outlook, rejecting French (and to a lesser extent, Spanish) imperial political identities to demonstrate their commitment to the Moroccan nation and the place of Jews within it. The third chapter, “Tactics,” addresses the strategies that Moroccan Jews and Muslims within the Communist Party deployed in navigating the strug gle for Moroccan independence and striving to create a pluralistic Moroccan national identity inclusive of Jews. Initial optimism during the immediate independence period quickly frayed for Moroccan Jews. As anti-Zionism became increasingly collapsed with anti-Semitism, the idea that Jewishness might be antithetical to Moroccanness gained credence. The fourth chapter, “Splinters,” highlights the disappointments of the early post-independence period, the rise of the Moroccan authoritarian state, the oppression of leftist political opposition (including the Communist Party), and the mass migrations of Moroccan Jews in response to increased tensions reverberating from the Arab–Israeli conflict. Jews within the Communist Party also splintered during this interval: some elected to work with the state to achieve their vision of an idealized Morocco, whereas o thers chose to leave the party and to create radical leftist groups in opposition to the brutal rule of King Hassan II. The fifth chapter, “Co-optation,” shows how the splintering of Moroccan Jewish Communists fueled a nationalist narrative of unity in the service of the Moroccan state. Key developments in this transition included human rights abuses, Moroccan self-presentation as “tolerant,” the emergence of the United States as a helpful ally, and the rise of the Moroccan Jewish tourist industry.
Searching for the Moroccan Communist Past
Incarnation Lévy, born in 1930 in Morocco to Spanish Protestant immigrant parents who were socialist organizers, granted me generous access to her
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husband Simon’s personal papers. Married to a prominent Moroccan Jewish Communist, she was an activist in her own right; during our meetings, she regaled me with tales of plastering the walls of Casablanca and stuffing mailboxes with PCM propaganda in the dead of night alongside Evelyne Serfaty, Abraham Serfaty’s radical sister. Incarnation’s own sister, Rosalie, was married to the PCM’s secretary general Ali Yata, a Moroccan Muslim with an Algerian father. Ali Yata controlled the party from the late 1940s until his death in the early 1990s. Thus the most prominent extended family of the Moroccan Communist Party included Muslims, Jews, and Spaniards— representing both the diversity inherent in the party from its origins in the mid-twentieth c entury and the demographics of radical Morocco. In turn, the family reflected the party’s vision and its historical origins. For two months during the winter of 2014, I came each day to the apartment where Incarnation and Simon Lévy had lived together for decades in central Casablanca. By this time, Incarnation was largely wheelchair bound and suffered from skin ailments. Yet she always greeted me with two kisses, one on each cheek, and offered me a cup of sweet coffee. I worked in Simon’s library in the apartment for hours, photographing original documents and his personal writings and ephemera, while admiring his collection of Communist texts, encompassing everything published by the PCM itself, as well as by Communist Parties from all over the world, including North K orea. Incarnation always invited me to join her for a long lunch, and I learned that she enjoyed a good bottle of red wine after trying all manner of other tributes to thank her for her generosity. It was at these lunches that Incarnation told me her personal stories, how her life intersected with that of the party, and her role in it—all the while insisting that she had nothing “interesting” to say, that her husband was the one worth knowing. I protested, trying to convince her of the value of her stories, the importance of her voice, but I do not think I was ever successful. It is common for women of Incarnation’s generation to minimize their roles and voices and the importance of their stories. Women are also more difficult to find in the archival material treating the PCM. Unfortunately, w omen do not speak as forcefully as I would like in the pages of the text that follow, but it is clear they played critical roles in the political history of the party and of Morocco in the twentieth century. My discussions with Incarnation inform
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this book, particularly Chapters 3–5, which correspond to the period from the 1950s to the 1990s, when she and her husband were at the center of Moroccan Communist political and social life, alongside their extended families. I first met Simon Lévy while researching a deceptively s imple question. I went to Morocco for the first time in September 2009 and remained there for nine months on a Fulbright grant, exploring any aspect of Jewish life in Morocco that interested me (requirements for new college graduates w ere less than stringent). I traveled across the country, photographing endless synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, Jewish community centers and Vichy labor camps. Most often, these lieux de mémoire were cared for by Moroccan Muslims, and when I chatted with the caretakers about the sites, I noticed a consistent, revealing vocabulary choice. The caretakers, and many o thers I met with in Morocco during that year, distinguished “Moroccan” from “Jew,” as if they were not one and the same. Morocco is well over 95 percent Muslim, and the modern Moroccan state rests on a monarchy imbued with deeply religious significance—most Moroccans are, and w ere, Muslim. But the subtle vocabulary selection, used by Moroccan Muslims and Jews alike, intrigued me as I heard and read narratives of the Moroccan Jewish past over those nine months. This initial question gave rise to additional ones when I met Lévy, who defined himself very much as Moroccan above all, but whose Jewishness enabled his Moroccanness and vice versa. We first met soon a fter I arrived in Morocco and had started to volunteer at the Casablanca-based Moroccan Jewish Museum and Foundation, founded and run by Lévy u ntil his death in 2011; I continued as a volunteer there for my nine-month stay. During that time I heard snippets about his activism and his ardent political beliefs. Lévy, who inspired this book and figures prominently in it, had been enmeshed in the Moroccan Communist Party and its vision for a pluralistic Morocco. He was also profoundly interested in the Jewish past of his country and committed to his Jewish identity. An educator and scholar, he wrote on Haketía— Moroccan Judeo-Spanish—as well as the Moroccan Jewish past. Through his museum and foundation, he reached out to Muslim and Jewish schools, hoping to raise interest in this shared Moroccan identity. In the wake of the 2003 Casablanca bombings that targeted several Jewish sites, Lévy redoubled his efforts. All of this sat comfortably with his Communist politics and
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nionizing activities. I had never met anyone like Lévy before, and I began to u wonder how exceptional his story was. In the chapters that follow, characters like Simon Lévy, Incarnation Lévy, Abraham Serfaty, Evelyne Serfaty, Edmond Amran El Maleh, and others illustrate that, although the Moroccan Jewish Communists may have been small in number, their voices speak loudly from the margins. They illuminate the longue durée of Moroccan Muslim–Jewish relations, state-building, and the tensions of “Moroccan Jewishness” across the twentieth century. Through the challenges of colonialism and the question of Moroccan Jewish political belonging, the figures in The Sultan’s Communists are simultaneously exceptional and emblematic, disrupting and nuancing modern Jewish history and modern MENA history, charting the transformation of a premodern paradigm of power relations into the present. Theirs is a seemingly paradoxical tale of Communist Jewish nationalists in a Muslim monarchy, of continued Jewish life in the MENA a fter the establishment of Israel and of Moroccan inde pendence. Such stories are needed more than ever to remember the contingent nature of history, the fickleness of affinities, and that the world of today rests on a prismatic array of past political possibilities.
l CHAP TER 1 '
C H O I C ES : FA S C I S M A N D A N T I - F A S C I S M I N I N T ERWA R M O RO CCO
Effective and precise monitoring is the best way . . . to
put an end to the Francophobe propaganda that so often
interests the youth, to control, direct and strengthen Jewish loyalty.
—French Protectorate Officer’s report, July 7, 1933
In June 1936, La Presse Marocaine reported that a group of Moroccan Jewish “red falcons” sporting matching scarlet ties aggressively heckled passersby at a Casablanca train station. The hecklers reportedly “amused themselves by screaming in p eoples’ f aces.” This was not an isolated incident. The newspaper reported that the previous evening, Moroccan Jewish members of the Popu lar Front (the interwar political strategy uniting competing leftist factions in the name of fighting the spread of fascism) had been party to a mass protest outside the State Bank of Morocco. When a police officer “requested” that the crowd disperse, a Jewish protestor “impudently” cried out, “We have the right to be here!” The paper blamed “this intolerable occupation of the street” on the Popular Front’s “dangerous” and “revolutionary” propaganda in Morocco. The article accused a certain Léon René Sultan, a Jew from Algeria with French citizenship, for starting the ruckus. This same Léon Sultan had recently returned from Paris where he had demanded, as part of a delegation of European leftists, that the deeply unpopular Resident General Peyrouton
C hoices
21
of Morocco be fired from his post for his hostility toward Moroccan workers. Sultan even had the audacity to “arrogantly state that he was acting out of the purest and highest sentiment of patriotism, all while working frenetically to incite his coreligionists to violence against true patriots.” The writer assured readers that most Jews were “anguished” over the episode and “deplored” such flagrant disregard for French authority. Supposedly, t hose Jews endowed with “good sense” acknowledged such events to be the “odious work of one of their own, determined to push his brothers into internationalism, to upheaval, and above all to violence which could have terrible consequences.”1 In some ways, the article’s author was correct. Many Moroccan Jews had in fact rejected such flamboyant activism. Moroccan Jews in communication with colonial authorities utterly decried any form of politics that could call into question the loyalty and good behavior of Jews toward France. However, many more Moroccan Jews, even if not formally engaged in overt Communist demonstrations, w ere involved in other leftist organizations under the umbrella of the Moroccan branch of the leftist Popular Front. Coalitions of leftists across Europe and its colonies agreed (for the most part) to t able factional leftist infighting to combat the rising threat of fascism. In Morocco, the Popular Front held particular appeal for individuals who were concerned about anti-Semitism and determined to confront fascism at home and abroad. After all, Léon Blum (1872–1950) had recently been elected prime minister of France on a Popular Front party platform, a historic victory for the first Jew and the first Socialist to lead France. Notably, Moroccan Jews as well as a few Muslims were drawn to the Ligue internationale contre l’antisémitisme (International League Against Antisemitism; LICA), a Paris-based anti-fascist, anti-racist organization under the leadership of Bernard Lecache (1895–1968) allied with the Popular Front, as well as a cornucopia of leftist groups, including the Ligue des droits de l’homme (League for H uman Rights; LDH) and the Libre Pensée (Free Thought). These Moroccan branches of French leftist groups did not replicate the internecine squabbles among factions of Popular Front parties elsewhere, particularly in France or in Spain. Spain also had recently elected a Popular Front government, only to become engulfed in civil war that same summer of 1936. At the same time, events in the Levant, including violence in British Mandate Palestine connected to pan-Arab and pan-Islamic movements, mattered for the development of Moroccan
2 2 C hapter 1
nationalism. Moroccan nationalist connections to such movements heightened tensions among Moroccan Muslims and Jews. Regardless of religious identity, Moroccans found themselves in the midst of local and international upheaval, questioning their place in the traditional Moroccan state apparatus within the context of French and Spanish colonialism. Two treaties in 1912 established formal French and Spanish protectorates over Morocco, with Spain receiving a smaller, northern stretch of territory and France ruling over the majority of Moroccan territory. Tangier became an international zone. This disruption of traditional power relationships enabled an array of political choices and opportunities for Moroccans. While colonial authorities propped up the sultan and his symbolic power in a bid for legitimacy, the a ctual power of the makhzan (an Arabic term for the central Moroccan authorities embodied in the sultan) was greatly diminished. All Moroccans, w hether Muslim or Jewish, recalibrated their relationships with each other, with colonial authorities, and with the influx of European settlers from the continent or other parts of the French Empire—above all those from Algeria. Newcomers to Morocco from French Algeria included the e arlier referenced Léon René Sultan (1905–1945), an Algerian Jewish lawyer with a practice in Casablanca, who was a committed Communist with French citizenship (as was the case for most Algerian Jews), but who also participated in Zionist fundraising and sports campaigns. At the same time, tremendous demographic shifts were taking place within Morocco itself, as massive rural-to-urban migration for work opportunities contributed to the rapid growth of Casablanca and other industrial cities. It was along the docks, railroads, mines, and factories of the colonial industrial apparatus that Moroccans, Algerians, and Europeans worked side by side and began to forge a leftist solidarity movement based on social class and universalist ideals that would eventually blossom into the Moroccan Communist Party (PCM). For Moroccan Jews, the primary political trajectories of the interwar period included “Alliancism,” a type of Francophile republicanism that grew out of the schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle; Zionism, itself an umbrella term for a wide variety of ideas and interpretations relating to the goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine and the historic Land of Israel; and Popular Front-leftist activism that included the Moroccan Communist Party and the LICA. These Jewish political movements were fluid and overlap-
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ping during the interwar period—they were prime choices at a Popular Front ideological buffet. Such fluidity is apparent in Léon René Sultan, a Jew, a French citizen of Algeria, a devoted Communist, and a Zionist who proved to be critical in the longue durée of the PCM and in recruiting Moroccan Jews. Moroccan nationalist movements also grew during the interwar period, most notably the Comité d’Action Marocaine (Moroccan Action Committee; CAM), the precursor to the Istiqlal (Independence) Party that would be central to the achievement of independence in 1956.2 Members of the CAM, the PCM, and other leftist groups frequently overlapped at political and social gatherings, much to the chagrin of protectorate authorities seeking to prevent Moroccan–European solidarity at all costs u nder the pretense of preserving the sultan’s authority. Political options w ere diverse and overlapping for all Moroccans during the interwar period. It was possible in the interwar period for a Jew to be si multaneously a loyalist of France and its colonial project, a Communist, and a Zionist; for Muslims, one could likewise be a Communist, a nationalist, pro-France, and drawn to pan-Islamic movements. Ideological fluidity found a common focus in anti-fascist activism. Such fluidity was due in part to regional wars, the development of new industries, and massive demographic upheaval. All of t hese factors would be critical for the development of a multivariable Jewish politics of belonging. The Spanish connection, both in terms of workers arriving in Morocco before the Spanish Civil War and refugees after, was a distinguishing component of the left in Morocco relative to other locations throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Further, the relative ease with which Algerian leftist transplants worked together and propagandized in Morocco contributed greatly to the development of an indigenous Moroccan left.3 The development of the Popular Front strategy to combat fascism in Europe and its colonies served as the intersection of many different strains of Jewish and Muslim politics in Morocco u nder the banner of anti-fascism and human rights. The interwar period in Morocco, particularly the 1930s, has not received sufficient scholarly attention u ntil quite recently. Consequently, it is often poorly understood. This chapter presents new sources for understanding the complexity and fluidity of Moroccan political life during the interwar period, for Jews and Muslims alike. In so d oing, it pushes against teleological
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understandings of the Moroccan interwar period as a mere antechamber to the dramatic events of the Second World War and recovers a time defined by overlapping political imaginaries. While so many narratives of Moroccan Jewish history are overshadowed by the eventual mass emigration of the 1950s and 1960s, an examination of Moroccan Jewish politics during the interwar period reveals the radical roots of Moroccan Jewish nationalism and politics of belonging. A number of forces worked together to radicalize a significant number of Moroccan Jews. These forces were quite international in scope and included the rise of fascism, Nazism, Arab nationalism, and anti-Semitism. The political choices Moroccan Jews made during the 1920s and 1930s laid the groundwork for eventual Jewish involvement in the Moroccan anticolonial movement; these choices also shed light on an era of Moroccan history that has been long obscured. The interwar period in Morocco was thus characterized by choices: Jews debated and negotiated their relationships to the state, to fellow Jews around the world, and to fellow Moroccans. At the same time, the fledging Communist Party of Morocco pondered w hether it was a Moroccan party or a French party, and w hether it was European or inclusive of indigenous Moroccans and sharing in their goals; Moroccan Muslims navigated their own disempowerment by the colonial state, the beginnings of national liberation politics, and new visions of Moroccan futures. The one future that all on the left could agree on was one without fascism. Fear of fascist domination was the glue that bound leftist Jews, Muslims, and European workers in Morocco in a common purpose. The resulting Communist Party, within the Popular Front apparatus, would become the organ ization through which leftist Moroccan Jews and Muslims could act against colonialism, fascism, and anti-Semitism. These years of ambiguous makhzan authority—while theoretically it was still sovereign, in reality the French co- opted the makhzan as an instrument of colonialism—were the roots of the PCM that would, over time, steadily Moroccanize and become a prominent avenue for Moroccan Jewish political expression and patriotism. At the same time, the fluidity of the Popular Front era in Morocco would give way to hardened political trajectories during the postwar period, compelling all Moroccans to decide among the cornucopia of choices available during the interwar period. Over time, for those Jews who chose to remain
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in Morocco and participate alongside their compatriots in the Moroccan national liberation movement and subsequent nation-building project, the Communist Party would become the most appealing option. During the interwar period, Communism was one of many overlapping choices in imagining a future Morocco and the Jewish place within it.
Demographics and Industries
Although the protectorate had been established in the holy city of Fez in 1912, it was Casablanca that became the center of political change in Morocco. This new port city was an expansion of the small fishing village of Anfa.4 By the 1920s, Casablanca was a colonial boomtown, buoyed by the construction of the port, railways and stations, colonial offices, grand boulevards, and more.5 Casablanca rapidly became Morocco’s most populous and most industrialized city, drawing international companies and prompting large construction projects.6 It attracted workers from across the Mediterranean—largely from France, Spain, and Italy—and catalyzed a tremendous rural–urban migration among indigenous Moroccan Jews and Muslims. This rural–urban migration was not only caused by a burgeoning increase in employment opportunities; it was also a consequence of a growing colonial infrastructure that disrupted overland trade routes in favor of new coastal or rail routes.7 With these developments, the inland cities of Fez, Marrakesh, and Meknes—all former imperial capitals—suffered while coastal cities like Casablanca and the administrative capital of Rabat flourished.8 This period also brought about changes for the workers of Morocco, including grave inequalities between Moroccans and Europeans that would, over time, catalyze labor organizing and leftist solidarity. As former routes of trade w ere disrupted, so w ere the professional opportunities of artisans, craftsmen, merchants, and middlemen. While Moroccans converged on new urban centers, a surge of European settlers also arrived after the First World War, bringing leftist and rightest political ideologies and literature with them.9 In addition to creating a boom in infrastructural work, protectorate authorities founded the Sharifian10 Office of Phosphates (Office Chérifien des Phosphates; OCP) in 1920 to exploit Morocco’s wealth of this natural resource. The city of Khouribga and its environs—inland and just southeast of Casablanca—were home to an enormous supply of phosphates. Khouribga
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mining operations became one of the protectorate’s most lucrative enterprises.11 Access to the mines and shipping of phosphates required reliable rail links to Casablanca and an army of workers. European miners were paid at a higher rate than Moroccans, with Moroccans receiving, on average, one- third the amount Europeans were paid.12 Even Europeans were not formally allowed to unionize until after the election of the Popular Front government in France in 1936, forming instead “Amicales” and other labor organizations. Moroccans w ere explicitly prohibited from joining such groups. However, there was little that protectorate officials could do to enforce this prohibition. The European workers who arrived in Morocco in droves following the First World War brought their ideological affinities with them. At the same time, the approximately 34,000 Moroccan workers who had replaced French industrial labor during the war returned to Morocco in 1919 having participated in organized labor practices and embraced leftist political ideologies.13 Moroccan branches of the French Confédération générale du travail (General L abor Confederation; CGT) w ere established, and Moroccan workers increasingly gravitated to them. Morocco’s first labor organization—the Association générale (General Association; AG)—had been founded in 1919, just two years after the Russian Revolution in 1917. When the Rif War (1920–1926) broke out in northern Spanish Morocco, French troops became involved in extinguishing the nationalist uprising (the Riffians under Abdelkrim al-Khattabi had been able to establish a short-lived independent Riffian Republic). Members of the French Communist Party in Paris demonstrated in the thousands against the conflict, in the form of marches, meetings, and other gatherings. All of this activity led ultimately to the creation of a Moroccan branch of the French Communist Party that would, over time, Moroccanize as the party itself became a Moroccan nationalist organization.14 The Rif War politicized Moroccans and brought them into radical national liberation politics in touch with nationalist movements in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. At the same time, the war also galvanized French leftists following France’s entry into the war, energizing the French Communist Party. Ultimately, the Rif War set the stage for the formalization of an indigenous Communist politics in Morocco. There w ere approximately 104,700 Europeans (largely French, Italian, and Spanish, many of whom had first transited through Algeria before arriving in Morocco) in Morocco by 1930.15 Most of t hese immigrants lived in Casa-
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blanca, Rabat, and Oujda on Morocco’s border with Algeria. The number of Europeans rapidly increased throughout the interwar period, reaching 172,000 just one year later in 1931. Protectorate officials legally barred Moroccan workers from joining European labor organizations, but it would only be a m atter of time before Moroccans, working alongside Europeans in the mines, became inspired and radicalized, which was a profound fear felt by protectorate authorities.16 As the Moroccan landscape became transformed by the tracks, pits, avenues, and towers of industry, rural–urban migration accelerated. L abor organizing grew in tandem with such industrial projects, developing into an array of political affiliations including, over time, the Communist Party of Morocco. The stock market crash of 1929 hit Morocco hard, cutting pay and jobs across all industries.17 Further, at that time, many of the large-scale colonial construction projects w ere nearing completion, which would soon leave hundreds, if not thousands, of Moroccans unemployed and desperate. Casablanca’s grand boulevards and elegant syncretic Maghribi-French apartment buildings were neither affordable nor intended for Moroccan workers—who, instead, formed bidonvilles (shanty towns) on the outskirts of the city.18 Albert Ayache estimated that half of the Moroccan population of Casablanca lived in bidonvilles in 1934.19 An employee of the French colonial administration, Robert Montagne once described Morocco during the interwar period as “the pride of France . . . out of an old dominion of Islam, entombed timelessly for centuries, a modern State crisscrossed with paved roads and rail tracks.”20 While these railroads, ports, mines and paved roads may have been part of the colonial infrastructure, they were also the roots of anticolonial, class-based agitation and syndicalism and became a prime site for the radicalization of the populace. Resident General Theodore Steeg had sought to mitigate the possibility of such politicization with the installation of three “colleges” to advise the protectorate government council in 1926. The first represented agricultural matters; the second, business interests; the third was a catch-all complaints court, meant to represent the troubles of the (European) people in direct communication with the council of the Resident General.21 A disproportionate number of leftists of many stripes, including avid Socialists and labor organizers, w ere elected to the third college. The college system, however, was not effective in diffusing leftist agitation. Cross-leftist demonstrations grew
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in the late 1920s, including in front of the American Consulate in Casablanca in August 1927 in protest of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, resulting in the deportation of at least one French militant and prison sentences for several others.22 With the rise of fascism in Europe and among European settlers across North Africa, leftist labor and political alliances transitioned into po litical organizations with overlapping memberships and a common cause.
Interwar Jewish Life
Moroccan Jews faced three prevailing political choices during the interwar period: “Alliancism,” in which Jews w ere firmly committed to the notions of citizenship and emancipation as espoused by the Alliance Israélite Universelle; religious, as well as secular, Zionism; and leftist political activism.23 These choices were by no means mutually exclusive and in many cases overlapped. Léon René Sultan, whose story of rabble-rousing opened this chapter, exemplifies this political fluidity. Léon René Sultan held ideological affiliations that w ere perfectly compatible during the interwar period in Morocco. Sultan was a staunch believer in the universalist virtues of French republicanism, an ardent Communist, and a supporter of the Zionist goals of Jewish cultural “renaissance.”24 Like other Jewish activists, Moroccan Jews in contact with the administration (notably Yahia Zagury, inspector of Jewish institutions for the French Protectorate, and functionaries in the Alliance Israélite Universelle) treated Sultan with suspicion. They feared that any type of Jewish political activism might lead to reprisals and a loss of official f avor. For most Moroccan Jewish leaders, figures like Léon Sultan represented liabilities for communal stability. Léon Sultan was born in Constantine, Algeria, on September 13, 1905, but precious little information is available concerning his life before he arrived in Casablanca in 1929. What is available indicates that his father worked for the local French military establishment and that Léon was the eldest of eight children.25 He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Algiers in 1926.26 His French citizenship by dint of the 1870 Crémieux Decree allowed him significant mobility in political movements in Casablanca. Whereas indigenous Moroccan Jews and Muslims were legally prohibited from attending European leftist meetings, Léon Sultan’s command of French and Arabic, connections with the local Jewish community, and European
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f ig ur e 2 . Undated photograph of Léon René Sultan, featured on 1946 PCM pamphlet. Source: Archives of the Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme (PPS).
classification enabled him to propagandize among Moroccan Jews and Muslims in Casablanca.27 His early intellectual work, in the form of his law thesis, was predicated on a notion of universal h uman rights and a defense of French republicanism.28 Sultan, like many other Algerian Jews, arrived in Morocco already politically radicalized. During the interwar period, he was a thorn in the side of protectorate authorities, as well as members of the Jewish community who sought to keep a low profile and demonstrate loyalty to France (Figure 2).
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Loyalty to France, however, did not translate into citizenship for Moroccan Jews. Although most Algerian Jews had been granted French citizenship pursuant to the 1870 Crémieux Decree, Jews of the French Protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco mostly retained Tunisian and Moroccan nationality.29 Some Moroccan Jews actively sought French citizenship but were denied it on the grounds that such a move might anger the Muslim-majority population and bolster the allegation that French Protectorate forces treated Jews preferentially and sought to divorce them from their Muslim compatriots.30 Growing anti-Semitism in Morocco and fear of fascism, as well as solidarity in the face of anti-Semitism in Europe, politicized Moroccan Jews and ultimately would propel them to join leftist groups that would include the Communist Party. The Alliance Israélite Universelle was the first avenue of Moroccan Jewish politicization. Established in Paris in 1860, the Alliance sought to “regenerate” the Jews of the Muslim world to prepare them for the rights and obligations of citizenship per the French emancipationist model. The Alliance tried to accomplish this goal by establishing a vast network of schools from Morocco to Iran and everywhere in between, in which the language of instruction was French and students were to be Gallicized. In so doing, the Alliance ultimately served to widen the gulf between Jews and their Muslim and Christian compatriots in the MENA, not close it in the name of a common citizenship. Although the Alliance was decidedly not intended to serve as a politicizing force in Jews’ lives, the teachers in its schools, themselves typically graduates of the system, were often politically active, frequently awakening the political consciousness of their students. The Alliance system as a whole worked, for the most part, as another arm of the French colonial apparatus in Morocco and Tunisia (it was less influential in Algeria). Officially, the Alliance was adamantly opposed to Zionism or any kind of political agitation that was not wholly in line with French emancipationist republicanism. However, the very fact of the Alliance’s existence within colonial territory—wading in the thorny relations of Jews, Muslims, and the colonial metropole—necessarily rendered the organization a dominant f actor in Moroccan Jewish political and cultural life. The Alliance acculturated generations of Moroccan Jews, teaching them to identify, infamously, with “our ancestors the Gauls,” as well as to appreciate French poetry, geography, and
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history.31 On a more informal level, the Alliance created social networks, such as alumni associations that would include leading members of the Moroccan Jewish community tackling the larger political issues of the day, scouting organizations, and youth clubs. The Alliance aimed to reshape Moroccan Jewish political, social, and cultural life along the aspirational lines of French Jewish emancipation. In so doing, it unintentionally politicized Moroccan Jews, rendering them acutely aware of their peculiar place at the interstices of Moroccan, French, and Jewish social and political worlds.32 The second political choice available to Moroccan Jews of the interwar period was Zionism. Zionism was itself relatively nascent and was not popu lar in most of Europe where it originated in the nineteenth century, let alone in the M iddle East and North Africa. That said, there w ere Zionist associations in Morocco at the beginning of the twentieth century, connecting Zionists in London to Moroccan Jews in places like Essaouira (Mogador) and elsewhere with strong transnational Jewish connections. The first Zionist organizations were established in the Moroccan cities of Essaouira and Tetuan shortly after the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897. According to Mohammed Kenbib, the Moroccan Jews who joined early Zionist organizations interpreted Zionism through the lens of messianic Judaism and redemption of the Jewish p eople to Eretz Israel.33 Further, the vast majority of Moroccans, including Jews, for the majority of the twentieth century were quite poor, and Zionist promises of improved economic and political circumstances were appealing. Zionism was not monolithic in Morocco; like all Moroccan Jewish political affiliations, it varied by context. For instance, Zionism manifested in the purchase of shekels, membership in the World Zionist Organization, and in social clubs among Moroccan Jews with no intention of emigration u ntil much later. The diverse Jewish populations in Morocco had diverse approaches to Zionism. Zionism took a cultural and social cast that would grow in popularity in Morocco following the Second World War; during the interwar period it was primarily a cultural expression of Jewish pride and international Jewish identification.34 Both the Alliance and the protectorate authorities roundly disapproved of Zionism, along with any political activity that might disrupt the desired apolitical peace. Events in Palestine, including the 1929 revolt and subsequent troubles tied to regional pan-Arab and pan-Islamist movements,
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would reverberate in Morocco, prompting an enduring conflation of Zionism and Jewishness among Moroccan Muslims that would intensify in later decades. One of the most widespread views was propagated by l’Avenir Illustré (The Illustrated F uture), a pro-Zionist, widely read Moroccan Jewish publication founded by Jonathan Thursz (1895–1976), a Polish-born Jew who moved to Morocco in 1927. During the interwar period, l’Avenir Illustré exhorted Moroccan Jews to buy shekels to support the Jewish homeland.35 However, the paper did not counsel emigration for Moroccan Jews, instead urging them to maintain their allegiance to France and embrace a kind of Zionism that would not “deracinate” them from their “national foundations and country,” meaning Morocco.36 Writers for l’Avenir Illustré even criticized Zionism as a “utopian project,” which was fine to support financially, but only if such support would not damage Moroccan Jewish–Muslim relations.37 As frequent contributor Fernand Corcós once wrote in a piece for the paper (revealingly titled “Jewish Loyalty”),“We present Zionism as it is, not as a call for Jews to immigrate to Palestine, but as a doctrine that for the greater progress of Humanity [capitalization in original] seeks to establish an additional spiritual and ethnic homeland.”38 Corcós admonished readers to do nothing to disrupt intercommunal relations and to follow the laws of the Residential and Moroccan authorities. For the most part, l’Avenir Illustré organized and publicized social gatherings including balls and teas, as well as lectures and articles regarding events in the wider Jewish world with a focus on Palestine. At the same time, Moroccan nationalist papers urged Muslims to defend the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem from Zionist encroachment, prompting an identification of Moroccan Muslims with the Palestinian Arab cause. Sectarian conflict regarding Palestine in far- removed Morocco also contributed to growing political tensions in the interwar period. As a result, pan-Arab tracts collapsing Zionism with Judaism spread, which would further entrench a sense that Jews were somehow not “truly” Moroccan. The third major avenue of Jewish interwar political engagement came through the LICA and its ties to the Popular Front. LICA was a Paris-based anti-fascist, anti-racist organization under the leadership of French Jewish activist Bernard Lecache (1895–1968); it was founded in 1927 as the League
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Against Pogroms before changing names in 1929. The LICA became active across North Africa during the 1930s following the Constantine riots of 1934, with Bernard Lecache going on extensive speaking tours and creating LICA chapters in every major North African city. As Aomar Boum has written, LICA would unite Jews and Muslims across North Africa against the rising threat of fascism.39 Boum argues that conflict in Palestine and other international events interfered with such solidarity, fracturing Moroccan interconfessional efforts in response to centripetal nationalist and internationalist agendas. Yet, an influential minority of North African Muslim élites joined their Jewish compatriots in the fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism within the ranks of LICA. LICA, in turn, was a member organ ization of the Popular Front umbrella that would include European and Moroccan Socialists, Communists, and other labor-oriented political groups. As anti-Semitism and fascist sympathies grew in Morocco, Jews joined the LICA in droves. Beginning in the 1930s, Jews encountered anti-fascist and anti-racist European members of labor organizations and leftist groups, as well as like-minded Muslims, at LICA meetings. These alliances would be critical in the later formation of the Moroccan Communist Party as a leftist national liberation organization. The protectorate authorities worried about Jewish political activism in labor u nions, leftist groups, and nationalist circles. Above all, protectorate authorities sought to keep the “loyalty” of the Jews to France, engendered through the educational system of the Alliance. Police reports through the interwar period reflect a number of Moroccan Jewish names on the roster of leftist organizations that were involved in phosphate mining and railroad construction. Algerian Jews including Léon René Sultan also migrated to Morocco for work opportunities; their names and points of origin w ere scrupulously noted by protectorate police forces.
Moroccan Nationalisms and Anti-Semitism
On February 24, 1930, Yahia Zagury, the inspector of Jewish institutions for the French Protectorate, reported that two Jewish students of an Alliance Israélite Universelle school in Casablanca were struck by stones and injured on their way back to school from a lunch break, but not gravely so. He complained that the Jewish students and their classmates had grossly
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exaggerated the incident in asserting that it was some sort of large-scale attack, which prompted their parents to converge in a wrathful mass outside the school. The school was on Krantz Street, close to a Muslim school, and it was assumed that students from the Muslim school had struck the two Alliance students. The furious parents, believing the Alliance teachers and administrators to be irresponsible custodians of their children in the face of physical danger, tried to bring their children home with them at once. Then, the parents of the Muslim students arrived. The directors of both the Jewish and Muslim schools sought to calm the parents, but a fight between the groups of parents broke out. “With the help of a police officer,” wrote Zagury, “I was able to get the crowd in front of the schools to see reason and to go back home. . . . I sent a circular to the synagogues, recommending to Jewish families that in the future they remain calm and avoid . . . any type of friction between themselves and the other elements of the local population.”40 Three years later, while there was no uniformly consistent atmosphere of hostility, tension had increased among Jews, Muslims, and Europeans in Morocco. For protectorate officials, the prospect of Jewish and Muslim joint activity in response to tension with Europeans was to be avoided at all costs. An official report from an officer of the Residency in July 1933 stated, [The Jewish community] is a very intelligent and active segment of the popu-
lation. Its youth suffers; it currently has shown the tendency to join up with a young Muslim party still forming in order to creation a Moroccan national party [unclear which one]. This is a danger whose gravity must not be exag-
gerated but would be imprudent to ignore. . . . International events can occur
which could facilitate exploitation of these currents and could, in the midst of conflict, become much worse. . . . On the whole, the Jewish population is
deeply indebted to France, for having, a fter twenty years of the protectorate, assured the security of property and family. . . . We must strengthen these
sentiments. A tighter connection between the Communities and the Government, effective and precise monitoring is the best way . . . to put an end
to the Francophobe propaganda that so often interests the youth, to control, direct and strengthen Jewish loyalty.41
This report highlights the risk of solidarity and political action between the two populations, and not the risk of increased violence or antipathy. “Inter-
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national events” had indeed politicized Jews and Muslims in Morocco; t hese events included the First World War and the lack of increased rights or re spect for returning colonial soldiers, the 1917 Russian Revolution, the establishment of the League of Nations and the Mandates system, the Rif War, the stock market crash of 1929, the revolts in Jerusalem of the same year, and the dramatic rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe. The French Protectorate policy sought to segment volatile populations in order to foster vertical relationships to the French Empire and not horizontal bonds of solidarity among colonial subjects. Interestingly, the author of this report made no claim to be able to sway Muslims away from “Francophobe propaganda”— only Jews. Jews, the author assumed, were overall “loyal” and “indebted” to France, echoing the “civilizing mission” language common at the time. The matter at hand, then, was for the protectorate authorities to keep the Jews loyal, grateful, and obedient to France. Jews were at a tipping point, dangerously close to choosing separatist nationalism and turning against France. For Moroccan Muslims, such a nationalist tipping point had already emerged in 1930, adding yet more existential weight to the question of Moroccan national identity and the place of minorities within it.42 The Berber dahir of May 16, 1930, sparked the first major nationalist mass movement in Morocco. Dahirs, or “decrees” in Arabic, were typically penned by French officials and given to the sultan to sign for the nominal appearance of authority.43 Since the nineteenth century, French imperialists had distinguished Arabs and Berbers from one another, asserting that Arabs were “true” Muslims, whereas Berbers w ere more akin to Europeans as inheritors of the Roman-Latin legacy in North Africa, at least according to prevailing racial colonial “logic.”44 This distinction, to a large degree, was intended to justify the French presence in North Africa as fellow “Latins.”45 The 1930 Berber dahir, at first blush, was “a short, innocuous document which the French claimed merely tidied up some legal points having to do with the system of justice in the Berber lands.”46 In truth, it was a fig leaf that removed Berber criminal cases from the purview of Islamic law courts to be adjudicated in French courts. Nationalists interpreted this as an infringement of the sultan’s authority and the purported sovereignty of Morocco.47 Further, as Jonathan Wyrtzen has written, the Berber dahir “constituted an integral threat to a Moroccan imagined national community unified over a millennium by Islam
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and by Arabization.”48 “Berbers” and “Arabs” alike vehemently rejected the dahir. For the most part, it was Arab nationalist elites who organized the subsequent protests. Such protests often took the form of Latif prayers (invoked in times of distress) and sparked Moroccan nationalist collective action, concentrated in the personage of the famous Allal al-Fassi, hero of Moroccan nationalism and the movement for independence. Mosques became spaces of renewed political agitation, and while Jews w ere not excluded from this growing political resistance to France, Moroccan nationalism was emerging to protect Moroccan Islam from French Christian threat.49 Additionally, the Rif War had already increased Moroccan nationalist contacts, particularly in northern Spanish Morocco, with pan-Arabists and pan-Islamic nationalists in Egypt and the Levant. A late December 1930 report for the Paris chief of police warned of creeping German propaganda in the Maghrib.50 The reporting officer noted that the increasingly popular (but not yet in power) Nazi Party had recently published a statement from a certain “Committee for the Defense of North Africa.” 51 According to French intelligence, the Nazi Party had established this committee and was “without a doubt” connected to the Syrian- Palestinian-Maghribi Committee and to the famous Emir Shakib Arslan’s Academy in Lausanne. Emir Shakib Arslan (1869–1946) was one of the most prominent leaders of pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism of the interwar period.52 The reporting officer also was worried that these organizations had received backing from fascist Italy. Arslan had served as the representative of the Syro-Palestinian delegation at the League of Nations, and advocated vociferously for Muslim and Arab solidarity and national independence movements.53 Indeed, the emir himself had previously authored a denunciation of the 1930 Berber dahir in Morocco, as it sought “to pit the Berber and Arab blocs against one another and to begin the Christianization of the former.” 54 Arslan also condemned France for its use of colonial soldiers to fight its wars and warned that France would do the same again in a coming conflict, exploiting North African Muslims while denying them rights and recognition.55 Newspapers and leaflets from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and across North Africa circulated among Moroccan students in Paris and other French universities and made their way to Morocco despite their formal prohibition. Commu-
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nist papers, l’Humanité (Humanity) in particular, w ere also widely and easily available in Morocco, despite a ban on their dissemination. In June 1930, Shakib Arslan visited France and Spain, where he met with Moroccan nationalists Muhammad al-Fassi and Ahmad Belafrej.56 At the same time, Moroccan nationalists Muhammad Lyazidi, Allal al-Fassi, and Muhammad Hassan al-O uezzani studied the methods and ideology of the French Communist Party (Parti communiste français; PCF), occasionally attending meetings and making connections with the noted Algerian Communist Messali Hadj.57 Meanwhile, events in the Levant, particularly in the Syrian and Palestinian Mandates, complicated pan-Arab and pan-Islamic politics.58 Hajj Amin al-Husseini (1895–1974), the G rand Mufti of Jerusalem u nder the British Mandate over Palestine, convened a World Islamic Congress in December 1931 that opposed Zionism and bolstered a vision of pan-Arab, pan-Islamic solidarity. French Protectorate authorities in Morocco credited the 1931 congress with a spike in anti-Semitic activity across North Africa.59 As John P. Halstead notes, Moroccan nationalisms in the interwar period were notable for their “eclecticism,” drawing on pan-Arab and pan-Islamist sources and figures in Egypt and Syria, leftist universalist agitation in France and Spain, and fascist support from Germany and Italy.60 Just as Moroccan Jewish visions for their future involved manifold overlapping and eventually contradictory ideological stances, the same was true for more popular forms of Moroccan nationalism that were typically predicated on some kind of Muslim identity. Unlike Moroccan Jewish options, fascism was also on the table, as the Nazi Party and fascist Italy supported General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War in part as a means to extend influence in Morocco.61 This climate ultimately served to further politicize Moroccan Jews, as well as Muslims, particularly within the framework of Léon Blum’s Popular Front government and related organizations in Morocco. Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, which had profound consequences for politics in the MENA. German and Italian propaganda spread into Morocco, promising support for nationalists against French and British rule. At the same time, Moroccan Jews were painfully aware of the rise of anti-Semitism and fascism in Europe, and tensions rose
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regarding their perceived place of privilege and even “arrogance” within the French colonial hierarchy. Anti-French sentiment dovetailed precariously with anti-Semitism, leaving Jews to be accused as colonial collaborators. In July 1933, l’Union Marocaine (The Moroccan Union), a Jewish newspaper in Morocco established by Tunisian Jew and Alliance representative Elie Nataf, republished with alarm an article titled “The Jews and Us,” originally published in l’Afrique du Nord Illustrée (North Africa Illustrated), a right- wing journal.62 The piece critiqued Moroccan Jews for being “uppity” and not bowing and scraping sufficiently to France, their “savior.” In the same month, protectorate security authorities reported a stark uptick in violence between Jews and Muslims in Casablanca.63 These incidents usually involved battles between “drunk natives,” including rock throwing and fist-fights, sometimes resulting in death and store closures in the Jewish quarter. In one report, the officer stated that Jews w ere typically the aggressors; he cited a recent incident in which twenty soldiers had been stationed near the Jewish quarter to prevent further violent incidents, but that “Jewish women standing in the windows of a nearby house made provocative gestures at Arabs walking by, b ecause they w ere safe at the moment. I immediately closed the windows of this building.” He warned of future incidents and simmering resentment. Just a few days later, the same reporting officer indicated that “the situation between Muslims and Jews remains very tense in Casablanca and the calm that seems to prevail at this time is flimsy; it would take the smallest pretext to provoke” an incident. Rumors abounded of Muslims meeting to plan a coordinated attack on the Jews; however, the officer reminded his readers that Jews had insulted the Prophet Muhammad in the past and demonstrated a “lack of respect toward Islam.” Rumors proliferated that the Germans would help Muslims organize an attack against the Jews and that Jews sought to immigrate to Palestine for fear of a “pogrom.”64 Meanwhile, the Alliance Israélite Universelle continued to do its utmost to engender a love of France and French culture through Jewish education. On June 19, 1933, a report by Prosper Cohen of the AIU school in Meknes underscored rising tensions, particularly with regard to the rise of Nazi Germany and its ideological influence in Morocco. Cohen wrote that the history of Muslim–Jewish relations in Morocco had been, on the w hole, peaceful, albeit punctuated with moments of conflict. Indeed, “Jews and Arabs have
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continued to live side by side, very often in true intimacy.” This had recently changed, Cohen asserted, in response to Hitler’s rise to power and Moroccan Jewish communal solidarity with their beleaguered German coreligionists. Cohen informed the Alliance director in Paris that violence between Jews and Muslims had broken out with more frequency and with greater vitriol starting around Passover 1933; it required French police intervention and often resulted in arrests, not only in Meknes but in particular around Casablanca and Rabat—in Rabat the Jews were forcibly shut into the mellah for their own protection.65 “They say that t hese terrible incidents are the result of Hitler’s propaganda,” wrote Cohen. Cohen worried that it would be next to impossible to prevent the further dissemination of Nazi propaganda in North Africa and that further conflict was inevitable. Events in the metropole also contributed to tensions in Morocco. On February 6 and 7, 1934, a coalition of xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and monarchist groups (including Croix de Feu, Action Française, and Mouvement Franciste) staged a demonstration in Paris that culminated in a riot with political ramifications across France and its colonies. The demonstration had been organized in response to the so-called Stavisky affair, in which Alexandre Stavisky, a Russian Jewish immigrant to France, had been caught in an extensive financial scandal in 1933. Stavisky was widely vilified for his connections to high-profile political and social figures, spurring anti-Semitic outrage and violence. He was killed in mysterious circumstances in 1934, and because government ministers sought to quiet the affair, allegations of government complicity in Stavisky’s fraud abounded.66 In the wake of these riots, French leftists, including members of the SFIO (Section française de l’internationale ouvrière; French section of the Workers’ International) and the French Communist Party, decried anti- Semitism and intensified their anti-fascist and anti-racist activism. The SFIO had been formally established in Morocco in 1933 and began to organize to combat fascism in France and in French colonies.67 French, Spanish, and Italian Socialists and Communists combined forces and published articles in Maroc Socialiste (Socialist Morocco), a French-language leftist newspaper, with smaller, subregional-affiliated Socialist papers in every major city.68 Its first issue came out on March 17, 1934, just over a month a fter the riots of February 6–7.69 Members of the French left had supported the newly formed
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Moroccan nationalist organization, Comité d’Action Marocaine (Committee for Moroccan Action; CAM), from its inception; Karl Marx’s grand son, Robert-Jean Longuet, and the review Maghreb (cofounded with Anis Balafrej), published out of Paris strongly supported the new organization.70 When the nationalist CAM published its plan for reforms in 1934, the SFIO endorsed them and published them in Maroc Socialiste.71 On a day of coordinated action on December 1, 1934, a coalition of French leftists and a few Moroccans presented the demands to officials in Paris while Moroccan nationalists simultaneously presented the document to Resident General Ponsot—the original Arabic edition had been printed in Cairo and circulated three months e arlier.72 The CAM reforms called for equal rights and responsibilities for Moroccan Muslims and Jews, encouraging a unified Moroccan nation within an Arabo-Muslim cultural context and urging France to embrace reform but not yet calling for the end of the French Protectorate.73 In the following decades, relations between European leftist groups and Moroccan nationalists would become increasingly acrimonious, even a fter the Moroccanization of the PCM.74 Yet, during the interwar period, Moroccan nationalists and European Socialists and Communists exchanged ideas and even article space in newspapers. Further, while the CAM discussed Jewish inclusion and equality with Muslims in Morocco, its base and vision w ere predicated on Islam. At the same time that the CAM published its reform plan, Alliance teacher Prosper Cohen penned an alarming report concerning anti-Semitism in Morocco in 1934. He used the story of the Jewish holiday of Purim to indicate the growing dread: Hitler is among us. How strange to see the state of mind reigning among the
Jews here, created by Hitler’s arrival on the throne of barbarism. The name of this champion of collective and official crime is on everyone’s lips. Every
thing having to do with Hitler’s Germany, bad luck, an object or any person with material or moral prejudice, is given the name Hitler, the Haman of the
twentieth c entury. . . . These days on the holiday of Purim, one hears more frequently “Arur Hitler” [cursed be Hitler] than “Arur Haman” [cursed be
Haman]. . . . Recently, a new game has been introduced to Morocco: Russian
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billiards. . . . In the middle of the table is a pin, which, if it falls, means a loss. This pin has been baptized Hitler, because it is an unlucky object.75
Cohen’s report shares in a long tradition of Jews in many contexts invoking the “Hamans” of their time and hoping for deliverance from their current foes. Protectorate police reports demonstrate how close in contact the Moroccan Jewish community was with global Jewish efforts to help German Jews and combat fascism. Hitler was construed as the new Haman, the enemy of the Jews in the Purim story and holiday, and all evil, unlucky items were in turn named Hitler. In the games of daily life and its irritants, all obstacles w ere called Hitler, the antithesis of “civilization” as defined by the Alliance. At the same time, the Alliance inadvertently served as a politicizing space for Jewish engagement in Moroccan leftist organizations, which increased alongside rising national and international tensions. Above all, Jewish leftist political activism emerged in response to leftist calls for solidarity against fascism. Even holy sites and religious gatherings became potential sites of radicalism. In May 1934, the shrine of the Rabbi Amran Ben Diwan in Asjen, one of the holiest saintly figures among Moroccan Jews, became the site of political activity as well as protest. In May 1934, attendees at the annual pilgrimage (hillula) took advantage of the occasion to distribute LICA propaganda and materials encouraging a boycott of German products.76 Protectorate officials w ere alarmed that Jews w ere not behaving as the apolitical religious community they were expected to be and that they flouted explicit orders to keep politics out of religious spaces.77 Moroccan Jewish organizing efforts multiplied in response to increased anti-Semitism at home and abroad, including in neighboring Algeria. In Constantine, Algeria, August 3–5, 1934, mass violence broke out between Muslims and Jews, sparked by a Jew allegedly insulting Islam.78 Nothing similar took place in Morocco, although Jewish communal leaders feared as much.79 News of t hese events in French Algeria circulated around Morocco, intensifying an already anxious atmosphere. Moroccan Jews maintained close ties of family and friendship with Algerian Jews, and the border between Morocco and Algeria was quite porous. Leaders of the Moroccan Jewish community announced plans to raise funds to alleviate the suffering of their
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brethren in Constantine.80 Communist papers in France and North Africa decried the Constantine violence, emphasizing a discourse of universalism and common humanity. French Protectorate surveillance indicated a politicization of Moroccans in all directions, blaming a French political “contagion” among the “natives,” perhaps in reference to European anti-Semitism.81 Just a few weeks after the Constantine violence, the Jewish bookstore owned by the Hadida b rothers in Casablanca began selling copies of LICA’s newspaper, Le Droit de Vivre (The Right to Live).82 The same store also sold copies of l’Avenir Illustré, the pro-Zionist newspaper that urged Moroccan Jews to buy shekels and support the Yishuv in Palestine while publishing local news and organizing festivities.83 Before the Moroccanization of the left as a w hole, LICA would Moroccanize, with Moroccan Jews and Muslims serving as presidents of a number of different sections by the end of the 1930s. In this way, LICA served as a gateway to joining the Popular Front and, eventually, the Moroccan Communist Party. Meanwhile, Léon René Sultan, who would become the future leader of the Moroccan Communist Party, joined the Youth Socialists in Casablanca in 1934, alongside other similarly inclined Jews in Morocco.84 Just one month after the Constantine riots, simmering tensions in Morocco’s cities came to a boil. According to French Protectorate sources, Allal al-Fassi, a leader of the CAM and f uture leader of the Istiqlal Party, preached a sermon on September 1 regarding the “perfidious role that Jews played at the beginning of Islam” and accusing contemporary Moroccan Jews of unfair business dealings with Muslims.85 The next day, a fight broke out between Muslims and Jews in Casablanca that required police intervention. Jews became increasingly worried for their safety as the holiest day of the Jewish religious calendar, Yom Kippur, approached. The Jews of Casablanca requested enhanced police protection and permission to arm themselves in case of attack.86 In turn, rumors of Jews arming themselves led to Muslim allegations that the Jews were seeking vengeance on Muslims for the attacks in Constantine.87 All of this combined with rumors of a newly established “Popular League for Germanism in Morocco” in Germany, as well as a Nazi Party presence in Beirut, intensive Nazi propaganda efforts in Egypt and Palestine, and a devoted office of the Nazi Party for operations in foreign countries
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based in Hamburg.88 Yom Kippur passed without incident. Nevertheless, the Moroccan air was thick with rumors of creeping fascism and anti-Semitism. Newspapers w ere replete with warnings of a coming war.89 In addition to alarming news from the press, rumor had it that Spain had agreed to cede its Moroccan territory to Germany, that Germans w ere arriving in increasing numbers in Tangier, and that the Germans would soon invade Belgium. In the city of Salé, adjacent to Rabat in French Morocco, the following graffiti had been scrawled in crayon along the medina walls: “Long Live Chancellor Hitler, Down with France.” 90 In December 1934, French reports confirmed a growing presence of German propaganda across French North Africa and German cultivation of Moroccan nationalist figures in Paris; they proposed extra surveillance of a German agent, Hans Erich Haack, who had spread German propaganda among Muslims during a recent trip to Morocco.91 At the same time, Moroccan Muslims returning from the Hajj in Mecca came back with Arabic-language propaganda that called for the unity of Muslims in the Mashriq (East) and the Maghrib (West) in protecting the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and that warned against Jewish immigration.92 In February 1935, the office of the police in Paris, true to surveillance recommendations, followed five German agents in Berlin and reported they had departed for Tetuan in Spanish Morocco bearing “an important sum of money” intended for “nationalist propaganda in the Spanish zone.” 93 Shakib Arslan was in touch with German officers and had traveled to Rome and to Berlin on the fascist dime; on his return to Geneva he caught up with colleagues including a few North Africans who had attended a conference in Brussels titled “The Global Conference of Students Against War and Fascism,” underscoring the ideological fluidity of the moment.94 At the same time, other Moroccan nationalists, including Muhammed Fassi and M. H. Ouezzani, were close to Messali Hadj’s Étoile Nord-Africaine (North African Star, an Algerian nationalist organization with links to the French Communist Party and other leftist groups), the PCF, as well as the Comintern itself.95 Publications such as The Arab Nation made their way to Morocco and, with them, a diffusion of ideas. Articles in al-Salaam (an Arabic-language nationalist newspaper from Tetuan) in 1933 described Communism as an atheistic,
f ig ur e 3 . French map of “Pan-Islamic and Communist Indigenous Nationalist Activities in North Africa” from 1935. Source: Cote 1 M 759, Conseil départemental 13, Archives départementales des Bouches du Rhône, all rights reserved.
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destructive force that was antithetical to Islam and therefore could not serve the Moroccan national movement were also widely disseminated.96 In 1935, Moroccan Muslim nationalists of many stripes w ere in touch with e very kind of political ideology; ideologies circulated from Morocco, through Egypt— notably at the World Muslim Congress in Cairo—and the Levant, through Europe, and back again (Figure 3). Tracts, newspapers, books, and charismatic figures circulated on the same networks, provoking action and reaction, in a multitude of recombinant nationalisms that included contacts with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany as well as Communists.97 At the same time, the very same Léon Sultan who caused so much trou ble at the beginning of this chapter was serving as the head of the Moroccan Committee for the Maccabiad Games, a Zionist version of the Olympics to be held in Tel Aviv. In this capacity, Sultan published a recruitment call in the Moroccan Jewish community’s pro-Zionist newspaper, l’Avenir Illustré.98 In this call, Sultan struck a simultaneously Zionist and proud Moroccan nationalist note: “For the first time, thanks to the initiative of several prominent Casablancan figures, Morocco w ill be represented in Tel Aviv. . . . It is extremely important that Moroccan sports not be absent from Eretz-Israel, since sports teams from all over the world will participate in this enormous showing that will be at once rejuvenating and comforting.” Sultan indicated that recruitment efforts would take place all across Morocco and that so far a water polo team from Morocco was confirmed, which he hoped would soon be joined by tennis, boxing, and fencing teams. Sultan wrote, “In order to achieve this goal, the Committee urgently calls on all friends of Moroccan sports and friends of the Jewish Renaissance.” 99 While international politics roiled, particularly in relation to events in Palestine, Léon Sultan combated fascism from within the ranks of the Moroccan left and embraced Moroccan Jewish athletic pride within the so-called Jewish Olympics. To those who embraced the reigning anti-Semitic trope of “Judeo-Bolshevism” and Jews as imperial puppet masters, such ideological fluidity was less indicative of a moment of overlapping identities and more illustrative of nefarious prominent Jewish figures involved in all angles of global conflict. Jewish–Muslim tensions were rising, and some individuals and organizations w ere receptive to Croix de Feu pro-fascist exhortations or t hose of pan-Arabists or pan-Islamists working in concert with
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fascist allies.100 However, Jewish–Muslim anti-fascist solidarity efforts were also gaining strength. The weight of evidence demonstrates that while European pro-fascist organizations such as the Croix de Feu, the Parti Social Français (PSF), and others proliferated in North Africa and tried to propagandize against a perceived common enemy in the Jew writ large—and especially in the figure of Léon Blum—most Moroccan Muslims, particularly in the French Protectorate zone, did not take the proverbial bait. Protectorate officials fretted about Moroccan Muslims joining the group Friends of the USSR and other left-leaning groups such as the League for H uman Rights, demonstrating the wide spectrum of political persuasions that continued to appeal to Muslims.101 By the mid-1930s, a critical if numerically small group of Moroccan Muslims, already drawn to the left through labor organizing in the 1920s to early 1930s, joined the Moroccan Popular Front and the LICA and, ultimately, the Moroccan Communist Party.
LICA and the Left
While European anti-Semites did their utmost to inspire Jewish–Muslim antipathy, LICA sought Jewish–Muslim solidarity in the face of fascism and racism. In Paris, LICA president Bernard Lecache was an open supporter of Léon Blum and the Popular Front government; Moroccan sections of the LICA followed suit. Fascist propaganda depicted Jews as simultaneously arch-Communists and global capitalists, attempting to rule the world and oppress Muslims. Anti-Semitic propaganda had found some traction in Morocco, while LICA advocated for a universalist program of h uman rights and enlightenment that also found a significant audience. In late 1935, Bernard Lecache had written to French Protectorate authorities asking to visit Morocco as part of a speaking tour across French North Africa.102 The first LICA branch section in Morocco was located in Oujda on Morocco’s eastern border with Algeria. Oujda itself—a porous city bridging Morocco and Algeria and connected to Mediterranean politi cal networks—was a place of high-volume activism and political organizing for both the left and the right. Oujda was an important stop on Lecache’s North African tour. A protectorate official warned his Parisian superior not to allow this visit, as it would “arouse racial antagonism, which must always
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be avoided, and would in the current climate be particularly inopportune and should be opposed by the Government in the interest of the Jews themselves.”103 Despite such fears, Lecache was permitted to enter Morocco and embarked on a sweeping speaking tour in e very major Moroccan city in the winter and spring of 1936. LICA sections proliferated in e very major city, with attendance in the hundreds at some gatherings that included Moroccan Muslims and Jews, as well as leftist Europeans.104 On February 16, 1936, Bernard Lecache spoke to a crowd numbering in the hundreds at the Coliseum Cinema in Oujda. Cinemas were prime locations for such capacious gatherings and w ere often owned by Jews, who helped promote such events among the local Jewish community. This program was devoted to the subject of “Racism and Peace.”105 Protectorate officials noted numerous Jews and a few Muslims in the audience, as well as European Communists and SFIO members, all of whom distributed propaganda at the event. Lecache admonished local LICA members for the relative paucity of Muslims, claiming that Egypt boasted a higher percentage. More Muslims had tried to attend the Oujda event but w ere barred ac106 cording to orders of the Resident General. Lecache defended Léon Blum, condemned fascist propaganda, and connected anti-Semitic legislation and violence in Nazi Central Europe with the violence that had broken out in Constantine in 1934. He argued passionately for Jewish, Muslim, and Eu ropean solidarity within the purview of the Popular Front and the SFIO. His message was well received, and Lecache gave versions of the same pre sentation in Fez, Meknes, Rabat, and Casablanca to crowds numbering in the hundreds. LICA, and the left more broadly, would eventually become Moroccanized to reflect local Moroccan concerns while remaining in touch with international events. Even before Lecache’s speaking tour, a protectorate report noted with alarm an apparent confirmation of its worst fears: Jews w ere allying with 107 Muslims against the French. This fraternization took place in a new organ ization, the Moroccan Union of Jews and Muslims, whose goal was to engage in action against Moroccan chapters of the right-wing French fascist organ ization Croix de Feu.108 Protests and press campaigns in Fez against France in May 1935 had provoked a reaction from the Fez chapter of Croix de Feu, which fabricated an alarmist lie that local Moroccans were desecrating the
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French flag. This, in turn, inspired local sections of the SFIO, the League for Human Rights, and other leftist organizations to proclaim themselves opposed to fascism and to assert the loyalty of Moroccan subjects to France.109 The leftist newspaper Maroc Socialiste (Socialist Morocco) published the Moroccan Union of Jews and Muslims’ 1936 call for solidarity against “the collusion of extremist French parties and indigenous nationalism”: Despite the political provocateurs and their actions to separate Moroccan
Jews from their Muslim b rothers, we Moroccan Jewish intellectuals, proclaim once more and with great force our firm desire to remain unconditionally
united with them [Muslim brothers] for the good of the Moroccan people, without distinction of race or religion. Long live the Moroccan proletariat movement!110
An official “Antifascist Committee” had been established in Morocco in June 1935, and its members w ere already taking significant action. A precursor to the Moroccan Popular Front (founded officially in March 1936), the Antifascist Committee included the numerous Amicales and professional federations that Europeans had established before unionization was permitted, the Moroccan federation of the League for Human Rights, the Federation of Peace Fighters, the SFIO and the Youth Socialists, the Federation of Republican Fighters, sections of the group Free Thought, the group Friends of the USSR, and other leftist organizations that protectorate officials had labeled “extreme.” Prominent figures in nationalist Moroccan Muslim organizations had also joined the fold, including Hassan Ouazzani, Muhammad Kholti, Omar ben Abdeljelil, Ahmed Balafredj, Muhammad al-Fassi, and Ahmed Ouezzani. The reporting official chastised European governments for their “weakness” and lethargy in the face of Communist and revolutionary activism across North Africa, complaining that “everything gets exploited” for the revolutionary cause, from anti-Semitism to the “apparent inequality among races.” The reporting officer warned that such trends, if left unchecked, would result in “mental contagion” and “hatred” among colonial subjects of French North Africa against France, their “protector.” Despite all attempts to prevent leftist Moroccan–European solidarity and Muslim–Jewish organ izing, French Protectorate authorities noted with increasing alarm the rapid
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growth of Moroccan Jews and Muslims among the membership ranks of such organizations as Friends of the USSR and other “radical” organizations of European origin.111 Economic factors also contributed to leftist political agitation efforts. In the mid-1930s, there w ere approximately six million Moroccans, large numbers of whom were moving to work in urban industries and colonial construction projects.112 The drought of 1936–1937 had parched the land and dried up rural agricultural opportunities, incentivizing many more rural Moroccans to gravitate toward Casablanca and its satellite industrial centers. An economic crisis ensued, compounding anti-fascist activism with economic desperation and growing labor unrest. With the election of Léon Blum’s socialist Popu lar Front government in 1936, Europeans won the right to unionize in Morocco, but Moroccan indigenous participation therein was strictly forbidden out of fear of provoking the ire of European settlers. However, Moroccans began to outnumber Europeans in strikes and organizing meetings in this period.113 The major industrial zones of Casablanca in particular were choked with inhabitants, surrounded by bidonvilles, and rife with sanitation trou bles. The areas of Carrières Centrales, which in later decades became the site of major nationalist upheaval; Roches-Noires, home to factories and, over time, clandestine Communist Party meetings; and Ben-Msik, another factory center, burst with unemployment and social-political grievances.114 Poor Moroccan w omen worked side by side with poor Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese women in Casablanca’s canning factories if they were lucky enough to find employment, while children often went begging in the streets.115 Labor grievances found voice within leftist political parties. The Moroccan branch of the Popular Front was officially founded on March 5, 1936, and included the SFIO, Communists who w ere as yet without a formal party, the Ligue des droits de l’homme, the various syndicates, and the Amicales. Events in the spring and summer of 1936 would bring the Popular Front to the center of Moroccan political life. By June 1936, protectorate officials w ere sufficiently concerned by joint LICA and Popular Front activities in Morocco that they compiled an exhaustive list of LICA leaders in every Moroccan city. Names on this list were accompanied by political affiliations, which w ere usually Communist
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or SFIO.116 Numerous Algerian and Moroccan Jews became the leaders of local LICA sections: Mardochée Seban was a noted Communist originally from Oran, Algeria, and Eugène Benane of Tangier was a Moroccan Jewish firebrand within the Popular Front in Morocco and prolific in his political activism. Spanish, Italian, and French names also abounded in the lists. A certain Edgar Djian, originally of Constantine, Algeria, was a LICA leader as well as a member of the Youth Socialists; he joined the same group and had the same city of origin as Léon Sultan, who had first come to police attention in Casablanca in 1934. However, not all members w ere Socialists or Communists; some gravitated to the group primarily for its activity against anti-Semitism. Elie Nataf, a naturalized French citizen originally from Tunisia and the former director of the Alliance school system, was not other wise engaged in leftist politics; Morice Chic, a naturalized French citizen of Polish origin and a doctor, was a militant Zionist. Many of the French members w ere noted for their trips to Moscow or membership in Friends of the USSR and the League for H uman Rights. Although fewer in number, there were also Moroccan and Algerian Muslims on the LICA leadership roster, indicating that while LICA may not have enjoyed widespread popularity among Muslims, it certainly had a committed minority of Muslim members.117
The Summer of ’36
The summer of 1936 was a turning point in Morocco. L abor activism and protest boiled over into mass disruption and repression; anti-Semitism spiked in the face of the Great Revolt in Palestine that had begun in April; the Spanish Civil War ignited in July; and Léon Blum’s Popular Front government came into power following his party’s electoral victory in May of that year. A major wave of strikes broke out in the summer of 1936 in every profitable colonial industry, above all sugar processing, transportation, canning, and mining phosphates. At stake w ere demands for equal pay for Europeans and Moroccans, as well as adherence to the eight-hour workday laws France had passed in 1884 but had not extended to Morocco. Moroccans outnumbered Europeans in strike activity by the thousands and began joining other leftist organizations in rising numbers.
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A committed right-winger, Resident General Peyrouton was no friend to labor activism. He met the strikes and demonstrations of the summer of 1936 with severity and repression. In Casablanca alone, 2,118 workers went on strike between June 18–19, 1936, with 1,446 of them Moroccan and a relatively scant 672 of them European.118 Nearly a full month of strikes ensued between June and July 1936, empowered by the investiture of Léon Blum’s government in Paris. In response to Peyrouton’s repression, the Moroccan Popular Front decided to send a delegation to Paris to petition Blum’s government in Paris for Peyrouton’s removal. The deleg ation included Léon René Sultan along with a few others, all of whom were members of the radical leftist politics taking root in Morocco.119 On their return, Maroc Socialiste published the headline “Peyrouton W ill Leave.” Peyrouton was eventually named French ambassador to Argentina and replaced in fall 1936 by General Noguès, a military man with extensive experience in Algeria.120 All of this took place alongside intensifying cycles of nationalist protest within Morocco, as well as labor upheaval within France itself.121 On Noguès’s arrival, the Moroccan Communist Party (PCM) began to operate openly after having previously been banned (Communists in Morocco had previously worked within the SFIO). A delegation from the newly legal PCM including Léon René Sultan and other Europeans met with General Noguès in October, seeking his formal authorization of the group and the right to publish a new newspaper, Clarté (Clarity). Sultan in par ticular was gaining popularity and respect among European leftists for his grasp of theoretical and ideological texts, as well as his ability to propagandize among Moroccan Muslims and Jews in Casablanca.122 Albert Ayache notes that several Moroccan Jews, including Samuel Benchimol and a certain Mr. Hammouz, helped Sultan in these efforts, as did a Moroccan Muslim by the name of Seddik ben Daoud.123 Cells of Youth Communists rapidly sprang up in Casablanca and other cities. Meanwhile, Moroccan Jews w ere becoming increasingly anxious about the G reat Revolt taking place in Palestine and its potential ramifications for Muslim–Jewish relations.124 Jews joined European anti-fascist organizations in Morocco in increasing numbers in response to increasing anti-Semitism and fascist sympathies. Anti-Semitic propaganda appeared more and more
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frequently in the French zone as well as the Spanish zone, including an article published June 18, 1936, in the pro-fascist right-wing newspaper La Voix Française (The French Voice) titled “The Jewish Peril”:125 The Jewish audacity in the provisional victory of the Popular Front obliges
us to cry foul play. The whole Muslim world is paying attention, and there is
danger that the fire in Palestine could catch in North Africa. Last Saturday in Casablanca, on Boulevard de la Gare [train station boulevard], a peaceful
passerby refused to buy a copy of Le Maroc Socialiste [Socialist Morocco] and was insulted by a pack of hoodlums that had come straight from the Mel-
lah [ Jewish quarter]. One Jew even had the insolence to lodge a complaint
with the authorities against this man whose only crime was not liking Judeo- Sociolo-Communist materials. In Fez, a group of Jews invaded a bookstore
and forced it to remove from its windowsill “The Jewish Peril” whose title
struck them as too offensive. . . . Blatantly aggressive Jewish papers are allowed to be sold in the streets of Casablanca—right u nder the noses of Arabs. We can do nothing but cry stop. If the public authorities let them [the Jews] do everything they want it will end badly.126
This piece of European-generated right-wing propaganda targeted both European settlers and Moroccan Muslims, seeking to make common cause against the supposed Jewish e nemy. This article referenced Jews selling leftist newspapers to fit the anti-Semitic trope of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy, attempting to spread it to Moroccan Muslims. The “hoodlums” coming “straight from the mellah” likely included figures such as Léon Sultan and others, construed in the article as disruptions to civil order within the French colonial polity. Attacking the Popular Front, as well as soft, inept colonial authorities, the article tried to appeal to Moroccan Muslims by drawing on the ongoing conflagration in Palestine and encouraging a conflation of Moroccan Jews with the Zionist movement across the Mediterranean. The article posited Europeans and Arab Muslims as victims, taunted by lesser, destructive forces in the form of Jews bent on destroying the world through Bolshevism or, at least, Socialism. It is precisely this context that politicized Moroccan Jews toward leftist political organizations. French patriotism, universalism, Communism, Socialism, advocacy for h uman rights, and more converged in anti-fascist leftist organizations in Morocco. Most of t hese
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organizations were allied with the Popular Front strategy, particularly LICA and many o thers with widespread Jewish membership. It was this precise context that laid the groundwork for Léon René Sultan and his “red falcons.” Following the June 1936 events in which Léon Sultan and his acolytes protested in the streets that began this chapter, La Voix Française prophesized that he was pushing Jews toward “odious internationalism” that must be s topped at all cost for the protection of France and the good of Morocco, and it warned of dire consequences if Sultan’s activities went unchecked.127 French-and Spanish-language (only occasionally Arabic) leaflets accusing Jews, above all Léon Blum of the French Popular Front, of warmongering and bringing about the destruction of humankind for Jewish profit through a Judeo-Bolshevik-Masonic conspiracy w ere pasted on the walls of Tangier in late June 1936. At least one leaflet explicitly cited the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which, according to this leaflet’s author, was the true “Bible of modern Judaism.”128 The Protocols and copies of anti-Semitic tracts such as “Le Peril Juif ” w ere widely reported across Morocco by protectorate sources. Similar leaflets cropped up in other Moroccan cities, including in the French zone. Several tracts, sometimes published in Arabic, targeted Moroccan Muslims in an attempt to convince them of a Jewish Communist plot in league with colonial authorities.129 Hatred of Léon Sultan went hand in hand with hatred of Léon Blum and his Popular Front government in France, as well as hatred of Zionism. Mekki Neciri, a Moroccan nationalist in the Spanish zone, famously quipped on the fascist channel Radio Rome, “We hate France, the enemy of Islam and religion, especially since it’s governed by Atheists and Jews, by Léon Blum in particu lar.”130 One particularly insidious piece of 1936 anti-Semitic propaganda was a leaflet titled “À nos frères Musulmans” (To Our Muslim Brothers), which attacked Léon Sultan by name as part of a Judeo-Bolshevik-Popular Front conspiracy.131 It seethed with disdain for politicized Jews: A wretched Jew from Oran [Léon Sultan was from Constantine, not Oran], a corrupt lawyer, a swindler, dishonest, named SULTAN (how is it possi ble that a yhudi [term in Arabic for Jew, in this case likely intended to map
European pejorative associations onto this Arabic word] has such a noble
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name), living in Casablanca, is at the head of the movement against the
Resident General [Peyrouton, in office for a turbulent few months March- September 1936]. It’s absolutely necessary that Jews are made to remember
the filthy black tarboush [hat]. . . . The Jew must again become the yhudi . . . as soon as a Jew raises his head up, it must be cut off [underline in original]. We must, all together, by force if necessary, make Jews go back into their
mellah, and prevent them from being involved in any political party what-
soever. They want to dominate us. We w ill never let them. It’s up to you, Muslim brothers, to speak up and make yourselves heard in Paris. We w ill be
WITH YOU. . . . LONG LIVE MOROCCAN MUSLIMS LONG LIVE MOROCCO LONG LIVE ETERNAL FRANCE DOWN WITH THE
JEWS AND THEIR POPULAR FRONT ALLIES [underlining and cap-
italization in the original].132
As this piece of propaganda was written in French, it is unlikely to have had a wide reach beyond an elite of Moroccan Muslims. The most likely audience for (and author of ) such a screed and o thers like it would have been European, primarily French, right-wing settlers in Morocco. That said, the document reveals how the author attempted to translate European models of anti-Semitic tropes and anxie ties of “domination” and “replacement” into a Moroccan Muslim context. This document overtly (and exaggeratedly) evoked precolonial Jewish–Muslim relations to suggest that, while Jews had once been kept in their appropriately debased place, they had now grown too powerful and would “dominate” Muslims. The use of “yhudi” and references to distinctive clothing worn by Jews in the pre-protectorate era (the black tarboush) were mapped onto European anti-Semitic tropes: where Jews might be forcibly “ghettoized” in Nazi Germany, this text recommended a forcible “mellah- ization” to keep Jews in their (debased, “proper”) place and out of politics. A Bastille Day editorial in La Voix Française in July 1936 argued that the campaign to remove Peyrouton from his post was the work of the “great number of Jews looking impudent . . . dressed in red ties or handkerchiefs, selling Maroc-Socialiste in the streets. . . . From Casablanca to Marrakesh, the population bore painful witness to the arrogance and even the brutality” of the Jewish newspaper vendors,133 prompting Yahia Zagury, the protectorate’s inspector of Jewish institutions, to send out a circular to all the synagogues
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imploring Jews to remain cool-headed and not to involve themselves in politics. La Voix Française was only too happy to publish the contents of Zagury’s plea for loyalty to France and avoidance of political activity, which was reportedly read aloud in synagogues across Casablanca: You are aware of the incidents [involving Léon René Sultan and his coterie] that have taken place recently and could bring down prejudice against our
community. Several prominent Jews in the community have come to see me
to complain about a few young Moroccan Jews who think they should get involved in m atters that don’t concern them [Communism and anti-fascism]
and that could bring down our entire community. The goal at the present
time is to get the attention of these young people and to inform them that our duty is now as it was in the past to live in respect and peace with every one in Morocco and to not get involved in these incidents.134
Zagury’s political strategy was to discourage Jews from getting involved in political matters and to pay homage to “la France libératrice,” the France that “liberated” Jews. La Voix Française added its own warning to Zagury’s pleas that “the young arrogant p eople” should listen to the leaders of the Jewish community and that the Community bring them back to “modesty”; otherwise, “we’re happy to announce that we are numerous in Casablanca . . . we are not disposed to tolerate their insolence for much longer.”135 Zagury’s synagogue circular was republished in a number of Moroccan papers in the hope of calming Jewish political activities. He was not, however, persuasive in his attempts.
The Moroccan Popular Front, the PCM, and Anti-Fascism
In December 1936, Clarté, the newspaper of the newly legalized Moroccan Communist Party, published its first issue. The PCM had an ambiguous relationship to the French Communist Party, as well as the Spanish Communist Party. French and Spanish settlers in Morocco supplied the majority of the PCM’s early membership, but the new party was divided as to w hether it should remain dependent on the French Communist Party or if it should have direct relations with Moscow and bypass the metropole. Because of Morocco’s status as a supposedly “sovereign” protectorate, to formally tie the PCM to the PCF would violate the former’s legal status, not to mention making
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it appear to endorse colonialism in the country.136 Léon Sultan was critical in moving the party toward an autonomous existence, graciously acknowledging the PCF as a “sibling” party. Under the pseudonym “Marc Forclaude,” Sultan penned articles for Clarté demanding better living conditions for “the Moroccan p eople” and sought reform of the makhzan’s justice system, a provocative claim.137 Further, in what was ultimately the party line of the PCM until its Moroccanization following the Second World War, the leadership of the PCM acknowledged the rights of colonized subjects for independence but urged Communists and Communist sympathizers to stick to the Popular Front strategy and put all other concerns on hold. As the paper Unir [Unite]: The Communist Bulletin of South Rabat would put it in February 1939, the most important t hing regarding colonization was preventing Morocco from falling into Hitler’s hands, and, quoting Maurice Thorez’s translation of Lenin’s anticolonial equivocation, that “the right to divorce doesn’t mean the obligation to get divorced.”138 Across the Popular Front, membership in the SFIO, the newly established Moroccan Communist Party, and the CGT boasted large numbers of Moroccan Muslims and Jews alongside Europeans and Algerians, all intersecting and sharing propaganda at meetings of the LICA, the League for Human Rights, and the Libre Pensée. The PCM itself had approximately 800 members by the beginning of 1937, mostly located in Morocco’s industrial cities.139 Meetings of t hese organizations frequently married anti-fascist, anti-racist, and labor concerns at large gatherings in cinemas or at smaller gatherings in bistros and bars. Into the late 1930s, LICA and other affiliated leftist organizations frequently used Alliance Israélite Universelle social spaces, drawing committed leftists into the supposedly pro-French politi cally neutral space of that organization. Refugees from the Spanish Civil War infused these gatherings with further forms of radicalism, increasing the urgency of anti-fascist efforts with eyewitness reports often accompanied by the showing of Soviet films in Jewish-owned cinemas in every major Moroccan city. Fundraising dances to support Spanish Civil War refugees were a particularly frequent type of social gathering in this overlapping leftist world.140 Politically left-leaning Jews, Muslims, and Europeans mingled at picnics held under the auspices of the Popular Front on more casual occasions.141 One picnic, outside Fédala (today’s Mohammedia, just north
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of C asablanca), became particularly rowdy, with a cavalcade of twelve cars honking and their passengers waving red flags alongside the Moroccan and French flags, before descending on a local café for music and dancing. Several people were noted to bear Communist symbols and, on leaving in their cars, raised their fists in the air defiantly. A member of the fascist, right-wing Parti populaire français (French Popular Party) was aghast that the Sharifian flag and Moroccans could be “mixed up” in such events and wrote to protectorate officials prescribing the utmost vigilance.142 Strikes broke out once again in Morocco in 1937, including among the miners at Khouribga and transportation employees on rail and bus lines. In Meknes, major revolts broke out in late summer 1937 pursuant to a French Protectorate plan to siphon a local w ater source (the w ater from the Bou Fer143 kane wadi) from local inhabitants. Mass protests resulted in hundreds of arrests, at least twenty dead, and more than a hundred wounded, two-thirds of whom w ere Moroccan.144 In the aftermath, Allal al-Fassi was deported to Equatorial Africa (a group of former French colonies now including the Republic of Congo, Chad, the Central African Republic, Gabon, and Cameroon), and other nationalist leaders were dispersed across Morocco. Leftist organizations decried this blatant expression of imperialism and promoted the CAM’s efforts. PCM cells, including the Youth Communists, had spread to e very major Moroccan city by 1937, with particular strength in Casablanca, Meknes, Rabat, Oujda, and the phosphate mining center of Khouribga.145 PCM operatives began to publish more papers, including Maroc Rouge (Red Morocco) and Espoir (Hope). The latter became the primary newspaper of the party in 1938.146 As Moroccan Jews became increasingly politicized in the face of growing anti-Semitism at home and abroad, larger numbers attended leftist meetings, including meetings of the PCM.147 In Casablanca in particular, Moroccan Jews organized relief efforts to benefit their coreligionists in Europe, raising money and distributing goods for refugees through the organization called Olam Katan (Small World), thereby inverting the traditional colonial relationship of European Jews “saving” and “regenerating” the Jews in Muslim lands, a dynamic that would continue into the early years of the war.148 Moments of intercommunal violence between Moroccan Muslims and Jews were interspersed with moments of solidarity that worried protectorate
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authorities.149 Yahia Zagury did his utmost to dampen political fires and keep Moroccan Jews quiet with the exception of expressions of total loyalty and gratitude to France. One circular from Zagury that was widely distributed and read across Moroccan synagogues in May 1938 admonished: “Those who watch their mouths and tongues have peaceful souls” (Prov). We are upset to have learned through the Authorities that some of our core-
ligionists have been discussing political subjects. N eedless to say, immense prejudice would come as a result of these activities, as it is understood that we
Moroccan Jews have the strictest duty and obligation to maintain an absolute respect for the Protector Nation and that we must completely disregard anything that addresses politics or public affairs. Each of us is unfortunately aware of the situation of our co-religionists in the different European
states, by contrast, we are so happy to proclaim loudly that the Jews u nder the protection of France are happy, free, and independent beings. May God
strengthen the supreme power of the French Nation whose humanitarian, democratic, and liberal spirit enlightens the world. It is full of these ideas
that we address ourselves to you to move you to distance yourself from any
sentiment, social context, home, conversation, from anything dealing with politics . . . remain on the righteous path, which means rigorously observing
the prescriptions of our protectors.150
Despite such appeals for calm and aspirational apolitical gratitude to France, Moroccan Jews organized in earnest in the face of rising anti-Semitism at home and abroad. While one tier of Moroccan Jewish society deplored Jewish political activity, the other deplored perceived Jewish political apathy. Moroccan Jews had joined the LICA in droves, with chapters in e very major Moroccan city within French Protectorate boundaries; these chapters encouraged boycott efforts against German, Italian, and Japanese goods and products and overlapped in membership with those of leftist anti-fascist organizations. Meanwhile, French police reports indicated rising intercommunal tensions between Muslims and Jews, describing Muslim resentment of Jews as favored colonial subjects, as well as collaborators with the French, and Muslims celebrating anti-Semitic measures taken in Germany.151 Just a few months after dissemination of the summer synagogue circular decry-
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ing Jewish political action, a circular (likely from LICA) was read across all major Moroccan synagogues, written in Hebrew and French, encouraging more boycotting of products from fascist nations.152 Yahia Zagury decried once again the use of synagogues as political spaces, citing French law and asserting that rabbis or other synagogue leaders must obtain written permission from the authorities in the form of his own personage before conducting anything other than prayer in a religious space.153 This plea was flatly ignored. A protectorate informant reported that a meeting of the LICA was held in Rabat in June 1938 at 9 p.m. at a local cinema. About 200 people were pre sent for the event, titled “The Brotherhood of Races”; the protectorate officer suggested about 20 percent of the audience was composed of civil servants and 80 percent “workers.” The stage was decorated with the Moroccan and French flags, and foreigners “comprised about 60 percent of the audience, communists and socialists.” A certain Mr. Romani intoned universalist values before the crowd: “the earth belongs to all men of all colors, religions, and opinions. . . . He preached the sincerity of the Brotherhood [Fraternité] of races, peace and freedom [Liberté]. Mr. Romani evoked the Great War—12,000 Jews fought in the French army, he said, and 6,000 paid with their lives on the battlefield to defend the land that is so dear to them. Mr. Romani finished by saying that the LICA is persuaded that democrats will combat all forms of racism to bring about Human Brotherhood.” Next came the president of the Rabat section of LICA, a Mr. Beaurieux who said that “to combat as much as possible Hitler’s regime, there must be a boycott on Moroccan soil against German products. [He] finished his speech by inviting audience members to purchase brochures at the exit, whose proceeds would go to supporting Spanish Republicans.”154 This episode represents a perfect moment of po litical confluence for interwar Moroccan Jewry. European leftists, interested in propagandizing among indigenous Moroccans, found an ideologically predisposed audience in the LICA attendees and leadership. The universalist overtones of the discourse went hand in hand with an increasingly anti- fascist and universalist drive espoused by the PCM. Further, that fundraising for Spanish Republican relief efforts occurred at such meetings (examples are abundant of similar efforts at LICA meetings in other cities of the same time period) underscores the complex knot of mutual influence, transnationalism,
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demographic shifts, and Moroccan Jewish political choices in the interwar period. Protectorate informants reported an astonishing number of SFIO members, Communists, and Socialists, not to mention Algerians and Spaniards, in attendance at LICA events. Increasingly, Moroccan Jews themselves were noted leftists and Communist supporters. Other leftist organizations flourished as well, notably the Jeunesses Socialistes Autonomes (Autonomous Youth Socialists) headquartered in Casablanca in 1939. The Jeunesses Socialistes Autonomes typically met in the Olympia Bar on Chenier Street; its meetings w ere attended by a number of young men and women, predominantly Jewish with a few Spaniards and Frenchmen. The group had at least one other branch in Rabat with similar membership demographics.155 Moroccan labor issues were frequent subjects of discussion at these meetings, which Communists, particularly Spanish Communists, would attend and speak about the virtues of their political platform. Muslims attended as well, and at least one was responsible for selling a newspaper called Revolution at the end of the Rabat meetings, which w ere noted to be dominated by Moroccan Jewish men and a few Jewish women.156 A frequent speaker at the Rabat meetings and president of the Rabat section, a Mr. Isaac Azoulay, was an eccentric yet oddly emblematic character of Mediterranean transnationalism and the colonial workforce of the interwar era. Born in October 1916 in Alexandria, Egypt, Azoulay apparently pretended to be an American Jew who had somehow found himself in Morocco. He too worked for Moroccan infrastructural development (the telegraph agency to be exact), as well as for the Employment Office. (The report is quick to mention that he was “currently unemployed.”157 ) The Casablanca group was led by another man with foreign ties: Mr. David Gabay, a Moroccan Jew who had obtained British citizenship.158 The group officially called for national self-determination and solidarity among all Moroccans, as well as advocating for the rights of workers and fair pay. While its policies w ere not uniform with those of the PCM, and indeed, the group was often skeptical of the PCM as a French organization, PCM members slowly infiltrated the meetings of the Jeunesses Socialistes Autonomes and distributed propaganda leaflets.159 Meetings of Libre Pensée and Fédération Nationale des Libres Penseurs de France et des Colonies drew large crowds of Moroccan Jews and Muslims, as well as PCM, SFIO, and Socialist leaders, decrying Hitler’s
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racist policies and encouraging universal humanitarian values. Alliance spaces also hosted public meetings and LICA presentations advocating boycotts and drawing attendance from volatile radical political elements, greatly distressing protectorate authorities and figures such as Yahia Zagury.160 Through the spring of 1939, protectorate reports indicate a record number of Moroccan Jews within the central organizing bodies of a variety of left-leaning organ izations, notably the LICA, League for Human and Citizens’ Rights, and the SFIO.161 One worried protectorate report cited at least two Jews in the Fez 1939 leadership of the Ligue des droits de l’homme (League for Human Rights): a Mr. Abraham Benaïm (“Albert”), a noted CGT militant and leftist activist, and a certain Georges Botbol, a lawyer and a “leftist militant,” vice president of his local LICA section, and thrice elected “assessor” for the League for H uman and Citizens’ Rights.162 Georges Botbol represents many of the argumentative and thematic threads of this chapter: a Moroccan Jew, locally engaged in nationalist and universalist politics, concerned with the broader Jewish world and yet deeply committed to Moroccan events and m atters. Membership listings for all of these Popular Front organizations from 1938 through 1939 included growing numbers of Moroccan Jews, as well as Moroccan Muslims, alongside Europeans and Algerians. On the more theatrical end, Mr. Marestan of the aggressively atheistic group Libre Pensée (Free Thought—its events featured a red banner with a man destroying a cross) gave a number of speeches in 1938–1939, combining forces with the Popular Front, LICA, the SFIO, the PCM, and other groups. Held in cinemas across Morocco, these gatherings attracted crowds that were often upward of 50 percent Jewish, alongside Europeans and Muslims. One of Marestan’s most popular speaking tours was on the theme of “For or Against Anti-Semitism?” (the answer was always “against”), held alternately in SFIO and Alliance spaces depending on the city.163 At one of t hese events at Rabat in 1939, hosted at the Cinéma des Variétés, M. Marestan concluded before a crowd of 500 attendees that “the Jews are with us . . . we must keep our guard up against an invasion of envoys from Mussolini and Hitler.”164 A protectorate reporter attending a Libre Pensée event in Khouribga in April 1939, held at the Coliseum Cinema, noted that Marestan addressed ongoing violence in Palestine as part of the problems of contemporary
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anti-Semitism in the world, contrasting it with the relative harmony of Jews and Muslims in Morocco, “where the medinas [Muslim quarters] and the mellahs [ Jewish quarters] are twins.”165 In e very major Moroccan city, Moroccan sections of the Comité Mondial des femmes contre la guerre et le fascisme (Global Women’s Committee Against War and Fascism) collaborated with the PCM and the Popular Front, cohosting meetings and advocating for indigenous and Spanish w omen, as well 166 as the welfare of children. The section of this group in Meknes continued to “denounce the outrageous exploitation” inflicted on Muslim w omen in Mo167 rocco in the group’s newspaper. Women involved in LICA and other leftist organizations combined forces for such efforts, overlapping with Popular Front initiatives to combat fascism. Protectorate officials noted that w omen w ere particularly effective in enforcing boycotts of German, Italian, and Japanese products in their respective cities. As with men in parallel leftist organizations, women met in restaurants, bars, and cinemas. Popular Front meetings attracted crowds of several hundred, including every demographic segment of Moroccan political life; they discussed the ongoing conflict in Spain, bringing in former volunteers in the International Brigades to relate their experiences followed by a common call to end fascism.168 After such speeches, Soviet films on subjects ranging from folk dancing to military parades and footage from Madrid would typically be shown. On leaving an event, one could easily pick up a copy of Espoir or other leftist reading material. Social gatherings at bars and restaurants, including the PCM social stronghold of the Moulin de la Gaieté in Casablanca’s Roches-Noires area, proliferated with Popular Front rhetoric.169 Once Spanish Republican forces at last gave way to Franco in 1939, a wave of political refugees streamed across the Pyrenees into France and across the straits of Gibraltar into French Morocco. Spanish political refugees flocked to large urban centers such as Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes, and even Fez and Marrakesh. Spanish and European Jewish refugee leftists in cities such as Meknes and Casablanca sparked the invigoration of leftist organizations in those locales as well as others. Spanish Communist fundraisers, dances, and film showings abounded under the auspices of the Popular Front. Police surveillance indicates that Jews attended these events in high numbers. Even those Jews who opposed this political trend could not help but be influenced by the many posters pasted on the mellah and medina (the “old city”
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of the Muslim quarter) walls and the predominant political café culture that abounded in the city.170 Spanish refugees mingled with Moroccan war veterans and Jews in cinemas and leftist meetings. They sang the “Internationale” together, agitated against anti-Semitism, and as a result, attracted the concern of protectorate authorities.171 Solidarity with international Jewry and the plight of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe grew in addition to anti-fascist, leftist Moroccan Jewish po litical activity. One of the primary Moroccan Jewish newspapers, l’Avenir Illustré, circulated a call from Olam Katan (Small World), an aid organization based in Morocco that distributed money and goods to beleaguered Euro pean Jews who came to Morocco to escape fascist and Nazi rule.172 Moroccan Jews, once depicted as the benighted, “backward” Jewish population in need of the French mission civilisatrice and French enlightenment courtesy of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, were now in the opposite position of providing aid to their previous benefactors.
o The interwar years set the conditions for the development of the PCM and the Jewish political role within it. Both w ere born in a context of virulent fascism and tremendous national and international political instability. Moroccan leftists—including Moroccan Muslims and Jews, Algerians, and Europeans— united in a Moroccan Popular Front to combat the rising threats of fascism and anti-Semitism at home and abroad. The interwar period was characterized by a wide variety of initially compatible political choices that would become mutually exclusive beginning with the Second World War. For Moroccan Jews, these choices included leftist activism under the umbrella of the Popu lar Front including the LICA and the PCM; Zionism, which was not yet widespread; and the Gallicization and French republicanism as enshrined by the schools and social networks of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. It was possible to identify with all of these affiliations and networks at once during the interwar period, as exemplified by Léon René Sultan, an Algerian Jewish Communist and Zionist with French citizenship. Moroccan Jews and Muslims joined the overlapping social and political circles of the interwar Popular Front for reasons ranging from labor organizing
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advocacy, anti-imperialist inclinations, anti-fascism, and advocacy for Jews amid a rising tide of anti-Semitism within and outside Morocco. Poverty, drought, and increased labor militancy within Morocco’s major industries drew Moroccan Muslims alongside Spanish, Italian, and French workers into unions and other leftist organizations. This interwar Popular Front buffet of fluid and compatible political affiliations would give way to more rigid political trajectories as the PCM Moroccanized and began to advocate for independence. While the PCM was a solidly European organization during the interwar years, following the Second World War and u nder the leadership of Léon René Sultan, it would become a Moroccan party, rather than a Euro pean party in Morocco. In doing so, the party included those Moroccan Jews who imagined themselves as citizens in an independent Morocco, working alongside Moroccan Muslims for a better f uture. As varied as the threats and ideological pulls may have been, Moroccan Jews during the interwar period enjoyed a prismatic array of political possibilities, as fluid as the future of Morocco itself. During the Second World War and the anti-Semitic persecutions of the Vichy period, Moroccan Jewish visions of the future and political loyalties would be severely tested.
l CHAP TER 2 '
P O S S I B I LI T I ES : WO R LD WA R I I A N D M O RO CCA N J EW I S H B EL O N G I N G
Devoured by his own words, he couldn’t know what fate
was ripening in the enclosed space of his imagination. “I
will be a professional revolutionary,” he wrote in his journal.
—Edmond Amran El Maleh, Parcours immobile
The Allied landings of Operation Torch in November 1942 marked a turning point in Moroccan Jewish political history. Abraham Serfaty, a Moroccan Jew living in Casablanca, had only recently graduated from high school and wanted desperately to volunteer to fight fascism with the F ree French. The teenager had been inspired by his Spanish radical friends working in the port of the colonial metropolis. Further, he had grown up in an atmosphere of anti-fascist agitation and, under Vichy, anti-Semitic persecution. Abraham’s sister Evelyne had been expelled from school for being Jewish, while Abraham had been allowed to remain as part of the 10 percent quota imposed by the Vichy administration. At age 17, however, he required parental permission to join the Free French, permission that he was flatly denied. He was able to work for the US soldiers stationed at the port of Casablanca, an experience that Serfaty described as “morally and culturally formative.” It was at this port that he befriended Americans who broadened his political horizons.1 Members of the Moroccan Communist Party, many of whom had been interned in Vichy labor camps, would be his mentors. In 1944, Abraham Serfaty would
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become a committed member of the Moroccan Communist Party, led by none other than the rabble-rouser from Chapter 1, Léon René Sultan. A new world of possibilities opened up for Moroccans, Jews and Muslims alike, a fter the success of Operation Torch. France’s defeat at the hands of Nazi Germany and the subsequent defeat of Vichy France in North Africa had demonstrated the weakness of the old colonial power. The arrival of US forces hailed a new era of American influence on the Moroccan political stage, as US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with the Moroccan sultan, Muhammad V, who himself felt empowered by France’s weakness to appeal to the United States to rid Morocco of France. For Moroccan Jews and Muslims, the weakness of France represented an opportunity to press strengthened independence claims, culminating in the founding of the Istiqlal (Independence) Party in 1943 and its Manifesto for Independence in 1944.2 The sultan held meetings with the Communists, the Istiqlal, and other political organizations, much to the chagrin of French Protectorate authorities, themselves working strenuously to maintain French prestige amid the transition from Vichy to the Free French government. For Moroccan Jews, this optimism and flourishing of political possibility post–Torch raised new questions. Before the Second World War (WWII) it was possible to be simultaneously a Zionist, a Communist, and a Gallicist under the Popular Front anti-fascist umbrella. A fter 1942, the anti-fascist urgency of the Popular Front era gave way to the “national” question. At the same time, some Jews moved from a stance of “gratitude” to France to a new sense of Moroccan nationalism, while o thers preferred to interpret the Vichy period as an aberration in the liberal French republican tradition. Although relatively few Jews entered politics, they were prominent on both the national and international stages. After 1942, and accelerating after the Istiqlal Manifesto, previously fluid political affiliations hardened into mutually exclusive channels. The experiences of the Vichy years pushed Jews to question their future in Morocco and their relationships to France. For some, such questioning led to an intensified affinity with Jewishness beyond Morocco’s boundaries. For others, it led to a commitment to the Moroccan nation and their Muslim compatriots. The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and Moroccan indepen dence in 1956 have typically borne most of the analytical weight in narratives
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of the trajectory of Moroccan Jews, minimizing the importance of WWII and the Vichy period relative to later events. This chapter pushes against narratives of Moroccan Jewish migration that locate dissonance between Moroccan Jews and Muslims primarily (or exclusively) within Zionism, anti- Zionism, and Arab nationalism in the post-1948 period. This chapter argues for a re-periodization of “watershed moments” within Moroccan (and, by extension, MENA) Jewish history that includes WWII as critical for the development of local nationalisms, anticolonial movements, and the place of Jews within (and without) their MENA homelands. Existential questions of Moroccan Jewish political belonging certainly intensified in the late 1940s into the 1950s and 1960s, but these questions have roots in the formative WWII period. Vichy and the Allied liberation prompted Jews to consider whether they would work for national liberation, alongside Moroccan Muslims, or choose to leave, following the call of political Zionism and a politicized Jewish sense of solidarity.3 The vast majority of Moroccan Jews wanted to avoid any political trouble altogether. However, with the growth of political opportunities also came a flourishing of existential political and ideological questions. Jews considered, in a way not previously possible, their place in an independent Morocco. For those Jews who had joined the Popular Front movement during the interwar period, the Moroccan Communist Party (PCM) became the natural extension of continued leftist, anti-racist, anti-fascist political activism. The Moroccan Communist Party itself, having been banned in 1939, had continued to function illegally under Vichy and was formally reestablished in 1943 by Léon René Sultan. Under Léon Sultan, the PCM would begin to shift from a predominantly European party with an inconsistent track record of supporting independence to one that, by 1946 (and after his death in 1945), would support it. The party, like other national liberation parties, formally supported the maintenance of the sultan and the makhzan at the heart of Moroccan political and cultural identification. As a result, by the end of the Second World War, a firm political network entwining the makhzan, US international ascendancy, and national liberation politics had taken shape. Within it would sit the Jewish members of the Moroccan Communist Party, on the fringes of many movements but at the heart of the debate over Moroccan political belonging. Figures such as Abraham Serfaty represented a
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new generation of Moroccan Jews whose political consciousness had been shaped by the war years. The success of Operation Torch had hardly been guaranteed. The two years before the Allied landings were bleak; 1942 was a breaking point. From that break emerged the conditions of political possibility for a new world order. Morocco’s particular periodization of the Second World War is thus 1940–1942 and 1942–1945. The period of 1940–1942 included the inauguration of the Vichy collaborationist regime a fter the fall of the French Third Republic to Nazi Germany in the summer of 1940, the implementation of anti-Semitic legislation in France and French colonies, the establishment of forced labor camps for political “undesirables” (largely Communists, including one exclusively Jewish camp in Morocco) in North African mining zones, and severe political repression of any and all political opposition. For a growing elite of politicized Moroccan Jews, the two years of Vichy rule represented a profound betrayal of the French republican ideals of 1789 and the republican vision of citizenship that had been propagated by the Alliance Israélite Universelle from 1860 onward among Jews of the MENA. Albeit unevenly and not uniformly, generations of Moroccan Jews had been taught to identify with France, to memorize French geography, to disregard their cultural inheritance as “backward.” U nder Vichy, it was clear that for all their French learning and devotion, France had rejected its Jewish students. Even for t hose Jews who had not embraced French republican ideology, France had represented “protection” and security, rendering the Vichy period a breach of trust, as well as one of betrayal. This period of Vichy persecution would accelerate preexisting political trends from the interwar period, including Communism, Zionism, and even a continued attachment to “true” republican France. Although most of the Moroccan Jewish leadership preferred to attribute the events of the Vichy period to German pressure, the growing politicized elite saw t hings quite differently. Jewish communal leaders largely sought a return to the prewar colonial status quo, whereas politicized Jews began to contemplate a future without France altogether.4 As discussed in Chapter 1, by the late 1930s Moroccan Jews were increasingly politicized toward Popular Front politics and anti-fascist activism. The Popular Front served as a gateway to adherence to the PCM, which itself, as a result of the severe repres-
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sion during the Vichy period, radicalized toward national liberation politics. The PCM would increasingly Moroccanize following the Allied landings, and consequently, the party’s anti-fascism transformed into anticolonial Moroccan nationalism. Moroccan Jews and Muslims of the party were at the forefront of this transformation, including figures like Abraham Serfaty. The US presence in Morocco was pivotal for these transformations. At the time of the Allied landings, leaflets with images of US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and the American flag alongside a text in French and Arabic rained on the residents of Casablanca, promising liberation from Vichy tyranny. A fter two years of fascist Vichy rule, two years that included forced labor camps for political “undesirables” and anti-Semitic legislation against Jews, there was cause for celebration. American books, magazines, and language transformed Casablanca, with the “blue eyed” soldiers satirized in Houcine Slaoui’s popular song of the time with its references to chewing gum and the refrain, “OK OK, come on, bye-bye.” 5 Sultan Muhammad V, who had played a largely symbolic role under French Protectorate rule, regained a measure of power for his office and independent legitimacy as a result of the US collaboration and began to instrumentalize his symbolism for Moroccan nationalist goals. Simultaneously, the seeds of a formative nationalist narrative in which Muhammad V had “saved the Jews” of Morocco from the worst of the Vichy regime w ere planted. In what has become a storied account, Sultan Muhammad V is reported to have rejected Vichy attempts to impose the infamous yellow star on Moroccan Jews, saying, “There are no Jews in Morocco, t here are only Moroccan Subjects.”6 The possessive relationship of this statement entrenched the sultan’s political legitimacy in its reference to a model of the makhzan’s “protection” of Jews, harkening to the precolonial era. Although the a ctual power of the sultan in these circumstances is debatable, the budding connection of US occupation, Moroccan political legitimacy around the figure of the sultan independent of France, and the question of Jewish political belonging is clear. It is in this moment that the archetype Daniel Schroeter famously referred to as “the Sultan’s Jew” in the precolonial era began its transformation into what would, over time, become modernized into “the Sultan’s Communists.”7
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Moroccan Jews and France: 1939–1940
When war broke out, most Moroccan Jews rushed to demonstrate their loyalty to France, while Communists protested the growing racist and fascist threat. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, true to French republican values, organized groups of Jewish students and their parents in e very major city to support the French Army. In the most immediate sense, housing, feeding, employing, and educating European Jewish refugees and their children fell to Moroccan Jewish communal organizations, most often the Alliance. Alliance teachers reported their efforts to the Alliance secretary general in Paris in voluminous letters, detailing their own French patriotism and the plight of the refugees, nearly all of whom w ere trying to obtain visas for the Americas. In one letter, an Alliance teacher waxed poetic about the French administration’s h andling of the refugee population, which seemed to amount to granting permission to leave: “Once again we must admire the Resident General Noguès’s beautiful and understanding humanitarian spirit and those of his colleagues at the head of Protectorate operations.” 8 That being said, many refugees, particularly those suspected of harboring subversive politics, w ere imprisoned on entry to French Protectorate territory.9 Alliance teachers made profound personal sacrifices as well. Several male teachers enlisted to fight in the French Army at the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. When her husband Raphael was called up to serve France, Madame Lévy, an Alliance teacher in Casablanca, was left in charge not only of the Moïse Nahon school but also the Narcisse Leven school that had been in her husband’s care.10 Alliance schoolchildren in Fez labored by candlelight or oil lamps stitching sweaters and wool gloves for French soldiers.11 Mme Béhar of an Alliance girls’ school in Fez wrote proudly to Alliance headquarters of such stalwart, patriotic efforts for France: They [the students] are made happy by the thought that these gloves w ill
bring a bit of well-being to our brave defenders. . . . The more gloves you knit, the less the soldiers will be cold—thus with a little encouragement, their zeal increases and each student is proud on Monday morning to report what they
accomplished on Sunday. . . . The m others are happy to participate in this labor of fraternity and many of them help their d aughters in their work [of
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knitting gloves and swearers]. Today all the students in my class are knitting for the soldiers and e very day the quantity and quality increase.12
Whole families of Moroccan Jews w ere thus enlisted in the war effort for France. Yahia Zagury, the Moroccan Jewish inspector of Jewish institutions within the protectorate apparatus, worried about Jews not manifesting sufficient “devotion” to France. However, his concerns were mitigated by the “young, strong men belonging to the best families who, in a moment of enthusiasm and sincere attachment to France, enlisted as volunteers.”13 Most of these volunteers w ere never actually accepted, with the excuse that army officials could not find “appropriate” battalions within which the Jews from North Africa might be placed. In November 1939, Y. D. Sémach, an Alliance teacher on the ground in Morocco, asked the Paris-based Central Committee of the Alliance for more funds to support the German Jewish refugees. He also asked for Alliance intervention to get the French Army to admit more Moroccan Jewish volunteers: Couldn’t you intervene in Paris to put a stop to this abnormal situation? Will
Jews always accept the error committed against them right at the beginning
of the Protectorate that classified them as indigenous subjects [rather than being made French citizens]? It is for this reason that they were unable to assimilate among Europeans, and since they have become more and more
like the Europeans through education and new ways of living, they are also unable to fit in among the Moroccans b ecause they aren’t Muslim.14
Sémach observed that Moroccan Jews were so Gallicized that it would be difficult for them to be truly Moroccan, which he defined as Muslim. If Moroccan Jews would not be allowed to fight to defend France, the “protector” nation and beacon of enlightenment, then Moroccan Jews would perhaps need to find another path toward political and social belonging. Thus, before the Vichy regime introduced harsh anti-Semitic legislation to Morocco, Moroccan Jews were already being rejected from their adopted Gallicized identity. Patriotism and leftist activism grew together and converged for Moroccan Jews on the eve of the Vichy period. Fez, the same city where Mme
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Béhar reported with such pride that her students w ere knitting gloves and sweaters for the “brave defenders” of France, boasted an uptick in leftist po litical activity. Leftist organizations diversified their propaganda and calls to action, incorporating demands for improved living standards for all Moroccans, as well as for anti-fascist and anti-racist activity. George Botbol, a Moroccan Jew, led the Fez section of the League of Human Rights whose ranks were populated with Jews, Muslims, and Spaniards.15 In December 1939, the Gallicist, pro-French Jews of Fez reported to the police that a number of Jews “dressed as Arabs” w ere distributing “subversive and inflammatory” Arabic-language propaganda, resulting in twenty-three arrests.16 “It would appear that the action taken by these Jews was due to communist propaganda,” observed a US diplomat.17 In that same memorandum, the US diplomat noted, “A regiment of natives had been assembled at the [train] station to go abroad [and fight in the French Army as conscripts]. I was told by an eyewitness that the natives grumbled and protested, declaring that it was incumbent on Frenchmen first to defend their homes, and not to be sent to Morocco, leaving their places at the front to natives. . . . It was authoritatively said in Fez that this incident was due to communist propaganda.”18 That memorandum also indicated that while Muslims in the French Empire were conscripted, often unwillingly, to fight in French wars, “native Jews all over the [French] Zone, especially in Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes and Fez volunteered for military service. None of these Jews were accepted except, however, in Fez and Meknes, where about 150 in all were engaged. They served about 20 days and were then returned to their homes, under the pleas that there was no appropriate regiment in which they could be incorporated.”19 As 1939 faded into 1940 and the war waged on in Europe, anti-Semitism grew in Morocco and political tensions heightened. Anti-Semitic propaganda from both Europeans and Muslims increased in response to news that Moroccan Muslim soldiers w ere being killed in France, asserting that “others are getting killed while the Jews get rich.”20 Moroccan Jews from e very major city had volunteered in g reat numbers for the French Army, anxious to demonstrate devotion and loyalty, but w ere turned away and blamed for profiting from war and the death of Moroccan Muslims.
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Nearly a year after France and Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, France fell to Germany. On June 22, 1940, Marshall Philippe Pétain, “the Lion of Verdun,” an anti-Semite and military hero of the First World War, signed an armistice agreement with Germany on behalf of France. France was divided into two zones: Nazi German forces directly occupied the northern zone, including Paris; the southern “unoccupied” zone fell under the administration of a new government u nder Pétain, headquartered in the spa town of Vichy. Thus, the collaborationist Vichy regime replaced the famous slogan of “liberté, égalité, fraternité ” (liberty, equality, brotherhood) with “travail, famille, patrie” (work, family, fatherland).21 The Vichy cabinet included Xavier Vallat, the deeply anti-Semitic politician who had derided Léon Blum as a “subtle Talmudist,” and several other unsavory characters bent on the “restoration” of a France antithetical to the universalist, emancipationist traditions celebrated by Jews and leftists in so many parts of the world.22 As a reward for such “values,” Vallat would soon be appointed head of the Commisariat Général aux Questions Juives (General Commissariat for Jewish Questions; CGQJ).23 Members of Action Française (French Action) and other right-wing extremist groups came to the political fore, both in France and in French colonies, empowered to act on preexisting racist and violent beliefs. On the more “mild” end of the spectrum, Vichy inspired ideological cognitive dissonance and a sense of betrayal. The Vichy regime collaborated with Nazis, often exceeding o rders for deportation and death for France’s perceived political and racial enemies. As discussed in Chapter 1, long before the installation of the Vichy regime, Moroccan Jews had become intensely politically active. Much of this activity took the form of public meetings and boycotts of goods from Italy and Germany; in March 1933 alone, approximately 5,000 people attended a rally held at the Regent Cinema in Casablanca, including organizers from local human rights organizations, LICA members, and Communists. Signs in both French and Judeo-Arabic urging people to boycott were distributed in synagogues. Thousands of Jews fled Central Europe between 1933–1940, many of whom ended up in Morocco and contributed to a mounting climate of
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anxiety.24 When the Vichy laws were applied, it was not without care for the precarious political stability of the 1930s. Resident General Noguès not only enforced Vichy legislation—with the sultan’s official seal—but also sought to prevent Jewish “subversion” in opposition to France.25 The laws published in the Journal Officiel in November 1940 and August 1941 imposed strict quotas on Jewish professional life (only 2 percent of doctors or lawyers could be Jewish) and educational life (10 percent of students or teachers in non-Jewish schools could be Jewish). Cinema owners, who were disproportionately Jewish, suffered harsh restrictions, along with pharmacists and others. Further, Jews w ere supposed to sell their homes in the French-built “new towns” (Villes Nouvelles) and move into the preexisting mellahs (the historic Jewish quarters), although this was rarely enforced beyond Fez and Meknes.26 In addition to such legal restrictions, pro-V ichy Europeans spread graffiti, pamphlets, and fliers replete with anti-Semitic slogans, such as “This is a Jewish business, a business of profiteers”; “Buying from Jews destroys French commerce”; and “Worker, your e nemy is the Jew; he exploits you and derives his ill-gotten gains from your misery.”27 In addition to such fliers, pro-V ichy Europeans—most notably in Moroccan branches of Croix de Feu and Action Française—sought to encourage Moroccan Muslims to identify Jews as a common, exploitive e nemy.28 Nazi representatives in northern Morocco blamed the Spanish Civil War and the current economic suffering on Jews. The Nazis maintained an office at the H otel National in Melilla and founded the International Anti-Jewish League in Tangier. All of this propaganda and organizing came on top of appeals to Moroccan nationalists and broadcasts from Radio Berlin.29 Leaflets and other propaganda in Arabic claimed that “Jews would enslave Muslims if the Communists should win the war.”30 In the face of such legal restrictions, many Moroccan Jews sought foreign intervention from international Jewish organizations, notably the American Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC).31 Barring that, they sought exemptions from Vichy legislation, which were possible, although quite difficult, to procure. On November 12, 1941, Raymond Bensimhon, a Jew from Fez, wrote to protectorate authorities protesting that he should be allowed to maintain his business. Article 10 of the August 5, 1941, dahir (an imperial decree signed by the sultan) stated that exemptions w ere possible “for those Jews who have rendered unto Morocco exceptional service.”32 Bensimhon then
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related his family’s exceptional service: his grandfather, Judah Bensimhon, had served as the guide and host for Charles de Foucauld, who came to Fez to study and write his 1888 book Reconnaissance au Maroc.33 Historians have noted that Foucauld’s time in pre-protectorate Morocco was indicative of the ever-reaching arm of France into North Africa during the nineteenth c entury. Thus, Bensimhon’s grandfather had played a critical role in bringing Morocco under France’s “protection.” Bensimhon was quick to point this out, as well as the dangers that hosting de Foucauld had presented for his grandfather: If F ather de Foucauld had been found out, my grandfather ran the risk of being insulted and harassed by the Jews for having allowed a non-Jew to
disguise himself as a rabbi. He also ran the risk of being purely and simply executed by the Arabs for having brought into the city a Christian at a time when all Christians were considered spies . . . today, with my own employ-
ment at risk, I am obliged to knock on door of great and generous France, for
whom gratitude has never been expressed in vain, to remind her—indeed, in spite of myself—of her debt to my f amily.34
Bensimhon helpfully attached newspaper clippings from La Vigie Marocaine and La Presse Marocaine from 1933 relating how Consul Lemaire had installed a commemorate plaque outside the family’s home in gratitude for such “exceptional service.”35 He was ultimately successful in his petition, but his example set a very high bar indeed for Moroccan Jews seeking to demonstrate service to the French authorities in Morocco.36 Most Moroccan Jews had not served France in such a historic fashion. Simon Lévy, one of the future leaders of the Moroccan Communist Party, was born in 1934 in Fez, the same city where Bensimhon was able to achieve exemption from Vichy legislation. The Levy family was not so fortunate. With the application of Vichy legislation, Simon Lévy and his family were crammed into a single room in the mellah after being required to abandon their home in the Ville Nouvelle, the French colonial “new town.” Lévy mused, “I remember standing on a balcony in the mellah of Fez. The streets were so over-crowded that people were obligated to walk very, very slowly, in baby steps.”37 He recalled attending synagogue with Ashkenazi refugees, celebrating Chanukah together, and exchanging religious traditions and experiences. Such housing restrictions and contact with Ashkenazi refugees enabled and strengthened preexisting movements
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of Jewish political solidarity. Some of the leaders of these movements embraced political Zionism, whereas others, like Lévy, upheld a Communist dedication to nullify the causes of anti-Semitism and racism engendered by French colonization. The politicization of the Moroccan sultan himself was another byproduct of Vichy rule. Sultan Muhammad V, under the guiding hand of the Vichy protectorate authorities, signed a series of dahirs on August 5, 1941. The articles contained in these dahirs specified the professions, living spaces, forms of education, and much else that was now forbidden to Moroccan Jews.38 By November 1941, Moroccan Jews were to have ceased practicing their prohibited professions (which included virtually anything that was not directly related to Jewish communal functioning) or else face imprisonment or steep fines from 100 up to 10,000 francs or both. And yet, as Bensimhon’s case demonstrates, there were exceptions. In addition to “exceptional service” such as that exemplified by the Bensimhon family, these included (1) possessing a French veteran’s registration card; (2) having fought in the French Army and having been decorated with a Croix de Guerre (Cross of War) for feats of heroism; (3) having received a nomination to the Légion d’honneur (Legion of Honor); or (4) being a descendant, w idow, or orphan of a soldier who died for France.39 While the legislation itself was applied unevenly, petitions for exemptions were routinely denied. The sultan himself had little to no say in the matter, although a potent nationalist story has been often repeated that he “saved” the Jews of Morocco from the worst of Vichy rule. In reality, he had little power to resist Vichy legislation. As described at the beginning of the chapter, this story of Muhammad V having famously declared that “there are no Jews in Morocco, t here are only Moroccan Subjects,” has become national legend and illustrates one of the foundational arguments of this book: it centers around the position of the makhzan as protector of the Jews in a possessive, legitimating relationship that, having been suspended under colonial rule, began to reemerge in the struggle for national liberation, itself strengthened by the weakness of France and ascendancy of the Americans internationally. Exemptions, suffice it to say, w ere not in the purview of the sultan.40 Among the professions now forbidden to Jews in Morocco, law was one of the most prominent. Léon René Sultan also lobbied for exemptions from Vichy. Sultan had French citizenship via the 1870 Crémieux Decree that had
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granted (most) Algerian Jews French citizenship. However, he, alongside other Algerian Jews, was stripped of this status with the abrogation of the Crémieux Decree at the beginning of the Vichy regime. Sultan had practiced law in Casablanca with all the advantages of French citizenship. Now he had neither French citizenship nor employment on account of his Jewishness. He petitioned the protectorate authorities to be allowed to continue practicing law to no avail and was forced to comply with Vichy’s laws by April 1941. In a March 1942 petition, one of several that he submitted, Sultan wrote: “Concerning myself, I d on’t seek to cling desperately to a profession that I have practiced so passionately. But having practiced it so scrupulously and without failing, I was hoping to leave it with less brutality.”41 Although he “submitted, naturally, to [their] decision,” he did not find it to be legally well founded.42 Sultan acknowledged that he did not meet the requirements to continue practicing law as he had not been decorated in the war of 1939–1940 and that while “it w asn’t possible for me to go and fight,” he had made the honest effort to register. Sultan, along with so many others, was unsuccessful in his pursuit of exemption. Despite being disbarred, Sultan remained a proverbial thorn in the side of Vichy officials. He wrote numerous letters inquiring about the legal grounds on which Jewish children were removed from French Protectorate schools and required to attend only those institutions—such as the Alliance Israélite Universelle—that were specifically geared toward Jews. In non-Alliance schools, the Jewish student body was fixed at 10 percent or less.43 Jewish men who had fought for France typically had their petitions to keep their children enrolled in non-Jewish schools rejected in addition to their petitions to maintain their employment. Indeed, in direct contradiction to the dahir of August 5, 1941, Jewish orphans of veterans w ere still not permitted to attend the protectorate schools. For Algerian Jews in Morocco, t here was no clear standard of what military record had to have been achieved to maintain their French citizenship.44 In most major cities, notably Casablanca, the housing legislation was not applied, whereas it was, at least in some measure, implemented in Fez and Meknes. In t hose cities, reports abounded of deeply unsanitary conditions with disease “ravaging” the Jewish population.45 Moroccan Jews faced different discrimination from European Jewish refugees who had arrived in the country. Pro-V ichy European settlers
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in Morocco placed increasing pressure on Resident General Noguès to do something proactive to suppress the growing Jewish population. In response, the Vichy authorities placed European Jewish refugees in transit camps that turned into refugee camps. If they were deemed “dangerous” b ecause of their political affiliations, notably if they w ere Communist, they would be placed 46 in forced labor camps. Although Moroccan Jews did not face forced labor camps (with some exceptions), the period wrought grave legal, economic, and political instability, as well as the increasingly urgent question of belonging and the naked truth of a fickle French republican bargain. Moroccan Jewish fates intertwined intermittently, yet increasingly, with Jews from Eastern and Central Europe, as well as Moroccan Jews who claimed foreign passports.47 A certain David Gabay was arrested in January 1940 and sentenced by a military tribunal in Casablanca to twenty-two months in prison for distributing political propaganda, alongside Spaniards and other “undesirables.” This was despite his being born to Moroccan Jewish parents (Samuel Gabay and Bellida Benzaquen) in Casablanca in 1915 and having acquired British protection.48 His fate, and those of Moroccan Jews like him, complicates historical understandings of colonial legal definitions such as “European,” “Moroccan” or “Israélite” ( Jewish), defying generalization. Along with political undesirables, European Jews fleeing the continent were also categorically unwanted. Resident General Noguès, in conjunction with o rders from Vichy, frequently bemoaned their presence on Moroccan shores. Estimates vary on their numbers—800 to 1,000 is a frequent figure quoted by Vichy authorities in January 1941, often already “armed with visas for overseas French colonies. These immigrants, mostly Jews, are transported from Marseille to Algiers, on a French boat, from where they get to Casablanca.”49 As time went on, refugee numbers increased. Just a c ouple of weeks later in January, estimates had risen that from 1,000–1,200 refugees (the Algerian authorities suggested this number was closer to 2,000) awaited passage out of Morocco toward, they hoped, safety. Noguès was anxious to see them leave because of the added stress they contributed to the already beleaguered Moroccan economy and housing market.50 A ship bound for the United States named The Wyoming caused particular anxiety in May 1941 among the refugees when the French Vichy authorities ordered
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that its departure from the port of Casablanca be delayed. On board w ere about 800 migrants—“majority Jewish” alongside Poles, Germans, and many other “apatrides [stateless subjects].” 51 While their departure was stalled, the Moroccan protectorate authorities refused to allow them to disembark as “the Protectorate camps were full to maximum capacity and the Administration is already responsible for more than 4,000 foreigners dispersed among internment camps and worker units.” Noguès firmly stated only two possible solutions: that the refugees return to Marseille or continue to their final destinations.52 In Tangier, the falsified document business flourished, and cargo- space tickets to the United States w ere sold at exorbitant, exploitive rates.53 As overcrowding worsened in Casablanca with refugees hastening to leave for the Americ as, Noguès justified limiting their stays out of fear of heightening the risk of “anti-Semitism [which] is always ready to strike violently.” 54 Noguès wrote this in his report of June 16, 1941: With their numbers increasing each day, fugitives establish themselves in
Morocco, where they inflate the ranks of the Mosaic [ Jewish] community to the point where we may fear bloodletting. Further aggravating the danger, another contingent of Jews is returning to the country. The steamships ‘Alsina,’ ‘Wyoming’ and ‘Monte Viso’ have disembarked their passengers
in Casablanca. This massive dumping [déversement] runs the risk of inciting an unpredictable backlash among a population particularly sensitive to
orders and impulsiveness. It’s out of the question to impose such a thing on Morocco.55
Noguès then threatened that if the boats were not able to leave Casablanca with this singularly vexing cargo on board, the protectorate authorities would be forced to transport them to Dakar, where supposedly housing was less crowded.56 Adding to prevailing anxiety, the French Communist Party paper l’Humanité reported in November 1941 that the Nazis sought to take direct control of North Africa.57 The protectorate authorities reported rising anti-Semitism among both Europeans and indigenous Moroccan Muslims across the country. Jewish stores in Oujda on Morocco’s northeastern border with Algeria w ere plastered with signs reading “Here is a Jewish h ouse, a house of profiteers.” 58 The community of Marrakesh was repeatedly “threatened,” particularly when
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Jews from Casablanca fled to that city out of fear of bombardment.59 It is unclear from protectorate reports exactly who or what organization was behind such threats and vandalism, but it was likely one of the right-wing organ izations that had been active during the interwar period. Fez also witnessed anti-Semitic activity in this period: “certain elements in Fez, in contact with leaders in the Spanish zone, think that the delegation that went to Berlin obtained important promises from the German government. In Casablanca, nationalist propaganda is intensifying, following the arrival of emissaries from the neighboring [Spanish] zone.”60 Unsurprisingly, the report mentioned that Jews were becoming fiercely pro-British, fearing for their future. As the Jews of Fez w ere forced to crowd into the mellahs, housing tripled in value, rendering life ever more expensive, cramped, and anxious. Rich Moroccan Jewish families considered leaving for the United States and sold their jewels, while others sought foreign passports.61 Rumors raced across the country that Hitler had expressed support for Moroccan nationalists, would soon f ree those who had been imprisoned or exiled in 1937, and that Germany would establish an air base in Port-Lyautey. At the same time German radio broadcasted in Arabic repeated its propaganda “endlessly,” and swastikas appeared on the medina walls “in several cities.”62 An Italian Commission arrived in Rabat in July 1940, which, along with the landing of a Lufthansa flight in Casablanca en route between Seville and Dakar, caused heightened tension.63 In Casablanca, stones w ere thrown through the windows of Jewish-owned stores, and fliers bearing anti-Semitic slogans were distributed widely.64 Despite this persecution, it seems that Moroccan Jews continued to affirm loyalty to France and “bowed their heads before the storm,” circulating less in public and expressing utmost deference.65 Jews were prohibited from any po litical organizing or meeting except for strictly religious purposes; t hese gatherings w ere to take place in the synagogues. Yet, u nder no circumstances w ere Jews to take advantage of the space of the synagogues to make political statements. As one protectorate official reported, “Current events have left the Jews profoundly demoralized. They feel threatened from all sides and seek, above all, to go unnoticed.”66 Moroccan Jews sought protection from the sultan, who had little political agency; some even reportedly made animal sacrifices at the shrines of the earliest Moroccan sultans in Fez, as well as at the sultan’s palace in that city, to ward off the evil potential of anti-Jewish laws.67 According to
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one protectorate report, a few Moroccan Jews (whether they were part of a particular organization wasn’t specified) appealed for Jewish–Muslim solidarity and issued a warning: “The French are persecuting us on German o rders. But what happens to you is connected to us. German racial laws and politics effect all semites; a fter the Jewish statute w ill come the Muslim statute.”68 Some Moroccan Jews, like their European refugee counterparts, also sought exit visas to the Americas, most often to Argentina or Brazil.69 As the war waged on through the Anglo-American Allied landings in Morocco in November 1942, Jews increasingly pinned their hopes on political avenues other than the French emancipatory dream, including Communist politics.
Refugees and “Undesirables”
The unfortunate European Jewish refugees judged to be “political undesirables,” as well as Spanish Civil War veterans who had fled to Morocco, met a grim fate if they were unable to acquire visas to the Americas. Political undesirables of all ethnicities, languages, and social classes mingled in the forced labor camps constructed across French North Africa. These undesirables were usually Communists or other leftist adherents, as well as former volunteers in the French Army either in World War I or in the 1939 campaign against Nazi Germany. The fact that the earnest Jews who volunteered to fight for the French Army could end up in forced labor or the more ominously named “punishment” camps further underscores the viciousness of the betrayal of French republican ideals. International Brigades volunteers, including Jews from across Europe, numbered among the Spanish Civil War Republicans, and several high-ranking European figures in the Moroccan Communist Party populated the camps alongside other anti-fascist Euro pean Jewish activists. All told, between 800 and 2,000 mostly European Jews, the vast majority of whom had been volunteers in the French Foreign Legion, w ere placed in Vichy labor and punishment camps in Morocco.70 At least 400 Jews resided in the only exclusively Jewish Vichy labor camp, that of Berguent (today the town of Ain Beni Matthar), on the border between Morocco and Algeria. Estimates for the total population of Vichy labor camp prisoners in Morocco vary from 4,000 to 7,000.71 These camps were built to fulfill a long-standing French colonial dream for a Trans-Saharan Railway. Along these rails, colonial goods, particularly
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phosphates and manganese, would flow seamlessly to the metropole. The railroad was to snake along the border of eastern Morocco and western Algeria, stretching from Oran, Algeria, south to Timbuktu. Work began on March 27, 1941, with an inaugural ceremony with great publicity and pomp attended by Minister Berthelot, Marshal Pétain’s official envoy.72 In the political refugees and prisoners, the Vichy regime had found the cheap labor reserves required to accomplish the task. Prisoners worked u nder extraordinarily harsh conditions either along the rail lines themselves or in the mines.73 Former officers of the French Foreign Legion, many of whom were of German origin and were “ardently anti-Jewish,” staffed the camps.74 In addition, Moroccan goumiers (indigenous soldiers; from the Arabic qum, meaning stand up or rise) and Senegalese tirailleurs (infantry soldiers) also staffed the camps. On paper, the prisoners were often referred to as “volunteers,” and many were furnished with contracts.75 A directive specifically addressing “refugees and undesirables in Morocco” listed a clear agenda of repressing any political dissent and putting the wide variety of refugees that Morocco was harboring to cynical good use; Spanish Republicans “who have been incorporated into the workers units for the railroad between Bou- Arfa—Kenadza” were to be segregated from the other prisoners, in at least one case.76 Others w ere to be distributed between Mogador (Essaouira), Safi, Marrakesh, and the internment camps of Sidi El Ayachi and Azemmour following a screening process in Casablanca.77 Refugees in Casablanca not put to work on infrastructure projects b ecause of their political affiliations w ere foisted on the Alliance Israélite Universelle and hosted by Moroccan Jews.78 The American Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC) and its Moroccan Jewish representative would be instrumental in h andling the cases of forced laborers and Jewish refugees.79 Hélène Cazès Benatar, a trained lawyer and nurse for the Red Cross, took over the leadership of the Association des Anciens Elèves de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle (Association of Former Alliance Israélite Universelle Students) a fter her husband’s death in 1938.80 Born in Tangier to a Moroccan Jewish father and an English mother, Benatar at age 20 moved with her family to Casablanca.81 After France fell to Germany, she established the Moroccan Refugee Aid Committee, which was declared illegal by Vichy authorities in 1941 but continued to operate, ultimately in conjunction with help from the JDC and the American Friends
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Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker philanthropic organization.82 Benatar began to work intensively for European refugees in Morocco on July 5, 1940, when she saw a boat of lost, helpless refugees disembark at the port of Casablanca.83 Following the success of Operation Torch in 1942, with the help of the US Army and the AFSC, Benatar and her team secured lodging in Ain Sebaa for refugees in the dissonantly named camp of Luna Park, after a chain of amusement parks of the same name.84 Léon Sultan collaborated with Benatar in her efforts to help refugees. He was then representing a few political refugees—Jewish and otherwise—seeking visas, employment, or liberation from the work camps.85 Letters poured into Benatar’s office from the Jews of Berguent who had fought for France, only to be rewarded by being subjected to the harshest of conditions. One Jewish prisoner of Berguent wrote, “We w ere all volunteers and served France, which earned us two years in work camps in the most humiliating of conditions.” 86 When hostilities finally ended and armistice agreements were signed, Moroccan Jews had both suffered directly and borne witness to the suffering of their coreligionists. The Moroccan Jewish leadership and many other Moroccan Jews sought a return to a precolonial status quo. For the growing number of politicized Moroccan Jews, however, the Vichy period proved one of betrayal of French republican ideals that would serve to push Moroccan Jews toward Zionism or nationalist politics. The Americans, represented both in the armed forces following Operation Torch and in aid organizations like the JDC and the AFSC, came to play an important role in Moroccan politics.
Operation Torch and Shifting Global Dynamics
Early in the morning of November 8, 1942, Leslie O. Heath, an agent of the AFSC, woke up abruptly to the shrill sound of air-raid sirens. Heath had been in Morocco working with the AFSC and monitoring conditions in the labor camps for some time, coordinating aid missions on behalf of the prisoners. He was staying in a hotel in Casablanca with a clear view of the bustling city. In a letter to his wife written several weeks later on November 22, Heath wrote that he got up, looked out the window, and, “seeing nothing but a clear, cloudless sky . . . concluded it was a false alarm and went back to bed.” He was woken again in short order, this time to the sounds of
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military activity in the street below, “and then realized for the first time that there was r eally something up.” Heath got dressed in the dark as the power was out, and went out into the street to find out what was happening. “An Arab” informed him that “sometime before the sirens sounded planes had flown low over the town and had dropped circulars which said the Americans w ere coming. I was so incredulous that I told him I would give him ten francs for one!” Heath went back to his hotel room where he observed the battle taking place at the port, which he described as cacophonous with “the continual rattle of machine gun fire” and a “continual rumpus” of dive bomb attacks. Heath reported that he was “simply flabbergasted” that “a very small French fleet” was attempting to fight the Americans after so much destruction which was, in his view, “was worse than suicide.” 87 Shelling, bombing, and machine-gun fire continued through the morning of November 11, when the combatants signed an armistice. A disproportionate number of Moroccan Muslims had their homes destroyed during the fighting. Heath noted that “the average citizen here was very much pro-American; but unfortunately it is not the average citizen who dictates policies. The day that the Americans came into the city there was quite a riot in the old native town. It seems that the Jews celebrated the arrival of the Americans most indiscreetly, loudly proclaiming that now they the Jews would have their opportunity to rule!” Violence ensued against Moroccan Jews for being too visibly excited by the arrival of the Americans and the presumed imminent departure of Vichy authorities. French police intervened and began beating the Muslims with clubs, when “a big gang of Americans turned into the Place and the whole mob forgot all about the Jews and rushed off to stare at the Americans. When they discovered that the Americans were actually giving away free for nothing [underlining in the original] cigarettes, candy, and chewing gum they just about went wild! As one of the refugee doctors said of the Arabs, ‘They have very primitive minds;’ and, he added, ‘so do the native Jews,’ and the delightful part is that the doctor is a Jew himself !” 88 In this letter, Leslie O. Heath described several of the dominant tensions and shifting alliances brought about by the success of Operation Torch. In this operation, an alliance of US and British forces fought against Vichy forces in Morocco from November 8–11, 1942, in a bid to swoop through
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the southern Mediterranean to rout Axis forces in a new Mediterranean front. US Army generals Patton and Eisenhower led the charge through North Africa, and the United States became a de facto occupying power in Morocco. Resident General Noguès remained in power in Morocco and worked directly with the new occupying forces after signing the armistice on November 11. Politically, Operation Torch was a significant turning point for the Second World War: it marked the beginning of the end of Vichy rule in Morocco and created an opening for stronger anticolonial political activity. European and Moroccan Jews alike praised the US–British operations, alongside political prisoners and Moroccan nationalists who pinned their hopes on the promises of the US liberator, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), to support self-determination. Liberation of the work and internment camps would prove slow, as did the restoration of Jewish rights. Critically, the US influence in Morocco laid the groundwork for later Cold War collaborations and ultimately anti-leftist activities that would take place in the post-independence period. After the Allied landings, Jewish groups began lobbying to restore Jewish rights in North Africa in the winter of 1942 to 1943, achieving success in restoring the Crémieux Decree in 1943.89 As Jews regained their rights and refugees began to secure passage out of the port of Casablanca, Moroccan nationalists, too, achieved an opening. As Susan Gilson Miller put it, “the French colossus had fallen, an American one had taken its place.” 90 During the war years the various Maghribi national liberation parties had been forced underground into clandestine activity, but with the encouragement of a weakened France and an ascendant United States, the Istiqlal Party issued its Manifesto of Independence on January 11, 1944.91 The manifesto proclaimed the need for “the independence of Morocco in its national entirety under the aegis of His Majesty Sidi Muhammad Ben Yusuf and the installation of a democratic constitutional government guaranteeing the rights of ‘all elements of society.’ ” 92 This document came with the approval of Sultan Sidi Muhammad Ben Youssef (rendered “Yusuf ” above) himself, most often referred to as Muhammad V. Indeed, the sultan had been increasingly flexing his political muscle against Resident General Noguès, as exemplified in his refusal to move from Rabat to Fez out of fear of an Allied bombing campaign.93
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The sultan welcomed the Americans and had intimate meetings with FDR, as well as Winston Churchill, at the Anfa Conference of January 14–24, 1943. At one lavish dinner hosted by President Roosevelt, he and the sultan exchanged gifts. The sultan gave the president “a gold-mounted dagger . . . in a beautiful inlaid teakwood case, and two golden bracelets and a high tiara for Mrs. Roosevelt. The President presented the Sultan with a personally inscribed photograph of himself, in a beautiful heavy silver frame, engraved at the top with the seal of the President of the United States.” 94 Although one might argue that a signed framed portrait of the US president was a paltry gift in comparison to the opulent treasures bestowed by the Moroccan sultan, the recognition by the president of the sultan as a figure of political legitimacy and authority was valuable indeed. Such meetings between FDR and the sultan occurred without the approval of General Noguès and had been planned for some time in advance of the trip. As Jamaâ Baïda has written, they “fueled the Sultan’s desire to free the country from French rule.” 95 In addition to reports of a letter exchange between the president and the sultan, these meetings led to a potent nationalist narrative: that the Americans supported Moroccan nationalist ambitions against a weakened France.96 In a pre-departure meeting at the White House on January 7, 1943, President Roosevelt asserted, “What must be made clear is that in North Africa we have a military occupation. General Eisenhower has the right to say to anyone, ‘Can you run this Government? Okeh [sic]; I’ll give you a try at it, but I can recall you at any time.’ ” 97 This attitude, although expressed in secret, certainly challenged French authority through US de facto military rule. At the same time, however, President Roosevelt held a meeting with French Resident General Noguès on January 17 in which the tone was one of collaboration. Although Moroccan Jews celebrated the Allied landings in November 1942, by 1943 political prisoners including Jews remained in camps and anti-Semitic Vichy legislation had still not been abrogated. In relation to Algerian Jews and the restoration of the Crémieux Decree that granted them citizenship that had been suspended u nder Vichy, Roosevelt is reported to have said breezily, “There just weren’t going to be any elections, so the Jews need not worry about the privilege of voting.” 98 There were yet more dubiously democratic statements concerning anti-Semitic Vichy legislation in French North Africa:
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The President stated that he felt the whole Jewish problem should be studied
very carefully and that progress should be definitely planned. In other words,
the number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions (law, medicine, etc.) should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population
in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population. Such a plan would therefore permit the Jews to engage in the professions, and would present an unanswerable argument that they were being given their full
rights. To the foregoing, General Nogues agreed generally, stating that at
the same time it would be a sad thing for the French to win the war merely to open the way for Jews to control the professions and the business world
of North Africa. The President stated that his plan would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards
the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college
professors, e tc. in Germany were Jews.99
“Roosevelt teas” and a “Roosevelt Club” sprang up in Casablanca, at which the nationalist Moroccan politic al elite and US officials mingled following the Anfa meeting.100 After the residency government severely repressed nationalist leaders in 1937, many now bounced back, emboldened by France’s obvious international diminishment. Such sentiments were only strengthened with the Atlantic Charter in 1941.101 Protectorate authorities w ere alarmed by graffiti on the Rabat medina walls testifying to popular support for the United States: “Long live America, Down with France, Morocco for Moroccans.”102 The port of Casablanca employed approximately 2,000 Moroccan workers, including Abraham Serfaty, a fter the success of Operation Torch, mostly in the service of off-loading US supplies.103 Pro-V ichy European settlers in Morocco, along with a gasping German propaganda machine, attempted to amalgamate condemnation of the US military with the Judeo-Bolshevik-American conspiracy among the indigenous Moroccan population, with little success.104 US military propaganda in Morocco countered with postcards of the sultan juxtaposed with “symbols of American military power,” as well as references to the eighteenth-century declaration of support addressed from Sultan Muhammad Ibn Abdallah to George Washington.105
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Meanwhile, Hélène Benatar’s work—and public visibility—increased dramatically with the Allied landings and the US occupation of Casablanca. With help from the AFSC, the Red Cross, and other philanthropic groups, Benatar and her team slowly began to liberate the camps and provide refugees with employment and exit visas. The process was often frustratingly slow, and prisoners were understandably vociferous and prolific in their complaints. Benatar’s personal archives are full of such letters and accounts of logistical difficulties. The transit camp for refugees called Luna Park h oused many who were recently liberated from camps and were in a bureaucratic holding pen for jobs and visas.106 After liberation from work camps such as Bou Arfa, many European Jewish refugees w ere transferred to the halfway- house camps like Sidi El Ayachi to then be hosted by Moroccan Jewish families elsewhere, primarily in Casablanca.107 The US forces in Morocco w ere happy to allow Benatar and the JDC to take on more of the work; indeed b ecause the liberation of camps was so slow (persisting through the end of the war) and prisoners were not easily liberated without work contracts or exit visas, the Americans often saw “no objection to the release of these persons, provided the American Joint Distribution Committee assumes responsibility for them.”108 Housing at camps such as Luna Park was ramshackle while food and clothing supplies for refugees and political prisoners w ere inadequate to the challenge of cold Moroccan winters. Many hoped for jobs working for the Americans, as well as factory work, especially at soap companies; others secured jobs at Moroccan newspapers.109 On receipt of a “Certificate of Good Conduct,” several Jewish former members of the Foreign Legion were able to leave Bou Arfa and move forward with their lives.110 As prisoners w ere liberated from work camps, doctors in the transit camps w ere faced with the inmates’ ideological and physical woes: many forced laborers needed amputations and artificial limbs after having suffered exposure during the tombeau (tomb) punishment, in which a prisoner was forced to dig a grave-like hole and lie in it exposed to the elements for an amount of time (often many days in a row) determined by the whim of the overseer.111 Some survivors of the Moroccan forced camps claimed to have previously survived the camps of Dachau and Buchenwald and had lost their families before transfer to the Maghrib.112 One could be liberated from the
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camps relatively swiftly by volunteering with the French Army, but, as one US official put it, “No refugee in his right mind would join the Corps Franc after the experience of t hose who joined up to fight for the French in 1939.”113 As mentioned, despite the Allied landings, the Vichy administration remained temporarily untouched, with purges taking place slowly over the course of 1943. For those Jews who would engage in Communist politics, this seemed to double the betrayal of the French republican ideal. Further, attacks on Jews by European Vichy supporters continued in spite of the official abrogation of anti-Semitic legislation. Robert Watson quotes Abraham Serfaty on this matter: “more than one Jew was arrested by the police and thrown in prison for having invited an American soldier to his home or for only having engaged in a conversation with one in the street.”114 In some respects, the political options persuasive to Jews had become more limited: Communism and Zionism appeared to be the most “realistic” in this context. In o thers, the political scene was infinitely more complicated and disruptive: between the nationalists, the Americans, the French, allegiance to the sultan, Zionism, and the Communist International, the w aters of Moroccan Jewish political identification and allegiance were increasingly muddied. Abraham Serfaty, whose story opened this chapter, was one Moroccan Jew who in the course of the Allied landings was initially staunchly pro-American before later becoming a member of the Communist Party. Long before Serfaty’s own activism, his father had supported leftist causes in Tangier, joining protests against the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, as well as against French and Spanish colonial forces.115 The family’s home in Maarif, Casablanca was in close proximity to the shantytown Derb Ghalef. Maarif was also home to a number of Spanish and Italian Communists who helped develop Serfaty’s emerging political consciousness.116 Not yet anti-French, Serfaty participated in anti-Vichy rallies in response to Roose velt’s decision to leave the Vichy authorities in office temporarily in Morocco. At such rallies, Serfaty and o thers “participated in the first demonstration by the Gaullists in Casablanca against the intractability of Vichy structures. The protesters shouted ‘Vive la France.’ . . . I shouted ‘Vive la République!”117 Like many Moroccan Jews, Serfaty distinguished between the Vichy regime and “their France, a Republican ideal incarnated by the Popular Front.”118 But as Robert Watson notes, Serfaty’s political imagination, and likely those of other
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Moroccan Jews, expanded beyond the confines of French republicanism with the US presence in Morocco. Serfaty “remembered the leaflets dropped by US planes with the face of FDR promising imminent liberation from Vichy rule and America’s commitment to Moroccan prosperity,” as well as a sense of triumph with the USSR’s victory at Stalingrad.119 Before his departure for France to continue his studies after the war, Serfaty worked as a night watchman at the port of Casablanca, where he interacted with and befriended US soldiers. Meanwhile, “many North African Jews welcomed Jewish soldiers from the British or American armies into their synagogues and h ouses as 120 guests of honor.” In this capacity as night watchman, Serfaty befriended a Black US soldier, “the only Black American officer in Casablanca at the time, a young and cultured non-commissioned officer, a fervent admirer of Baudelaire.”121 Serfaty caused a scandal in the Moroccan Jewish social scene when he invited this friend to a dance, exposing the racism of the bourgeois Moroccan Jewish community.122 Ultimately, Serfaty joined the youth wing of the PCM in 1944, working with figures like Léon René Sultan and Edmond Amran El Maleh in the postwar heyday of Communism in Morocco and in Europe.
Communism, Zionism, and Nationalism Post-Torch
Cynically, French historian François Furet once wrote, “The Communist idea was the greatest beneficiary of the Nazi apocalypse.”123 The Moroccan Communist Party was officially reestablished under Léon René Sultan in 1943, the same year as the historic Anfa meeting at which President Roosevelt intimated his support for Moroccan national independence. As previously mentioned, the party had its origins in the French Communist Party (PCF), which had established a branch called the Communist Party of Morocco by the later 1920s. From the beginning of its involvement in Moroccan politics with the Rif War of the 1920s, the PCF had advocated against colonialism. When Vichy rule fell, however, the PCF and its Moroccan branch argued that the most urgent task was to rid the world of fascism. Concerns about national liberation should be put on hold until the more immediate task of winning the war was accomplished. Once this occurred, the nature and demographics of leftist political organizing in Morocco began to shift. The Allied victory in the Second World War boosted the spread and popular-
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ity of Communism. Many historians have recorded the surge in popularity the PCF experienced in France, particularly regarding its long-standing role in anti-fascist activity and its strong support for the F ree French forces.124 However, it would be a mistake to understand the PCF as a radical actor in this period. Its policies hewed much closer to those of de Gaulle than to those of Moscow, and like de Gaulle, it sought to strengthen ties between Communist Parties in the colonies to France.125 Yet, it is also in this period that the PCM began to shift from a largely European-dominated organization to a Moroccan national liberation party. Despite the PCF’s outspoken resistance to the immediate colonial liberation of North Africa during the war years out of a purported fear of fascist inroads, some members of the PCM disagreed with that stance.126 At first, PCM leadership embraced the PCF line that Communist Parties in North Africa should “convince the vast majority of autochthonous [inhabitants] that their best interests lie with the people of France, which is different from the official France that they have known thus far.”127 The PCM voiced its support in the National Assembly for joining the French Union; however as with interwar-era labor unions, increased indigenous membership and intervention challenged the PCF’s colonial policy.128 Labor organizing began again in earnest in 1943. From teachers to dock workers, unionized labor proclaimed its support for the war effort and hence demonstrated its patriotism. In early May 1943, leftist labor activist Paul Durel organized a meeting of syndicalists in Meknes’s municipal theater that produced a series of bold demands addressed to Morocco’s Resident General: freedom of the press, freedom of organizing, the creation of an employment office in Meknes, and, finally, “the liberation of all political prisoners.”129 The ever-combative phosphate miners of Khouribga reprised their political activities in 1943, as did the CGT and the Union générale des syndicats confédérés du Maroc (General Union of Confederated Syndicates of Morocco; UGSCM, a CGT affiliate) in Morocco.130 In May 1945, the UGSCM established a “syndical clinic” in downtown Casablanca, staffed with doctors and nurses to treat Moroccan workers.131 The UGSCM, alongside the PCM, was one of the very few protectorate-era political organizations that included both Eu ropeans and indigenous Moroccans; a fter the war, both would increasingly distinguish themselves from and challenge PCF colonial policies.132
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Postwar Resident Generals, particularly Erik Labonne, w ere relatively tolerant of the PCM’s activities. U nder Léon Sultan’s direction, alongside party stalwarts such as Michel Mazella, Germain Ayache, and o thers, the PCM was formally reinstated on November 14, 1943, in a “constitutive conference” grouping together laborers and left-leaning administrators in the transportation (particularly railroads), electrical, medical doctors, legal, educational, and many other industries.133 Much of the European leadership of the PCM had been interned in forced labor camps in Morocco for their political beliefs; following the war they began working with Moroccans in the party for the goal of national liberation, albeit with some disagreement in the ranks. “To free France is to free liberty itself !” declared Léon René Sultan to an audience of more than 2,000 during a PCM meeting on July 29, 1944, in Casablanca’s Municipal Theater.134 According to police surveillance reports, this meeting was “composed for the most part of Spanish activists, Muslims, and Jews. There w ere not many Frenchmen.”135 Over the course of his remarks, Sultan argued that, to defeat fascism, there must be “a u nion of the French and Moroccan p eoples, regardless of religion, which is private and personal.”136 Indeed, Sultan had once stated that there was nothing in the Qur’an to prevent Muslims from engaging in Communist or union activities, b ecause, a fter all, “in the year 600 Sidi Muhammad w asn’t think137 ing about either the CGT or the Communist Party.” Sultan presided over PCM meetings with audiences often numbering over three hundred and even reaching into the thousands through the summer and fall of 1944, with disproportionate Jewish and Spanish attendance, as well as Muslims and Frenchmen. At such meetings, Sultan praised the Red Army’s efforts against Hitler, denounced fascism, and encouraged a Moroccan war effort to help “French patriots” fighting for “True France.”138 He would first deliver his address in French, followed by a summary in Arabic. Sultan’s statements and activities fit into a major PCM propaganda initiative begun in the spring of 1944 to “show the true face of France.”139 The effort came in the form of leaflets, distributed in French and Arabic, as well as in political speeches at meetings. However, Sultan’s popularity began to wane. PCM members complained that he was “all talk and no action” and that he had given high posts within the PCM leadership to “Jews who had no political education.”140 Sev-
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eral high-ranking PCM members w ere apparently beginning to look to the future and hoped for a new secretary general. Between 1943 and 1945, the PCM accelerated its propaganda and organ izing to levels previously unseen across Morocco: there were hundreds of meetings, in both rural and urban locations, that w ere “discreet” at first and then public and “massive.” The cities of Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes, and Fez remained the centers of activity.141 The activists who breathed life into the postwar PCM w ere prominent figures before the outbreak of hostilities and included Michel Colonna, Charles Dupuy, Paul Durel, and Léon Sultan. Sultan raised the Communist Party’s profile a fter the Allied landings in 1942, creating new cells divided into new kinds of sections (even by religion), as well as creating the Amicales Communistes (Communist Associations) in 1945 with the aim of recruiting in more rural locations.142 While the party remained about 80 percent “European,” between 1943 and 1946 it purportedly contained about 10,000 members, divided into thirty sections, although this number does not seem reliable based on other sources.143 In a country where the indigenous population was about 80 percent rural, PCM leaders such as Michel Mazella (a teacher who later worked extensively with Simon Lévy, himself a teacher), Léon Sultan, and Germain Ayache (also a teacher, an Algerian Jewish leftist activist, and prolific historian) sought to bring rural members into the urban-dominated party politics, albeit with middling success.144 Under Germain Ayache’s leadership (then a literature teacher in Casablanca), the Jeunesses Communistes Marocaines (Moroccan Youth Communists; JCM) alongside the Union des Femmes du Maroc (Union of Women in Morocco; UFM) — led by Madame Fortunée Sultan (Léon Sultan’s wife), Lucette Mazella (Michel Mazella’s wife), and Fréa Ayache (Germain Ayache’s wife, a Moroccan Jewish w oman from Salé) — worked with the Amicales to expand recruitment in both urban and rural communities.145 Germain Ayache, like Sultan and much of the leftist community in Morocco, had also volunteered with the F ree French, fighting in Italy where he was radicalized in the late 1930s for anti-fascist causes.146 Following the Second World War, he, along with many other Jews in Morocco, would transform that anti-fascist agitation into nationalist demands within the Moroccan Communist Party. Youth Communist events also served to increase the party’s membership, and its members would prove to be critical in the PCM’s transition to a
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national liberation party. In the summer of 1944, while war raged in Europe, Abraham Serfaty co-organized, along with French and Spanish members of the Jeunesses Communistes, a beach day that would also serve as a po litical rally. They planned this gathering to take place on August 13 at Sidi Abderrahman, a small islet off of Casablanca.147 There would be a period of recreation, followed by a parade and distribution of propaganda. It was successful, with one hundred p eople turning up for the event. The majority of the attendees w ere Spanish or Moroccan Jewish, with a minority of Frenchmen, according to a protectorate surveillance report. Apparently, “throughout the day [attendees] played all kinds of games, swam, and sunbathed, to the exclusion of any political activity.”148 Other meetings of the Jeunesses Communistes in the summer of 1944 were similarly lighthearted, with some including musical performances. Nearly every meeting ended with a group singing of the “Marseillaise,” the French national anthem and song of liberation during the war, and of the “Internationale.”149 Occasionally, the Jeunesses Communistes or the wider PCM concluded meetings by singing the “Sharifian Hymn,” the Moroccan national anthem. Meanwhile, Zionism was also gaining ground in Morocco. The Tunisian Zionist newspaper La Voix Juive (The Jewish Voice) was widely distributed across Moroccan cities, interest in learning Hebrew spiked, and local urban Zionist clubs and organizations were quite active.150 The Alliance Israélite Universelle still opposed Zionism as contradictory to its core mission to prepare Jews for citizenship in their home countries, but that too would change following the end of WWII. According to French Protectorate reports, the US landings and presence in North Africa emboldened Zionism, as the Americans and the British w ere considered advocates for Jewish settlement in Palestine.151 Articles in La Voix Juive reinforced this sensibility, publishing numerous articles regarding US support for “the cause of Israel,” which was compared to the “studied neutrality with some animosity” on the part of France.152 Moroccan Jews increased their donation activity to the Jewish National Fund, World International Zionist Organization (WIZO), and Jewish refugee aid organizations such as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) that were operating on the ground in Morocco to help resettle the European Jewish refugees who had stopped there.153
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When Nazi Germany capitulated to the Allies, Jews of all political convictions celebrated. Jews in Casablanca and in Marrakesh in particular celebrated “deliriously,” which, according to French Protectorate sources, stoked Muslim–Jewish antagonism.154 In Marrakesh, Jews hid in the mellah when a fight broke out between Jews and Muslims at Gueliz Park to celebrate the Allied victory. In Casablanca, such frictions lasted for longer than a week. Observers posited Zionism and nationalism as primary catalysts, emboldened by France’s weakness and US ascendance. A protectorate official wrote, For Zionists, this period has been one of increased activity, manifested in the unfurling or carrying of Zionist flags or the sign of Solomon with six points
[the six-pointed Star of David], with songs and poems of a political char-
acter and sometimes even provocations, insults to the Muslim religion and assertions that would easily make one think that the defeat of HITLER [all
caps in the original] was that of Islam and the Victory [capitalization in the original] of the Jewish p eople.155
Such Jews, according to the report, had “overtly turned toward America” or were Communists, or w ere sometimes both. Construing Jews to be simulta neously pro-American and pro-Communist, anti-Semites in Morocco held them responsible for foreign influence over the country and its supposed degradation. Intriguingly, a few propaganda items circulated in Casablanca and Fez that undermined Zionism and instead advocated for Jewish–Muslim unity, including a tract by a self-described “Non-Fanatical Jewish Palestinian” who argued for a “Semitic u nion” between Jews and Arabs; another tract from a wealthy Fez Jewish businessman advocated for greater Arabic-language education among young Jews “so that they might better understand young Muslims.”156 Preexisting political affiliations among Jews during the interwar period intensified following the Second World War. The Vichy period had demonstrated the brittleness of France’s republicanism, and although Léon René Sultan and others argued that the Vichy period represented an aberration and not the “true face of France,” Moroccan Jews began to question more seriously their place within French colonial society and Morocco. Meanwhile, the membership of the PCM became increasingly Moroccan, with many more Moroccan Muslims in party leadership positions. Abdenbi
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ben Mekki, a cabinetmaker, was appointed the head of the Syndicate for Buildings and Wood in Casablanca in 1945 and served as a “delegate of propaganda” for the PCM.157 At age 17 or 18, a certain M’Hamed Tahar was recruited on a soccer field by PCM officials to go to Paris for training at the École des cadres (a school for training Communist cadres). He said of life under the protectorate, “We lived next to a kennel in 1943. I was disgusted to see that the dogs w ere better treated than we w ere. I developed a pro158 found hatred for colonization.” On his return from Paris, Tahar became the head of the dockworkers syndicate, as well as the General Union, from 1946 to 1950.159 The abiding difficulty for recruitment remained language— for “few w ere the bilingual militants” in both Arabic and French.160 To reach more Moroccan Muslims, the party would have to increase Arabic-language gatherings and publications. Indigenous Moroccans who rose through the ranks to leadership, such as M’Hamed Tahar, Mamoun Alaoui, Lahcen Ben Maati, Tayeb Bouazza, and M’Hamed Ben Aomar, w ere thus linguistically 161 endowed. Although the PCM had established schools and literacy programs, they reportedly functioned mostly as conference spaces and provided only a minimal Communist theoretical education, but one that still served to propel some indigenous Moroccans upward through the PCM and union hierarchies.162 Albert Ayache’s extensive “biographical dictionary” of Moroccan labor activists documents a growing list of Moroccan Muslims in numerous leftist organizations following WWII, among them the PCM.163 Ali Yata was first among the rising stars in the PCM. Yata was a Moroccan Muslim born in 1920 in the international city of Tangier to an Algerian father and a Moroccan mother. He would serve as secretary general for the PCM from 1949 u ntil his death in 1997. Yata came from a comfortable, well-educated background. His formative teenage years were steeped in anti-fascist activity in the bustling industrial capital, all while he studied at Casablanca’s most elite high school, Lycée Lyautey. Yata was first part of the CAM and signed onto the 1944 Istiqlal manifesto before joining the PCM later that same year. He was an Arabic teacher at the time, teaching alongside two leading European figures in the PCM, Michel Mazella and his wife Lucette Mazella. He joined his colleagues in the PCM and rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming a member of the secretariat in 1945. Although the PCM had initially decried the Istiqlal’s manifesto, Yata was critical in bringing the
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party to a platform for national liberation in 1946. He was among the leading PCM figures who would meet with the sultan in his palace as the party began to overtly support Moroccan independence.164 Building on a prewar legacy of universalist activism against racism and anti-Semitism advanced by LICA and other groups, the PCM appealed to a wide swathe of the Moroccan Jewish political landscape. The PCM welcomed “the entire Moroccan population regardless of race, language or religion.”165 This held great appeal for many Moroccan Jews, particularly the urban elite, often educated at Alliance schools by left-leaning teachers. Zionism, too, grew in appeal following the Vichy betrayal. Although some Moroccan Jews embraced Moroccan nationalism through the lens of Communist universalism, many more would eventually embrace Zionism.166 The majority of Moroccan Jews remained outwardly politically neutral or leaned Zionist. The immediate postwar period proved the height of Moroccan Jewish participation in the PCM, however; as subsequent chapters will demonstrate, these Jews represented a powerful but symbolic minority within a minority. For those Jews engaged in Morocco’s national liberation movement, the PCM was the most productive and inclusive avenue of participation. In addition to the PCM’s less than entirely effective literacy programs, participating in the PCM’s activities was itself a kind of “school,” according to Simon Lévy.167 Lévy wrote, “For many Jews [the PCM was] a crucible for solidarity in the struggle. The democratic appeal a fter the war put in motion latent forces. When Independence became a concrete goal, the PCM offered clear answers for minorities, and brought them into labor and political action.”168 Jewish activity in the struggle for national liberation is the subject of the next chapter, but it is clear that the PCM represented a distinct and persuasive political option for Jews contemplating how to be a Jewish citizen in an independent Moroccan nation-state. Edmond Amran El Maleh, a Moroccan Jewish member of the PCM, would likewise play a critical role in the national liberation struggle; he became an active leader in the PCM in the immediate postwar period and cited the Vichy years as a catalyst for his activism. Serfaty had joined the Jeunesses Communistes; Simon Lévy was still too young in 1945 but would soon join the PCM as a means to participating in anticolonial, national liberation politics in 1954. In an interview with anthropologist Marie Redonnet, El Maleh
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explained why he joined the PCM: “Three elements are essential to answering this question: place, time and identity. Time: this was the climate of 1945 which came with the fantastical foundation myth of Communism. I was one of the thousands of human beings swept up by this myth. I now think that the Communist experiment was something magnificent. Indeed, in terms of the imaginary and the existential, it was an explosion of all borders. We were there in a kind of aurora borealis, a kind of birth.”169 El Maleh referred to the boundless optimism that Communism, and the USSR as its victorious emblem, represented at the conclusion of the Second World War. As a young man, the Allied victory and the promises of Communism appealed to El Maleh and many other French-educated, philosophically minded Moroccan Jews. El Maleh would eventually abandon the PCM, but in the 1940s and 1950s, he described his engagement as a kind of “seduction.”170 El Maleh’s initial activism was located at a Fiat garage in Casablanca—a site he continually circles in his semiautobiographical fiction. In this garage there were “large meetings of Europeans, Frenchmen and Spaniards, excluding Moroccans [this was not strictly true, as the PCM sought to recruit greater numbers of Muslims]. This constituted the embryonic state of the Communist Party. I went there, seduced by p eople that I found to be kind. The friends I had in my youth w eren’t part of it. I was in the process of distancing myself from them. It was a solitary choice.”171 El Maleh does not explain w hether his friends w ere predominantly Jewish, but he clearly considers his political activity isolated from his Jewish familial milieu. In the same series of interviews, El Maleh describes his life as “allegorical” for t hose Moroccan Jews who participated in the PCM: somewhat isolated, a minority of a minority, but with profound optimism for their f uture in their home country and for the universalist messages of Communism. His language of “seduction” becomes clearer when he talks of being a “young naïve man in that Fiat garage requisitioned by the Italians . . . [who] found himself surrounded by pretty, seductive young w omen, in an ambiance of brotherhood.”172 El Maleh became increasingly engaged in the PCM’s activities, becoming a member of the Politburo and more theoretically engaged with Marxist writings.173 Despite his perceived isolation, El Maleh was one of many in his position. Serfaty had a similar story to El Maleh’s. During the early to mid- 1940s and later, Serfaty became more distant from his Jewish childhood
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friends and more interested in Marxism, debating ideology with a favorite cousin whom he credits for “precipitating” his joining the party.174 He lived in a predominantly Spanish section of Casablanca, Maarif, where Spanish radicals absorbed him into their social world, which included the Jeunesses Communistes. Many Jews, as the previous chapter addressed, were drawn to the PCM, and this trend only accelerated following the Second World War. However, this affiliation would, over time, distance Moroccan Jewish Communists from the majority Jewish population. Perhaps thankfully for the increasingly annoyed PCM leaders, Léon René Sultan finally talked less and acted more: he joined the Free French and fought for “true France” in Europe. Sultan sustained wounds in Germany and died at home in Casablanca in 1945. At 12 years old, Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh attended the Casablanca street procession for Sultan’s funeral. Benarrosh would soon join the PCM himself; he had been kicked out of school according to Vichy anti-Semitic law and became one of many radicalized young Jews who would soon militate against France.175 His younger sister and his older b rother also became members of the party. The f amily had had a cousin who had been active in the party before volunteering to fight for the F ree French and, like Léon Sultan, died for it. Léon Sultan and this cousin w ere the old guard—Benarrosh, Serfaty, El Maleh, and Lévy w ere the young, radicalized, anticolonial generation of Moroccan Jewish Communists.176 According to Benarrosh, Sultan’s funeral was a public affair that a vast number of Jews attended.177 W hether the Jews in attendance at the funeral were PCM members or otherwise, this represented a moment of increased activity for Moroccan Jews and national politics. Moroccanization of the PCM followed Léon Sultan’s death in 1945. The party changed its name, indicating a political shift: having been the Parti Communiste du Maroc (Communist Party of Morocco), it became the Parti Communiste Marocain (Moroccan Communist Party). Ali Yata— Simon Lévy’s future brother in law—became secretary general a few years later in 1949. The Central Committee was composed of forty-three members, fifteen of whom were Moroccan; a “national secretariat” was made up of three members; and a Politburo (bureau politique) was composed of eleven members, five of whom were Moroccan.178 The subtle shift in the party’s name reflected the PCM’s increasing Moroccanization: no longer a branch of the
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(French) Communist party in Morocco, it now proclaimed itself as a party with Moroccans in its leadership, with the goal of furthering Moroccan national liberation. Still, its doctrine nearly mirrored that of the PCF and the two parties maintained a complex relationship.179 Soon a fter Sultan’s death, the PCM declared itself in favor of Moroccan independence in 1946.
o fter the Vichy period in Morocco had formally ended, an official protecA torate report concluded the following regarding Moroccan Jews: “The many difficulties that surrounded them have revealed a great malaise within the Jewish Communities, in particular in the most important centers such as Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes, etc. . . . This malaise is nothing more than the logical conclusion of a number of currents running through the Jewish communities; these currents w ere already noticeable in the pre-war years.”180 This “malaise” contributed to the growth of a politicized Moroccan Jewish elite, active in the increasingly existential question of Moroccan Jewish political belonging. Abraham Serfaty, with whom this chapter opened, was one of many Moroccan Jews galvanized by the Vichy years, as well as by the intersection of anti-fascist politics and the national liberation movement. For Serfaty and figures like Simon Lévy, Edmond Amran El Maleh, and Ralph Benarrosh, “belonging” would mean a rejection of France and a firm ideological and social commitment to Moroccanness. They would enact this “belonging” through the Moroccan Communist Party. The Vichy years and the Gallic betrayal that accompanied them left the Moroccan Jewish community, particularly the urban, politicized elites, shaken and vulnerable. Moroccan Jews’ faith in French republicanism was sorely tested by the anti-Semitic persecutions of the Vichy period; Moroccan Jews increasingly questioned their place in the French Empire. As France had demonstrably failed in its self-proclaimed role of “protector” of Jews, many Moroccan Jews began to consider the sultan their primary “protector.” Further, Moroccan Jews during the interwar period had supported anti- fascist activism in high numbers. As anti-fascist activity transformed into nationalist demands, many Moroccan Jews carried their previous Popular Front allegiances into the PCM. Others took a different path, embracing
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Zionism and eventual outmigration, seeing themselves as neither French nor Moroccan but primarily Jewish. A fter a period of French “loyalty” and betrayal, Moroccan Jews faced an array of political possibilities that became more exclusive than they had been during the interwar period. The question of Moroccan Jewish political belonging became existential. Operation Torch was a potent indicator of the waning power of colonial France and the ascendancy of the Americans in an incipient Cold War context. The makhzan strengthened with increased US support. In the immediate postwar period, the PCF’s popularity was buoyed by its role in France’s liberation. The PCM, too, exited 1945 on a high note and u nder Ali Yata and other party veterans began to work for national liberation. Zionism also enjoyed renewed popularity following WWII as the Jewish Agency and local Moroccan Zionist groups began to agitate more aggressively. The PCM, its clashes and collaborations with Istiqlal and other nationalist parties, the monarchy, and the role of Jews in a newly independent Morocco form the narrative threads, with formative roots in the Vichy period. Abraham Serfaty and other Moroccan Jewish Communists also had their roots in WWII and its immediate aftermath, emboldened, alongside other nationalist Moroccans, to fight against imperialism in all forms.
l CHAP TER 3 '
TAC T I C S : J EW S A N D M O RO CCA N I ND EP END EN C E
We are Moroccans, we are not “foreigners” as the Zionists would have us believe. . . . We are deeply Moroccan.
—Edmond Amran El Maleh, Espoir, December 1949
In April 1950, French Protectorate authorities arrested Abraham Serfaty, leader of the Jeunesses Communistes (Youth Communists), for distributing Communist propaganda out of a suitcase in Casablanca.1 In response, the leadership of the Moroccan Communist Party (PCM) led numerous public demonstrations while widely publicizing Serfaty’s arrest in propaganda and its newspapers. The PCM leadership even wrote a formal letter to the Moroccan sultan Sidi Muhammad Ben Youssef himself, imploring him to intervene on behalf of their comrade on the grounds that his arrest represented yet another example of “colonial oppression.” The PCM leaders argued that this arrest had v iolated Sharifian juridical authority and sovereignty and that to release Serfaty would be to exercise patriotism and autonomy in defiance of France.2 In one tract, they decried the arrest of this “young, ardent patriot,” upholding Serfaty as an example of colonial cruelty and disenfranchisement, as he had been “tossed into prison in clear violation of the law.”3 This tract informed fellow “patriots, democrats, and peace seekers” of Morocco that such blatant disregard for Moroccan autonomy, Sharifian authority, and the rights of true patriots was nothing short of a declaration of “war.”4 PCM members
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distributed such propaganda by sliding tracts under the doors of Moroccan homes u nder the cover of night in both Jewish and Muslim quarters, as well as European areas, in nearly e very major Moroccan city.5 Abraham Serfaty, for the first time but hardly the last, became the face of Moroccan freedom in the face of oppression. Serfaty had joined the PCM in 1944, inspired by the heroism of the Soviet Union in the Second World War and his friendships with Spanish Civil War refugees as well as with US soldiers forged while working on the docks of Casablanca. He had left Morocco to study in France from 1945 to 1949, where he continued his activism within the ranks of the French Communist Party (PCF); on his return to Morocco, he became one of the primary actors in the PCM’s activism for national liberation from France. At the time of Serfaty’s 1950 arrest, Edmond Amran El Maleh, a Jewish Communist from the southern Atlantic coastal city of Safi, was the de facto head of the PCM while the party’s secretary general, Ali Yata, was imprisoned and subsequently exiled to Algeria (and later France) in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These were only two of the most prominent Moroccan Jews within the PCM at this time—Jacob Levy was at the helm of the PCM branch in Oujda, one of the largest membership bases outside of Casablanca in the early 1950s, and Joseph (Youssef ) Levy led the party in Fez. The protectorate archives highlight numerous other politically active Moroccan Jews, including Abraham Pilo, who edited the Communist newspaper Espoir (Hope). Jewish w omen w ere also quite active, including Léon René Sultan’s w idow Fortunée and Abraham Serfaty’s firebrand s ister Evelyne. They w ere joined by scores of Spanish w omen such as Incarnation and Rosalie Rojel, sisters who each married leading members of the PCM—Incarnation to Simon Lévy, and Rosalie to Ali Yata. Incarnation and Rosalie Rojel themselves w ere children of Spanish immigrants to Morocco. Their m other had sold horsemeat to dock workers in Casablanca, served with a side of Socialist propaganda. Facing grinding poverty in the Spanish city of Cartagena, their grandparents had emigrated to Algeria and subsequently to Morocco for employment opportunities. Supposedly, the grandmother had stated, “Nos vamos por el puerto y el primer barco que se va, nos vamos con el” (Let’s go to the port and get on the first ship leaving).6 Two generations later, her granddaughters would be two of the most prominent w omen associated with the Moroccan Communist Party.
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Leading figures in the PCM were thus a demographic combination of Moroccan Jews, Spaniards, Frenchmen, and, increasingly in the majority, Moroccan Muslims. For Jews seeking to participate in the national liberation movement, radicalized by anti-fascist activism during the 1930s and 1940s, the Moroccan Communist Party would become the primary avenue for expressing their patriotism and vision for a new Morocco. As France’s power waned following the Second World War and during the Cold War, the Moroccan sultan, emboldened by assumed promises of US support for independence, declared himself openly in favor of independence and promised to protect “all of his c hildren,” including Moroccan Jews. For Moroccan Communists, the post–WWII years saw the anti-fascist struggle transform into an anticolonial fight for national liberation. It is in the period of 1945 to 1956 that Moroccan Jews again became, after a colonial hiatus, the “Sultan’s Jews,” who would in turn include the “Sultan’s Communists.” The national liberation party that counted the most Jews among its ranks was the Moroccan Communist Party. A few Jews w ere members of Istiqlal and far fewer of the Parti Democratique de l’Indépendance (Demo cratic Party for Independence; PDI).7 The PCM’s universalism and appeal for Moroccan independence made it the most obvious political option for activist Jews. Further, as discussed in previous chapters, Jews had been radicalized toward anti-fascist activism through the prism of the Popular Front, the LICA, and the Communist Party during the 1930s and 1940s. The PCM itself increasingly Moroccanized in the immediate postwar period, with Moroccan Muslims and Jews occupying top leadership positions; in the past, Europeans exclusively had led the party. Moroccan Jews and Spaniards were disproportionately involved in the PCM throughout the struggle for national liberation, achieved in 1956. For Jewish members of the PCM, Moroccanized Communism represented the most capacious, universalist, and nonsectarian means of proclaiming their patriotism and demonstrating their commitment to building a new, independent Morocco, run by Moroccan citizens regardless of ethnic or religious origin. The Second World War and the experiences of the Vichy regime, followed by the Allied liberations of Operation Torch in 1942 in Morocco, had demonstrated the waning power of France and the fragility of republican values. Léon René Sultan had advocated for “true France,” an idealized vision of republican France, arguing that the Vichy period had represented an aberration. However, soon a fter Sultan’s untimely
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death from wounds incurred from fighting in the war in 1945, the PCM Moroccanized and became a party for national liberation. This did not happen all at once, but by 1946, the PCM firmly declared itself anti-imperialist and pro-independence. By 1949, Ali Yata, a Moroccan Muslim, was the party’s secretary general—a position he would hold until his death in 1997. Despite this turn toward anticolonial politics, the PCM faced allegations of inauthenticity from leaders in the Istiqlal. They accused the PCM of being a foreign import, claiming that Communism would be fundamentally incompatible with an independent Morocco with a strong Muslim history and identity. The fact that Léon Sultan, an Algerian Jew with French citizenship, had re-founded the party out of the ashes of a previously banned Eu ropean version and that Ali Yata’s father was Algerian (despite Yata’s birth in Tangier in 1920), did not help the PCM’s case for Moroccan “authenticity,” nor did the high-profile activism of Jews such as Edmond Amran El Maleh, Abraham and Evelyne Serfaty, Jacob and Joseph Levy, and a large number of Spaniards. By 1948, the PCM counted among its members 500 Jews, 2,500 Europeans (a majority of whom were Spanish), and 3,000 Muslims.8 The party was strongest in Casablanca but was also active in e very major city and even in parts of the countryside. The Jewish members of the PCM active in the generation following Léon René Sultan’s death saw themselves as contributing to a truly emancipated Morocco, defined not by their Jewishness but by their Moroccanness first and foremost. Where Léon Sultan had represented a kind of “old guard” inclined toward association with France rather than full independence, after his death the party became staunchly pro-independence. As Simon Lévy, who joined the party in 1954 and would marry Incarnation Rojel, once noted, “The PCM offered clear answers to minorities. . . . In the nationalist infused syndicates, many workers organized [toward this goal], including teachers for the Alliance Israélite.” 9 In other words, not only w ere Jews primary members of the PCM’s Central Committee and Politburo in major urban centers but also more “average” Jews in the labor u nions and Jews teaching on behalf of the ostensibly pro-French Alliance could be card-carrying members of the PCM and, through it, advocates for Moroccan independence. However, many Moroccan Jews w ere more ambivalent regarding their future in an independent Morocco. While for Jews in the PCM the Allied victory in the Secord World War meant the defeat of fascism and renewed
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energy for Communism worldwide, for most Moroccan Jews the Vichy period had demonstrated the precarious nature of their acceptance in Morocco, whether as Francophiles, Moroccans, or Jews. Following the Second World War, increasing numbers of Moroccan Jews became active in Zionist social, educational, and political circles. Although the Alliance Israélite Universelle had been steadfastly opposed to Zionism before the Second World War, the horrors of the Holocaust had softened this stance. Thus, while it was possi ble for Alliance teachers to lead crypto-Communist lives, it was also common for Alliance teachers to become involved in local Zionist politics and cultural activities. It is important to remember that in both Communist and Zionist circles, not everyone involved was a dedicated militant. Further, the meaning of Communism and Zionism in Morocco changed over time and depended heavily on class and urban or rural social context. Many more Jews in Morocco w ere not politically active at all and sought to avoid trouble to themselves, their families, and their communities. Meanwhile, the Moroccan sultan became increasingly outspoken following the conclusion of the Second World War, culminating in a famous declaration of support for independence and allegiance with the wider Arab world in the international city of Tangier in 1947. In 1944, the Istiqlal Party had issued its Manifesto of Independence; in 1946, the PCM followed suit. International events, notably the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the war that surrounded its founding, as well as the beginning of the Cold War, further complicated the prismatic array of political possibilities facing all Moroccans, Jewish or Muslim. Although t hese possibilities emerged from the same prism, their rays fragmented into different, increasingly mutually exclusive responses. Moroccan Jews in particular could no longer be simul taneously pro-French, Communist, and Zionist as they could during the interwar period: the postwar world demanded harder political boundaries. As Zionism gained ground, so too did the conflation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Although e very major political party and the sultan himself publicly and forcefully distinguished between Zionism and Jewishness, m atters on the ground w ere more inconsistent and fraught, as Morocco moved closer to the political orbit of the wider Arab world and support for Palestinian liberation. For Moroccan Jewish Communists, rejecting Zionism was one critical means of expressing devotion to the Moroccan state and
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patriotism. For many other Moroccan Jews, such a climate encouraged the massive outmigration that would start in 1948 and accelerate throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Jews who “did politics,” to use El Maleh’s terminology, w ere at once working for the unity of Moroccans in the fight for independence and beginning to profoundly diverge from the Moroccan Jewish majority.10 That said, the moment surrounding independence in 1956 was one of jubilation and optimism across the political spectrum, and for that brief period, the Jewish Moroccan future and its political expressions seemed secure as the independent makhzan asserted the inherent Moroccanness of “its” Jews. As El Maleh wrote in a 1949 issue of the PCM newspaper Espoir, which was excerpted in the chapter epigraph, “We are Moroccans, we are not ‘foreigners’ as the Zionists would have us believe, who fuel the Colonial fire. We are deeply Moroccan.”11 This quote reflects the PCM’s attempt to remind Jews that their primary allegiance was to the homeland where they were born and not to a far-away unknown Jewish state. However, such ardent public exhortations were frequently unpersuasive. Many tensions influenced the diverse, but increasingly centralized and urban, Moroccan Jewish community. At e very level, Jews on the eve of Moroccan independence in 1956 navigated an ever-choppy sea of allegiances and embraced a prismatic variety of politi cal strategies that placed either “Moroccanness” or “Jewishness” at the fore of a political and cultural identity. As much as El Maleh and other Jewish members of the PCM asserted the Moroccanness of Jews, Zionism argued for an identification with global Jewishness instead. On independence in 1956, the newly independent state included Jewish cabinet ministers and participated in initiatives to bring Muslims and Jews together under the auspices of the monarchy under the retitled King Muhammad V. In part, such initiatives w ere successful. However, external events such as conflicts with Israel challenged Jewish understandings of Moroccan belonging, leaving the PCM to increasingly shout its persuasions into a vacuum.
Postwar Casablanca: Political Economy and New World Order
In 1950, decorated French orientalist and ethnographer Robert Montagne and a research team for the protectorate authorities published a survey of Morocco titled Naissance du Prolétariat Marocain: enquête collective exécutée de 1948 à 1950 (Birth of the Moroccan Proletariat: A Collective Inquiry Conducted
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from 1948 to 1950).12 In it, Montagne depicted Moroccan Jewish urban life, particularly in Casablanca, on the eve of Moroccan independence. Montagne noted the massive rural-to-urban migration of the interwar period to Casablanca, converging on the city (as well as other large cities) for factory and other industrial-commercial opportunities, which only increased with the US presence after 1942.13 His total population estimates for 1937–1940 in Casablanca alone stood at 120,000 “Europeans,” 365,000 Muslims, and 65,000 Jews out of a total of approximately 250,000 Jews across all of Morocco.14 Montagne characterized Jewish political affiliations as directed externally— especially the poor who looked to Israel—with the notable exception of “a few hot-headed Jews drawn to Marxist Communism, [who] join in the social agitation of the unions and the ‘militants’ for the Moroccan people.”15 Despite the overwhelming poverty among Jews in Casablanca, Montagne depicted them as upwardly mobile, although sometimes “whole families w ere crammed into a single room.”16 He described the Jewish youth as dressing completely in the European fashion, working in elegant shops, earning advanced degrees, and entering professional schools.17 Muslims, Montagne noted, typically had less economic success and social mobility in the colonial context of early 1950s Morocco. He claimed that history had treated Jews in Morocco far worse than Moroccan Muslims, neglecting to mention the long history of French Protectorate preferential policies t oward Jews as mediators in the colonial apparatus across the Maghrib.18 The “hot-headed Jews” Montagne referenced were highly cognizant of this historical and economic difference and through the PCM sought to remedy these inequalities while working for Moroccan independence. Following Operation Torch in November 1942, many of Casablanca’s poor and displaced worked for the US Army. While the Americans maintained a significant military presence in Morocco after the Second World War ended, the US Army was not a dependable employer, and as nationalist agitation increased, the presence of foreign employers became less politically desirable. Istiqlal, the mainstream political independence party of Morocco, had issued its manifesto in 1944, which called for a popular revolt against imperialist rule in all its forms, to take back Morocco for Moroccans and restore the full authority of the sultan. It called on all Moroccans, regardless of background, to participate in this patriotic struggle. The manifesto guaranteed “freedom
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of belief and of thought for all. All Moroccans should enjoy equality before the law; they should enjoy equal rights and assume equal obligations, without discrimination on account of religion or race.”19 The same 1944 charter waxed poetic about the Spanish convivencia of medieval al-Andalus and the warm reception of the fifteenth-century Iberian Jewish exiles in Morocco. Under a section titled Foreign Policy, it read, The hospitality granted the Jewish expellees from Spain testifies to the liberality of the Moroccan people. These Jews were permitted to preserve their
religious beliefs, their properties, and their separate religious courts; they were accorded Moroccan citizenship which enabled them on occasion to rise
to the highest positions in the state. This should disprove all allegations of religious or racial intolerance and attests to the willingness of Moroccans to cooperate sincerely with other states and communities.20
Ecumenicism was integral to the history of Morocco in the emerging nationalist narrative, and Jews were the primary example. Such statements of convivencia and post-Andalusian harmony were overly romanticized. However, they related to the legal historical continuity of considering Jews within an independent Moroccan legal framework as protected subjects of the sultan.21 Belying this rhetoric of inclusion was Istiqlal’s plan in 1945, which called for cooperation across national liberation parties, excluding Communists. Points 7 and 8 of this plan clearly defined the criteria for acceptable Moroccanness: “7. There shall be no affiliation with the Communists in a common front, and there shall be no contacts with them except through the executive committee. 8. The Jews who do not carry a foreign nationality and t hose who are not Zionists, s hall be regarded as Moroccans, subjects of his Majesty.”22 Such rhetoric would only grow stronger after 1948 with the establishment of the state of Israel, but these two points raised questions common to all Moroccans in this historical moment: Who was “authentically” Moroccan, and what parties, by extension, w ere authentic representatives of said Moroccans? What was foreign, and what was indigenous? The Istiqlal Party—like most nationalist political entities—vied for liberation from colonial authorities along the lines of a modern nation-state model predicated on a nationalism in turn defined by “essential” national characteristics. For Morocco, this meant, as stated in the 1944 manifesto,
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Arabic as the national language (indeed, Tamazight was only recognized as an official national language in 2011) and Islam as the national religion, but within the framework of a constitutional monarchy framed by “democratic precepts.”23 Moroccan Jews, of course, had been educated for generations in French through the Alliance curriculum, and although most could speak colloquial Moroccan Judeo-Arabic, they were mostly illiterate in the standard Arabic of newspapers and dahirs (decrees). Jews walked a tricky line of Moroccan “authenticity.” Jews had operated as middlemen between Europeans and the makhzan from the early modern period into the nineteenth century.24 At the same time, they had dhimmi or “protected” status pursuant to Islamic custom and had integrated linguistically, socially, as well as culturally into their surrounding Moroccan contexts for centuries before the beginning of European intervention. On the heels of the spike in anti-Semitism during the interwar and Vichy periods and a fter interacting with Jewish war refugees, many Moroccan Jews began to see their Jewishness as their primary identity, rather than their Moroccanness.
The Jewish Political-Social World and the Protectorate Authorities
In the waning months of WWII, Maurice Botbol replaced Yahia Zagury as the new protectorate intermediary with the Jewish community. Botbol warned French officials to show more gratitude for Jewish support. In 1944 he reported, “On account of the instruction of the Alliance Israélite schools, which predate our Protectorate, the colonization process found in the Jewish element valuable collaborators, speaking both Arabic and French, who . . . became the necessary and indispensable intermediaries for the economic life of this country. It would be imprudent to neglect the evolution of this segment of the population.”25 Such language was a marked departure from Yahia Zagury’s interwar admonishments for Moroccan Jews to avoid politics and show gratitude toward the French. The protectorate authorities w ere aware of the damage the Vichy period had done to Jewish loyalty to France in Morocco and, as a result, knew that Moroccan Jews “have become seduced by diverse influences . . . above all Zionist propaganda. . . . Communism as well has gained followers among the young workers and intellectuals of the
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big cities . . . the leaders of Istiqlal have also tried to appeal to Moroccan Jews in promising them absolute legal equality.”26 Botbol was right: u nless the French authorities took action, Moroccan Jews, purportedly feeling like “wounded lovers,” w ere rapidly politicizing and turning against the protec27 torate. The difference between the Communists and the Zionists was that in the former, the Jews were politicized primarily as Moroccans; in the latter, as Jews. In the spring of 1944, protectorate reports had noted a rise in the circulation of Zionist propaganda and fundraising between Mandate Palestine, France, the United States, and Morocco. American Jewish organizations that had become more prominent in Morocco as a result of humanitarian missions surrounding the war, such as the American Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC), began increasingly intervening in Moroccan Jewish life by engaging in philanthropy with a political edge, often in close collaboration with the Alliance Israélite Universelle.28 The JDC itself increasingly worked with Zionist organizations to facilitate outmigration, a trend that would accelerate its activities in the country as the struggle for Moroccan inde pendence intensified. The JDC, along with other international Jewish aid organizations, feared that Moroccan Jews would no longer be adequately “protected” in an independent Arab Muslim nation-state. Moroccan Jews followed the activities of the World Jewish Congress intently, and secular Hebrew-language learning programs proliferated within local Zionist circles.29 At the same time, the PCM expanded its Arabic-language propaganda and proclaimed its “struggle for the unity of the youth without any racial or religious distinction.”30 Despite French wishes, Jewish schools and youth organizations would come to be increasingly oriented t oward Zionism. Further, Moroccan Jews directed most of these initiatives, advocating for themselves on an international Zionist stage. These local organizational leaders collaborated with larger international philanthropic efforts backed by the JDC such as the Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (Organization to Save the C hildren; OSE), which provided superior health care to Jewish children than what was generally available within the protectorate infrastructure; the Organisation Reconstruction Travail (Organization for Reconstruction Work; ORT) that trained Jewish students in skilled labor, and an affiliate of the Jewish Agency—Kadima
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(Forward, in Hebrew), which encouraged Jewish migration to Palestine. The Alliance school network and its powerful alumni society—Fédération des Anciens Élèves de l’Alliance Israélite—proved a stage on which the conflicting ideas of the Jewish future played out. Alliance teachers and administrators, in the wake of the Second World War, increasingly embraced Zionism. However, individual teachers within the Alliance system fomented leftist activism among their students. At the same time that the Alliance increased its Hebrew program and student circles encouraged its use, the Alliance also began to place emphasis on Arabic literacy as an important skill for Moroccan Jews.31 The Charles Netter Association—affiliated with the Alliance schools—leaned heavily Zionist, frequently publishing articles in its journal, La terre retrouvée (The Reclaimed Land), about the degradation of Jewish life in Morocco, the threat of Moroccan nationalism to Moroccan Jewry, and the material and spiritual gains to be made in Palestine.32 Further, Moroccan Jews became increasingly involved in the World Zionist Organization (WZO). Moroccan and European Jews working with the WZO often referenced the substandard living conditions of Moroccan Jewry. A June 1947 edition of La Vigie Marocaine published an article by an Ashkenazi visitor who described the mellah of Casablanca as a kind of cesspool, where “30% of residents suffered from tuberculosis, typhus, scabies, ringworm, trachoma, conjunctivitis [which is] the typical lot of this unfortunate population.” The correspondent added, “I know why I d idn’t see a single dog during my visit. When one is a dog, free and alone, one wouldn’t live in the mellah.”33 The Jewish press, particularly of Casablanca, was burgeoning with articles pulling Moroccan Jewry in every possible direction. One May 1945 article in La Voix Juive titled “CAN JEWS ASSIMILATE” [all caps in the original] argued that, while various political movements might promise much idealistically to Jews, When, then, should we revive the so-called “Jewish question’ ”? A fter the fall of fascism, the victories of democracies, the supremacy of socialism or Com-
munism, all is well. Jews w ill enjoy the same rights as their fellow citizens, and will no longer be a special minority. . . . Hoping that one day all the na-
tions of the world w ill form a g rand international family, that’s very nice . . .
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but it has no chance of happening in the coming five hundred years. For now
and for a long time to come there w ill be Frenchmen, Englishmen, Chinese
and Jews.34
Shekel-buying campaigns picked up in earnest, spearheaded by local Moroccan Jews, often from the Casablanca elite.35 Regional meetings of Moroccan branches of the French Zionist Federation w ere common in the 1940s. Often a fter presentations, attendees would sing both the “Marseillaise” and “Hatikva”—the archives make no mention of the “Sharifian Hymn” (the Moroccan national anthem) being sung.36 As with Communist and other political meetings, Zionist organizations often held their meetings in large urban cinemas.37 Leaflets often appeared in Moroccan Judeo-Arabic, French, and Hebrew.38 Protectorate authorities monitored an impressively long list of urban Zionist centers, youth groups, organizations, and Zionist-affiliated activity with the Alliance, the JDC, and other operators such as the OSE and ORT; this list even included contacts with a Morocco Society of Amer ica, based in New York City, that worked to promote Moroccan Jewish immigration to Palestine.39 The schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle propagated the pro-Zionist French-language journal Noar financed jointly by the Alliance and the JDC. This publication joined an already boisterous newsprint debate discussed in Chapter 1, represented by l’Avenir Illustré, La Voix des Communautés, and the official journal of Moroccan Jewry, l’Union Marocaine, that was unabashedly pro-French.40 Debates concerning the place of Moroccan Jews within the wider Jewish world, Zionism, Moroccan nationalism, and French assimilation played out on their pages, while Communist and Istiqlal publications also contributed perspectives. Moroccan Jews were thus pulled between two poles that the international and local political context rendered increasingly mutually exclusive: primacy of identification with world Jewry (Zionism) or primacy of Moroccan identity (Moroccan nationalism). Protectorate authorities in the late 1940s were as concerned with Jewish engagement in Moroccan nationalism as they were with Zionism. One protectorate report was deeply skeptical: “Young Jews are drawn to the nationalists and the Sultan who promises them mountains and miracles in the event of in dependence (equal rights, e tc . . .). . . . Further, Jews are being increasingly won
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over . . . by Communist propaganda. We must, no m atter what, do something. Jews represent a considerable force for propaganda, not only in Morocco, but around the whole world. They can work with us, but also against us.”41 Jewish members of the PCM, however, had already represented their party and their nation at the Youth International Festival in Prague in August 1947, and the Youth Communists ( Jeunesses Communistes) were drawing increasing numbers of members through social outreach, literacy programs, and working through the labor unions.42 Protectorate officials blamed the spread of Communism among the Jewish youth on their proximity to Communist members or sympathizers, as well as the experiences of the Vichy period that served to convince Moroccan Jews that they could not assimilate to a French model; disillusioned with French republicanism, these Jews joined the PCM b ecause they believed in an internationalist model adapted for local conditions.43 Officials sounded the alarm: Night classes, charity balls, soup kitchens and free distribution of clothing
and food stuffs are effective, most often with the CGT which is completely obedient to the Communists in Morocco; the weeklies ‘ESPOIR’ and ‘LIB-
ERTÉ’ are read in the mellahs, tracts are distributed by Jewish militants and, at political meetings as well as ceremonies and public demonstrations orga
nized by Communists, Jews are a large number; indeed, importantly in an Islamic country, Jews frequently occupy top positions in local cells, commit-
tees and central committees. . . . In some cases, they [party officials] have had
to limit Jewish participation out of fear of being perceived by Muslims as a “Jewish” party.44
At an event in June 1946 marking the one-year anniversary of Léon Sultan’s death, the policy of union with France had radically shifted to one of in dependence, although the “Marseillaise” was still often sung at the end of meetings along with the “Sharifian Hymn” and the “Internationale.”45 The police reported record numbers of Jews at the PCM meetings of the mid- to late 1940s and early 1950s.46 A certain Moroccan Jew, Albert Pilo, was an apparent Communist recidivist: police reports of that period repeatedly document his arrest for spreading propaganda among Moroccan Jews.47 Indeed, one could be a member both of the Éclaireurs Israélites (a Jewish youth scouting organization based in France with chapters in Morocco) and the
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Youth Communists, participating in the dances, film screenings, picnics, and pool parties of each—accordingly, Pilo was guilty for spreading propaganda equally among them.48 One such item of propaganda included an Arabic- and French-language slogan: “Join the Moroccan Communist Party because it is the true nationalist party of Morocco.”49 At PCM events, the “Marseillaise” was sung less and less, and the “Sharifian Hymn” followed by a rousing chorus of the “Internationale” concluded meetings, against a backdrop of Moroccan and Soviet flags. The sultan continued to flex his proverbial political muscles. He welcomed meetings with leaders of the Istiqlal. To the “stupefication” [sic] of many, he also met with PCM leaders, including Ali Yata, in August 1946, granting the Communist Party a greater degree of legitimacy.50 The logic of this meeting is clear, however, when considering the new shape of the PCM: it was no longer the Moroccan branch of the French Communist Party, a colonial outpost of a foreign entity. The PCM was now firmly Moroccan, patriotic, and monarchist, which may strike those familiar with Communist politics elsewhere as curious. However, the PCM, like many Communist Parties in the Global South, manifested as a nationalist party. It was prepared to respond Istiqlal’s routine attacks on it as “foreign.” As Abdesselam Bourquia, a PCM Central Committee member, pointed out in a January 1950 edition of the PCM Arabic-language newspaper Hayat al- Shaab (Life of the People), Stalin had resolved the national question . . . he speaks of the “nation” and describes
the process of national evolution. Many compatriots imagine that the “Nation” is a group of people, practicing the same religion, speaking the same
language, sharing a common origin. They categorize Arabs and Muslims, who live in diverse countries and who do not speak the same language, as “the Arab Nation” or the “Muslim Nation.” Stalin demonstrated that a “Nation” is a group of people, historically bound together, sharing a common lan-
guage, a common land, and a shared spirit. We should not say “Arab Nation” or “Muslim Nation,” but rather “Moroccan Nation.” 51
To this end, the PCM’s manifesto, published in August 1946 and widely distributed, called for “A United and Independent Morocco—a National Moroccan Front.” In it, the PCM asserted that while numerous Moroccans
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had “fought for freedom against fascism” and died for “the common victory,” they had not been rewarded for their “immense sacrifices.” The PCM called for Arabic to replace French in the public sphere, for Moroccans to be able to control affairs of government, and for freedom of association and unionization. Above all, it called on “all men, all w omen who desire freedom” to form “Moroccan National Front Committees,” which would be “the greatest guarantee for the full sovereignty of our country, which, through unity of action of all its inhabitants, w ill become a UNITED AND INDEPENDENT MOROCCO ASSURING EVERYONE FREEDOM, WELL-BEING AND HAPPINESS” [capitalization in the original].52 The manifesto was printed in Arabic and French and distributed across Morocco in high volume in urban centers (often by the aforementioned Abraham Pilo, who wrote for Espoir as well).53 Distribution tactics included “sliding copies under the doors of residences, placing them in mailboxes, in stairwells and passed hand to hand.” 54 Abraham Pilo was regularly implicated in (and arrested for) this activity, alongside a married Jewish c ouple, Simon and Yemna Abitbol, who also worked with Pilo on Espoir.55 In the late 1940s, before the outbreak of the Israeli–Arab conflict of 1948, the PCM was occupied by questions of Moroccan independence and anti- American imperialism. It began the new year of 1947 with a meeting of approximately nine hundred p eople, held in Casablanca’s Municipal Theater on Boulevard de la Liberté (Freedom Boulevard), an art deco structure surrounded by trees and a beacon of the French architectural project of the protectorate. Léon Sultan’s w idow Fortunée spoke to the crowd, along with Eli Benchimol, another prominent Jewish member of the party. The Europeans in the crowd w ere disproportionately Spanish.56 Later that month, the PCM pushed harder for the accelerated Moroccanization of the party, and under the initiative of a certain “Ben Chemsi”—a Moroccan Jewish surname—the PCM began to form a purely Moroccan labor u nion devoid of European 57 attachment. PCM propaganda before 1948 ranged from the lofty and philosophical to the scatological. The Rabat office of the PCM displayed the following poster in its window in reference to France: “The Hand Is in the Purse and the Nose Is in the Shit.” 58 Dr. Léon Benzaquen, a leading figure of the Moroccan Jewish community, meanwhile, appeared frequently in the pro-Zionist Moroc-
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can Jewish paper Noar alongside glowing images and articles about life in the Yishuv, with article headlines such as “The Mellah Accuses!” which decried the abysmal living conditions of the average mellah in Morocco.59 During the same period, Dr. Benzaquen, who also served as the Moroccan president of the Zionist aid agency, Keren Hayessod, was criticized among nationalists for organizing Zionist meetings; for example, when fliers were posted for a Keren Hayessod event in Casablanca, nationalists removed or defaced them, principally with slogans against Dr. Benzaquen.60 Benzaquen himself would become a prominent example of Moroccan Jewish optimism and patriotism after independence, appointed to the first independent government in 1956. Meanwhile, following the sultan’s proclamation in f avor of independence in 1947, Crown Prince Moulay Hassan (known a fter his elevation to king as Hassan II) attended JDC and OSE Jewish fundraising efforts, including campaigns against tuberculosis and other diseases endemic to the mellah.61 M. Isaac Dahan, president of the Federation of Alumni Associations of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Morocco, worried about PCM and nationalist recruitment among Moroccan Jews.62 In a report to protectorate officials in March 1947, Dahan cited a man whose loan repayment was extended by showing his PCM membership card.63 Despite PCM outreach to the wider Jewish community and increased Jewish involvement in independence activism, most Jews preferred to stay out of politics. Such apparent neutrality caused Moroccan nationalists to doubt Moroccan Jewish patriotism. The June 20, 1947, edition of the nationalist paper Jeune Moghrebin (Young Moroccan) published an article (originally in Arabic and then translated into French) by Abou Khalil titled “The Zionist Venom” that alarmed Jews and protectorate officials alike. Khalil argued that Moroccan Muslims had “so often demonstrated [their] sympathies for the Jewish population of Morocco,” granting the Jews “protection” since the very arrival of Islam in Morocco in the eighth c entury in the form of dhimmi status. He referenced the potent nationalist narrative developed during the Vichy period, that the sultan had “in particular affirmed this protection while under the Vichy regime.” Jews, Khalil argued, had always “found only goodwill and help in safeguarding their [the Jews’] rights in their time of need. . . . Morocco and Moroccans have never ceased to come to their defense, to uphold their rights and to fight on their behalf when they have endured injustice.” However, “this trust has
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been misplaced; the Jews h aven’t acknowledged any of these good deeds and have shown Muslims only ingratitude and treachery”; as a result, according to Khalil, “the majority of Moroccan Jews d on’t deserve their nationality. . . . Don’t depend on them for aid or solidarity; we must keep them at arm’s length.” Citing anti-Semitic tropes of Jews controlling global finance and their lack of a trustworthy “character,” Khalil issued a chilling warning: “Oh Zionists, we will not overlook your crimes. W ill we do nothing while our blood and our hearts burn for the Arab cause? We w ill face this hostility with all our might, our love, and our national feeling; watch out, O Zionists!”64 Khalil’s article was notable for its conflation of “Moroccans” and “Muslims,” leaving Jews to be hyphenated Moroccans, and for the familiar tropes of European anti-Semitism that had spread in Morocco by pro-fascist ele ments during the interwar period. The piece fails to distinguish between the two categories of “Jews” and “Zionists,” assuming that one is synonymous for the other. The sense of “ingratitude” and “treachery” conveyed in this piece, coupled with a possessive understanding of Morocco and “its” Jews, amounts to an alarming synthesis of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. The same paper ran another article with a similar tone titled “We Want Nothing from You Other than As Moroccans.”65 This article made similar points, in addition to asserting that, when Moroccan Jews did show themselves in favor of independence, such declarations should not be trusted. The Istiqlal Party, the Democratic Party for Independence (PDI), and the PCM all decried these articles, but a critical distance developed between doctrine and real ity.66 Rather than encouraging Moroccan Jews to be more patriotic, such articles alarmed Moroccan Jews regarding their prospects in an independent Morocco.67
The Year 1948 and Moroccan Jewish Nationalisms
Months before Israel’s declaration of independence in May 1948, a January article in Istiqlal’s main mouthpiece, al-Raï al-‘Am (The Opinion of the People), exhorted Moroccans to avoid any Zionist commercial enterprise and explicitly claimed that all Jews were Zionists: “You, noble Moroccan . . . know that by giving a dirham to a Zionist you are destroying an Arab house and financing the treacherous Zionist state. You can dispense with Zionist ser vices. . . . So don’t buy your medication in a Zionist pharmacy, don’t go to a
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Zionist doctor, don’t have your photo taken by a Zionist photographer, don’t take a Zionist bus, don’t employ a Zionist, (and remember) that every Jew is a partisan of Zion.”68 The PDI explicitly deemed that “mellahs were nothing but ‘haras sionistes’ ” (Zionist quarters).69 Allal al-Fassi’s wife, along with other nationalists’ wives in Fez, led a fundraising campaign for the Palestinian cause; their actions were emulated by the women of Casablanca, who “donated their jewelry” while calling for boycotts of Jewish and European establishments suspected of Zionist support.70 American goods and businesses w ere added to the list after the United States’ endorsement of partition and recognition of Israel’s statehood. Worried protectorate officials asked that Jews postpone their ziyaras (pilgrimages, literally “visits” in Arabic) to tombs of the saints and holy shrines, “fearing this might irritate the Muslims at this sensitive time and make them think Jews w ere celebrating the creation of Israel.”71 Illegal emigration from Morocco to Palestine was at an all-time high as the clock ticked on the expiration of the British Mandate over Palestine on May 14. As emigration increased, Sultan Muhammad V issued a radio broadcast on May 23, 1948 (just a fter Israel’s declaration of independence), that reiterated Morocco’s support for the Arab League (another postwar legacy, founded in Cairo in March 1945) and its rejection of Zionism. It was widely broadcasted, and printed copies of the speech were read aloud in all of Morocco’s mosques and synagogues.72 The sultan appealed to the memory of Andalusian convivencia and a romanticized past of Muslim–Jewish harmony in Morocco, exhorting both Muslims and Jews to resist political radicalization around Zionism. Citing the history of dhimmi status, the sultan emphasized his role in protecting Jews, as well as his duty to “defend the first Qibla of Islam” in Jerusalem (“qibla” in Arabic refers to the direction of prayer in Islam: before Muslims prayed toward Mecca, the direction of prayer was toward Jerusalem). The sultan underscored the difference between “the uprooted Jews who have come from all corners of the world to Palestine” and the stolid Moroccan Jewish community living in historical harmony with Muslims under his benevolent rule. He concluded his address as follows: We also command Our Jewish subjects to not lose sight of the fact that they are Moroccans living under our aegis and that they have found in Us, on
many occasions, the best defender of their interests and their rights. They
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must thus abstain from any act that might support the Zionist aggression or
demonstrate their solidarity for that cause; for, in d oing so, they would risk their rights and their Moroccan nationality.73
In a maelstrom of political identities, this royal address emphasized that “his” Jews must place their Moroccan identities first, which in turn required a rejection of Zionism and affiliation with “uprooted” Jews from elsewhere. Further, in an atmosphere where “Zionist support” could mean anything, delineating between Jewish and Zionist cultural activities could be difficult. This bind, of course, is one familiar to many contexts across modern Jewish history and speaks to an old tension and suspicion of dual loyalties. Despite this warning, Jewish migration continued and intensified. A fter David Ben- Gurion declared Israel’s independence, the nationalist press buzzed with articles blurring Zionist critique and anti-Semitism to an alarming degree.74 The PCM, too, issued a declaration in response to the outbreak of war, advising Moroccans not to be “distracted” from “the national struggle,” as this was yet another example of imperialist conflict intended to misdirect Moroccan anger.75 The signatories of this declaration included Edmond Amran El Maleh and other Jews in the PCM. It further advised, “In the interest of the Arab and Jewish people of Palestine, we must denounce English Imperialism. . . . We must also denounce the double dealings of American millionaires who want to take E ngland’s place [in the region].”76 For the PCM, the declaration of the state of Israel and the war that followed represented a “distraction” from nationalistic goals, another stumbling block of false consciousness on the road to liberation. Acknowledging that events in the Middle East had put Moroccan Jews and Muslims on edge, the PCM leadership reframed the conflict as one of imperialism against the colonized masses. That Stalin supported the 1947 Partition Plan and that the USSR was the first nation to recognize Israel in the UN did not help the PCM’s legitimacy in an era when Moroccan nationalism was increasingly tied to Arab nationalisms. The northeastern city of Oujda became a hub for Zionist migration, as Moroccan Jews crossed into Algeria illegally before seeking passage to Marseille and from there to Israel. In the week of May 31 to June 7, 1948 alone, protectorate authorities apprehended seventy-seven illegal Jewish migrants. Marseille was populated with transit camps in response to such clandes-
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tine migrations, supported financially by the JDC and the Jewish Agency.77 British authorities had previously prohibited such immigration, and French authorities banned migration via Casablanca, but tacitly allowed it from Marseille.78 Oujda was bubbling with tension according to protectorate reports, including boycotts against Jewish merchants who w ere presumed to support the Zionist cause. Throughout the month of May 1948, Oujdan Jews and Muslims w ere in a state of near-constant paranoia, with mutual accusations of weapons fabrication.79 As a PCM mouthpiece sarcastically pointed out, anytime someone found an abandoned package on the street, the French explosives specialists would be called, “only to realize it contained random objects, including coffee filters.” 80 On the morning of June 7, 1948, the tension boiled over into violence. The previous day, the Jewish community of Oujda reported concern over impending violence to the local police. The police provided reassurance. Early the next morning, while the military was out of the city conducting training exercises and the chief of police was attending a friend’s wedding in Taourirt, a crowd from out of town began to converge on the city.81 At the same time, rumors spread throughout the city that a Jew had a bomb and that a Jew had killed a Muslim. The bomb claim was false; the killing was true. Albert Bensoussan, a Jew from Oujda, had killed Benkirane Ben Muhammad, a Jewish convert to Islam, who had apparently been spreading rumors that Bensoussan had been facilitating clandestine Zionist migration through the border city.82 This fight served as the “match to the gunpowder,” in the words of one protectorate official.83 Violence erupted, resulting in scores of wounded and dead, not to mention pillage and property destruction that the police were unable to quell. Later that day, a few cars departed from Oujda heading to Jerada (about sixty kilometers southwest) where they “did the same work; they spread the rumor that Jews had set fire to mosques in Oujda.” 84 The PCM took credit for battling those bent on attacking Jews and, in particular, for defending Jews who had hidden in a brothel for safety. The upheaval continued into the next day. The PCM blamed the violence on international imperialism and the conflict in Palestine, arguing that the incidents of June 7–8 had revealed the extent of the false consciousness of Moroccans.85 Further, the PCM asserted that to achieve the “sacred cause” of Moroccan independence, Jews
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and Muslims must not “fall into the trap” laid by French, British, or American imperialists but rather unite their efforts as Moroccans.86 The Istiqlal and the PDI decried the violence and appealed for calm; European anti-Semites in Morocco blamed it on Jewish attempts at world domination.87 For their part, French Protectorate authorities tried to blame the Istiqlal or PDI leadership, arguing that the attacks were premeditated. However, the events were likely spontaneous, and the media and prevailing political climate made such combustion less surprising.88 At least forty-three people were killed; hundreds more were wounded.89 By the end of June 8, the bloodshed had ceased; however, the tear in the social and ideological fabric between Jews, Muslims, and French authorities had grown wider. Predictably, Zionist recruitment and clandestine emigration increased following the events of June 7–8, 1948. Zionist propaganda from France called on young Jews in North Africa to defend “their” p eople fighting for “their homeland”—Israel—and to join the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization under the British Mandate, that would fill the pages of history with “glorious and rare heroism.” 90 Such propaganda typically collapsed thousands of years of diverse Jewish history into one oversimplified narrative of continuous suffering, redeemed finally in the establishment of the state of Israel. Further, such propaganda focused on European Jewish history with relatively little discussion of Jews in the MENA region. As Zionist activism increased, so too did that of the PCM and other national liberation parties, doing their utmost to convince Moroccan Jews that their Moroccanness and loyalty to the Moroccan state should come above all else.
Existential Exhortations and the Early 1950s
Edmond Amran El Maleh became the de facto leader of the PCM when Ali Yata was arrested and ultimately exiled to Algeria in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ali Yata himself, like so many other members of the PCM in the postwar period, had been inspired by the Soviet victory in the Second World War and was a staunch anti-fascist before becoming a nationalist. He had a solid Arabic and Islamic education before joining the party, which would help in justifying the PCM’s “fitness” to represent the Moroccan national spirit. According to his son Fahd Yata, Ali Yata had even attended school with Crown Prince Moulay Hassan’s sister, granting the PCM leader some proximity to royal legitimacy.91
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Seemingly paradoxically, Ali Yata was a staunch defender of the Moroccan monarchy as the foundational institution of Moroccan nationalism. As a prominent leader in the national liberation movement and head of the PCM, Yata was a regular target of the French Protectorate authorities. He had a “Communist marriage” ceremony in 1949, in which he was married by and before members of the PCM to Rosalie Rojel, daughter of Spanish radical immigrants to Morocco during the interwar period. The couple would not be formally married u nder Moroccan law u ntil 1967 and even then, according to Fahd Yata, mostly to acquire documentation so that the c ouple’s children could attend school.92 Yata remained active in Communist politics in exile first in Algeria and then in France; in fact he once entered Morocco clandestinely only to be re-expelled to Algeria and ultimately from Algeria to Paris.93 Fahd Yata and his twin brother were born in Paris in July 1952 and would remain there for the next eight years. For a critical period of Morocco’s independence movement between 1948 and 1956 while Yata was in prison or in exile, El Maleh led the PCM alongside prominent Muslim figures in the party. Abraham Serfaty, too, came into PCM prominence on his return from university studies in France in 1949; he was frequently cited alongside El Maleh and other Jewish PCM members (including his s ister Evelyne) in French Protectorate documents before he and Evelyne were both expelled. Other prominent Moroccan Jewish PCM members w ere arrested, released, and continued their activities to achieve Moroccan independence and realize a vision of Moroccan Jews as co-architects of an independent Moroccan future. Less prominent Jews were cited in police reports for buying and selling Communist propaganda, notably the French-language PCM newspaper Espoir, which El Maleh wrote for and edited along with Albert Pilo and other Jews.94 It was in this context that Abraham Serfaty was arrested in 1950 for distribution of subversive propaganda, the episode that opened this chapter. Jacques Levy and Joseph Chouraqui were likewise arrested for propaganda distribution in Oujda, a city whose location facilitated active Communist propaganda exchanges between Morocco and Algeria, as well as Jewish clandestine emigration.95 Joseph Levy and Menachem Amiel, both of Fez, were under close watch for subversion and PCM activity.96 All of them reported to Casablanca, the headquarters of the party and its anticolonial activism. Casablanca was home to more than one-third of Morocco’s Jews
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and simultaneously served as the capital of Zionist activity in the country. A profound fissure was developing into a chasm within the Moroccan Jewish community regarding the future of the Jewish community in Morocco and the nature of Jewish cultural and political allegiance beyond North Africa. In the spring of 1950, well-to-do urban Moroccan Jews celebrated the second anniversary of Israel’s existence in synagogues across the country. Religious figures cautioned Jews to refrain from boisterous celebration and so avoid anti-Zionist violence. Within synagogue walls the religious Zionist youth group BAHAD (Hebrew acronym for Brith Halutzim Datiyim, Alliance of Religious Pioneers) sang Zionist songs and auctioned off an Israeli flag for 81,000 francs.97 For Zionist Moroccan Jews, the traumatic events of Oujda and Jerada had demonstrated the need to leave; for Communist Moroccan Jews, the same events showed the need to combat agents of imperialist division, including Zionist political actors. When an Israeli ship docked at the port of Casablanca in May 1950, the PCM circulated propaganda asserting that, with the aid of the Americans, Israel was exploiting Moroccan natural resources and the arrival of this ship was part of an imperialist plot to provoke Muslim and Jewish violence.98 Further, the PCM argued, the Israeli ship’s presence was intended to distract attention from an American ship with five hundred soldiers arriving to supply military equipment to the US military base in Kenitra, presumably to aid the French in crushing Moroccan nationalist organizing.99 Meanwhile, anti- S emitic propaganda also circulated, further entrenching the positions of both Zionists and Communists. In May 1950, a French-language tract endorsing the anti-Semitic Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy theory was distributed in Casablanca; apparently from Swedish anti- Semites, it was titled “Kol Nidre—Each Promise” and accused Jews of lying as an intrinsic part of the High Holiday religious service (predicated on a willful misunderstanding of Yom Kippur prayers); also distributed w ere two more tracts titled “Jews Are Children of the Devil According to the Gospel of John” and “A Jew Is B ehind Communism!”100 This last piece of propaganda asserted the Jewish background of Karl Marx, blamed the 1917 Russian Revolution on Jews, and claimed that Lenin and Stalin w ere both 101 Jewish. Such propaganda, combined with an increasingly common conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, as well as Istiqlal’s claims that the
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PCM was “inauthentic” to Morocco, placed Moroccan Communist Jews in a defensive position. In response, El Maleh and others began to offer Communist political education classes on workers’ rights and imperialist exploitation; t hese classes decried US machinations against the USSR and other Communist regimes (notably, what was then known as Indochina, as well as Korea), and urged the Moroccan working class to organize. These classes and meetings never seemed to address the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy head-on.102 They did, however, continue to make strident arguments to demonstrate the Moroccanness of the party, distributing mostly French-language propaganda from the Soviet Union that advertised the compatibility of Islam and Communism and its successes in the Muslim, Central Asian portions of the USSR, particularly Uzbekistan.103 However, the relative lack of Arabic-language material—indicative of a partial blindness within the PCM to the contours of Arab nationalism—undermined the overall case of compatibility. Indeed, Ali Yata’s Moroccanness, and, by extension, that of the PCM more broadly was literally on trial in the fall of 1950. Ali Yata had been directing PCM activity in secret since 1948 and was ultimately arrested in July 1950.104 On the morning of October 16, 1950, members of the PCM appeared in a Casablanca civil court to prove Yata’s Moroccan nationality in an effort to reverse his expulsion to Algeria. A Jewish PCM member and lawyer, Jacques Levy, was charged with representing Yata. Approximately eighty PCM members attended the hearing, including El Maleh, the Serfaty siblings, as well as Yata’s wife Rosalie Rojel and her sister Incarnation, who would later marry Simon Lévy.105 Jacques Levy made a compelling case, tracing Yata’s father’s arrival in Tangier and Ali Yata’s birth in Tangier in 1920 to his Moroccan mother; he cited a late nineteenth-century Sharifian law by which “every Arab or Jew living in Morocco was Moroccan,” as well as a court case in September 1940 that had decreed a Turkish Jew living in Rabat by the name of Amzellag to be Moroccan based on this legal precedent.106 Jacques Levy was not successful, however, and Yata’s exile sentence was upheld. Such legal woes pushed the PCM to further seek a common national front with the Istiqlal and the PDI, but these overtures were often refused.107 Despite rejection by the Istiqlal Party, Jews continued to work within the PCM framework. Several Moroccan Jews, including at least one AIU
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teacher, were imprisoned for distributing Communist propaganda, often for several months, and charged with heavy fines.108 At PCM meetings, El Maleh encouraged members to disobey the police, decried French efforts to supplant loyalty to the increasingly politically active sultan with that to Glaoui Pasha of Marrakesh, and promoted Istiqlal initiatives alongside t hose of the PCM.109 At a meeting of the women’s section of the PCM, Madame Fortunée Sultan, the w idow of Léon Sultan, “violently” critiqued Glaoui Pasha as a stooge of the French and the Americans and called for a boycott of all US enterprises in Morocco, which, she reasoned, would also force out the French.110 Of course, the American Joint Distribution Committee, alongside Zionist groups, saw their mission as protecting Moroccan Jews from such nationalistic upheaval.111 Moroccan Communist Jews sought to encourage the broader Jewish community to become more involved in the movement for national liberation and to reject Zionism and its French and US imperialist allies. In November 1951, PCM operatives (Muslim and Jewish) placed tracts in Arabic and French u nder the doors of Casablanca’s major synagogues, as well as under the front doors of Jewish homes, calling on Moroccan Jews to join the national liberation struggle. One tract, provocatively titled “Unity Against our C hildren’s Assassins” (the assassins, of course, referring to the French), denounced Vichy France for having betrayed French colonial promises of “protection” and also the efforts of Zionists in Morocco.112 Such forces, the PCM argued, sought “to sideline Jewish Moroccans from the nationalist movement” and distract Muslim Moroccans from the national liberation struggle “toward racist demonstrations” such as the 1948 events in Jerada and Oujda. However, they also admonished Moroccan Jews for not having done their part in the fight for independence. The tract’s authors asked and answered, “But do Jewish Moroccans consider themselves and act like members of the Moroccan nation? Unfortunately, too many are the Jewish Moroccans who think that the Protectorate, despite the misery it has caused and its crimes, is preferable to an independence that would leave them at the mercy of Muslims.” Buying into French and Zionist propaganda of fear and Jewish–Muslim discord would only harm the Moroccan nation, argued the PCM. Further, there was more that connected Moroccan Jews and Muslims than divided them: “The Protectorate only brings misery and oppression to
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Jewish Moroccans, the same misery and oppression it brings to Muslim Moroccans. Jewish c hildren play with Muslim c hildren in the muddy narrow streets of the mellah, of the rue des Anglais in El B’Hira, they grow up with them in the mud of the Protectorate.” Now was the time to join the fray, to prove the Moroccanness of Jews, the indivisibility of all Moroccans, to “affirm [their] solidarity” with the movement and to “disassociate yourselves from the liars of the press and the traitors who trick you.” The tract concluded, in emphatic capital letters: “STRUGGLE TOGETHER, WITH YOUR BROTHERS, WITH YOUR MUSLIM COMPATRIOTS, FOR A UNITED MOROCCO, FOR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE AND FOR PEACE.”113 Such tracts only heightened the sense of tension and precarity. The World Jewish Congress began to work more closely with Zionist immigration associations and the JDC to facilitate Moroccan Jewish outmigration, concerned for Moroccan Jews out of a perception of existential threat to the community.114 At the same time, the Alliance Israélite Universelle and local Jewish leadership committees agreed on the importance of strengthening Arabic-language instruction within Jewish schools.115 When violence broke out in Carrières Centrales, a bidonville of Casablanca in 1952, the protectorate authorities seized the excuse to rescind their previous acceptance of union activism in an effort to crush this sphere of national liberation activity. This violence was in response to a swelling street demonstration organized by Istiqlal and PCM leaders through the General Union of Moroccan Confederated Syndicates (UGSCM) to protest the murder of Ferhat Hached at the hands of colonial authorities; Hached had been the secretary general of the General Tunisian Workers Union and was prominent in the Tunisian struggle for national liberation. All told, as one PCM member later reflected, “With unheard of sadism, the tanks demolished the flimsy huts beneath their weight, pitilessly crushing t hose who sought a pathetic refuge in them [the huts]. And so, in one single night from 7–8 December, more than 2,000 men, women and children were left homeless.”116 In the immediate wake of this violence, several European leaders of the PCM, as well as Abraham and Evelyne Serfaty, were expelled to France on the grounds, as with Yata, that they were not Moroccan. Although the Eu ropean members were indeed not born in Morocco, Abraham and Evelyne
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Serfaty both had been: they were deemed “non-Moroccan” on account of their f ather living in Brazil for some time. Thus, the protectorate authorities had found a convenient excuse to get rid of the troublemakers by deeming them Brazilian nationals.117 When Sultan Muhammad V was deposed and exiled to Madagascar in 1953 for his support of nationalist activity, protectorate authorities continued to publish unsigned dahirs restricting u nion activism.118 The nationalist struggle—across all parties—now rallied around the person of the sultan, who became the very symbol of the Moroccan nation in its struggle for in dependence.119 In the sultan’s absence, devoted subjects claimed to see his benevolent visage in the moon. The nationalist struggle became increasingly violent, as the Armée de Libération Nationale (Army for National Liberation; ANL) coordinated with Egyptian leader Gamal Abd al-Nasser, the Arab League, and Abdelkrim’s Comité de Libération du Maghreb (Committee for Maghribi Liberation) in Cairo to obtain financial, strategic, and arms support.120 Simon Lévy noted that Moroccan Jews were unsure of their future at this juncture: “It was the hour of truth for the w hole Moroccan people; one had to pick sides. The notables of the Committee of the [ Jewish] Communities remained passive. Most Jews, inert for many reasons, waited. But they were never treacherous, and their hearts remained faithful to the legitimate sovereign.”121 At the time, Lévy, who would marry Incarnation Rojel and become brother-in-law to Ali Yata, as well as a leading figure in the PCM, was a student in Paris, living in the Dar al-Maghrib, or the Maison du Maroc (Morocco House), along with about 150 other Moroccan students involved in nationalist politics in the metropole.122 Lévy had left Morocco to study in Paris in the summer of 1953; he later recalled that it was during that very same summer that he began his “political education” at the Maison du Maroc. According to Lévy, the Maison du Maroc held debates and cultural events, bringing Moroccan students together across the confessional and po litical spectrum, inspiring debates and solidarity across members of Istiqlal and of the PCM. The students of the Maison du Maroc, Simon Lévy among them, w ere highly politicized and frequently clashed with French officials in Paris around their political activities. The Bandung Conference in 1955 and the growth of the nonaligned movement, as well as interactions with Vietnamese and other colonial subject students in Paris, pushed Moroccan
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students even more to reject French colonial politics in the name of leftist solidarity, advocating for independence around the personage of the sultan. The PCM supported the sultan w holeheartedly, decrying the “imperialist French” in their actions, accusing them of deposing the sultan “because, sensitive to the legitimate aspirations of the people, he opposed the attempts of the French government to alienate that which remains of our country’s sovereignty.”123 The violent repression of 1952 plus the exile of the symbol of Morocco strengthened and catalyzed national liberation activism across all organizations. Clandestine resistance organizations such al-Hilal al-Aswad (Black Crescent) and the al-Yad al-Souda (Black Hand) attracted militants from all the main national liberation organizations, most notably the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN).124 The PCM had initially placed a blanket rejection of any violent activity, preferring to participate in the boycott of French goods (notably alcohol and cigarettes), but eventually its members joined in clandestine violence. Communists w ere overrepresented in the leadership of the Black Crescent, which produced pamphlets and tracts festooned with machine guns and celebrated the explosion of bombs in the European quarters of big cities such as Casablanca, notably in the Central Market.125 An efflorescence of tracts, political propaganda distribution, clandestine activity, and radio broadcasts intensified the political atmosphere. Both Istiqlal and the PDI, in addition to the PCM, were outlawed. From August 1953 to August 1954 alone, 1,600 died in anticolonial violence, 3,431 were wounded, and 65,000 w ere arrested.126 Radio broadcasts from Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus applauded the Moroccan resistance fighters, and the protectorate authorities feared weapons smuggling via Egypt.127 Meanwhile, pro-Zionist forces in Morocco argued that this bloodshed should be enough to encourage Moroccan Jews to leave and go to Israel. One widespread Judeo-Arabic tract of December 1952, issued in the immediate wake of the violence in Carrières Centrales, argued that on religious grounds alone Jews were required to go to Israel, but also asserted, A lot of blood has been spilled in Morocco in the past few weeks. People were killed with rocks, knives, and firearms. It is a miracle that butchery did
not reach the Mellah . . . this time we were spared from this killing. But this
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miracle is a sign and a warning for us that there remains only one path be-
fore us: Going to Israel without delay, not waiting even one minute. There is
no other mode of deliverance. Everyone who says “Let’s wait for tomorrow” puts his life in danger. Every Jew must understand what’s coming in the
near future, for what’s g oing on is just the beginning. Everyone who advises their friend to wait will be held responsible for that friend’s blood, and this
crime w ill never be forgotten. . . . Every father or m other who prevents the
departure of their c hildren to Israel embitters their lives and destroys their progeny.128
Although the violence of Carrières Centrales in December 1952 was certainly widespread, it was never directed specifically at Jews. As previously noted, the mass uprising was a turning point in the movement for indepen dence, bringing the working-class masses near industrial zones in Casablanca into the fight. The violence all took place directly between Moroccans and French Protectorate forces. The tract just quoted drew on the threat of vio lence and the fear that Jews, so often identified as complicit with French colonial authority in the less savory components of national liberation propaganda, would soon be targeted. Fear, above all, was the argument for outmigration. At the beginning of August 1954, leading nationalist figures called for all business owners to close their shops out of solidarity for the exiled sultan. Jews in Petit Jean (today Sidi Kacem) w ere caught in the crosshairs of allegiance and authority since the French protectorate officials mandated that the everyone keep their shops open, promising to protect them in case of any violence. However, such promises w ere insufficient as angry protestors attacked open Jewish businesses on August 3, 1954, resulting in seven deaths.129 All of this served to strengthen Kadima’s operations and Zionist emigration. Following the Petit Jean violence, 2,075 registered to leave Morocco.130 The growing numbers of departing Jews vexed the protectorate authorities, who considered maintaining the Moroccan Jewish population to be necessary for the country’s stability. After many months of violence and popular protest, Sultan Sidi Muhammad Ben Youssef signed an accord in Aix-les-Bains in August 1955 that began formal negotiations for Moroccan independence. The sultan returned
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to Morocco on November 16, 1955, “greeted by delirious crowds.”131 In his absence, the superstar Moroccan Jewish singer Sami El-Maghribi had composed a song that was broadcast widely on the airwaves and sold in record shops to celebrate the return of their “beloved ruler.”132 Sultan Muhammad V received a delegation of Moroccan Jews within the same month as his return and attempted to reassure his Jewish subjects of their future status in an independent Morocco; he is reported to have told them that “Moroccan Jews are citizens with full rights like their Muslim compatriots.”133 The mainstream Jewish communal newspaper, La Voix des Communautés reported on the event: The delegation reaffirmed to His Majesty the Sultan Sidi Muhammad ben
Youssef their loyalty and attachment, and confirmed their desire to take on their part in the nationalist struggle under his aegis. It expressed its joy to the
Sultan for His firm will to establish a modern democratic regime in Morocco. His Majesty affirmed that Morocco was entering a new era where “all
of His subjects, without any difference, would have absolutely equal rights.” [The delegation] confirmed its intention, already publicly declared by Moroccan notables, to integrate Jews into the national life: “You will live in absolute equality and freedom!”134
Such professions of allegiance to the sultan cut across all Moroccan Jewish political affiliations, w hether Communist, Zionist, or Gallicist. Indeed, even among Jews who had left Morocco for Israel, support for the sultan (and subsequent monarchy) remained ardent. Every political party, every nationalist faction, called on Jews to participate in the national liberation project and the construction of an idealistic, independent Morocco. Moroccan Jews were, in a sense, commodified: they were symbolic for nearly every national and international political interest at play in Morocco. They w ere also active agents in constructing such political paths and possibilities. International interest in the Moroccan Jewish question came from as far away as Radio Damascus. About a year before Moroccan independence was granted, Radio Damascus broadcast (in Arabic) at least two trenchant appeals to Moroccan Jewry to support their own national cause, for their national interests did not lie with Israel but with their Arab brethren; the broadcast also noted that Moroccan Jews and other “Oriental Jews” w ere mistreated on arrival in the Jewish state. These
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broadcasts interviewed Moroccan Jews trying to return home to North Africa, after feeling “seduced” and deceived by propaganda from the Jewish Agency that had promised them a better life, while instead the new immigrants had suffered numerous indignities.135 It was initially unclear how Radio Damascus had access to these interview subjects, but the broadcast was notable for its narrative of the harsh life of the transit camps and the racism that North African Jews experienced on immigration to Israel.136 Another broadcast, one month later, lionized Syria and provided an answer to how the broadcasters found their interview subjects: the radio station was sheltering North African Jewish migrants on their return to their home countries while broadcasts emphasized Israel’s supposed ephemeral and dysfunctional nature.137 Such broadcasts, however, w ere not credible to the majority of Moroccan Jews, and emigration numbers kept rising. The Jewish community was increasingly fracturing along political lines. As Zionists and family members of Zionists left, those Jews who w ere politically committed to the indepen dence movement found their numbers shrinking and themselves to be out of touch with the Moroccan Jewish community. Violence against Jews in Petit Jean in 1954—characterized as a “pogrom” by Kadima and officials in Tel Aviv—did not put Moroccan Jewry at ease.138 One article in La Voix des Communautés in April 1955 put the existential question Jews faced in stark, moral and economic terms: Live, live, live, I hear this everywhere. . . . But what economic fate awaits these [ Jewish] children? . . . Morocco is your land, your ancestors have been
here for twenty centuries. I have felt the heavy concern about the future
among you. Barely adults, you the elite must confront and accept the heaviest
fate. Your Westernization, the material and intellectual situation you have achieved. . . . W hat is possible, finally, is a role that you can take on linking
you to the diverse groups in Morocco. Through your minority status, your
knowledge of the West, your deep roots in the East, without a doubt you are the only ones in Morocco, the best able to understand the other, to maintain or create a place of dialogue, to ensure an unfurling of the present situation
without clashing, without brutality, without explosion. You know how to do it. You must do it. For Morocco. For the Jewish community, most of whom
are destined to remain in this country. You say y ou’re only 250,000? So what?
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You constitute the largest and most concentrated Diaspora community, not
including the Jewish quarter of New York city. You cannot remain passive before the unfolding of events. The current situation is progressing so rapidly that even the smallest change can mark the course of the next fifty years. And
so, you want to know what I think? It’s no longer time for you to question yourselves. Fate is calling you. It’s only a matter of courage.139
Such ideas came in the context of increased anxiety for France’s colonial holdings, as by the early 1950s nearly e very French colonial territory “was on fire” agitating for independence.140 As the bloodletting raged in French Indochina and Algeria, Morocco also convulsed with anticolonial violence that had intensified and become widespread since the uprising at Carrières Centrales in 1952. French troops hardened from t hese other battlegrounds participated in the “massive and brutal military response from the French side, who used airplanes, tanks and ground troops to subdue a resistance that left 500 Moroccans dead.”141 However, France began to loosen its grip over the protectorates as its priorities shifted to the maintenance of its integral “departments” such as Algeria. Morocco secured its independence from France and Spain in March 1956, and, contrary to the expectations of Zionist emigration organizations, migration slowed and a sense of optimism prevailed.
“The Beautiful Family”: Al-Wifaq and 1956
According to Simon Lévy, the initial independence period was marked by “euphoria” for Moroccan Jews.142 One expression of this was Istiqlal’s creation of the group al-W ifaq (Accord) a few months before formal independence, with the backing of the makhzan. The group’s aim was to create mutual understanding between Muslims and Jews “for the greatness and happiness of the country.”143 Al-W ifaq urged Moroccan Muslims not to conflate Moroccan Jews with Zionists and Israelis, which, especially in public discourse, was widespread.144 Several Jewish members of Istiqlal were instrumental in the establishment of al-W ifaq, including Marc Sebbah, Albert Aflalo, Armand Asoulin, and David Azoulay.145 The future eminent historian of Moroccan Jewry, Haïm Zafrani, was also a member.146 These characters represented, arguably, an even smaller minority of a minority for Moroccan Jews than the Jews in the PCM as “they w ere portrayed as slavish acolytes of Mehdi
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Ben Barka, the noted left-wing Istiqlali leader” and thus out of touch with the wider Moroccan Jewish community.147 Al-W ifaq did, however, boast high Jewish membership numbers.148 The emancipated Moroccan Jewish population—numbering approximately 160,000 on independence—faced an almost universal conundrum for Jews across many nationalist contexts in many time periods: how to maintain communal Jewish identity and institutions and yet make Moroccan nationality their priority. Jews had reason to be optimistic. The Jewish press in Morocco brimmed with enthusiasm for the new Morocco and for the place of Jewish citizens within it.149 On independence Muhammad V appointed his personal physician, Dr. Léon Benzaquen—a Jewish member of Istiqlal and, curiously, a Zionist sympathizer—a minister in the new government. Muhammad V also nominated Jews to government posts within the ministries of finance, agriculture, commerce and industry, as well as public works.150 In addition to such political posts, Jews w ere named to semi-public/private posts crucial to the Moroccan economy, such as the Sharifian Office of Phosphates (OCP), the Moroccan Navigation Company, and the Bureau for Mining Research.151 The Jews who occupied such positions w ere typically educated in French universities and had returned to “take part in building the new Morocco.”152 Abraham Serfaty is a prime example: as a student in the Paris School of Mines, he had been a staunch member of the PCF and committed to Moroccan independence through the PCM on his return. For his nationalist dedication, he was rewarded with the prestigious OCP appointment. In keeping with monarchical imperatives, both Istiqlal and the PDI openly embraced Jews, and the national consultative assembly for the creation of a Moroccan constitution included thirty-nine Jews.153 Jews wrote for Moroccan publications across the political spectrum.154 Al-W ifaq hosted numerous social and cultural events with the aim of building Moroccan harmony that cut across faiths. In this spirit, Abraham Serfaty could say, “I am an Arab Jew and I am Jewish b ecause I am an Arab Jew.”155 Simon Lévy, Edmond Amran El Maleh, and other Jews in the PCM would echo similar statements that in 1956 that would intensify in the decades following independence, rejecting any Zionist pretensions to claim Moroccan Jews for the Jewish state. While in previous decades it had been possible to be both a Zionist and a Communist in Morocco, the PCM now declared itself officially anti-Zionist. This
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context gave Jewish militants in the PCM more confidence to publish strong criticism of Zionism in Morocco, particularly against those Moroccan Jews who worked actively with the Jewish Agency. Such Moroccan Jews, in the eyes of the PCM, sought to impose “a permanent obstacle in the path of true integration for Jewish minorities in their respective countries.”156 Al-W ifaq events w ere supported by the palace, the Istiqlal, the PCM, and every major political and social group in Morocco. The JDC, OSE, ORT and Alliance all had members and directors attending and participating in al-W ifaq initiatives. The group’s national call for solidarity is indicative of Morocco’s place on a broader global stage, as well as the place of Jews on that stage. Crown Prince Moulay Hassan (the future King Hassan II) presided over a meeting of al-W ifaq—mostly attended by young Muslim and Jewish students—in January 1956, billed as “Jewish Moroccans and the New Morocco.”157 Dr. Léon Benzaquen, so reviled by leftists a few years earlier, and other prominent ministers attended the event, as well as prominent religious and political leaders. Approximately 1,500 were packed into the room— “for the most part Jews,” according to one observer. After a number of speeches from al-W ifaq members waxing poetic about the legacy of Moroccan Muslim–Jewish symbiosis and the brilliant future of the nation, Crown Prince Moulay Hassan took the stage. All rose for his “brilliant, improvised speech, made with great ease and humor.” The prince, honorary president of al-W ifaq, celebrated the “centuries” of Jewish–Muslim cohabitation in Morocco while acknowledging that “they have often been called upon to hate one another, to turns their backs on one another.” In the new, independent Morocco, such divisions would no longer be tolerated. The prince recognized the power of Arab nationalism stemming out of Egypt in particular and observed that “there isn’t a single Jew who d oesn’t look t oward Palestine.” However, he asked rhetorically, “Is that a good reason to be divided?” The crowd responded with an emphatic “No!” and began “applauding frenetically.” The prince then outlined the rights and obligations of e very Moroccan citizen in the soon to be newly independent nation, foregrounding the unity of Moroccans around, implicitly, the royal family.158 As a result of such activity, the president of the Jewish community, David Berdugo, was emboldened to make strong statements against France at public events with the safe backing of al-W ifaq. The makhzan, and Istiqlal,
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the PDI, and the PCM all urged for the “complete integration of Jews in the Moroccan community.”159 Jewish communal leaders spoke more openly against Jewish emigration to Israel, enforcing the call to remain and build the new nation. In Rabat, on February 11, 1956, the palace sponsored an enormous, lavish gala organized by al-W ifaq, held in the Cinéma Royal. Once again, Prince Moulay Hassan presided over the event, which presented the country’s prime Jewish and Muslim entertainment personalities in an exuberant show of unity. The entertainment included Moroccan Jewish pop superstar Sami El-Maghribi and his orchestra, the variety artist and impersonator Habib El Kadmiri, Pierre Kichy’s miming talent, new songs from Abdelwahab Agoumi, a comedy in one act, an auction of a signed portrait of SM the Sultan, illusions and sleights-of-hand by a certain Farrez, and belly dancing by Naima Cherki.160 Prominent government ministers and their wives in addition to the princely entourage—including his sister, Princess Lalla Aicha—embodied a common “theme” of the night: “la belle famille,” the beautiful f amily that was Morocco.161 The celebrations went late into the night, concluding at about 1:30 a.m. The 1956 edition of al-W ifaq’s magazine featured photographs of such galas and full-page photographs of Sultan Muhammad V and Crown Prince Moulay Hassan.162 Articles reprinted texts of ecumenical and exuberant speeches from the sultan and his son on the future of Morocco and all Moroccan subjects working in harmony with one another, as well as pieces lauding the medieval Andalusian model of convivencia so frequently romanticized and propagated. Haïm Zafrani, an al-W ifaq member before he became a historian, wrote an article in Arabic to demonstrate linguistic unity. In it, Zafrani praised the sultan as the source of cohesion for Moroccan Muslims and Jews and reiterated the politically advantageous tropes of the Andalusian heritage of convivencia in Morocco and how a similar degree of “flourishing” awaited all Moroccans in their newly independent state. Such a “beautiful family” had cracks, however, and not all Jews supported all of al-W ifaq’s efforts. An exhibit by the group in the same month in Marrakesh titled “The Jews Before, During, and A fter the French Protectorate,” met notable opposition for its criticism of Jewish emigration to Israel. A certain Mr. Assor, attending the exhibit, voiced his complaints with the official
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recording the event: “Mr. Assor notably declared that the AL-WIFAQ movement must remain apolitical and that it s houldn’t get involved with Jewish emigration to Israel. It’s worth noting that up until today, only fifty Jews have paid their membership dues, which cost 500 francs annually.”163 Exuberance might not have been consistent or universal, but for a moment, emigration paused. However, Zionism had become a component of the cultural and social life of many Moroccan Jews. The Istiqlal paper al-Raï al-‘Am argued vociferously against Kadima, claiming it was trying to engender a “religious war” in Morocco and accusing external forces, primarily the Americans, of frightening Moroccan Jews into thinking life in independent Morocco would be dangerous.164 The article cited Léon Benzaquen’s apotheosis to minister as a sign that there was nothing to worry about (either it was unaware of his Zionist background or was overlooking it), and proclaimed, “It is imperative that the Jews . . . see themselves as among the inhabitants of this country. . . . If among the Jews there are some who feel isolated or endangered, it is because they abstained from participating in the national struggle and from integrating into the fighting Moroccan community,” arguing that it was by taking part that Moroccan Jews could find belonging and security. The Suez crisis of 1956 burst this optimistic bubble. The “Tri-Partite Aggression” of October 1956 for access to the nationalized Suez Canal and the rise of Nasserism once again put Jewish Moroccans in a delicate position.165 King Muhammad V received a deleg ation of Moroccan Jewish dignitaries in the wake of the crisis in the Middle East. Following this meeting, the king issued a common appeal for calm: I would . . . ask of you to undertake persuasive, decisive action among the
Moroccan Jews in order to persuade them not to leave Morocco, because
their place is h ere. Morocco needs all its children, whether they are Muslims
or Jews. It [Morocco] needs all its doctors, all its engineers, all of its lawyers. We must convince all of our Jews that they must not leave Morocco, that
they should stay. Morocco needs all of its c hildren. We must work together. We must consider ourselves to be in service to the country. Those who leave the country must be considered deserters.166
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Despite this speech, however, the king did not ban the migration of Jews from Morocco. This lack of action irked pan-Arabists opposed to migration to Israel. An article in al-Raï al-‘Am highlights this anger: We cannot tolerate imperialist Zionist recruitment among Moroccan Jews, who are citizens of the Kingdom, the f uture colonizers of an Arab land that
belongs to the Palestinians. We cannot be complicit in this injustice. That is
why the minister of the Interior must take immediate action: no longer allow Jews to have passports and to not allow those who want to go to Israel to leave.167
nder popular pressure, King Muhammad V banned Jewish migration to U Israel in July 1957. This ban was lifted in December of the same year, pursuant to his meeting with Jewish supporters in New York City, but this would prove a temporary measure. Bans on Moroccan Jewish emigration would come and go, mapping onto the Israeli–Arab conflict and, in the shorter term, the rise of Nasserism.168 It was not again legal for Jews to migrate to Israel u ntil 1961, largely out of the makhzan’s concern for its own Arab League legitimacy. Moroccan Jews w ere increasingly suspicious of Istiqlal, and the personage of Allal al-Fassi in particular, as the Israel–Palestine conflict gave rise to popular anger, undermining the ephemeral appeal of al-W ifaq. Simon Lévy lamented, “We had never lived so well as we were then . . . and we were leaving!”169 Moroccan law had granted Jews full, equal citizenship to that of Moroccan Muslims, and no infringements had been made on religious communal autonomy or educational institutions. And yet, the exogenous po litical climate and local popular context widened the gap between political ideology and reality. Further, the Jewish Agency increased its propaganda, both within Morocco and vis-à-vis financial backers abroad, “accentuating the dangers” facing Moroccan Jewry following the departure of French colonial authority.170 Al-W ifaq attempted to intervene with a widely distributed political tract translated into French, Judeo-Arabic and Arabic.171 It began by denouncing the joint British, French, and Israel maneuvers as illegal and called on the “Moroccan people” to “rise up against this aggression” and “condemn” this “premeditated act of war by imperialists” aimed at “subjugating” Egypt. Cognizant of the risk of polarization and the likelihood of reprisal violence ideologically aimed at Israel but meted out on Moroccan
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Jews, al-W ifaq called on Muslims and Jews as “brothers” to “maintain and reinforce . . . cohesion, friendship, unity, and understanding which alone can ensure the independence of our country” against any force of division. Echoing the language ascribed to Sultan Muhammad V during the Vichy period, the authors proudly proclaimed, “Here in Morocco, there are only Moroccan citizens: Moroccans of the Muslim faith and Moroccans of the Jewish faith, but all Moroccan.” Al-W ifaq emphasized that the king was the primary protector of Moroccan Jews, as well as Muslims, and that all must stand united with “his government on which the future of our country depends.” The tract concluded, “Long live the King! Long live Morocco!”172 Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, it was met with tepid response save from the organ ization’s core devotees. Emigration had picked up once again in earnest, as did popular rhetoric and agitation that vacillated—unevenly, unclearly—between criticism of Zionism and anti-Semitism. All of this undermined the persuasiveness of al- Wifaq, Istiqlal, the PCM, and the king himself in sustaining the Moroccan Jewish population. Even Edmond Amran El Maleh, who remained largely in charge u ntil Ali Yata’s return from exile and a fter that was a decisive member of the PCM Central Committee, began to question the PCM’s universalist commitment and practical ability to effect change in an increasingly Arab nationalist climate. Just three years after independence, El Maleh would leave the PCM—and a few years a fter that he would leave Morocco altogether for self-imposed exile in France in 1965.173 His semiautobiographical work of fiction Parcours immobile provides insight not only into his growing disaffection with the party but also a broader sense of what the PCM and the precarious identity politics of Jews within it came to mean in a newly inde pendent Morocco. Parcours immobile speaks directly to his experiences in the PCM, telling the story of a young assimilated Moroccan Jewish man’s experience and growing dissatisfaction with the PCM, under the tutelage of the PCF. In several sections, El Maleh discusses the PCM as if it w ere a religion, full of hypocrisy. He repeats the phrase, “Les Juifs marocains c’est entendu ne font pas de politique” (it’s understood that Moroccan Jews d on’t do politics) in several sections, though the protagonist joins the PCM in defiance of his family.174 The novel is deeply syncretic, in the sense that the protagonist, Josua/Aïssa (depending on the section and the identity adopted), as well as
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his family in Essaouira/Asilah, is constantly in transition, from one mode of dress to another, one language slipping into another, until they are gone. El Maleh frames the novel through the story of Passover. Josua/Aïssa is born on the first night of Passover in 1915 e ither in Asilah or Essaouira (this is left ambiguous for the sake of the protagonist’s multiple personalities). The protagonist’s family understands this to be an auspicious omen of liberty, as Passover commemorates the exodus of the Israelite slaves from Egypt to the Promised Land. Although the characters are largely interested in Zionism, Josua/Aïssa becomes a Communist, influenced by his left-leaning teachers. In the Communist social world of the Moulin de la Gaieté, a popular Communist meeting place and cinema, Josua/Aïssa leaves the Jewish bourgeois Zionist-leaning world of home to work among the dock workers, to plot at Roches-Noires (another area of Casablanca) at night (where, indeed, El Maleh himself had met with Serfaty, Simon Lévy, Ralph Benarrosh, and others), feeling a kind of religious zeal and righteousness according to El Maleh’s description. He refers to the Amicales Communistes and the same Fiat garage manned by leftist Spaniards that Serfaty described as instrumental to his own politicization; his zealousness lasts for some time. However, Josua/ Aïssa’s Jewish background becomes more relevant as the novel progresses: Things must be stated appropriately, summons, searches, a brutal violation
of a calm, dignified Jewish family closed in its traditions that do not support either politics or revolution. “Your son, madame, is working against the
French. This will cost him dearly,” and the mother didn’t understand any-
thing, anything except the agony that gripped her heart “he does politics” and the distance, the margin that was widening between him, Josua Aïssa, and his parents, his friends from youth. . . .
Josua Aïssa, a Jewish Moroccan assimilated down to his toes, at least he
saw himself in a myth, or perhaps he lived it without seeing it, becoming in
the ‘50s a Moroccan patriot, demonstrating with his comrades for national independence, as is said in well-crafted stories, he left his wife and kids, his
family and friends with a joyous heart, serious and serene, to join the g rand
crusade of its time and the margins implied across his familial horizon anticipating the pages in the beautiful story to come.175
As Moroccan Jews left in record numbers, in what El Maleh would refer to as a sudden “hemorrhage,”176 the story of exodus that frames the novel comes
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into play. Alienated from family and friends, rootless and adrift in a struggle that would come to be co-opted by the monarchy, the characters are permeated by a sense of regret and betrayal. This theme of ephemeral, hopeful liberty also resonates with El Maleh’s novel Mille ans, un jour (A Thousand Years, a Day), in which thousands of years of Jewish history in Morocco seem to disappear in “a day,” or at least a very short period of time, like a flash in the longer narrative.177 In Mille ans, un jour, the protagonist’s family and social circles are all évolués—“evolved”— the French acculturated Jews of Morocco’s urban centers, attending Alliance schools and dressing in the European style. As the international political situation heated, in the context of Israel and Palestine, Nasserism, and the Cold War, those Jews involved in national liberation politics increasingly found themselves working against the prevailing political trends of their country and the Jewish community from which they came. When King Muhammad V died unexpectedly of a relatively minor operation in 1961, his son Hassan II became king, and an era of profound political oppression started. The disillusion of the post-independence period had begun.
o Moroccan Jews were increasingly divided following the Second World War; these divisions became entrenched during the struggle for national liberation. Abraham Serfaty once said that when he returned from his studies in France in 1946, “the Jews from the lower class areas of Casablanca w ere completely backing the Communist Party. . . . The Communist Party, unfortunately, d idn’t know how to nurture this.”178 Although Serfaty was exaggerating, there w ere a disproportionate number of Jews in the leadership of the PCM during the late 1940s, early 1950s, and into independence in 1956. While the Vichy period had accelerated preexisting political trends among Moroccan Jews, the struggle for national liberation begged the existential question of how and whether Moroccan Jews could belong in an indepen dent Morocco. The pivotal years for the Moroccan independence movement overlapped with several dramatic events for Moroccan Jews, including the establishment of the state of Israel and the mass violence against Jews in Oujda and Jerada in 1948. In response to such violence, Zionism enjoyed
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increased popularity, and Zionist clubs, newspapers, songs, and more became staples of Moroccan Jewish cultural life, even if they w ere clandestine. Between 1948 and 1956 alone, more than 90,000 Moroccan Jews left the country, primarily to emigrate to Israel. Migration to Israel did not necessarily imply adherence to Zionism—social and economic concerns also prompted emigration.179 After all, Abraham Pilo, a noted PCM member and editor for the French-language PCM newspaper Espoir, who had been arrested multiple times by protectorate authorities for his subversive activities, also left for Israel in 1949, for reasons that remain unclear from the archive.180 On inde pendence in 1956, organizations like al-W ifaq promised a bright future for Jews and Muslims as they together would build the new Morocco. The optimism of the moment of independence gradually faded as the independent country, the “beautiful f amily” of Morocco, became increasingly authoritarian under a centralized makhzan.
l CHAP TER 4 '
S P LI N T ER S : D I S I LLU S I O N A N D J EW I S H P O L I T I C A L LI F E I N T H E N EW M O RO CCO
My f ather—may God keep his soul—always told me:
“Morocco is a lion that must be guided with a leash. It must never feel the chain.” . . . W hen it pulls too much, I let go a little, and when it lets up, I pull a little. It’s a constant
compromise, collective and unconscious. We are immersed in the same bath, a bath of love and a bath of conflict. This relationship transforms into perfect solidarity when the nation is in danger.
—King Hassan II
During the bloody uprising in Casablanca in March 1965, Simon Lévy was arrested by the police. He was tortured for eight days while his wife Incarnation was stricken with anxiety. She had no idea where her husband was but feared the worst. She waited at home with their two sons u ntil, finally, Simon was unceremoniously dumped at the doorstep of their building at four in the morning, broken and bruised. According to Ali Yata’s son and Simon’s nephew, Fahd Yata, Simon Lévy had been beaten, subjected to electric shocks, and forced to drink laundry detergent.1 Simon’s sons corroborated this account of their father’s torture.2 Simon was unable to walk when he fi nally made it home; he had been thrown out of a moving car and would suffer gastric problems for the rest of his life. After this incident Simon’s mother
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implored the family to go to France, but Simon was adamant in his loyalty to Morocco. A few months after Lévy’s release, the Hungarian Communist Party, in a gesture of kindness toward their comrades abroad, paid for the family to spend a month on the coast of bucolic Lake Balaton in the small town of Siófek. Incarnation remembered hating the food.3 The 1960s and 1970s proved a crucible for state formation in indepen dent Morocco. The state was dominated by the monarchy, led by Hassan II a fter his father died undergoing a relatively minor medical procedure in 1961. The state experimented—sometimes with violent and severely repressive outcomes—with the balance of parliament, constitutional monarchy, state of emergency, and back again. Political parties splintered, recombined, and challenged each other and central authority in a manner that was deeply disturbing to the palace. The main efforts of the palace w ere, as the epigraph quoting Hassan II indicates, to guide the “lion” of the state without it feeling the hand of the makhzan and so quell, control, and ultimately co-opt any political opposition. The state tortured, exiled, imprisoned, and “disappeared” unruly political forces. Some parties, such as Istiqlal and the PCM, w ere wracked with internal dissent regarding strategy in the face of such repression. The Istiqlal’s left-leaning faction u nder the leadership of Mehdi Ben Barka (kidnapped in broad daylight in Paris 1965 and subsequently assassinated, it is speculated, by King Hassan II’s aide General Oufkir, who would himself lead a failed coup d’état in 1972), would form the UNFP (Union Nationale des Forces Populaires). The PCM, a fter being legally disbanded by court order in 1960, continued to operate clandestinely. It would resurface as the PLS (Parti de la Libération et du Socialisme) in 1968 and then, finally, in its current iteration, the PPS (Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme) in 1974. The left itself began to splinter in the late 1960s. In 1970, Abraham Serfaty and others, disgusted with what they viewed as a betrayal of Communist ideals by the PCM/PLS, broke with the party to establish a farther-left Marxist-Leninist group, Ila al-Amam (Forward, in Arabic), taking most of the party’s student members with them. This move caused lasting ire between Serfaty and Lévy, who remained staunchly loyal to the PLS. Although both factions would face persecution under King Hassan II at the beginning of the infamous “Years of Lead”—an approximately two-decade period of po litical repression—eventually the PLS chose a path of accommodation, while
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Ila al-Amam advanced maximalist ideological goals. These political fractures and fusions indicate a critical choice that lay before party leaders and their members, almost regardless of political platform and orientation: whether to work with the regime and maintain legal status or to go underground. The efflorescence of prison literature and work on human rights in Morocco attests to the dire consequences of the latter decision.4 Just as leftist politics splintered, so too did the Moroccan Jewish community. In response to the political instability of the immediate post- independence period regarding Morocco’s position within the Arab world, as well as growing fear evoked by the instability of the king’s regime, Moroccan Jews left in the hundreds of thousands. Between 1948, the year the state of Israel was established, and 1956, the year of Moroccan independence, approximately 90,000 Jews departed the country. An additional 92,000 Moroccan Jews left between 1961 and 1964 in Operation Yakhin, an Israeli-directed mass migration of Moroccan Jews undertaken with the tacit approval of the makhzan.5 The vast majority of Jews left for Israel, but many migrated to France, Canada, and to Latin American countries such as Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil. This boom in migration was in part due to internal anxieties and threats of violence linked to the far away and yet deeply consequential Israeli–Arab conflict. The year 1961 was a watershed moment for Moroccan Jewish migration for three major reasons. First, Morocco hosted a joint African Summit and Arab League meeting as it tried to play a delicate diplomatic game among Cold War and nonaligned powers, attended by Gamal Abdel Nasser of the short-lived United Arab Republic. Violence erupted against Jews in Casablanca during Nasser’s visit, adding to mounting communal anxiety. Second, an illegal ship of Jewish migrants called the Pisces shipwrecked a fter leaving Morocco, causing an uproar among both anti-Zionists and international Jewish philanthropies, although for very different reasons. Third, King Muhammad V died unexpectedly due to complications from a minor operation, raising his widely unpopular son, Crown Prince Moulay Hassan, to King Hassan II. Uncertain of their political future and the ability of this unpopular new king to “protect” them as guaranteed, Moroccan Jews departed out of fear. As the Arab–Israeli conflict intersected with Cold War politics and internationalism, Moroccan Jewish members of leftist parties
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found themselves increasingly alienated from the broader Moroccan Jewish community. Devoted to Communism in its many guises during the 1960s and early 1970s, Moroccan Jewish leftists remained ideologically very consistent with their positions in previous decades, if not more devoted, as their nationalism was increasingly pitted against the mass migration of their Jewish families and friends. This chapter covers the period of the 1960s up until the Green March, whose purpose was to claim Western Sahara for Morocco in 1975. It traverses the tensions of Jewish and Moroccan identities, nationalism and internationalism, co-optation and post-independence dreams of revolution. Despite an increasingly murky and grim Moroccan political context, the Jewish members of leftist parties remained staunchly devoted to their Moroccanness and their hopes for their country in the face of massive Jewish migration and po litical repression. The chapter’s first section treats political splits in the mainstream Moroccan political parties and the makhzan’s ability to control or co-opt them before 1967, discussing the bloody violence of 1965 that opened this chapter and the assassination of Mehdi Ben Barka. The second section examines Zionism, clandestine migration, and Hassan II’s complicated relationship to Israel and the Jewish Agency. The third section addresses developments in Moroccan leftist political parties a fter 1967, particularly the founding of Ila al-Amam and connections with Third Worldist movements, and how these and other efforts w ere complicated by repression following two failed coups d’état in 1971 and 1972. This is a chapter about failed hopes, accommodations, migrations, and collaborations; it is also about persistence. Simon Lévy’s activism exemplifies this persistence. After Simon Lévy and his family returned from vacationing in Hungary, the activist family (it w ill be remembered that Incarnation’s s ister Rosalie was married to Ali Yata) resumed its previous activities. The stories of Moroccan Jewish Communists during this period of post-independence repression are at once exceptional and emblematic, shedding light on Morocco’s political history and that of its Jews in the relief available from the margins.
Increasing Opposition and Repression
The roots of post-independence political repression extend before Hassan II’s regime. One year after independence, the title of sultan was changed to that
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of king. In 1958, newly elected prime minister Abdallah Ibrahim formed the first official government a fter independence. This flirtation with democracy was short-lived: King Muhammad V soon ejected Abdallah Ibrahim from office. The king appointed his son Hassan, the crown prince, to the role of prime minister in the spring of 1960, arguing that as a member of the royal family, he more than anyone e lse would be best suited “to respond to the call of duty and of sacrifice for the good and safety of the nation.”6 At the same time, King Muhammad V called for a new constitution, in order to safeguard individual liberties: Crown Prince Moulay Hassan accepted the charge. This parliamentary wrist-flicking was bred in a context of political turmoil as the parties that had worked for national liberation from France made the transition into post-independence existence. Once Morocco was officially free of the colonial yoke, the makhzan worked to fracture Istiqlal’s popularity by intervening in multiparty parliamentary politics.7 As parties engaged in infighting, Crown Prince Moulay Hassan was placed in charge of the Royal Armed Forces, the national army, fortifying the bond between the palace and the military forces: the king was both their commander and the Commander of the Faithful. Before his death on February 26, 1961, King Muhammad V had successfully made the monarchy “the main pillar of stability in the state,” exerting firm control over all branches of governance, notably the Ministry of Justice, and the military.8 When he became king, Hassan II continued his father’s policies and solidified state structures with the monarchy at the top, although his efforts w ere not uncontested. U nder pressure from Istiqlal— split in 1959 between conservative and left-leaning tendencies represented by the UNFP—the new king presented the nation with a constitution in December 1962 that “was written behind closed doors by Hassan’s appointees, not by a representative body.” 9 Parties of the left, spearheaded by the UNFP, boycotted the constitution, while Istiqlal, hedging its bets on maintaining the monarch’s favor, was essentially alone in supporting it. The makhzan’s post- independence political strategy to “divide and rule” was proving successful, if precarious.10 The PCM itself had been put on trial in 1959 and had been formally banned by court order in 1960, as “historical materialism” was deemed “incompatible with the monarchical and religious form of the Moroccan state.”11 Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh, who had attended Léon Sultan’s funeral cortège
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in 1945, served as one of the PCM’s lawyers before the Moroccan state. Benarrosh was born in the old imperial city of Meknes in 1933; his family moved to Casablanca when he was about five or six years old. According to Benarrosh, his family was religious and comfortably bourgeois. He as well as his siblings became increasingly politicized, joining the Jeunesses Communistes while in high school.12 Indeed, Benarrosh had been recruited to join the Jeunesses Communistes (part of the PCM organizational umbrella) in 1952 by a non-Jewish philosophy teacher from his school. In the middle of the night, the teacher brought Benarrosh to the semi-clandestine PCM meeting spot in Roches-Noires, where he met Edmond Amran El Maleh, who personally asked the young student to join.13 Benarrosh’s public defense and legal representation of the PCM in 1959 resulted in what he called a “boycott” of his entire family by members of the Casablanca Jewish community—they did not want to be associated with such a seemingly unpatriotic political liability. For most Moroccan Jews, Benarrosh was a “traitor” for representing a political opposition party declared antithetical to the Muslim values of the Moroccan state. The PCM lost the case and, as mentioned, was legally disbanded in 1960. Although banned, members of the forbidden PCM circulated a tract protesting the 1962 constitution because it would officially confirm the monarch’s grip over essentially all government operations.14 The PCM declared that the constitutional process was flawed, “serv[ing] the interests of colonizers, collaborators and reactionary bourgeois.”15 It demanded that, rather than “impos[ing], against popular will, a prefabricated constitution prepared by foreign specialists,” the constitution should mandate a separation of powers, nationalization of Moroccan natural resources, more equitable education and health care, land redistribution, and freedom of speech, press, and assembly. The tract concluded by calling on Moroccans to “unite all progressive and democratic organizations” in order to “realize the hopes of the people for a democratic constitution.”16 The PCM, like other organizations that had fought for Morocco’s freedom from colonial oppression, sought to prevent a crystallization of power uniquely in the hands of the makhzan and to instead fulfill the liberation ideals of the immediate post-1956 period. The educational leftist, Communist-affiliated review, La Nouvelle Garde: Bulletin des lycées et collèges de Casablanca (The New Guard: Bulletin for the
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High Schools and Junior High Schools of Casablanca) that Simon Lévy worked for and distributed among schools, echoed such calls to arms. The disappointment and disillusionment with this failed democratic moment would resurface in the bloody riots of 1965, particularly among the student population. The clandestine PCM actively churned out pamphlets urging Moroccans to boycott the referendum that would approve the new constitution, as did other leftist groups, primary among them the UNFP.17 It was such activities that would land Simon Lévy in prison and subjected to torture following the 1965 upheaval. Despite this and other efforts, the repressive po litical environment all but guaranteed that the constitution would pass nearly unanimously. The PCM struggled to maintain ideological unity in this context. Edmond Amran El Maleh had formally left the party in 1959 and, after the events of 1965, left for self-imposed exile in France. Although never explicitly stated, the party’s ideological “sclerosis” (El Maleh’s word) and the brutal oppression of 1965 represented a shattering of what he had worked toward as its de facto leader during the struggle for national liberation. Internal Moroccan Communist permutations reflected the broader Communist world. As François Furet put it, “The Communist idea had gained in dimensions what it had lost in unity.”18 Since the 1955 Bandung Conference and the growth of the nonaligned movement, international political jockeying between Cold War powers had intensified. De-Stalinization of the USSR and an ascendant Chinese Communist Party challenged the international leftist status quo, as Maoism became increasingly popular worldwide.19 King Hassan II participated in the nonaligned movement, although under his guidance Morocco drifted ever more pro-American. Regionally and internationally, Moroccan officials positioned themselves at once pan-African, pan-Arab, anti-Zionist, and pro-American. At home, the makhzan attempted to thwart the rising leftist opposition by establishing a stooge party of the palace, the cynically named Front pour la Défense des Institutions Constitutionelles (Front for the Defense of Constitutional Institutions; FDIC). This party, established in the spring of 1963 with the seemingly express purpose of fending off leftist subversion, was the brainchild of Minister of the Interior Reda Guedira. Guedira spoke at the annual congress of the Federation of Moroccan Jewish Communities in
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April 1963, encouraging Moroccan Jews to support the FDIC as their patriotic duty in gratitude for the king’s “protection.”20 It was no coincidence, observed US diplomats, that the FDIC chose Mayer Obadia, the president of the Casablanca Jewish Community Committee, as its candidate. The UNFP, in turn, also ran a Jewish candidate, Meyer Toledano, to try to capture the Casablancan Jewish vote.21 Although Toledano was confident he could “easily” beat Obadia, the majority of the Casablancan Jewish community supported “the King’s candidate” to “demonstrate its loyalty to its benefactor, the ‘Sultan.’ ”22 Members of the banned PCM called on Jews in the May 1963 elections to vote against the two Jewish candidates (with particular venom reserved for Mayer Obadia of the FDIC) and instead endorse Ali Yata, who was r unning as an independent candidate. The PCM, particularly its Jewish members such as Simon Lévy, Abraham Serfaty, Ralph Benarrosh, and Joseph Levy, implored Moroccan Jews to eschew traditional relationships to the sultan- turned-king and his Jewish representative. The PCM tract attacked the FDIC as an antidemocratic, even anti-Semitic false “popular movement” that had “no real platform, no history of activism” and would “fall apart at the first test.”23 It accused Mayer Obadia of being “a ‘court Jew,’ good for collecting votes along confessional lines” and for being “opportunistic,” thus playing into the hands of the antidemocratic makhzan for personal gain.24 The PCM asked, “Does Mr. Obadia represent democracy just because he’s Jewish?” positing that “only a true democracy can guarantee the rights of the Jewish minority” and that democracy would unite Muslims and Jews for a stronger Morocco. The tract concluded by admonishing Jews to care not only for the “interests of the Jewish minority” but also t hose of “the Moroccan p eople as a whole”—indeed, for the PCM, the two were mutually constitutive.25 Signatories to this plea to the Moroccan Jewish community included the usual leftist suspects, with their professions listed. This list gives insight into an aspect of Jewish leftists’ political engagement explored in previous chapters: they w ere relatively well-to-do, w ere well educated, and held rela26 tively prestigious positions. Jewish Agency officials and representatives of the World Jewish Congress were also skeptical of Mr. Obadia, for similar reasons, in a rare moment of confluence between the PCM and Zionist politics: both agreed the man was a “token candidate.”27 However, the Jewish
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Agency and WJC ultimately supported the FDIC and Obadia for the same reasons that most Moroccan Jews did. For most Moroccan Jews, maintaining the support of the palace was critical for Jewish communal stability. Such schisms highlight the splintering of leftist Jews from the vast majority of the Moroccan Jewish population, inclined not to risk its neck on the political opposition. In the days preceding the May 17 election, both major Jewish newspapers, La Voix des Communautés and Noar, strongly endorsed the FDIC and Mayer Obadia, citing patriotic duty and devotion to the monarchy.28 The FDIC won the 1963 elections by a landslide: nine out of fourteen elected ministers were insider FDIC candidates. In the end, Mayer Obadia received more than double the number of votes Toledano did in the “most decisive of all UNFP losses.”29 Ali Yata barely won 1,000 votes, less than half of the votes for Toledano. As US consul general James Frederick Green observed, The chief point around which most campaign tactics developed was the po-
sition of the Jewish community and in the Moslem [sic] nation; the role of the King as “protector: of the community and the implication (at least) that
Obadia was the “King’s candidate.” The UNFP, Istiqlal, and communist can-
didates were thus, for the Jewish community, depicted to be not only in po litical opposition to the monarch, but also to represent an occult threat to the Jewish community.30
Over dinner with US diplomats in Casablanca held after the election, Toledano alleged that Obadia overtly campaigned on the grounds that voting for a UNFP candidate “is a vote against the King and is a vote for a traitor.”31 At the same time, nearly one hundred UNFP members w ere arrested and would stand trial in November 1963 for an “alleged plot to assassinate the King,” which, US diplomatic observers noted, was one of many such “treason trials.”32 Such policies would ultimately lead to the co-optation of most po litical opposition groups. In this climate, Moroccan Jews had ample reason to fear political retribution for any display of disloyalty to the makhzan. The Moroccan–Algerian border war of 1963 (“War of the Sands”), on top of Mehdi Ben Barka’s growing popularity and calls for Third World solidarity, threatened the palace. As Ben Barka’s rhetoric became more revolutionary, the palace began making arrests and violently suppressing the UNFP
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and its supporters; 200 UNFP members w ere put on trial in 1963–1964, “during which eleven prominent leaders of the party accused of participating in the alleged plot against the King w ere sentenced to death, including Ben 33 Barka.” The Moroccan National Students’ Union (Union nationale des étudiants marocains; UNEM), which had close ties to the UNFP, went on strike, even calling for the “abolition of the regime,” leading many of its members to face the same fate as UNFP members.34 It was UNEM, in fact, that spearheaded the March 1965 uprising in response to legislation that would place age limits on high school students, effectively cutting this population off from educational opportunities beyond technical training. Simon Lévy worked particularly closely with UNEM and student unions across the Casablancan high school network. A teacher at the prestigious Lycée Muhammad V in Casablanca, he organized student Marxist circles and wrote for and distributed La Nouvelle Garde, keeping student concerns at the forefront.35 UNEM rose in prominence as the UNFP faced continued existential threats from the monarchy and sought a broad base of support. Even though the overwhelming majority of Jews supported the FDIC, there was still a critical enough Jewish student mass to warrant UNEM resolutions calling for clear distinctions between Zionism and Jewishness and asserting the “rights of the Jewish minority” within a free, independent Morocco.36 The PCM worked with UNEM and the UNFP, and teachers such as El Maleh and Lévy radicalized the students. Leftist teachers affiliated with the PCM and UNEM mentored a young, politically frustrated, but motivated student population that implored the government to make good on its pre-independence promises.37 Through La Nouvelle Garde, Simon Lévy and o thers within the PCM cultivated the critical minds of high school and even middle school youth: although they were too young to vote, they joined a critical leftist discourse that would bear fruit in a few short years.38 UNEM members and sympathizers interpreted the decision to place age limits on high school students as an outrage in the face of widespread illiteracy in the country and the fact that education (and the relative lack thereof for Muslims during the protectorate) had been a cornerstone of every national liberation platform.39 Indeed, it is estimated that 70 percent of the Moroccan population was illiterate at independence in 1956.40 Casablancan students went on strike on March 22; the next day,
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the protests turned into riots joined by all dissatisfied segments of Moroccan society, including “parents asking for the release of their imprisoned c hildren, unemployed demanding work, students looking for scholarships and others simply screaming their anger.”41 The 23 Mars [March 23] radical movement in which Moroccan Jewish activist Sion Assidon would play a part (as discussed in the next chapter) emerged directly from this day of protest and venting of anger. The rioting quickly spread to Fez, Rabat, Marrakesh, Settat, Khouribga, Meknes, and Kenitra and lasted for several days.42 Following the bloody suppression of the uprising, the constitution—faulty as it was—was suspended, and the king inaugurated a state of emergency. Hassan II defended the violent suppression of the time, citing his father’s inherent distaste for “disorder.”43 He also claimed to have been taken by surprise when the riots broke out, although “one could sense something was brewing, although not something like this.”44 Press censorship tightened, and at least fourteen leftists—many of whom w ere part of the UNFP—were condemned 45 to death on March 27. During this time, Simon Lévy was abducted off the street while protesting and was imprisoned and tortured for eight days, as described in the opening vignette of this chapter. King Hassan II addressed the Moroccan p eople on March 29, sharply criticizing the leftist “intellectuals” who encouraged such protesting. Famously, he said, “So why d idn’t they go out in the streets, instead of the students? Where is their bravery, their courage, their common sense? Allow me to inform you that there is nothing so dangerous to the State as a so-called intellectual. It would be better if you were illiterate.”46 The king dissolved parliament and declared a state of emergency on June 7, 1965. This was “legal” pursuant to article 35 of the king’s constitution.47 Secondary literature concerning the next several years is unanimous in its assessment: the palace tightened its grip on all state institutions and apparatuses—increasing surveillance and, with it, arrests and imprisonment. The national movement “weakened” and fractured into ever more competing factions, undirected as to how or w hether they could work within the state’s limitations. The number of victims of the violence of March 1965 is still unknown—official numbers cite 7 dead, 69 wounded, and 168 arrests.48 According to the opposition, hundreds w ere killed and more than 3,000 arrested, with “many victims buried at night, in secret.”49 It was in this political
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ferment that Edmond Amran El Maleh formally exited the PCM and left for France. The riots of 1965 are one of the many open wounds throbbing in his historical memoir fiction. El Maleh’s other open wounds connect to politics in the wider MENA region and what he viewed as the tragedy of Moroccan Jewish outmigration, primarily to Israel. While El Maleh’s writing tends to locate the catalysts for this outmigration squarely in the colonial period and Zionist machinations, there w ere very real c auses for anxiety for Moroccan Jews a fter independence: the vicissitudes of Arab nationalist policy and the popular conflation of Jewishness and Zionism at home in Morocco.
Zionism and Moroccan Jews
Events in the Levant and Egypt exacerbated and sharpened the ongoing debate of Moroccan identity and Jewishness. As previous chapters have described, Moroccan public political debate and activism increasingly conflated Judaism and Jewish identity with Zionism, and, a fter 1948, with criticism of the actions of the state of Israel, despite official statements issued by Istiqlal, al-W ifaq, the PCM, the palace, and many others. As of King Muhammad V’s visit to New York in late 1957, Moroccan Jews w ere allowed unrestricted movement, with the understanding that such liberties s topped at migration to Israel. Zionist organizing continued, despite public outpourings of enthusiasm for Moroccan identity among Jews in the initial post-independence years. Although Jewish educational institutions established much stronger Arabic-language education in keeping with post-independence goals, the international context of pan-Arabism and Zionism rendered such efforts for Moroccan “authenticity” relatively impotent.50 French university-educated élites returning to Morocco in particular championed leftist, nationalist Moroccan causes. In July 1961, perhaps as a response to the sinking of an illegal Zionist emigration ship, the Pisces, Moroccan Jewish graduates of French universities established the Cultural and Social Association of Moroccan Jewish Students in Paris, with a resolution affirming their commitment as full and equal Moroccan citizens in the Moroccan nation-building project.51 In addition to prominent figures such as Dr. Léon Benzaquen and o thers from al-Wifaq serving in government, Communists too held official posts. Following independence in 1956, Abraham Serfaty was appointed to the Economic Ministry and worked in mining development from 1957–1960; his success
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there led him to being named the director of Research and Development at the Sharifian Phosphate Office (OCP) until his resignation in 1968 in solidarity with the miners of Khouribga.52 The vast majority of Moroccan Jews, however, remained outside the political limelight, and intentionally so. As mentioned, winter 1961 was a uniquely tense season for Moroccan Jews because of three events. First, the Egyptian pan-Arabist president Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose international élan seemingly knew no bounds, visited Casablanca for a Moroccan-hosted regional summit in January. In addition to Nasser representing the United Arab Republic (the short-lived union of Egypt and Syria), representatives from the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Front; FLN), Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Libya, and Sri Lanka converged on Casablanca. The police “out of excessive zeal,” penalized and threatened the Jews of Casablanca, assuming antipathy on their part toward Nasser.53 Michael M. Laskier has described that conference as a “pretext for numerous arrests and unwarranted beatings administered by the police” and a “nightmare” for Moroccan Jews.54 Leading members of the World Jewish Congress took note, referencing the “convulsive course of Moroccan developments in 1961” in a March 1961 report.55 The report pointed out that police “excesses” and “brutality” against Jews occurred with greater frequency around the Egyptian president’s visit. Such “excesses” began with the “confiscation” of any clothing that happened to have a blue-and-white color combination (the colors of the Israeli flag), as well as of black clothing, interpreted as a sign of Jewish communal “mourning on account of Nasser’s visit.” Sartorial policing turned into “large-scale arrests followed by night-long beatings and other brutalities.” 56 A US diplomat reported back to the US State Department that “some 25 [ Jewish] schoolboys” had been arrested for leaving the grounds of their Jewish school during Nasser’s visit. The school’s director, a Jewish man from Switzerland, was also arrested when he protested the arrest of his charges. The US diplomat grimly recounted that “all [were] taken [to the] police station [and] physically beaten without explanation or charges.” 57 The school boys were released later that same night, the school director a fter two days and the intervention of a Swiss diplomat. Such targeting only further fractured the already deeply splintered and anxious Moroccan Jewish community. Some political figures found in this moment greater justification for Zionism and outmigration, whereas others, especially those
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in the PLS, read the moment as cause for renewed patriotism and distancing from Zionism. The PCM and members of the Casablancan Jewish community loudly decried the anti-Semitic violence during Nasser’s visit in a tract titled “NO TO ZIONISM! NO TO ANTI-SEMITISM!” It condemned Nasser’s inflammatory remarks and stated: “the context in which t hese arrests occurred was outside of any judicial authority, as well as the authorities’ silence on the matter concerning police activity and the brutality experienced by some of the arrested c hildren, has aroused profound concern among our Jewish compatriots.” 58 The PCM tract went on to condemn Zionist exploitation of ongoing tensions. André Azoulay, special advisor to the current King Muhammad VI and his father Hassan II, also experienced persecution as a direct result of Nasser’s visit. Born in Essaouira in 1941, Azoulay was po litically active from a young age, even flirting with Communism—he met Ali Yata in 1958 and had “climbed over the walls” of his high school in El Jadida (formerly Mazagan) to hear him speak alongside Simon Lévy. He had appreciated the “rational component” of Marxist thought but was put off by the party’s doctrinaire Stalinism. Ultimately, Azoulay would depart Morocco in 1966 for a self-imposed exile to France. During the Casablanca summit, Azoulay worked for the newspaper Maroc Information (Information Morocco), reporting on the events and Nasser’s speech. While reporting on the summit, he became a target of police repression against Jews. Police officers entered the press office, arrested Azoulay, and ripped apart his press pass publicly, in front of the newspaper employees, as punishment for the “arrogance of a Jew writing about Nasser and the Arab Summit.” 59 On the heels of the Nasser visit, “which had given rise to despondency and near-panic in the community,” leaders in the Moroccan Jewish community made an appointment to meet with Crown Prince Moulay Hassan. Global Jewish leaders demanded that emigration be legalized, and Moroccan officials promised to take “important measures . . . in an effort to reassure Moroccan Jews that their status would be safeguarded.”60 Shortly after this meeting, a ship bearing an illegal cargo of Moroccan Jews heading to Israel sank in the Mediterranean: the sinking of the Pisces was the second critical event during the winter of 1961. On January 10, the Mossad-arranged ship sank off the coast of Tangier: all onboard (forty-two, forty-three, or
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forty-four—the reported numbers vary) perished.61 Those bodies that could be recovered were buried secretly, “in a reclusive corner of the Al-Hoceima Spanish cemetery.”62 The World Jewish Congress leaders were worried about the aftershocks of such exposure—after all, while emigration was technically illegal, it had been tacitly tolerated. Further, even if migration were a possibility, a WJC report indicated that “the Jewish community is itself deeply split about the policies to adopt.”63 Although the majority of Moroccan Jews were split, those on the left had a very clear vision of what needed to be done. The PCM argued that the wave of anti-Semitism currently experienced in Morocco was antithetical to Moroccan “tradition” and identity and was inflamed by Zionist propaganda; in a widely distributed tract issued on January 25, Jewish PCM members said that the tragic sinking of the Pisces was born of “an intoxication” with Zionism. It called for greater monitoring of “notorious Zionist agents” who w ere carrying out a program of “denationalizing” Moroccan Jews from the wider Moroccan society. Referencing Muhammad V’s actions during the Vichy period and the rise of Moroccan Jews to high places in government following independence, the PCM sought to underscore for Moroccan Jews their inherent safety in their homeland and that Zionism and colonialism alone had worked to divorce Moroccan Muslims from Jews. The PCM called again for Moroccan Jews and Muslims to reject the polarizing effects of Zionism. If “conscious,” “patriotic” Jews and Muslims could denounce Zionism as well as anti-Semitism in a united front, the PCM argued, a “completely indepen dent, democratic and prosperous Morocco” would be possible.64 Soon after, the PCM released another declaration, this time aimed more widely at all Moroccans. In Simon Lévy’s recounting, several prominent intellectual Jews—mostly on the left, including Serfaty, El Maleh, and himself—“proclaimed the right of Moroccan Jews to the Moroccan nation. [They] condemned Zionism, as well as the anti-Jewish blunders that sought to deny the right to emigrate.”65 This declaration, cherished in the personal collections of both Simon Lévy and Ralph Benarrosh, decried anti-Semitic statements in the Moroccan nationalist press and denounced the harsh police action against Moroccan Jews during Nasser’s visit. The tone of this document is imploring; its audience is unclear. It is not addressed particularly to Moroccan Jews, but was a broad public outcry against “the infernal
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cycle in which mistrust begets mistrust, with the end result of Zionism and anti-Semitism enforcing one another,” which harmed the “vital interests” of the country.66 The signatories proclaimed themselves to be representing the “true interests” of Moroccan Jews and thus “publicly and unequivocally condemn[ed] Zionist propaganda as an instrument of imperialism and a weapon of division used against the entirety of the Moroccan p eople.” The signatories condemned “Zionist agents” for preying on “the deep hopes of Moroccan Jews for dignity, well-being and security” and for fearmongering to divide Moroccan compatriots. “Anxious to defend our country against all calumny,” they exhorted all Moroccans to act against “imperialist hypocrites” who instilled “a racist climate . . . in order to discredit our country and tear away the Jewish population from the national community.” The statement concluded with a call to arms against “all discrimination,” vowing that Morocco was their home and that “no one [would] be able to deprive [them] of it.” According to Simon Lévy’s sons, their father told them that the pro- makhzan FDIC newspaper, Les Phares (The Lighthouses) attacked Simon for this declaration, publishing a nasty piece titled “The Red Levys” accusing Simon of faking signatures on the document.67 Nevertheless, the paper al-Tahrir (Liberation) seized on this document and reprinted it, “written and signed by thirty Jewish supporters of the UNFP and the Moroccan Communist Party.”68 Among these signatories were Simon Lévy, Abraham Serfaty, Ralph Benarrosh, and Roger Cohen (a representative of the Moroccan National Bank).69 The other signatories were largely professionals, teachers, engineers, doctors, and administrators.70 Meanwhile, Israeli foreign minister Golda Meir stated in the Knesset in the wake of the Pisces sinking, “The Jews are driven into the corner of despair, given the discriminatory atmosphere and persecution which presently reigns in Morocco.”71 Newspapers such as al-Tahrir and al-Fajr (Dawn) boldly charged that the makhzan had facilitated the mass exodus of Moroccan Jewry u nder pressure from Israeli, US, and European governments and were guilty in undermining the cause of Palestine.72 Nearly one year after the Pisces tragedy, al-Moukafih (The Struggle), the newspaper of the PCM, published an article titled “On the Departure of Moroccan Jews.” In it, the undisclosed author argued that French planes and “perhaps Royal Air Maroc” w ere transporting Moroccan Jews to Marseille from where they would
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travel on to Israel.73 The article bluntly accused the makhzan of facilitating the WJC and Zionist agents’ activities in the country and stated that “the Moroccan government would allow the emigration of Moroccan Jews in exchange for American wheat.”74 Simon Lévy and Ralph Benarrosh placed copies of the al-Moukafih piece in the mailboxes of Jewish residences and institutions, not relying on newspaper dissemination alone to make their case but also reaching out to their readers directly. In a climate of pan-Arab nationalism and Palestinian solidarity as a litmus test for Arabness and ideological cohesion, it was not flattering to the makhzan to be accused of covert negotiations with Israel. Operation Yakhin, the Israeli program to resettle Moroccan Jews, facilitated the migration of 92,000 Moroccan Jews between 1961 and 1964 with the complicity of the makhzan. The story of “selling Jews for wheat” was true to the extent that the Moroccan government received payment for Jews leaving Morocco for Israel; widely acknowledged and repeated, it still lives on in the public consciousness. Jean Lévy, Simon Lévy’s son, when generously allowing me access to his father’s personal papers, mentioned the story, maintaining that UNFP activists had scrawled on walls across Casablanca, “Hassan al-qr’aa baya’a al- yehud bzra’a” (Hassan the bald [King Hassan II indeed was bald] has sold the Jews for wheat).75 Meanwhile, Prime Minister Abdallah Ibrahim had pushed Morocco in 1959 to join the Arab postal union, which resulted in the immediate cessation of all communications with Israel.76 Former American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, in touch with Léon Benzaquen and other WJC activists, had personally implored Muhammad V when postal communications w ere restricted to lighten this policy, to no avail: “Your Majesty: I have been asked to find out whether it would be possible for you to permit an exchange of letters between people who have gone to Israel and their families remaining in Morocco. It seems to be a very great hardship to allow no communication and it if could be permitted at certain stated intervals, I think it would be of great importance to these harassed and troubled people.”77 In the same file at the Central Zionist Archives, Senator Jack Kennedy and other Americans also implored both Kings Muhammad V and Hassan II to facilitate Israeli–Moroccan communication, but they did not change the policy, and letters continued to travel via France. However, the WJC officials w ere hopeful
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regarding their future relationship with the new king as he was “modern- minded and disposed, by education and outlook, to consider Moroccan Jews as full-fledged citizens. . . . Each Yom Kippur that he is in Morocco, he visits a Casablanca synagogue to convey a message of greeting and good will. Also, Jews are included among his intimate friends.”78 However, the year 1961 alone counted at least 11,478 illegal emigrants; in the years 1962 and 1963, the total was 72,632.79 Most of the elite, well-educated Jews remained, but they were the distinct minority. In the third major event of 1961, King Muhammad V died suddenly. This panicked the international community that feared for the stability of the country. Political opposition had been steadily growing and challenging the makhzan; pan-Arabism-inflected Moroccan nationalism threatened the prospects of Jewish integration into the state. Further, Crown Prince Moulay Hassan, soon to be elevated to King Hassan II of Morocco, was widely unpopular. The day after King Muhammad V’s death, approximately 800 Moroccan Jews mourned in a public march in downtown Casablanca, while leftist student groups reportedly shouted “Down with Hassan.” 80 Moroccan Jews used the moment of the king’s death to perform their loyalty to the makhzan; leftist students saw an opportunity to challenge the status quo. As was traditional, Crown Prince Moulay Hassan had been the palace representative at the Casablancan Jewish community’s Yom Kippur services in 1961, where the palace emissary traditionally received special blessings for the sultan/king.81 There was no reason to think that the makhzan’s policies toward Jews would change with the new king. However, such policies could prove to be a liability in the face of intensifying political opposition. The “Sultan’s Jews” increasingly feared their king would be unable to protect them, while the “Sultan’s Communists” did their utmost to demonstrate their ardent patriotism. Most Moroccan Jews voted with their feet. A few short years after the burst of enthusiasm of al-W ifaq around Moroccan independence, the organization’s vision of Jewish–Muslim harmony was decidedly unrealized. In 1961, the Istiqlal began to openly publish increasingly anti-Semitic tracts. Jews w ere caught in the crosshairs of political activity despite their official protection by the king.82 An Istiqlal electoral slogan in 1961 stated, “To vote for a Jew is to betray the country,” and an edition of al-Alam (The Flag) made this statement: “Even the word ‘Jew’
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should be forbidden in Morocco.’ ” 83 Allal al-Fassi, the former Istiqlal leader and then the Minister of Islamic Affairs, declared before Parliament in 1962, “Whoever says Moroccan, means Muslim. Jewish Moroccans are nothing but dhimmis. In the past, no foreigner could acquire Moroccan nationality without converting to Islam.” Two years later, in an address to Parliament, al-Fassi stated, “Morocco is a Jewish State. It is led by Jews and foreigners.” 84 In this same period, a number of Jewish girls were kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam.85 The main Jewish Moroccan newspaper, La Voix des Communautés, published the photos of the kidnapped and demanded an end to this practice.86 In an interview with a reporter for this paper, the Minister for Islamic Affairs denied any involvement in the affair, stating that “discrimination has never existed and never will exist in Morocco.” 87 Around this time the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were published and distributed, the Istiqlal press called for the rooting out of all Zionists, and al-Akhbar al-Dounia (World News; an independent newspaper not tied to a particular political party) proclaimed that “a Jew is a Jew even if he’s been Muslim for forty years.” 88 Enraged, Abraham Serfaty responded, “Does the editor suggest substituting a concept of nationality based only on religion for the Moroccan concept of nationality, deeply rooted in our country?” 89 Shortly before his untimely death, King Muhammad V had met with Jewish notables of the Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco (Conseil des Communautés Israélites du Maroc; CCIM), at which the following demands w ere made: 1. unconditional and unrestricted freedom of movement 2. action to stop the forcible abduction and conversion of Jewish girls to Islam 3. a new, fully legal status for the Jewish communities and the CCIM, suitable to an independent Morocco90 The May–June 1961 issue of La Voix des Communautés addressed the kidnapping and conversion of Jewish young w omen and their subsequent forced marriages. This issue focused on the technicalities of the Moroccan penal code: “the conclusion was that any conversion done by a minor, established at below 20 years of age, was null and void according to Jewish law.” 91 Moroccan law, however, held that marriage at age 12 was valid.92 The Romance Haketía song about Soulika—an early nineteenth-century Jewish woman from
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Tangier who chose death rather than convert to Islam—was invoked to warn Moroccan Jewish women of the 1960s, urging the kidnapped and converted women not to follow the martyr’s example.93 For a time restrictions on outmigration w ere indeed eased, but Morocco’s political agendas at home and internationally w ere not always in sync, to the detriment of Morocco’s Jews. Articles in La Voix des Communautés attempted, without much success, to convince Moroccan Jews that their place was not in Israel but in their true home of Morocco.94 The élite minority, many of whom w ere in the left such as Lévy, El Maleh, and Serfaty, proclaimed the Moroccanness of Jews above all, but this was not persuasive to the critical majority.95 Even the Jewish members of al-W ifaq, such as March Sebbagh, David Azoulay, and David Amar, were attacked in the national media for attending a meeting of the World Jewish Congress in 1961.96 The PCM endorsed such criticism of these figures. As Michael Laskier put it, for the PCM, “it was pointless to debate w hether Jews attended the Geneva Meeting as delegates or observers. The mere fact that they attended [italics in the original] a pro-Zionist meeting was bad enough.” 97 Jewish members of the PCM in a tract titled “Open Letter to Misters Marc Sebbah and David Azoulay” accused the aforementioned of treason: “The World Jewish Congress . . . pursues policies contrary to the national interest. Its activity . . . is founded on false theory that would have all the Jews of the world be considered as one, singular people, whose duty it is to support the State of Israel by any means necessary, a state they consider the land for all Jews.” 98 The tract called for Moroccan Jews to work to unite themselves politically, economically, and socially with all Moroccans as integral components of the country. The PCM also called on Muslims to fight against “any manifestation of racism” and on Jews to fight against Zionism.99 The authors criticized Sebah and Azoulay’s defense that they attended the WJC meeting “out of a concern to understand the true condition of Moroccan Jewry,” arguing that “[their] activity would have been much more productive, without a doubt, on the national soil.”100 However, most Moroccan Jews w ere not persuaded by nor perhaps were even reading or listening to such public calls for Moroccan patriotism. Indeed, approximately one thousand Moroccan Jews who had converged on Casablanca awaiting passports rioted at the Jewish Community Council office, “invading the building and smashing furniture and office fixtures before
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being dispersed by the police.”101 The makhzan had been tacitly allowing emigration, but associations with Jewish emigration became toxic to regime stability, particularly at the point of Hassan II’s apotheosis. Enraged Moroccan Jews, who had left everything behind only to find themselves waiting indef initely, reportedly chanted “Bread or Passports” to highlight their plight, thus “drawing unwelcome attention to the renewed emigration.”102 When the Six-Day War broke out and Israel dealt a stunning defeat to Egypt among other nations, tensions elevated. In the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Jewish businesses were boycotted with public political support as the conflation of “Jew” and “Zionist” became ever more common.103 The Union Marocaine du Travail (Moroccan Labor Union; UMT) publicly called for boycotting not only Jews and Jewish financial ties in commerce but also “in the liberal professions . . . lawyers, doctors and architects.”104 Mahjoub ben Seddik, leader of the UMT, wrote a telegram to the king, claiming he was “protecting Zionists and their acolytes, the Jews of Morocco . . . Zionists dressed in djellabas.”105 Perhaps in response to this telegram, the king defended Moroccan Jewry and urged Moroccans to distinguish between loyal Moroccan Jewish subjects and Zionists but reminded his Moroccan Jewish subjects in 1967: The government of His Majesty the King reminds Moroccans of the Jewish faith that their rights as enshrined in the Constitution are completely contra-
dictory with any support or aid they might provide Zionism. Consequently, the government w on’t hesitate to apply, in all its rigor, the law against those
who have been convinced to collude with Zionism and reminds [you] that such collusion w ill lead to the stripping of one’s nationality. . . . The State alone has the ability to assure public order and protect the rights of all na-
tions . . . it will not tolerate any kind of provocation and w ill not permit anyone taking justice into their own hands.106
At the beginning of 1961, 162,420 Jews remained in the country—by 1967, that number was down to 53,000.107 The ensuing boycotts and newspaper declarations against “Zionist citadels” in Morocco made Jewish life ever more tenuous. Simon Lévy later wrote of this moment in 1967 that “something had broken” within the Jewish community that chose to withdraw rather than embrace “public life.”108 The 1967 Six-Day War spelled the swan song of Jewish
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life in Morocco. As the vast majority of Jews departed, those members of leftist organizations were increasingly alienated from the prevailing winds of Moroccan Jewish life. The Jewish members of the PCM issued a public declaration following the Six-Day War, urging, perhaps in a political and social vacuum, the members of the Moroccan Jewish community to cease their support of Zionist activities. The usual suspects signed this tract, including Ralph Benarrosh, Joseph Bendellac, Haïm Benisty, Léon Elmallem, Joseph Lévy, Simon Lévy, René Ohana, Isaac Sebbagh, and Abraham Serfaty. The tract was repetitive of so many others issued by Jewish Communists, criticizing Israel as an imperialist enterprise, chastising Moroccan Jews for not engaging more in the country’s political and social climate, imploring Muslims not to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.109 The authors argued that the Moroccan Jewish community was “at a crossroads” and that “its future on the land of their ancestors, in their own country, [was] at risk.”110 As Moroccan Jewish leftists had admonished before, they once again criticized the majority of Moroccan Jews for remaining “isolated from the people,” which only served to “widen” the “chasm” between Moroccan Muslims and Jews. “Lack of understanding and mistrust have developed dangerously” among Moroccans, prompting them to declare that they “considered Morocco to be [their] one and only Country.” As “Moroccan Jewish patriots,” the authors called on the majority Moroccan Jewish community to “maintain solidarity” with Muslims and not let themselves be duped by fear. They “den[ied] Zionism the right to decide the politics of global Judaism” and to “declare itself the representative and defender of [their] interests.” They argued, “Far from helping resolve the Jewish Question . . . Zionism ha[d], on the contrary, compromised the future of Jews in the world.” Their nation “need[ed] all its children” to work together and “maintain solidarity” in the face of imperialist forces of division. Thus, it was imperative that Moroccan Jews gain “a complete national consciousness” within their “true Nation,” not Israel.111 As with other, similarly impassioned, patriotic pleas, this one too failed to convince the majority Moroccan Jewish community. After the Six-Day War, King Hassan II stated, “The Jew has fulfilled all his obligations towards Arabism and Islam but the sentiments of the population have unfortunately been exploited by some elements whose only con-
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cern is to sow confusion and disorder and to brand Jews with treacherous slogans.”112 As Aomar Boum has shown, Hassan II positioned himself as the inheritor of the old Alaouite Dynasty’s legacy of protector of the Jews while simultaneously pivoting toward the United States and partially embracing pan-Arabism and Nasserism.113 Indeed, Hassan II maintained close ties with Israel and the Moroccan Jews of Israel—working with the Jewish Agency to, at times, facilitate Zionist efforts to bring Moroccan Jewry to Israel.114 This friendly rapport, however, was not without its hitches. In New York City, local Jewish grocers boycotted Moroccan oranges in February 1968 as a gesture of solidarity: “some of the Jewish buyers began to complain about supporting Arab governments in view of the reports of ill- treatment of Jews living in Arab lands.”115 In response, Meyer Toledano traveled to New York City to speak publicly on the m atter that Morocco was not like Iraq or Egypt and that Jews were well treated, and WJC officials also defended the king’s good actions. As one report from André Jabès of the WJC office in Geneva maintained, “There has been no looting and no burning down of Jewish properties in Morocco. . . . He [King Hassan II] did his best to protect the Jews and although being in a very difficult political situation he succeeded even if not always and not completely.”116 Jabès related that while the king would probably be pleased with a word of appreciation from the Jewish world, [he] would only accept it if it were conveyed to him discreetly, personally and orally [underlining in the original], either directly or through one
of his close collaborators. . . . If the Jews thank the King it means that the King did something in their favor, and the Arabs, whether Moroccans or in
the Arab world, will resent it. The King is tired to be called “the King of the Jews.” Therefore we should avoid any expression of gratitude which might be known as it is bound to be.117
Meanwhile, Fatah (the dominant party within the Palestinian Liberation Organization) operated offices in Rabat, and a memorandum from the WJC in October 1970 noted that taxes from movie tickets and tobacco products went to supporting Fatah operations.118 Israeli officials and their liaisons in the World Jewish Congress and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) were cautiously optimistic about
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the new king. A Mr. R. Spanien of the HIAS visited Moroccan in the summer of 1964 and concluded that Jewish life in the country was precarious at best: -the King and his Government are always friendly to the Jews but how long
will the regime last? The political situation is not stable, and few p eople think
that the Moroccan mixture of monarchy and democracy, of personal power and freedom can prevail for a very long time. If the regime changes the Jews may have reasons for fear. They seem to live just for the present and the pre sent is secure.
-emigration is satisfactory and may reach this year the 12,000. -the total Jewish population being under 90,000 the percentage of emigration is very high.
-those responsible for the various forms of emigration agree that the impor tant thing is to get out the greatest numbers as quick as possible lest the situation changes for the worse.119
The report noted that the demographic composition of emigrants had shifted from the poor, largely Arabic speakers to more middle-class and élite French speakers, dressed in “European clothes.”120 The position of the Alliance Israélite Universelle was similarly complicated. Pursuant to the Arabization policies in education and government, the Alliance began to Arabize its curriculum in earnest beginning in 1960, coincidentally in line with the organ ization’s centennial celebrations. In June 1960, the state officially required that the Alliance integrate its schools into the state educational system (Ittihad; “Union,” in Arabic—this is still today the framework in which Casablanca Alliance schools exist, notably lycée Narcisse Leven).121 As part of the Arabization program, their entire teaching staff was taken over. This includes some 150 regular
and 70 substitute teachers, and about 40 teachers or directors of Sephardic stock who came to Morocco decades ago from the Alliance schools in Turkey, Greece or the Balkans. They now hold French citizenship and should
have been offered one-year renewable contracts on the pattern of t hose concluded with teachers or directors brought to Morocco by the French Cultural
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Mission, but in fact administrative ineptitude has left those and many other matters dangling in mid-air.122
The report went on, cynically, to praise such “administrative ineptitude,” because Muslim students had not yet overwhelmed the schools. Moroccan Jewish Communists supported the Arabization policy, even when directly and negatively affected by it. Ralph Benarrosh, the lawyer who had represented the PCM before the government in 1959, as well as Simon Lévy before the government in a 1966 trial, left the country pursuant to the Arabization of the judicial system: his Arabic was not good enough to continue working. He had had a law practice with a friend in Casablanca, but it had to close in 1966 when he also quit the Moroccan bar. He recounted that one day he went to see a magistrate and all of the signs in the building w ere in Arabic—he could not read them. Despite this, he supported and actively advocated for the Arabization policy and signed a PCM petition in favor of it.123 Simon Lévy’s own brother, also a Casablanca lawyer, also left the country pursuant to the Arabization of the judicial system; according to Lévy, his brother was by all accounts “an ardent Moroccan patriot,” but he was out of a job as he and most other Moroccan Jews had been educated in a thoroughly Francophone system.124 This Arabization policy was not intended to alienate Moroccan Jews, but rather to shed (unsuccessfully) the linguistic remnants of French colonialism. Such a language policy was hardly isolated to Morocco. Across the decolonizing globe of during the 1960s and 1970s similar policies w ere instituted by independent governments. The collateral damage of this policy, however, was the shedding of many Francophone Jews. While Morocco embarked on an official Arabization policy, King Hassan II maintained cordial relations with the WJC and HIAS representatives. Dr. Nahum Goldmann of the WJC personally met with King Hassan II in 1970 (as well as in subsequent years). The 1970 meeting was held in the palace of Rabat and was called at the request of the king. Correspondence between then-Israeli prime minister Golda Meir and Goldmann addressed the latter’s meeting with the king, as well as issues concerning Yugoslavian, Russian, Hungarian, and Romanian Jews. Goldmann wrote that he met in Rabat in the palace gardens of the king, who was dressed “quite informally”
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and attended by various ministers. They discussed the feasibility of peace in the Middle East, and Goldmann reported, “Although he did not say so, I immediately understood that this was the main reason for his inviting me. He is, by the way, a most intelligent and charming man, fully informed about the problem of the area and somehow e ager to play a role. The name of Nasser was not even mentioned (I understand that Hassan’s relations to him are not too good).”125 The king suggested he knew Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) quite well and indicated his potential to serve as an intermediary. Notably, Goldmann and he did not discuss Moroccan Jewish outmigration. In a letter, Goldmann described a subsequent interaction in 1973: “The King did not discuss with me Israel’s immigration policy. He said he will continue to allow e very Moroccan Jew to emigrate to Israel, but asked me to convey to them that they would be welcome to return to Morocco if and whenever they wished to return. I told the King that I did not think many would avail themselves of this kind offer.”126 Goldmann was correct— the rate of migration continued apace. The king would remain tolerant of the outmigration of Moroccan Jews, as political repression intensified within Morocco’s borders in the early 1970s.
Attempted Coups and Crises
As 1967 proved a watershed moment for Moroccan Jews, so too were the late 1960s and early 1970s for Moroccan domestic politics. As previously noted, the leftist UNFP broke from Istiqlal in 1959; the PCM became legalized as the PLS in 1968 and finally split into a farther-left faction, Ila al-Amam, in 1970. Il al-Amam, UNEM, 23 Mars (the movement that grew out of the popular uprisings begun on that date in 1965), and the UNFP represented the growth of the “New Left” in Morocco, largely comprising university students. For their detractors, the PLS and Istiqlal had come to represent sclerotic “sell-outs” to the makhzan, although this was a matter of differing political strategies for viability in a political fragile context. As Susan Gilson Miller has noted, government-controlled university departments of history, philosophy, and sociology w ere “ ‘Arabized’ by fiat, changing the curriculum in fundamental ways, in a crude and obvious attempt to foster a more conservative atmosphere within academia and to dampen enthusiasm
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for the radicalizing influences filtering in from Europe.”127 This Arabization program also sought to limit access to French revolutionary literat ure, on the heels of the 1965 Casablanca uprising as well as upheaval in France and elsewhere in 1968. Arabization also put a number of Francophone Jewish professionals (it w ill be remembered that the attempt at robust Arabic programs in Jewish education was quite new) out of work.128 Tahar Ben Jelloun—one of the writers for Souffles (Breaths), the New Left arts and literature journal, and perhaps the most widely translated Moroccan novelist—characterized this academic Arabization program as “a way to eradicate subversion . . . in getting rid of Nietzsche, Freud or Marx in academic programs, and in teaching it its place Islamic thought.”129 Souffles was itself symptomatic of a break within the Moroccan left, founded in the midst of the makhzan’s anti- intellectual political program. The Ila al-Amam (Forward) movement was founded by Abraham Serfaty and Abdellatif Laâbi, a Moroccan poet and activist. Laâbi had also founded the aforementioned New Left arts and literature journal Souffles in 1966, which Serfaty joined later and pushed into a farther-left political direction. Laâbi and Serfaty met while both were members of the PLS, at the critical juncture after 1965 when the UNFP split into a farther-left wing represented by the 23 Mars movement. As Kenza Sefrioui has written, “For Souffles, another Morocco was possible, and one had to work to build it.”130 The lifespan of Souffles (and Anfas—its Arabic-language version begun in 1971) was short in Morocco; it was disbanded in January 1972 in the context of intensified political repression following the second failed coup. It picked up again in exile in Paris but even t here only lasted u ntil 1973.131 Ultimately, Serfaty and Laâbi would spearhead Ila al-Amam’s break with the PLS, taking most of the active student members with them in 1970.132 On the heels of intense political repression at home, Third Worldist optimism offered a hopeful direction for far-left Marxist-Leninists in Morocco. Algeria’s independence in 1962, the swath of African and Asian successful independence movements in the 1960s and 1970s, and global appreciation for Maoism and the nonaligned movement bolstered political opposition in the face of domestic oppression.133 The Cuban revolution of 1959, the war in Vietnam, and the civil rights movement in the United States all informed the activities of the Communists and, eventually, Ila al-Amam and 23 Mars
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in Morocco.134 If another world was possible, so too was another Morocco. Palestine was one of the central c auses for the PLS, Ila al-Amam, and 23 Mars alike.135 L’Opinion, journal of the Istiqlal Party, felt confident publishing in 1970 that “real Moroccans,” and not Jews, should occupy political posts pursuant to the era of Arabization and Moroccanization. In response, leftists such as Simon Lévy, Abraham Serfaty, and Sion Assidon loudly protested the “amalgam of Judaism and Zionism,” claiming their rightful place in Moroccan politics.136 Pan-Africanism represented by luminaries such as Ahmed Sékou Touré and Kwame Nkrumah was widely cheered, and until the War of Sands in 1963 (pursuant to which Ali Yata was arrested for three months) between Algeria and Morocco, some even dreamed of a Maghribi Union.137 Indeed, the PCM had ventured to argue publicly against the 1963 war, urging, “End the fratricidal struggle! . . . The Moroccan Communists, who have always worked without any reservation toward the creation of a United Arab Maghrib, anti-imperialist and democratic, renew their call for popular vigilance and the reestablishment of ties of close brotherhood, which unite [us] with the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria.”138 Until his kidnapping (resulting in his assassination) in broad daylight in Paris on October 29, 1965, Mehdi Ben Barka of the UNFP had spearheaded such international connections, meeting with Che Guevara just before his death.139 Ali Yata, the secretary general of the by-then-illegal PCM, actively traveled between Moscow, Cairo, and Khartoum, in addition to Paris and other leftist bastions of the 1960s.140 Yata made formal appearances at Communist gatherings in Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, and elsewhere; these visits frequently resulted in his arrest on returning home on the grounds of his activities in reconstituting the illegal Moroccan Communist Party. In defense, Yata who had a solid Muslim religious education, would cite scholarly works about how Islam and Communism w ere not antithetical (demonstrated best by the Soviet Republics of Central Asia), and so maintaining such connections and political activities served Morocco’s national interest.141 The bloody riots of 1965 did not quell this enthusiasm—on the contrary, it was strengthened. Indeed, many members of the PLS and the Souffles team studied in Moscow.142 In addition to such notable authors as Tahar Ben Jelloun, the eminent Moroccan historian Abdallah Laroui also wrote for Souffles and worked with Serfaty.143 In the capacity of writers for Souffles, Serfaty and Laâbi also traveled to Algiers
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as part of the 1969 Pan-African Festival, where they met with the Black Panthers, among other international revolutionaries. In an interview with anthropologist Mikhaël Elbaz, Serfaty described t hese meetings at this festival: “In July 1969, the entire Souffles team went to the pan-African cultural festival in Algiers. I spent all afternoon meeting with the Black Panthers, where they spoke of their beliefs, read poems and sang.”144 He continued, At a certain point, we found ourselves in Algiers, Laâbi and myself, and every day I went to the Black American meetings, the Black Panthers. We would
discuss American négritude and seriously considered the merits of Bundism. I remember the first time I heard the Black Panthers speak . . . they said: we
return to Mother Africa to greet you as American militants. The distinction
is important, acknowledging historic roots without denying rootedness. In my own way, I can claim Kabbala and Spinoza, I am part of a millennial history with its distant roots which we have lost, the Holy Land.145
Admiring Black Panthers’ organizational techniques and ideological foundations, Serfaty compared his predicament as a Sephardic Jew in Morocco to African Americans in the United States. Serfaty acknowledged his family’s diasporic roots and history while confirming his Moroccan patriotism and investment. Oddly enough for this ardent anti-Zionist and Palestinian activist, Serfaty elided the Black Panthers’ reference to “mother Africa” with the Jewish diaspora from the “Holy Land.” Rooted and thoughtful of origins as distinct from national allegiance, this radical Moroccan Jew shared much else in common with leaders of the Black Panther Party, set on the Third Worldist stage of 1969 Algiers. The trip to Algiers was one of Serfaty’s last as a PLS member. Five years after it was instituted, King Hassan II ended the state of emergency in the summer of 1970 and established a new constitution. This constitution was boycotted by the PLS and the UNFP-Istiqlal unity party, al-Koutla al-Watania (National Bloc, La Koutla in French).146 Miller argues that boycotting the referendum left “the way open for the makhzan to fill the seats of the parliament with its own, hand-picked members. Meanwhile, Ila al-Amam organized on the far left, and a new group of religious extremists, the Shabiba Islamiyya (Islamic Youth), quietly coalesced on the right, but both were beyond the bounds of political give and take.”147 However, the
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most dire threat to the makhzan at this time emerged from within the king’s own Royal Armed Forces. Hassan II’s regime suffered two failed military-led coups d’état in 1971 and 1972, which led to an increased crackdown on the left and on any politi cal opposition not handpicked by the palace. The first coup was staged in the royal palace in Skhirat, an oceanside city between Rabat and Casablanca. On July 10, 1971, military officers attempted a violent, bloody coup at the palace with the aim of killing both King Hassan II and Crown Prince Muhammad. Approximately 500 Moroccan and foreign dignitaries, including high- profile representatives of international allies, w ere gathered at the Skhirat palace to celebrate King Hassan II’s birthday.148 Apparently, US observers reported, the king escaped by hiding “in the gents,” more specifically the toilets on the second floor of the palace.149 The attempt put Moroccan Jews on high alert, and HIAS reported an uptick in emigration interest following months of relative calm.150 Two prominent Jewish ministers, André Lamy and Jean Elmalem, resigned from their posts, and Sidney Engel of the JDC suggested that while the motive for their resignations was unclear, they may have been directed by Hassan II in an attempt to bolster regime legitimacy.151 In an additional attempt to mollify the masses, the king announced a land redistribution plan than never quite reached its stated goals.152 The second coup attempt took place in the air, as King Hassan II returned to Morocco from a visit to Paris on August 16, 1972. A rebellious faction within the Royal Armed Forces attempted to shoot down the royal jet, but somewhat miraculously the jet and its royal contents landed relatively unscathed.153 The coup was allegedly spearheaded by Hassan II’s closest confidant, Defense Minister Major General Oufkir. When the plane landed at Rabat/Salé airport, the king reportedly “calmly greeted” the officials in attendance and then “sped away to the Royal Palace in Rabat.” His adversaries “strafed” the airport, barely missing the king and his entourage. The coup leaders refueled and then again “strafed” the royal palace.154 General Oufkir supposedly committed suicide the next day, although it is much more likely that he was murdered for his treachery. General Oufkir’s f amily paid the price for the father’s crimes, as they “disappeared” into the desert, undergoing decades of torture, isolation, eventual h ouse arrest, and exile.155 Eventually, eleven Moroccan Air Force Officers were sentenced to death and executed by firing squad at the military
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base in Kenitra.156 Once again, JDC and HIAS officials reported a stark rise in Moroccan Jewish emigration out of fears for their security amidst the makhzan’s instability.157 As a fter the first coup attempt, following the August 1972 coup attempt Hassan II promised democratic reforms, liberalization, and land redistribution while simultaneously cracking down ever more severely on any form of political opposition, real or imagined. When the Arab–Israeli October War of 1973 broke out, Hassan II saw an opportunity to endear himself to his people and demonstrate his legitimacy. Morocco sent an “expeditionary force” that “performed heroically” in the Golan Heights. Although the Moroccans suffered several casualties, the Moroccan media “reflected local pride” on the radio, on television, and in the press. According to al-Alam, Istiqlal’s newspaper, “4,000 men came forward in Casablanca alone” to register for the Moroccan forces fighting in Syria. US diplomats in Morocco worried that Arab losses and US support for Israel would result in a forced reduction of the US military presence in the country, largely located in Kenitra.158 The Moroccan Jewish community, reduced to approximately 30,000 from its height at about 250,000 following the end of the Second World War, was anxious, fearing a spike in anti- Semitism alongside anti-Zionism.159 However, as one US diplomat reported, “Hassan II is basically friendly to the US and to the West. . . . Despite his efforts to preserve his image with the other Arabs, he does not think much of them.”160 As was Hassan II’s signature, the makhzan proved remarkably adept at playing all sides, subverting opposition and assuring the Moroccan Jews of their security as part of the much-vaunted age-old vertical alliance between the sultan and Jews. Meanwhile, the makhzan focused its efforts on crushing leftist activism, allegedly sending mail bombs in hollowed-out books to UNFP headquarters, staging mass arrests of students and faculty members at universities, and incarcerating and torturing hundreds if not thousands.161 Serfaty and other members of Ila al-Amam went underground in 1972 to escape arrest; he was apprehended two years later and imprisoned in Casablanca’s Derb Moulay Cherif where he was tortured and interrogated along with many other leftist political prisoners.162 He and other political prisoners were transferred to the Kenitra prison in 1977 after a very public “show trial,” in which Serfaty was sentenced, as Susan Gilson Miller puts it, to life in “a Golgotha of suffering kept hidden from the rest of society.”163
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Meanwhile, the PCM emerged under yet another new legal guise in 1974—this time the PPS (Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme; Party for Progress and Socialism). Even the UNFP splintered into another radical group, the USFP (Socialist Union of Popular Forces).164 Leading members of UNEM, Ila al-Amam, and 23 Mars w ere already imprisoned or exiled, largely disappeared from public life. Much of their activity went into exile with them, most often to France. While most far-left leaders w ere imprisoned, the PLS, reincarnated as the PPS, worked through the labor u nions and student groups, notably effecting strikes by teachers and students.165 UNEM was formally dissolved in January 1973 pursuant to the death of a Rabati police officer during a demonstration u nder somewhat murky circumstances.166 As Susan Slyomovics has written, “By 1973, all the constituent elements for widespread abuse were in place: the criminalization of political opinion, arrest without warrant, detention without reason, unlimited extensions of time spent in garde à vue or preventative detention, the creation of secret prisons, and the institutionalization of torture.”167 Ali Yata would later commemorate the imprisoned, describing them as “militant patriots of the left.”168 By the early 1970s, Moroccan student groups in France, working in concert with h uman rights organizations such as Amnesty International, began what would become a more than twenty-year campaign against political repression in Morocco.169 By 1975, the vast majority of Moroccan Jews had left the country. Those who remained typically had significant assets invested in the country, were too poor or old to leave, or w ere devoted leftists. Of the devoted leftists, they split into three parallel political tracks: legal activism, prison, or exile.
o The 1960s and early 1970s were a critical period for Moroccan post- independence state reinforcement and development and also saw tremendous demographic shifts. During this time, the Moroccan left fractured as groups chose different strategies to cope with increasingly oppressive state power: the PCM/PLS/PPS opted for existence as a defanged, if legal, opposition; Ila al-Amam and 23 Mars chose a more radically revolutionary path. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Moroccan Jews left for Israel and some for
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France or Canada. Jews in leftist movements found themselves increasingly alienated from the prevailing attitudes and concerns of the Moroccan Jewish community: leftist Jewish calls for solidarity against Zionism and anti- Semitism within the country seem largely to have fallen on skeptical, if not deaf, ears. The period was defined by splintering against a backdrop of calls for patriotic unity. In response to flares of violence surrounding the Israeli–Arab conflict and local political instability, Moroccan Jews became anxious. The majority of the “Sultan’s Jews” w ere frightened that the king would no longer be able to serve as their “protector” in the face of rising Arab nationalism that increasingly conflated Zionism and Jewishness. From abroad and with the benefit of nostalgia, the story of a special makhzan–Jewish relationship flourished. When many Moroccan Jews arrived in Israel, they w ere greeted with abysmal conditions and faced racial prejudice from the Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli society.170 Further, as the next chapter will demonstrate, Israeli–Moroccan relations and exchanges improved throughout the 1970s–1990s. As Hassan II positioned himself as a key arbiter in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, working with the Americans as well as Israeli and Palestinian representatives, the narrative of Jewish–Muslim convivencia u nder the protective gaze of the sultan/ king became instrumental in global and regional politics. As the next chapter describes, even the Moroccan Communist Jews would ultimately come to serve the state as its ambassadors for “tolerance” and regional exceptionalism abroad. Moroccan Jewish Communists remained fiercely patriotic while criticizing the king. They did not reject the institution of the makhzan as such, but rather specific actions and policies that flew in the face of the democratic ideals they had fought for during the fight for independence from colonial rule. They fought for an idealized, post- independence Morocco in which Jews and Muslims would work in solidarity for the greater social, political, and economic good of the nation. That Morocco did not yet exist, but they remained optimistic.
l CHAP TER 5 '
CO -O P TAT I O N : T H E M O RO CCA N CO LD WA R , I S R A EL , A N D H U M A N R I G H T S
The presence of a Jewish Community in Morocco is useful for the King to enable him to make his propaganda and to
attract sympathy from outside, in particular from the Jewish world.
—A. Kaplan and Feder of the JDC to Mr. P. M. Klutznick, Dr. N. Goldmann, and Dr. G. M. Riegner of the WJC, July 21, 1978
On November 6, 1975, approximately 350,000 Moroccans crossed into the disputed territory of Western Sahara on the orders of King Hassan II, armed only with copies of the Qur’an and the Moroccan flag.1 The Moroccans set up camp as a form of peaceful protest and assertion of Moroccan owner ship of the territory, despite its long standing as a Spanish colony and Algeria’s vigorous (and violent) protestations on behalf of the Polisario Front, a Western Saharan independence organization that rejected Moroccan claims. S imon Lévy, loyal Moroccan Jew and member of the now-legalized PPS (Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme), the current legal incarnation of the Moroccan Communist Party (PCM), was among the marchers, proudly declaring the Western Sahara utterly Moroccan in the name of Islam and of the king. Meanwhile, Abraham Serfaty, former PCM member and leader of the illegal far-left party he cofounded in 1970, Ila al-Amam (For-
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ward), languished in prison for his rejection of the Moroccan claim to Western Sahara, among other transgressions. Near Serfaty’s prison cell resided Sion Assidon, who, despite his first name’s linkage to Zion, was (and remains today) a fierce critic of Zionism and member of the 23 Mars movement that emerged from the popular uprisings of Casablanca in 1965. He, like Serfaty, was imprisoned for supposedly posing a risk to state security. The rest of Morocco’s Jewish community, both abroad and at home, seemed indifferent to the imprisonment of Assidon and Serfaty; they embraced Lévy’s gesture of nationalist-royalist solidarity even if they did not embrace Lévy himself. International Jewish philanthropies concerned with Moroccan Jews, mostly located in the United States with European and Israeli branch offices, shared this unqualified support of the king and his Green March, befitting their firmly held belief in him as the sole guarantor of Moroccan Jewish security. One year later, Lévy would be elected to Casablanca’s municipal council; Serfaty and Assidon would still be imprisoned, only at the beginning of more than three decades of combined prison sentences. This chapter relates how Moroccan Jewish communal fealty to King Hassan II as “protector” and the harsh repression of political dissidents intertwined to support, ultimately, a nationalist narrative embedded in international realpolitik of the 1970s–1990s.2 This complex set of narrative Russian nesting dolls is clear in the lives and political choices of three Moroccan Jewish leftists— Simon Lévy, Abraham Serfaty, and Sion Assidon—whose trajectories at first diverged dramatically before dovetailing in the service of the state by the late 1990s after forcing considerable change via an international human rights campaign. Jews were simultaneously among the greatest boons and the greatest liabilities for Morocco in domestic and international politics from 1975 to the death of King Hassan II in 1999. The question of Western Sahara and the Green March of 1975 entrenched divisions among Moroccan Jewish Communists. Some, like Simon Lévy, chose the legal route, supporting the makhzan’s claim through the defanged version of the PCM/PLS-turned-PPS, alongside the vast majority of Moroccan Jews who w ere also staunchly royalist: Lévy and the majority of Moroccan Jews, at home and abroad, embraced the Green March as an opportunity to demonstrate loyalty to Hassan II and Morocco. Others, such as Abraham Serfaty and Sion Assidon, rejected both
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the PPS’s co-optation by the makhzan and Moroccan nationalist claims to Western Sahara; they paid for this view with decades of imprisonment and torture. The Cold War climate and US support of Morocco against any hint of Communism enabled the rampant h uman rights abuses and crushing of political opposition under Hassan II during the infamous “Years of Lead.”3 The Moroccan monarchy u nder King Hassan II considered itself a constitutional monarchy or, at least, that was how it aimed to present itself to the world. In reality, the Moroccan post-independence state was an absolutist, authoritarian monarchy. As seen in the previous two chapters, the makhzan routinely adopted the trappings of democracy and constitutionalism, enlisting apologists and creating new loyalist parties (such as the FDIC, which had Jewish candidates who were reviled by Communist Jews) when it appeared any election upset might be possible. Of course, when Election Day arrived, these parties would achieve clear mandates from the p eople, with a wink and a nudge to any international observers. At the very moment when King Hassan II was working with Israel and international Jewish philanthropies to guarantee Jewish h uman rights and security, he and his government w ere brutally quashing any hint of leftist political opposition and denying hundreds if not thousands of political prisoners their internationally recognized h uman rights. International h uman rights organizations focused on the Moroccan monarchy in one of two ways: the first around Jewish rights and monarchical stability, the second around political prisoners and torture. By the time of the Green March, Hassan II had placed Morocco firmly in the pro-Western camp of the Cold War and was conducting direct negotiations with Israeli representatives; Morocco was thus a distinct outlier and a clear US and American Jewish ally in the region. Moroccan Jews, leftist and otherwise, became key components in Moroccan Cold War international relations, both as political boons and political liabilities. While Muhammad V had been widely popular and much loved by the people, Hassan II was significantly less so. His rule was marked by increased authoritarianism, including arrests, “disappearances,” suspension of the constitution, rigged elections, monarchist-apologist political candidates, torture, and decades-long imprisonment of political opposition members. Two attempted military coups nearly toppled the regime and increased Hassan II’s
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iron repression. At the same time, he was vaunted as the protector of the Jews and to this day is widely adored by the expatriate and in situ Moroccan Jewish community—an adoration that has arguably intensified since his death in 1999 and extended to the current monarch and Hassan II’s son, Muhammad VI. The Green March represented King Hassan II’s latest (and ultimately, very successful) attempt to marshal popular opinion and defang opposition groups, a gesture of consolidation and legitimacy for the amir al-mu’minin (Commander of the Faithful) u nder the ubiquitous banners of Allah, al-Watan, wa al-Malek (God, Country, and King), the Moroccan holy trinity. The moment of the Green March also raises one of this book’s central questions: How did Jews participate as fully fledged citizens in an imagined, as well as actual, independent Moroccan state? Some Jews maintained absolute loyalty to the king and his initiatives, whereas o thers turned against him for the sake of an imagined and idealized Moroccan state. On Hassan II’s death in 1999, both currents of Moroccan Jews would ultimately be welcomed into the Moroccan nationalist narrative in a neoliberal campaign for tourism and a Moroccan story of pluralism on the world stage, encouraged by Cold War–turned–War on Terror alliances. Even those Jews who emigrated to Israel would be welcomed to return to Morocco, either for short trips or to settle permanently, as Morocco maintained closer relations to Israel than most other powers in the Middle East and North Africa. Jews who openly defied the makhzan during the reign of King Hassan II, such as Simon Lévy, Abraham Serfaty, Edmond Amran El Maleh, and Sion Assidon, would reach different accommodations and degrees of complicity with or rejection of the regime. Yet, by the time of King Hassan II’s death and the installation of King Muhammad VI, they too would become the “Sultan’s Jews,” the “Sultan’s Communists.” They became the very international face of Moroccan openness and tolerance while simultaneously being shunned by the majority Jewish community.
The Green March: A Show of Political Strength
fter two attempted coups, the king needed the Green March to demonstrate A his ability to unify the nation around his role as Commander of the Faithful and to maintain control over the army.4 More than a year before the Green March launched, Hassan II successfully co-opted representatives from the
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chief Moroccan opposition parties, including the assassinated Mehdi Ben Barka’s former party, Union nationale des forces populaires (UNFP); the PPS; and the Istiqlal, in order to launch an international propaganda campaign on behalf of Morocco’s claims to Western Sahara. Thus, it was as a member of the pro-Monarchist PPS that Simon Lévy marched in November 1975. Domestic opposition to the march and to Morocco’s claim on Western Sahara came from Abraham Serfaty’s Marxist-Leninist Ila al-Amam Party and the 23 Mars movement, so named for the start date of the 1965 Casablanca student uprising.5 While Simon Lévy marched in support of his party and his country’s territorial claims, Sion Assidon and Abraham Serfaty were imprisoned for the rejection of those same claims, supporting the Polisario against international imperialism instead. The images of the Green March are stunning, showing hundreds of thousands of Moroccan citizens in a solid column of irredentist Moroccan nationalist claims. They held portraits of King Hassan II aloft alongside Moroccan flags, bearing Qur’ans in their hands. The volunteers in the Green March were peaceful, unarmed apart from nationalist and religious accoutrements; they camped for three days, November 6–9, 1975, until the king recalled his army of the faithful in response to Spanish appeals for negotiation. The Spanish army had strict o rders not to fire and to hold back.6 They were responding to the king’s call to reclaim the land for Morocco and for Islam itself, fulfilling his role of Commander of the Faithful. Jews also responded to the call as a landmark moment to display their patriotism and their fealty to the makhzan. Even Simon Lévy, who had been tortured and imprisoned u nder Hassan II, loudly supported the Green March, as did the wider PPS apparatus. Abraham Serfaty, however, supported the Sahrawi indepen dence movement, guaranteeing him greater persecution during his tenure in prison. The moment of the Green March represented the coalescence of the majority of Moroccan Jews in support of Hassan II’s policy, even those who were members of the PPS. Simultaneously, it underscored the deep divisions between Jews on the left and their visions for Morocco in the diverging paths of figures like Lévy and Serfaty. Hassan II later wrote that the Green March was divinely inspired, coming to him as a celestial command while he was in Fez, Morocco’s holiest city and location of the first Moroccan Empire, on August 19, 1975.7 Weeks before
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this “peaceful” march in October, the makhzan had commanded brutal aerial bombardments and encouraged the use of napalm and phosphorus against civilians in the disputed territory.8 Spain had claimed Western Sahara in 1884, nearly thirty years before Morocco became a protectorate of France and Spain in 1912. A fter Moroccan independence in 1956, Western Sahara, alongside the Mediterranean enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta, remained in Spanish control. Despite this “incomplete decolonization,” 9 Hassan II had promised Spain’s long-serving dictator General Francisco Franco in 1963 “that the issue would not be discussed in their lifetimes,” but as General Franco became increasingly indisposed (leading to his death on November 20, 1975), Hassan II began to act more aggressively.10 Morocco laid claim to Western Sahara as part of “Greater Morocco,” defined by centuries of trade and Sahrawi fealty to the sultan across historic trans-Saharan trade routes.11 Mauritania also laid claim to Western Sahara, prompting a decision from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on October 16, 1975, that supported Western Saharan independence from either state. Despite this ruling, Morocco and Mauritania continued to press their claims, ultimately spurring Morocco’s dramatic political show in the form of the Green March. In the words of Hassan II, he intended to “reclaim our Sahara, not with weapons, but with the peaceful entry of all Morocco”12 and “since our Sahara cannot come to us, we must go to it.”13 The king announced the March on October 16, the very day of the ICJ ruling, and enlistment for the ranks of the volunteers began immediately, largely excluding the urban student population due to lingering anxieties on the part of the monarch surrounding the Casablanca uprising of 1965.14 Meanwhile, the Moroccan military continued what David Seddon dubbed a “blitzkrieg” in Western Sahara, capturing strategic towns and phosphate mines.15 The UN “deplored” this action and “call[ed] upon Morocco immediately to withdraw from the Territory of Western Sahara all the participants in the march.”16 Morocco did eventually call the volunteers (not the soldiers) back into internationally recognized Morocco, not in response to UN pressure but rather to Spanish interests. Following the withdrawal of the Moroccan volunteers (while military aggression raged on), Simon Lévy among them, Moroccan and Mauritanian representatives traveled to Spain on November 12 for negotiations. These negotiations resulted in the Madrid Accords, signed two days later. According
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to this agreement, Spain would completely withdraw from the territory by February 28, 1976, with Morocco and Mauritania agreeing to split Western Sahara.17 In exchange, Spain would retain access to the territory’s phosphate wealth and fishing rights; because of General Franco’s failing health and anx ieties surrounding the country’s political stability, Western Sahara was not a Spanish priority.18 When Algeria decided to enter the fray and support the Polisario alongside Libya, Western allies, in particular the United States and France, invested huge sums of money in primarily the Moroccan and, to a lesser extent, the Mauritanian armies. This investment included millions of dollars of equipment, training, and economic support.19 A depleted and politically unstable Mauritania withdrew from the ongoing conflict and signed a bilateral accord with the Polisario in 1979, resulting in Morocco’s annexation of the remaining territory.20 US military support for Morocco increased considerably in the wake of the Iranian Revolution and fall of the Shah in 1979, as the US sought to maintain any remaining MENA allies as close as possible.21 US military, intelligence, and economic support of Morocco increased greatly under the administration of President Ronald Reagan, cementing Morocco’s Western alliance and setting the stage for warm US–Moroccan relations that have continued through today.22 Simon Lévy’s response was, for once, in complete accord with the majority of the Moroccan Jewish population. On announcement of the Green March in October 1975, Lévy wrote a French-language opinion piece in the PPS’s official paper al-Bayan (Statement) presenting Moroccan Jews as the most dedicated of Moroccan patriots. The piece extolled the unity of the Moroccan people, above all of Moroccan Jews, for d oing what Jewish PCM members had so long implored the community to do: demonstrate their patriotism and Moroccan nationalism. Lévy praised the Moroccan Jewish community president Georges Berdugo for “sending a message to the royal cabinet declaring that Moroccan Jews w ere ready to defend the integrity of the national territory,” which “recalled that Moroccan Jewish citizens have been ‘for 2,000 years . . . witness to the justice of Moroccan claims to the Sahara.’ ”23 Lévy was writing for the Muslim-majority, left-wing readership of al-Bayan, presumably trying to convince them that Moroccan Jews, though reduced in number, w ere committed patriots and w ere themselves as inte-
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gral to the nation as, indeed, the Sahara. Lévy elaborated on his pride that Moroccan Jews—not just those part of “the militant avant-garde” but “entire delegations” that included prominent Moroccan Jewish figures, including rabbis—had registered to join the Green March. Lévy wrote glowingly that Jewish “community councils” had reached out not only to the local Moroccan Jewish community but also to the Moroccan Jewish diaspora abroad to join the effort, “to do their part in the struggle.” “Special classes” about Western Sahara and its historic connection to Morocco w ere taught in the schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, now nationalized into the Ittihad (Unity) Moroccan school system. In the Green March, Lévy had found proof of Moroccan Jewish “national sentiment” and their sense of “deep roots” in the wider Moroccan nation. Moroccan Jews w ere committed “to achieve the country’s freedom from colonial occupation, from the colonialism that had done all it could to separate Jews from their Muslim co-citizens, to de- nationalize then, to make them forget their roots.” Although “a g reat deal of harm was done” during the colonial period and “many Jewish co-citizens have found themselves dispersed and deracinated,” Moroccan Jews were “still here, alive and active, demonstrably conscious” of their “Moroccanness.”24 The moment of the Green March was a prime opportunity for Moroccan Jews, regardless of their place on the political spectrum, to prove their “unity” with Moroccan Muslims and demonstrate their innate Moroccanness above any other sectarian identity. While the colonial period and Zionism may have served to “deracinate” Moroccan Jews and “make them forget their roots,” in 1975 Moroccan Jews in the country and abroad had the opportunity to reaffirm the modern nationalist narrative of Jewish–makhzan cooperation and mutual legitimization. Lévy had written in al-Bayan to demonstrate the Moroccanness of Jews not necessarily to the Jews themselves, but to persuade other Moroccan Muslims that, despite waves of mass migration, Moroccan Jews all over the world remained committed to their homeland, tied by profound historical and emotional bonds. Lévy was not close with the Jewish community of Casablanca; his political activism had rendered him somewhat of a liability for communal po litical stability. However, with the legalization of the PPS and the utility of the Green March cast as an anticolonial struggle against Spain, Lévy and the Moroccan Jewish community found common cause. The Green March
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was useful in shoring up the legitimacy of King Hassan II, Moroccan Jews, and former political subversives. Lévy became what Pierre Birnbaum called in a different context a “state Jew,” a loyal Jew in service to the state, and he was able to do so through his now state-sanctioned and legalized party, the PPS.25 While Lévy sought to meld Moroccan Jewish identities and activities with loyalty to the state, Serfaty and Assidon sought to supersede Jewishness in favor of a more universalist platform. Whereas the Green March was a gesture of colonial oppression of the Moroccan state against the Polisario for Serfaty and Assidon, for Lévy it was an anticolonial gesture for Morocco to claim it “back” from Spain. In a reflective essay written nearly two decades after the events of the Green March, Lévy noted that “the Jewish community did its part, as part of the Moroccan nation, within Morocco and abroad . . . it’s from this moment that Moroccan Jewishness began to renew itself.”26 At the same time, the ruling regime considered a fragment of that Moroccan Jewish community to be too dangerous to the state to walk f ree. Organizers from the American Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC), the primary Jewish philanthropy active in Morocco since the Second World War, seemed to be astounded by the Green March. Its 1975 annual report proclaimed that “headlines from Peking to Peoria” carried news of the March, and “Moroccans waving banners” were broadcast on every televi sion. With a degree of marvel, the report informed that the country “was mobilized” seemingly “overnight.” While “at the time” it had seemed like a “reckless g amble,” the march had been an unqualified “triumph, unifying the country as it never had before.” This meant stability and protection for the country’s remaining Jews. The report concluded, “If in Moroccan history 1975 is remembered as The Year of the Green March, in Moroccan Jewish history it will go down as The Year Emigration Stopped.”27 The report elaborated that, even though the Moroccan Jewish community still required significant outside support, it had found strength and perhaps even renewal in 1975. Indeed, in addition to benefiting from the stability and unity wrought by the Green March, Moroccan Jews w ere active participants well before the events of November 6–9, 1975. On October 8, Georges Berdugo, head of the Moroccan Jewish community, sent a direct letter to the king in support of the planned march and offered Jewish communal assistance in any way the king should see fit.28 A delegation of Moroccan Jews
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that included Berdugo and Léon Benzaquen, the first Jew to serve in the first independent Moroccan government, as well as personal physician to the late King Muhammad V, met with Hassan II at the Royal Palace on October 23. Less than a week later, the king met with Mr. Riegner of the World Jewish Congress and Mr. Karlikow of the American Jewish Committee, both of which organizations worked in close coordination with the JDC. Georges Berdugo informed the two foreign Jewish leaders “that they [the Moroccan Jewish delegates] were interested in meeting prominent Jews and non-Jews in Europe, Canada and the United States to explain King Hassan’s purpose and role in the Sahara and to obtain backing for the King’s point of view.”29 The Moroccan leaders planned to meet with Nahum Goldmann, the longtime president of the World Jewish Congress and one of the chief supporters of Moroccan Jewish outmigration to Israel, to further engage support for the king’s position on Western Sahara.30 Goldmann had previously met Hassan II in 1970, and the two had a friendly relationship. Thus, the interests of US military sponsorship, as well as those of international Jewish philanthropies concerned with keeping the regime intact, converged to support the makhzan, despite its increasingly apparent abuse of domestic human rights.
International ( Jewish) Rights, Deprivation of Human Rights
Sion Assidon, a Moroccan Jew from a younger generation than any of the previously discussed Moroccan Jewish leftists, was arrested on February 23, 1972, in a sweep that apprehended dozens of “extreme left” militants.31 Assidon was born in the fateful year of 1948 in the southern Moroccan Atlantic coastal city of Agadir to a comfortable Jewish family. His father was a businessman with industrial interests; his m other stayed at home while the children grew up and subsequently became an accountant. Assidon describes his parents as “middle of the road” politically, who “sympathized with Israel’s position but never thought of moving there.”32 Assidon was one of three c hildren and attended a Catholic school for the first few years of his education before entering the local Moroccan high school. This all changed abruptly on February 29, 1960, when a 5.7-magnitude earthquake leveled the city, killing thousands and injuring thousands more. He moved to Casablanca to complete his high school education at a French lycée, then pursued
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advanced studies in mathematics in Paris, and continued his studies when he returned to Morocco. The 1965 Casablanca uprisings spurred the formation of a far-left group, the 23 Mars movement, so named for the date on which the uprisings began. It was this movement that Assidon joined, although it was the 1967 Six-Day War in Israel and the Vietnam War that initially spurred his politicization.33 Assidon had wanted to join the March 1965 protests, but his parents strictly forbade him to do so, and he obeyed, watching o thers in a city set on fire. He continued his studies in Paris until 1968, departing just before the May protests in that city. By the time he became politicized in the late 1960s, the PCM (PLS) / Ila al-A mam split was in proc ess. Assidon was critical of the PCM “legalist” position within the regime, believing, along with Serfaty and o thers in Ila al-Amam, that t here was a need for profound change within the regime.34 Other leftist groups including the PCM, UNEM, the UNFP, and the USFP had all become too defanged, too accommodating of the regime for Assidon and the other radicals— Jewish or otherwise—of his generation.35 Assidon complained of a wider Moroccan Jewish apathy in the face of such upheaval, that his fellow Jews considered it “not their problem.”36 As had happened to Ralph Benarrosh many years e arlier, when Assidon was arrested in 1972, the Jewish community shunned him, as well as his parents—“ostracizing” them for his anti- Zionism and criticism of the regime that, according to the American Jewish philanthropic reports cited previously, most Moroccan Jews felt was an existential necessity. Once arrested, Assidon joined hundreds of other political prisoners in Morocco in a mass show trial in Casablanca in August 1972. Lawyers from France and representatives from the International Federation of H uman Rights came to the defense of the arrested activists. They were all “adopted” by Amnesty International immediately on arrest; however, it would be nearly two more decades before such international h uman rights pressure would achieve the desired results in the form of prisoner liberation.37 Assidon, along with dozens of other political subversives, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, and an extra three for his participation in a failed escape attempt in the summer of 1979 that resulted in the death of one other prisoner and the recapture of Assidon and a comrade.38 The escape attempt also resulted in
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more torture for Assidon: the cartilage of his fingers was crushed and his ear drum ruptured. Assidon and most of the prisoners of his “cohort” eventually landed in Kenitra prison, where Serfaty too would eventually reside. In Kenitra, Assidon was able to continue his study of mathematics, and prisoners were able to send and receive letters. For Assidon, this correspondence would put him in touch with an international group of mathematicians, who w ere pressing for human rights for political prisoners in Morocco.39 For Serfaty, the ability to correspond would place him at the center of an international human rights campaign that would eventually put enough pressure on Morocco to release him, albeit stripped of his citizenship and exiled to Paris.40 Abraham Serfaty’s story until this point will be familiar from the previous chapters. He was arrested in 1972, briefly released, and then hid for two years before being arrested once again in November 1974. Less familiar is the story of his s ister Evelyne. During that two-year interlude in hiding, Evelyne Serfaty, a radical political figure in her own right, was captured and tortured for information on her brother’s whereabouts; she died two years after release, frail after her time under torture.41 According to her account of the event, she was apprehended while on a day trip to Rabat (she lived in Casablanca) to do some shopping on September 26, 1972. She was forced to use her own car and drive the two police officers who arrested her to headquarters, where she met their superior. He was “courteous” at first, asking her where her brother was hiding.42 The officer did not believe her when she said that she had not seen him for several months. The officer then dropped his courteous manner, and Evelyne was subjected to humiliation and torture. She was slapped and forced to take off her skirt and her shoes; her torturers then tied her wrists and ankles together, and she was dangled like an animal on a spit, tied to a bar balanced between two chairs. This manner of torture was called “perchoir à perroquet” (parrot perch) and was endured by many o thers, including her brother Abraham. With eyes blindfolded and mouth stuffed with a cloth, she also was subjected to waterboarding and warned that if she did not reveal where her b rother was hiding, “they would add Javel [bleach] to the w ater.”43 For days Evelyne Serfaty was tortured in this manner, including with electric shock. The police threatened that if she did not talk, they would also torture her 83-year-old father and 79-year-old “half-blind” mother before her eyes and it would be her fault. They accused her of drug trafficking and warned
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that they would “close [her] up in a sack and throw [her] into the sea” if she didn’t talk.44 Once, Evelyne was told that her time was up and that she would be executed. The police then put her in a car, blindfolded her, and told her they would throw her out to her death; instead she was returned her to her cell. On October 4, she was eventually released, instructed to get back in her car, drive home to Casablanca, and not speak to anyone in Rabat. Miraculously after all the torture she had endured over nine days, Evelyne was able to drive home. She was covered in bruises, swollen, with terrible wounds, and barely able to walk. She had not known where her brother was hiding, but it had been enough to torture her “just b ecause [she was] her b rother’s sister.”45 Evelyne Serfaty died on October 2, 1974, of hepatitis, a condition possibly worsened by her weakened state from her time under torture. Abraham Serfaty, unlike Sion Assidon, was part of the old guard, a member of the PCM since the late 1940s, and a PCM militant for national liberation through the 1960s, until breaking with the party because of its defanged, legalized trajectory. Serfaty, along with radical poet Abelatif Laâbi of the Souffles journal, was “judged” alongside 139 of his comrades in a Casablanca show trial in January–February 1977, pursuant to which he was given a life sentence. At the trial, he shouted, “Long live the Democratic Sahrawi Arab Republic! Long live the Democratic Republic of Morocco! Long live the union of the Moroccan and Sahrawi peoples!”46 Serfaty then spent three years in solitary confinement after fifteen months of torture in the infamous Centre Derb Moulay Chérif, where he developed severe carpal tunnel syndrome due to the prolonged application of tight handcuffs. He was eventually transferred to Kenitra prison in 1979 where he was able to correspond with the world, as Assidon did.47 His son, Maurice Serfaty, had his passport stripped from him in 1972 and was repeatedly arrested, tortured, and released until he received a two-year prison sentence in 1984, for no crime other than being the child of a political subversive. Maurice’s German girlfriend was incarcerated for four months for being a “concubine.”48 When Abraham Serfaty learned of his son’s imprisonment, he protested with a hunger strike for one month, hoping the authorities would release Maurice, but to no avail.49 Maurice’s m other, divorced from Abraham since 1963, was a Spaniard who lived in France and had acquired French citizenship; his maternal grandparents lived in Spain, but Maurice was unable to reach out to them for help.50
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Abraham Serfaty wrote a grim account of his experience in Morocco’s prison system as a political subversive: Arrested January 27 1972 at 7 a.m. in my home, I was subjected to a first tor-
ture session as soon as I arrived at the police station in Rabat, which lasted
until 8:30 a.m. A second session followed a little later in the morning for I
don’t know how long. The methods employed w ere similar in each session. I was suspended on a broom handle that straddled two desks with about
one meter’s distance between them in the following manner: hands tied, my arms under my knees and smashed together so that the broomstick could slide between the forearms and the back of the knees. Once strung up in this
fashion, the head is mostly horizontal. I was already blindfolded, with a dirty
rag covering the rest of my face, covering the nose and mouth, w ater was poured over rag. . . . Before beginning, my torturers told me to raise a finger if
I wanted to talk. I knew that to give in would make me into nothing, would
reduce my life of militancy to nothing, would make all my sacrifices mean-
ingless. . . . The third torture session took place between 4–8 p.m. on Saturday,
January 29. It was very different. . . . W ith a similar suspension technique [as
the first and second torture sessions], I was violently beaten on the s oles of
my feet . . . the rest of the time, my torturers had fun with me: a lit cigarette
snuffed out in finger wounds; strikes with a leather whip on my head and face; hits with a metal whip on my back. One of the interrogators . . . , after
a long string of insults against Jews, said to me: “We got rid of Mehdi Ben Barka; y ou’re not going to be any trouble at all.” 51
In this excerpt, Serfaty describes a common form of torture in Morocco— what he called the “airplane” method and his sister had referred to as “perchoir à perroquet” (parrot perch).52 While Mehdi Ben Barka, the leftist agitator kidnapped and assassinated, had been “taken care of,” Serfaty would prove the source of immense trouble for Hassan II’s regime, becoming the central figure in an expansive international h uman rights campaign. Yet, neither Serfaty nor Assidon w ere ever mentioned as figures of concern by American Jewish philanthropies, which largely saw King Hassan II as the prospective guarantor of the Moroccan Jewish security. It is a mistake to think, however, that all such political pressure came only from the outside. Activism from abroad was certainly safer, and thus it was
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more frequent and visible, as well as more strident. However, there was indeed extensive internal pressure and activism during Hassan II’s infamous “Years of Lead.” Five years after the Green March, another march took place, this time in front of the UN offices in Rabat. On December 10, 1980, the anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of H uman Rights (December 10, 1948), a crowd of fifty women marched to the UN offices in Rabat and occupied the grounds peacefully. They w ere m others, wives, and sisters of the mostly, but not exclusively, male political prisoners in Morocco’s wretched prison network. Morocco had just recently become a signatory of the UN Declaration, and the women w ere filled with righteous anger at the regime’s hypocrisy. They occupied the grounds and began a hunger strike, demanding the liberation of political prisoners and the return of political exiles to Morocco.53 Hunger strikes were frequent occurrences among the Kenitra prisoners—Abraham Serfaty and Sion Assidon, among them—and the women were employing the same tactics as the prisoners themselves to raise awareness for their plight. The UN, however, could only issue statements in response. As the Green March had demonstrated, as long as Morocco remained on the “right” (American) side of the Cold War and continued to oppress leftists as potential Bolshevik- revolutionary existential threats to the nation-state, the UN was effectively powerless. As the clandestine leftist bulletin Option put it in 1980, “The history of the Moroccan regime is stained with violations against H uman Rights and it even goes so far as to violate the laws and the constitution that it has itself promulgated. The only laws that it [the Moroccan regime] follows are those inherited from the colonial period.” 54 A year before this demonstration, the Arabic-language edition of Option, al-Ikhtiar al-Tharoui (The Revolutionary Option), loudly protested against Moroccan “imperialism” in Western Sahara and decried that “23 years a fter official independence, the Morocco regime is above all distinguished by the repression that it has enshrined as a system of governance.” 55 Articles in the paper described the numerous death sentences meted out to leftist politi cal prisoners, the abduction of Mehdi Ben Barka, the brutal crushing of the Casablanca uprisings of 1965, and dozens of political exiles condemned to death or life imprisonment in absentia. Most appalling, however, w ere the treatment and conditions endured by the prisoners. The paper singled out Abraham Serfaty and a few others “living for many years in inhuman con-
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ditions and completely deprived of medical care. Their lives are in danger and we fear that they w ill endure the same fate as Ben Moussa, Brahim Zaidi, and Sekou Akka . . . who recently died in prison after long untreated illnesses.” 56 One political prisoner was simply guilty of attending an Earth Day celebration and supporting the Palestinian cause; he died u nder torture 57 after his arrest. The same issue of al-Ikhtiar al-Tharoui reported on an “International Congress of Solidarity with Arab Peoples and the Central Question of Palestine” that was held from November 2–6, 1979, in Lisbon. Two years prior in November 1977, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt became the first Arab leader to conduct a formal state visit to Israel, speak in the Knesset, and eventually sign a peace accord with Israel, which caused Egypt to be ejected from the Arab League and prompted ire across the region. The Moroccan representatives linked Sadat’s perceived betrayal of the Palestinian cause to Moroccan reactionary policy. One writer for Option asserted, “If Sadat’s regime has been defined by its relations with the Zionist entity, its Moroccan partner preceded [Egypt] in this vein. In fact, Hassan II’s regime was the first to welcome Zionist officials in Rabat, in particular Moshe Dayan in September 1977, in order to plan Sadat’s visit to al-Q uds [ Jerusalem]. [Hassan II] even played a key role in coordinating activity between the USA, Egypt, and Israel, which led to these treacherous accords.” 58 This text holds several of this chapter’s threads in tandem: resistance to Hassan II’s regime, Moroccan official (and tacit) relations with the United States and Israel, the trampling of human rights, and the place of Jews in Arab solidarity. Opposition writers lambasted Hassan II for his role in orchestrating Sadat’s “betrayal” of the Arab world and for the monarch’s meetings with Moshe Dayan; they even accused the monarch and General Oufkir (long dead) of working with the Mossad to kidnap and murder Mehdi Ben Barka in the mid-1960s. “Truth be told,” the writer for Option asserted, “the collaboration of the Moroccan regime with international Zionism helps [Morocco] keep its powerful allies that can help it in its imperialist cause and keep [the regime] in power in Morocco. Stop plotting against the Arab people and above all against the Palestinian people!” 59 Simon Lévy, a Communist who ardently opposed Zionism and was deeply loyal to the Moroccan state, saw t hings differently. Lévy praised Hassan
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II for his work with Israeli and Zionist officials and saw him as a peace broker, or “moderate” partner in the region, to echo the language of US and Israeli diplomats.60 In stark contrast with figures such as Serfaty and Assidon, Lévy welcomed the Moroccan state’s mediating role in the Israeli–Arab and Israeli–Palestinian conflicts. This was not a betrayal of Lévy’s lifelong anti- Zionism; rather, much like the Green March, support of this effort was a unique mode of expression for Moroccan Jewish patriotism. As discussed in previous chapters, the Moroccan state officially rejected Zionism and contributed troops to the wars of 1967 and 1973, but a fter the 1973 conflagration and, in particular, the Green March, Morocco adopted a more diplomatic approach. Indeed, this approach had begun e arlier. Following Nahum Goldmann’s visit to Morocco in 1970, Le Nouvel Observateur conducted an interview with Hassan II, who famously (and perhaps even heretically) intoned, “Israel is a fact which the Arabs must recognize.”61 American Jewish philanthropic liaisons and officials w ere well aware of the controversial nature of Hassan II’s stance and welcomed his “ ‘moderate’ Arab approach to the Middle East conflict.”62 They w ere also well aware of the internal pressures and opposition Hassan II faced in Morocco. Without mentioning (let alone condemning) Morocco’s severe repression, imprisonment, and torture of political dissidents, World Jewish Congress leaders and o thers admitted to “major apprehension of Moroccan Jews with regards to the future. . . . The Jews in Morocco know very well that the King is their only protector and their single barrier of protection.”63 This document speaks volumes concerning the assumptions and freighted opinions regarding Moroccan Jewish political life. However, there is truth here, predicated on the profound loyalty of Moroccan Jews to the sovereign (with the notable exception of figures like Serfaty) and the centuries-old makhzan tradition of Jews as loyal interlocutors both with restive domestic elements and abroad with foreign diplomatic concerns.64 In the previous section this was clear with the intervention of Berdugo, Benzaquen, and other Moroccan Jewish figures working as emissaries on behalf of the king’s policy. King Hassan II was likewise eager to court American Jewish leaders. On an official visit to Washington, DC, in November 1978, he met with the presidents of Jewish organizations, including Hadassah, ORT, the American
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Jewish Committee, the JDC, B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Congress, and the World Jewish Congress. The head of the Jewish community in Morocco at the time, David Amar, traveled with the monarch and coached the American Jewish leaders in the proper manner of addressing His Majesty.65 Such interactions compelled A. Kaplan of the WJC to state in an internal memo: “the presence of a Jewish Community in Morocco is useful for the King to enable him to make his propaganda and to attract sympathy from outside, in particular from the Jewish world.”66 In this, the king was successful, at least for a time. However, the dire warnings of the internal opposition and of papers such as al-Ikhtiar al-Tharoui reaching the outside world began to raise a storm of international solidarity for the h uman rights of Moroccan political prisoners.
Domestic Elections, International Campaigns
Following the legalization of the PPS (the legalized form of the PCM as of 1974), Simon Lévy, too, ran for elected office in the mid-1970s. As discussed in the previous chapter, after the split between the PPS and Ila al-Amam in 1970 and a period of severe persecution for both organizations, the former PCM leadership a dopted an accommodationist, apologist platform to work from within the makhzan’s policies and procedures. By contrast, Ila al-Amam under the likes of Abraham Serfaty, as well as the majority of student groups such as the 23 Mars movement and UNEM survivors of the 1960s repressions such as Sion Assidon, rejected the makhzan and decried its strangulation of the opposition, landing these figures in prison. In 1976, Lévy mounted a successful campaign for Casablanca municipal council representative for the Aïn Diab district (Figure 4).67 Firmly believing in the potential democratic benefits of participating in these elections,68 Lévy circulated campaign materials across Casablanca in Arabic, French, and Judeo-Arabic. His campaign leaflet, widely posted and distributed, included the following statement: Citizens! The municipal elections represent an important component of our new democratic experiment. All citizens, no matter what faith they come
from, are invested in the success of this experiment, for a democratic, healthy
and competent management of municipal matters, for the good of the country.
f ig ur e 4 . Simon Lévy’s 1976 election poster. Source: Simon Lévy’s personal papers.
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This concerns every group, from every background, that, across history, have
each made critical contributions to the national patrimony. The Moroccan Jewish minority is an integral part of the nation. Our country’s laws grant all citizens equal rights and obligations. Active participation in public life reinforces this legal equality. Moroccan Jewish citizens unanimously approved of
and participated in the return of the Sahara to Morocco; some volunteered in the Green March, o thers advanced the cause abroad. The municipal elections represent a new opportunity for Jewish citizens to actively take part in public life, thus reaffirming the democratic unity of the Moroccan nation.69
The signatories on this declaration came from Muslim and Jewish backgrounds; included in this leaflet was a resume (presented in easily digestible bullet points) of Lévy’s qualifications: • Simon Lévy joined the national [independence] movement in 1953, and has since fought for national independence, democracy and social pro gress, and devoted himself to a life of militant patriotism. • He has always worked for the political integration of the Moroccan Jewish community in national life. • A university professor, his research shows the specific contributions of Moroccan Jews in national cultural heritage. • On November 6, 1975, Simon Lévy was among the first to set foot in the liberated Moroccan Sahara in the glorious Green March. Lévy was evidently in step with the majority of the Moroccan Jewish community, even defeating Georges Berdugo, who had led a delegation of Moroccan Jews to promote the Green March among American Jewish leadership, and Amram Amzellag, each of whom was favored in a Judeo-Arabic synagogue circular that did not even mention Lévy’s candidacy.70 More than Abraham Serfaty, Edmond Amran El Maleh, or Sion Assidon, Lévy was deeply concerned with the integration of Moroccan Jews into the dominant political life of Morocco; Serfaty and Assidon, in particular, were more in keeping with Isaac Deutscher’s conception of the “non-Jewish Jew”—seeking to surpass the limits of Jewish communal life and at times rejecting identification within it.71 As discussed in previous chapters, Lévy had previously been shunned and reviled by the dominant Jewish community, along with
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other prominent politically active Jews as potential “troublemakers” for the community’s stability and f uture. Now that the PCM was legalized u nder the defanged moniker of the monarchist and loyalist PPS, Lévy was no longer the pariah he once was, whereas figures like Serfaty and Assidon w ere more dangerous to communal stability and reputation than ever. Lévy had worked to propagandize among the Jewish community for decades; his efforts w ere finally able to take root as his political party now played by the makhzan’s rules. Thus, while Simon Lévy wooed voters for being “among the first to set foot in the liberated Moroccan Sahara in the glorious Green March,” Serfaty and Assidon paid a severe price for their rejection of the same policies and their refusal to kowtow to the makhzan. Levy’s feet were symbols of state- sponsored “liberation”; Serfaty’s and Assidon’s were shackled. The 1980s and 1990s became turning points for all of the Moroccan Jewish Communists discussed so far in this book (with the exception of Léon Sultan, who died in 1945). When Serfaty was transferred to the Kenitra prison a fter years of solitary confinement and torture, both he and Assidon were able to communicate with the outside world. This sparked an international human rights campaign that included Moroccan exiles advocating for their comrades back home, Amnesty International, and eventually the Euro pean Parliament, as well as the United Nations. These campaigns would result in the eventual liberation of Serfaty and Assidon, exiling them to France, where international condemnation reached a crescendo. However, by the late 1990s a fter the death of Hassan II and the coronation of his son Muhammad VI, Serfaty, Assidon, and Lévy would come to occupy similar “useful” roles for the Moroccan state, much like the Moroccan Jewish community at large. In 1983, Lévy ran for reelection. Again, the election flyer came in French and Arabic flavors, this time with an impressive list of accomplishments during his time in office. These accomplishments included major construction projects; notably, mosques, hammams (public baths), marketplaces, a special housing development for the “fallen martyrs” (shuhada) of the Saharan campaigns, kindergartens, three new libraries, and parking structures. Lévy also initiated social projects, including a more efficient distribution of Ramadan alms, literacy programs, and cultural programming. Finally, Lévy boasted of great improvements to public sanitation and cleaner streets.72 He also muted his Jewish credentials; the only one that appeared came immediately below
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an updated photo and a thumbnail CV of sorts: “SIMON LEVY: Professor at Mohammed V University; Member of the politburo of the Party for Progress and Socialism; Member of the Casablancan Jewish Community Committee.”73 This time, Aïn Diab, the community Lévy had represented for six years, was split into two new voting districts, that of Anfa and Sidi Belyout; Lévy ran in the Sidi Belyout section, but lost, coming in second.74 In 1993, Lévy ran for parliament with the PPS and lost, according to his sons, largely b ecause of maximalist demands of the PPS that w ere refused by Istiqlal and USFP fac75 tions that had won more votes. At a PPS party congress in the summer of 1994, Lévy began to depart from the official party line when, according to his sons, the party began to maneuver to replace the aging Ali Yata with Thami El Khayari. The story goes that, on the second day of the party congress, Lévy was outside the meeting hall when “some young militants approached him and informed him that he had been excluded from any leadership roles.”76 The number of young militants outside the meeting hall grew, until Lévy asked them what they wanted, to which they replied, “To show our attachment to socialism and refuse any subordination of the party to the authorities.” The group of young militants then hoisted Lévy on their shoulders “in triumph” and entered the meeting hall, chanting “ya Shimoun ya rafik la zilna ‘ala tariq” (Comrade Simon, w e’re still on the path—on the path to socialism). The crowd grew such that the entire meeting was interrupted, spurring discussions between the Yata / El Khyari “tendencies” in favor of placing the party squarely in the purview of the makhzan, and those of the “la zilna ‘ala tariq” group holding Lévy aloft on their shoulders. The discussions resolved in the following compromise: Lévy and o thers who had been excluded, including Abdelmajid Douieb, would be “reintegrated in the central committee.” Ali Yata then refused Lévy, his brother-in-law and longtime colleague, the microphone, prompting Lévy to shout for unity and a vote. According to Lévy’s sons, Ali Yata and El Khyari continued to machinate to subordinate the party within the makhzan, working against and ignoring the young militants of “la zilna ‘ala tariq.” A fter this episode, Lévy never officially quit the party, but did reduce his activism b ecause, despite being held aloft by the younger generation, “he thought that a Jew could not lead a political party in Morocco at that time.”77 Ali Yata himself died a few days after being hit by a car in 1997.
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Lévy’s friend and fellow former militant, Bernabé López García, wrote that the events of 1994 had been deeply “frustrating” for Lévy, and that, “while he no doubt still maintained much clout within the PPS . . . this served to distance him further and further from his party,” which was increasingly engaged in promoting “plutocratic candidates without ideology, but who could finance their campaigns.”78 López García accurately characterized Lévy as a “rouspétard,” a “grouch” and a “non-conformist,” a “man of opposition” against the makhzan, Zionism, and Moroccan Jews who failed to be adequately political active and committed to their Moroccanness. Toward the end of his life, Lévy poured his energies into one of his most lasting legacies in the country and, indeed, internationally. Morocco is famous for having one of the only official Jewish museums in the Arab world. Although Lévy “wasn’t always easy to get along with,” López García praised him for not “abandoning his activism” even in the later years of his life, channeling it “in the preservation of the Judeo-Moroccan roots” of the country in the museum he founded. Without this activism, López García argued, “The thousand-year history of Jewish Morocco would have gone up in smoke.”79 Under Lévy’s direction, the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum in the Casablancan suburb of l’Oasis has worked to restore a number of synagogues across the country, most recently his own childhood synagogue of Fez, Slat al-Fassayin, which was completed after his death with help from the German government. In response to a question about how he felt about the fading of the Moroccan Jewish community, Lévy insisted, “I am not nostalgic because I am active.” 80 When several Jewish sites in Casablanca w ere bombed by terrorists in May 2003, Lévy visited schools—Jewish and non-Jewish—around Casablanca in a public outreach program to bring awareness to the shared Muslim and Jewish history in Morocco. In addition to this activity within Morocco, Lévy was part of an international Moroccan Jewish cultural organization, Identité et Dialogue (Identity and Dialogue), founded by André Azoulay in the mid-1970s when he was serving as an advisor to King Hassan II (Azoulay is also an advisor to the current king, Muhammad VI).81 Lévy doubled down on his Jewishness and on his role in the preservation of Jewish Morocco after withdrawing from leftist politics t oward the end of his life, having devoted so much of it to the cause. His cause, in the end, became “Moroccan Judaism”
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and its preservation, in the service of the government and to prove a point to the international community. Meanwhile, a growing international human rights campaign was taking shape outside of Morocco with characters like Abraham Serfaty and Sion Assidon, still imprisoned in dire conditions, as figureheads. Political repression within Morocco was at an all-time high: hundreds if not thousands of political prisoners were held in abominable conditions, and many more had “disappeared” in Hassan II’s regime’s bid for political stability. Despite the regime’s attempts to cut prisoners off from the outside world, prisoners w ere able to communicate with each other and abroad through means of covert political solidarity and bribery. As some of them became more famous, it became less and less possible for the regime to restrict access. While organ izations like UNEM, UNFP, and others had been banned or become effectively defanged and co-opted, their parallels abroad in France continued to exert pressure in the most incendiary and strident ways. UNEM had been one of the most vocal, full-throated opposition organ izations in Morocco in the 1960s, responsible for much of the activities of the 1965 Casablanca uprisings. It was expansive, with a broad student membership that included postgraduates, university students, and high school students, primarily in Morocco’s large urban centers such as Casablanca and Rabat. The UNFP, Istiqlal, PCM (and all of its iterations), Ila al-Amam, and more all coveted UNEM partnership and membership. During the Years of Lead, UNEM and all the other opposition parties struggled to remain active. Chapters of UNEM abroad, however, b ecause of the considerable numbers of Moroccan students studying in France and several other countries, had no such limitations. The UNEM Toulouse New Year’s greeting card for 1979 and calendar displayed in Figures 5.1 and 5.2 illustrate this point. The entire double-sided image is about the size of a standard commercial postcard, easily transportable and disseminated. Both the card’s format—small and in the form of a “useful” calendar, ironic in its New Year wishes—and its content demonstrate a propaganda technique that UNEM would increasingly employ throughout the 1980s and 1990s: mockery of Morocco’s touristic paradise and exports at the expense of human rights. The card features a giant orange with a Moroccan grocery store sticker and prison bars, entrapping a group of prisoners. It reads, “For the Liberation of all Political Prisoners
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f ig ur e s 5 .1 – 5. 2 . “There’s more than just sunshine in Morocco . . . there are also trials,” subversive New Year greeting card and calendar from the Union Nationale des Etudiants du Maroc (UNEM), Toulouse Section, 1979. Source: UNEM Toulouse propaganda from 1979. Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis, Association Française d’Amitié et de Solidarité avec les Peuples d’Afrique (AFASPA) 68J. Reprinted with permission from Francis Arzalier and the Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis.
in Morocco: In Morocco there is more than just sunshine and oranges . . . there are also trials. 1956–1970: 14 grand trials; 1970–1976: 16 grand trials; 3,000 appeared in court for crimes of opinion; 150 centuries worth of prison sentences; Happy New Year 1979.” 82 This piece of propaganda, whose a rtist is unfortunately not attributed, brilliantly combines Morocco’s burgeoning tourist economy and an international political blind eye to the country’s wretched h uman rights record as long as the exports and money kept flowing. UNEM intensified this strategy with a second, longer pamphlet, this time from the Nice section of the organization and in the form of a touristic brochure (Figures 6.1 and 6.2). The illustration references the orientalism and exoticism inherent in Morocco’s touristic marketing. There is a drawing of a key-hole door and a photographer holding up a camera, presumably to take some quaint vacation memento; the camera lens reflects a raised fist of defiance against a prison bar backdrop. Beneath the camera, the photographer’s speech bubble reads, “Don’t move! Smile . . . got it! Come look . . . ,” and at the bottom of the pamphlet, “A country of marvelous contrasts.” The brochure unfolds and features photographs of twelve of Morocco’s most famous political dissidents, including Mehdi Ben Barka, Abraham Serfaty, and Saïda
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Menebhi, an Ila al-Amam militant who died in prison in 1977 after thirty- two consecutive days of a hunger strike.83 Under each photograph is a brief description of the hardships each experienced in prison. Next to the photos is a sketch of Morocco (notably without Western Sahara) and a map featuring Morocco’s most famous cities and their nearby prison centers. A tourist with a camera around his neck—wearing shorts, a t-shirt, sunglasses, and a cowboy hat—is drawn with an arrow indicating he is entering the country, while an outgoing arrow indicates e ither a poor day laborer or a w oman being exported to Europe for another likely exploitive trade. Joining them is a banner that reads “exchange.” “Why?” asks the banner on the bottom of the page; “Everyone come let’s break this wall of silence . . .” A handshake is depicted in the bottom right corner with one hand labeled “imperialism”; the other hand is unfortunately cut off, but most likely has a label worthy of international leftist condemnation at the time. The back side has a large centered title reading “In Morocco, the sun shines for 300 days per year, for those who:—exploit our people and resources;— send their dogs in special airplanes;—collaborate with an anti-national regime” (middle column of Figure 6.1); u nder it is a long list of human rights abuses and internal politic al woes such as “22 years of ‘indepen dence’—22 years of repression; 80 death penalties, of which 50 have been carried out; hundreds of dead in the Rif revolt of 1959 and that of Casablanca in 65; . . . dozens dead under torture. . . . Indeed, such contrasts . . .” The left column of Figure 6.1 shows an article with a photograph of King Hassan II’s pug dog; its headline reads, “A special airplane for the King of Morocco’s dog,” to add insult to injury and highlight the regime’s terrible and destructive stewardship of the country. Other Moroccan ex-patriot organizations in France, including the Comité de lutte contre la répression au Maroc (Committee for Fighting Repression in Morocco), the Association des parents et amis de disparus au Maroc (Association of Parents and Friends of the Disappeared in Morocco), the Association de défense des droits de l’homme au Maroc (Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Morocco), and, eventually, Amnesty International all took up the cause of Moroccan political prisoners, placing enormous international pressure on Hassan II.84 Ultimately, this combined strategy would work, for two major reasons: first, the European Parliament’s
f igur e 6 . 1 . Front side of subversive UNEM (Nice section) pamphlet linking tourism and political repression in Morocco, late 1970s. Source: UNEM Nice propaganda from the late 1970s. Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint- Denis, Association Française d’Amitié et de Solidarité avec les Peuples d’Afrique (AFASPA) 68J. Reprinted with permission from Francis Arzalier and the Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis.
f ig ur e 6 . 2 . Verso of subversive UNEM (Nice section) pamphlet linking tourism and political repression in Morocco, late 1970s. Source: UNEM Nice propaganda from the late 1970s. Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis, Association Française d’Amitié et de Solidarité avec les Peuples d’Afrique (AFASPA) 68J. Reprinted with permission from Francis Arzalier and the Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis.
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concern for the Moroccan political prisoners emerging out of closer economic cooperation with Morocco; and second, the end of the Cold War and the diminished international willingness to permit crushing of the left for the sake of the so-called Free World. On the occasion of the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1979, the Paris-based Committee to Fight against Repression in Morocco demanded freedom for “all political prisoners.” 85 The notice informed readers that while Morocco was a signatory to the Declaration and Hassan II “idolized his p eople” and proclaimed his commitment to “tolerance” and “liberalism,” t here were at least six hundred political prisoners, many of whom had succumbed to torture or illnesses due to the terrible conditions of their confinement—including Abraham Serfaty who reportedly suffered from Raynaud’s disease, a circulatory ailment.86 During the 1980s the scope of international activity increased to include additional petitions and “adoption” campaigns on the part of Amnesty International. In 1981, Sion Assidon was thirty-two years old and had served almost ten years in prison. He had a daughter living in France as old as his prison sentence.87 Laurent Schwartz, a fellow mathematician and friend of Assidon, took Assidon’s case public in an article in Le Monde. He gave a brief biography of his friend and a short description of his time in prison, including the escape attempt, the resulting additional prison years, and his hospitalizations. All told, Assidon was condemned to eighteen years in prison; if he were to serve them all, Schwartz pointed out, he would be forty-two years old by the time he was freed. While Serfaty and others became the causes célèbres for prominent international organizations such as Amnesty International, Assidon had a less prominent but determined group of universalist mathematicians on his side. H uman rights and the laws of logic, it seems, found common cause in Moroccan political prisoners. The Committee of Mathematicians had been similarly active on behalf of brethren in the Soviet Union and in Uruguay. Schwartz informed the readership of Le Monde that four hundred mathematicians had signed a letter addressed to the Moroccan Ambassador in France demanding Assidon’s release. Subsequently, the ambassador invited a delegation from the Committee of Mathematicians for a meeting; it included Henri Cartan, Gustave Choquet, Jean Dieudonné, and Schwartz himself. Schwartz and many of the other signatories had previously
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lived and worked in Morocco and were part of Morocco’s national liberation movement; they believed this would give more heft to their pleas to release 150 prisoners, Assidon among them. Unfortunately, they were wrong. The ambassador waved the delegation off with promises to keep them apprised of the situation and nothing more. This was despite Schwartz making a practical and humanitarian case, for the sake of scientific intellectual exchange: French mathematicians ardently seek strong scientific cooperation with Morocco; this cooperation already exists, but it can expand. But how can we go
to Morocco for conferences and thesis defenses, and then return, pretend-
ing to forget that mathematicians are in prison? Morocco is a great country,
great in its history and in its possible role in international politics. However, Morocco cannot assume this role without public consensus, and international good standing. Thus, we seek the granting of more liberal measures that all await, and Sion Assidon’s freedom.88
Assidon’s freedom would be granted in 1984, but this proved to be only the beginning of a cascade of liberations granted by a Moroccan regime under increasing internal and external political pressure. The mid-1980s also saw an increase in homegrown Moroccan uprisings, including mass protests occupying tourist hotspots in Marrakesh, making international exposure inevitable and damaging a major revenue source for the Moroccan economy.89 When King Hassan II traveled to a meeting of the European Parliament in Strasbourg in the summer of 1986, the Paris- based Association for Defense of Human Rights in Morocco seized the opportunity to apply political pressure. The king was seeking closer trade relations with Europe, aspiring to integrate Morocco into the European common market (the European Economic Community)—a request that was ultimately rejected, although not on human rights grounds. Two years after this meeting, in 1988, the European Parliament began noting the mounting outcry over h uman rights in Morocco, which was increasingly focused on the personage of Abraham Serfaty, who had become the subject of scores of international petitions and letter-writing campaigns around the world, as well as a primary figurehead for Amnesty International. On February 11, 1988, the European Parliament passed a resolution demanding the freedom of Abraham Serfaty specifically.90 Two years later on November 22, 1990, the European
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Parliament again called for the release of Serfaty, noting that at the age of 60, he was now “one of the oldest political prisoners in the world” and that his health was fragile because of the conditions of his imprisonment.91 The resolution demanded the release of many other political prisoners, including the family of General Oufkir (of the failed 1972 coup).92 Abraham Serfaty became the subject of an extended and concerted international human rights campaign intended to force his release, as well as effect systemic change within the makhzan and its treatment of political dissidents. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, this campaign reached a crescendo. The Association française d’amitié et de solidarité avec les peuples d’Afrique (French Association for Friendship and Solidarity with African P eoples), along with the Amicale des combattants de la cause anticoloniale (Association of Fighters for the Anticolonial Cause), the Association des travailleurs marocains en France (Association of Moroccan Workers in France), the Association de défense des anciens travailleurs au Maroc (Association for the Defense of Former Workers in Morocco), the Comité de lutte contre la représsion au Maroc (Committee for the Struggle Against Repression in Morocco), the Comité de défense des libertés et droits de l’homme (Committee for the Defense of Freedom and Human Rights)—and many more human rights organizations such as the Ligue de droits de l’homme (League for Human Rights) and the Fondation D. Mitterand—joined forces to create the Comité pour la liberation d’Abraham Serfaty et d’autres prisonniers politiques au Maroc (Committee for the Liberation of Abraham Serfaty and Other Political Prisoners in Morocco). Combined, they spearheaded a letter-writing campaign that would send a postage-paid, pre-written note card to Serfaty (including his prisoner number 19559) in the Kenitra prison. The mass mailing included a letter with biographical information about Serfaty and a photo: it began, “In the land where the sun is King, women and men disappear in the kingdom’s shadow. Hassan II, King of Morocco, detains the oldest prisoner in the world since the liberation of Nelson Mandela: Abraham Serfaty” (Figures 7.1 and 7.2). The attached pre-written letter to be sent to Serfaty read: “Dear Friend Abraham, This example of solidarity was inspired by my admiration for your fidelity to just c auses. Like Nelson Mandela, you [‘tu,’ employing the informal French register] pay with your life for your wish to live among freed p eople.” 93 The letter had a blank space for the
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sender’s name, address, and signature (Figures 7.3 and 7.4). The front of the card overtly compared Serfaty to Nelson Mandela, as being on par with the anti-apartheid leader and future first post-apartheid president of South Africa and as being the litmus test for his nation’s conscience and that of the world’s human rights organizations. The card stated, “Since the recent liberation of Nelson Mandela [in February 1990], Abraham Serfaty is one of the oldest political prisoners in the world. Like the leader of the ANC [Mandela of the African National Congress], he refused freedom if it meant denying his political convictions and acknowledging the ‘Moroccanness’ of Western Sahara. He received the International Prize for Human Rights in the Arab World in 1988. We fight for his freedom and for that of other Moroccan po litical prisoners.” 94 As with the triumvirate of events in 1961, 1990 was a similarly momentous year. While 1961 had been a traumatic year for Moroccan Jews, 1990 saw the acceleration of an international h uman rights campaign centered on Abraham Serfaty. It was the year of Nelson Mandela’s freedom, the “Year of Morocco” in France (a public relations campaign of sorts), and the year Gilles Perrault published his searing condemnation of Hassan II as a cruel narcissist in the book Notre ami le roi (Our Friend the King).95 The book rocked France and was immediately banned (albeit clandestinely circulated) in Morocco. Perrault appeared at book events with Christine Daure Serfaty, Abraham’s wife who had been expelled from Morocco to France, to raise awareness of the cruelty of the regime and foment righteous anger among the French population.96 The book risked a major diplomatic rift between Morocco and France, as Moroccan media broadcasted endless attacks on Perrault.97 In response, Moroccan Jews abroad in Israel, France, and Canada sent in letters of support to Hassan II (along with many other Moroccans, Jewish or otherwise), proclaiming their loyalty and devotion to the makhzan. Several of these letters were read aloud and broadcasted on Moroccan state television, including one from Rabbi Mashash, who had served as Chief Rabbi of Morocco before emigrating to Israel.98 Meanwhile, petition letters and notecards found their way to Serfaty in prison, and occasionally he had the opportunity to write back. Such letters were often published to spread word of the cause. In these letters, Serfaty emphasized his long-standing commitment to universalist politics in Morocco.
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One such letter, dated April 26, 1991, mere months before he would be suddenly released in September 1991, was addressed to “Comrade Georges Marchais,” the secretary of the PCF. It congratulated him on his activities and those of the PCF on behalf of political prisoners in Morocco. Marchais, along with others at l’Humanité, had published an open letter of solidarity on April 4, with more than 250 signatories, many of whom had been active in Communist politics in Morocco before independence. In his response, Serfaty recited his activist biography, citing how he joined the Jeunesses Communistes (Youth Communists) in 1944 alongside committed Spanish and
f ig ur e s 7.1 – 7. 4 . “In the country where the sun is king, women and men disappear in the kingdom’s shadows. Hassan II, King of Morocco, detains the oldest political prisoner in the world since Nelson Mandela,” AFASPA open letter to Abraham Serfaty early 1990s. Source: Lettre ouverte à Abraham Serfaty,” publication of the Association Française d’Amitié et de Solidarité avec les Peuples d’Afrique (Montreuil, France), Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis, AFASPA 68J. Reprinted with permission from Francis Arzalier and the Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis.
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French leftists, as well as Moroccan Jews. In reference to the 250 signatories in l’Humanité, Serfaty wrote, I learned to fight, in the early years of my life as a militant, alongside a number of the signatories of this letter, workers and French communist militants
in Morocco who were examples of revolutionary fervor and internationalism that I have never forgotten. . . . If I have accomplished anything in my life, it is having been able to transmit, to a degree, these traditions of strug
gle and proletarian solidarity to the young generation of militant Moroccan revolutionaries.99
This campaign highlighted the internationalism of the struggle for human rights, one with roots in the previous Communist and independence struggles of the Second World War and later. In January 1990, Amnesty International’s London-based International Secretariat reported an exchange with Hassan II, in which the king invited Amnesty representatives to Morocco; the king blithely commented, “I’ve been waiting for them.”100 Amnesty International published a special briefing issue devoted to Morocco in March 1991, replete with tales of horror and suffering, as well as maps indicating locations of “Secret Detention Centers.”101 After a somber and expansive list of violations of h uman rights and severe repression since the late 1950s, the report’s authors indicated, “The government has responded angrily to Amnesty International’s reports and since March 1990 has prevented the organization from carrying out research in the country, but has not acted to end the abuses. The time for action is long overdue.”102 They urged readers to write letters to Hassan II condemning his actions, in partic ular asking “him to release all prisoners of conscience and to launch investigations into all cases of torture and ‘disappearances.’ ”103 Between a massively popular (and shaming) book and the growing chorus of public condemnation from the European Parliament and global human rights organizations, the makhzan released Abraham Serfaty on September 13, 1991, stripped him of his Moroccan citizenship, and expelled him to France. While this may have been calculated to quell public outcry, Serfaty’s release and embrace by activist circles in France further empowered him in his strug gles against the regime. Eventually, on the death of King Hassan II and the coronation of his son as King Muhammad VI, Serfaty would be repatriated
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with a hero’s welcome and would become, in a paradoxical transformation, the most visib le face of Moroccan “tolerance” of both Jews and political dissidents, signaling change to the world and earning international respect. On Friday morning, September 13, 1991, Abraham Serfaty met with the director of the Kenitra prison along with two lawyers. He had a brief moment to say his goodbyes to his comrades and was shoved into a government car that went straight to the Rabat airport. Serfaty was expelled from Morocco on the grounds that he was not a Moroccan citizen, because of the work his father and grandfather had done in Brazil (along with many other Moroccan Jews who worked temporarily in Brazil and sent home remittances before themselves returning)—despite the fact that Abraham Serfaty had never set foot in Brazil and the precolonial capitulatory regime had long been abolished. The French Protectorate authorities had used the same pretext in 1952 to expel Abraham and his s ister Evelyne when they w ere active in the PCM for Morocco’s independence. Serfaty had an official escort in Serge Berdugo, leader of the Moroccan Jewish community, on his Royal Air Maroc flight to Paris. According to Serfaty, Berdugo had been “ordered” to serve in this capacity by the Minister of the Interior and was someone who had “trapped himself in his own contradictions.”104 Berdugo had recently organized a conference in Paris on Moroccan Judaism that had defended the makhzan and performed “the perpetual allegiance of the King’s subjects, wherever they were, to the Sharifian monarchy. Moroccan nationality was inalienable.” That Berdugo chaperoned Abraham Serfaty as he was being stripped of what was supposedly an inherently alienable right for all Moroccans was as ironic as it was emblematic of makhzan policy. The plane landed at Orly Airport just outside of Paris at 3:45 p.m.: Serfaty was an expelled, but free, man. He raised a fist of defiance into the air, greeting the gathered crowd of supporters, including many from the PCF and assembled human rights organization representatives.105 After thanking the crowd for its continued hard work on behalf of political prisoners in Morocco, Serfaty said, I would like to protest two t hings. The first is against the continued imprisonment of my three comrades from the 1977 Casablanca trial, the hundreds
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of political prisoners, including civilians and members of the military, above
all the former soldiers imprisoned for the past seventeen years in the secret prison of Tazmamart. . . . The second is the drama presented by the Moroc-
can government, attempting to camouflage its defeat today with a drama taken from the Protectorate authorities in December 1952 with the pretext
that we [Abraham and his s ister Evelyne] were not Moroccans. The Minister of Justice in Morocco after independence had declared my expulsion null
and void and that my Moroccan nationality was clear without question. . . . The Moroccan political system and Moroccan regime are in crisis, w e’re fac-
ing the end of a reign [that of Hassan II] . . . my liberation confirms that the Moroccan authorities find themselves in a humbling position.106
Serfaty was right—his imprisonment and that of his comrades simply underscored how little liberty had been granted since Morocco’s independence in 1956, that the charade of human rights and liberalism was simply for tourists and sycophants in the king’s inner circle. Serfaty’s Jewishness almost never comes up in these manifold reports and earlier petitions for his freedom. He is free as a Man, in the Marxist sense, not politically emancipated, but free as a “true human.” In this newfound freedom, Serfaty would exert ever more pressure on the regime. Just two days a fter his arrival in France, a frail Serfaty, joined by his wife Christine who had done so much to protest on his behalf, was the guest of honor at a party thrown by the staff of l’Humanité. Old leftist friends, including René Toussaint who led the Association de défense des anciens travailleurs au Maroc (ADATAM) campaign to free Serfaty, embraced warmly, tears brimming in their eyes before a crowd of journalists and photog raphers.107 Serfaty asserted that although he was free, this was hardly the end of the political road: he would continue to fight on behalf of those still stuck in Hassan II’s grim prisons. A report from l’Humanité about the event gave a boost of optimism, asserting that the “liberation of all political prisoners” would happen and was “already underway.” While it was unclear why “the Moroccan despot” King Hassan II had freed Serfaty when he did, the enormous amount of international pressure had certainly “paid off.” The reporter argued that this international human rights shaming campaign and the monarch’s desires to play a bigger role in the Middle East compelled him
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to “play at democracy.” Further, the king was “doing as much as he can to cozy up to the Americans” for military hardware, and at the end of the Cold War, Hassan II needed to demonstrate his country’s continued geostrategic utility. The reporter concluded with a biting criticism: “If ridicule could kill, Morocco would have been long rid of this sinister and absurd monarch.”108 On September 21, l’Humanité reported that Hassan II issued an order to “raze” and destroy the secret, yet infamous, prison of Tazmamart. Most prisoners were transferred to the Kenitra prison where Serfaty had been held for so long and Assidon had remained u ntil his release in 1984; the rest, presumably those in terrible condition due to their years of privation, w ere sent to a health center near Meknes.109 About sixty prisoners were reassigned in this manner, most of whom had been condemned for taking part in the attempted coups of 1971 and 1972.110 The international campaign, it appears, was working; international political events, including the end of the Cold War, the early 1990s Israeli–Palestinian peace process in which Morocco played a role, and a cascade of negative public opinion against the king forced these changes. The end of the Cold War meant that the alliances that had previously helped bolster the regime now threatened to upend its legitimacy. To stay afloat and maintain a strategically important international position, the makhzan would need to rebrand itself, recruiting Moroccan Jewish culture for the tourist circuit and maintaining Morocco as a helpful “moderate” in regional and international politics. As such, Morocco retained its historic position in relation to “its” Jews, rendering them loyal servants of the state, whether diehard “non-Jewish Jews,” the “Sultan’s Jews,” or the “Sultan’s Communists,” in Morocco or abroad.
Returns and Legacies: Morocco’s Jews and Post–Cold War Realignments
In 2015, the Moroccan-born Israeli anthropologist André Levy expressed his desire to “return” to the “homeland” of Morocco from Israel, along with the impossibility of such a return: “Regrettably, my choice to connect to the country through research is proof of the continual distance that I am unable to fill, because distance is at the heart of research. . . . One may not dip his finger in the same place twice; human beings do not have the possibility to return to their former social past.”111 While it might not be possible to re-inhabit the
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same past and the same memories, the Moroccan state and its tourism industry began working hard to do just that for Jews of Moroccan descent abroad, primarily t hose living in Israel. As anthropologists Oren Kosansky and Aomar Boum have pointed out, the Moroccan state’s public embrace and cele bration of its Jewish past serve to enhance Morocco’s stature in the global community as a “moderate,” “tolerant,” and “liberal” state in the Muslim and Arab world.112 By the time of the mid-1980s, when Jewish tourism began in earnest in Morocco, King Hassan II and US president Ronald Reagan had enjoyed a photo opportunity on horseback together, picture perfect for the global arena.113 While the commodification of Morocco’s Jews for global consumption began in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it accelerated through the end of the Cold War. As Morocco came under increased pressure from the international community, the United States included, for its abysmal human rights record, Jews b ecame vehicles for demonstrating Morocco’s culture of “tolerance” and liberalism.114 It is during that moment of the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War when Moroccan Communist Jews and the larger Moroccan Jewish community became commodified for the good of the state. In his 1986 novel Mille ans, un jour (A Thousand Year, a Day), former Moroccan Jewish Communist leader Edmond Amran El Maleh presents a character by the name of Teddy, originally named Yeshouaa: he is a Moroccan Berber Jew who emigrated to Israel, then left for the United States, and has now returned “home” on a guided tour. When Teddy-Yeshouaa’s group arrives in Amizmiz, his grandparents’ hometown, El Maleh depicts a showman tour guide, speaking in English and French to his assembled charges (the italics indicate where English was used in the original text): Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the very core of Jewish Berber communities
thousands of years of life, amazing, amazing, the group of pilgrims raised their
heads u nder their canvas and straw hats, sunglasses, camisoles and sundresses, or jeans for the youths, tomorrow we’ll have the Hiloula the feast unique all over
the world, proclaimed the young leader proud of his speech! God Almighty! . . . The majority of the tourists w ere, in fact, originally from this country sooner or later in the f amily tree.115
The slippage between tourist and citizen, homeland and diaspora, is clear here, as well as in other texts treating the subject of Moroccan Jews abroad.
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In his study on Moroccan Jewish tourism, hillulot, and the Moroccan state, anthropologist Oren Kosansky writes, “The commodification of hillulot as part of the Moroccan tourist economy has ironically relied on the transformation of Moroccan émigrés into tourists in their own homeland.”116 Hillulot—organized pilgrimages to the tombs of sainted Jewish figures, most of whom are male rabbis but some of whom are famous women, including the martyr Lalla Sol ha-Tzadikah—and the restoration of Jewish sites such as synagogues and cemeteries throughout Morocco work in the service of preservation for the sake of presentation: the Moroccan state as emblem of pluralism and liberalism.117 El Maleh was quite critical of the phenomenon of commodification and rendering of Moroccan Jews tourists in their homelands, as his characteristic sarcasm demonstrates in this selection. In the same vignette of Teddy- Yeshouaa’s tragic return, El Maleh painfully depicts the zeal and frenzy, indeed the theater, of the impossibility of homecoming: “The Hiloula, the gathering, the pilgrimage, the festival, the reconstitution of an opera with grand scenes, prayers, the flickering flames of candles around the tomb of the holy saint, songs, m usic, the tribe returned to its original state, civilization melting between bodies, free and excessive gestures were rediscovered, exuberant sensuality.”118 Depicting the melting candle wax and the bodies losing themselves in the saint and in one another, El Maleh’s imagery drips with nostalgia in its truest meaning—the pain of homecoming, a homecoming that ultimately cannot truly attain the past. In the midst of this ritual reconstitution of the “tribe,” Teddy-Yeshouaa stands up amid the crowd and describes his alienation living in New York: “I am a son of the mellah, from here, d on’t look for me in New York you w on’t find me, my w hole family is from here.”119 Drunk on mahia, a Moroccan fig liquor historically produced by Jews, Teddy-Yeshouaa describes with anger how most Moroccan Jews “cried, prayed, and signed up” to go to Eretz Israel, while the youth were with the nationalists, in the unions there w ere communists, they ignored us, we wanted to punch them but didn’t dare. . . . Yes, listen to me, I see and I still see that wonderful day, the King’s return from exile, inde
pendence, what a holiday, even in the synagogues it was pure joy, prayers for
the sovereign. . . . We had a Jewish minister in government, everywhere there was friendship among families, the Wifaq, that organization of friendship
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between Jews and Muslims, we lost our minds a bit . . . don’t trust them, as
soon as the French are gone they’ll slit our [the Jews’] throats, they spread rumors: young girls w ere kidnapped, forced to convert and marry Arabs; they [Arab Muslims] killed some Jews t here, stole their money, their house, soon they [the Jews] won’t be able to go out, they’re [the Arab Muslims] already
throwing rocks; I’m telling you honestly there was nothing of the sort, but they [the Jews] had to believe it in order to decide to leave, to make us refu-
gees, screaming that they were in mortal danger, it was so long ago, these lies, all the garbage they filled our heads with, it’s exhausting.120
While t hese allegations of Muslim–Jewish violence and kidnapping are true, those crimes were not rampant. Teddy-Yeshouaa appears guilty of an overly romanticized vision of the Moroccan Jewish past, which, according to anthropologists André Levy and Oren Kosansky, is all too common among Jews of Moroccan origin returning “home” as tourists and is itself symptomatic of the tragedy of displacement and impossibility of “double dipping” into the past.121 Teddy-Yeshouaa recounts his initial experience migrating to Israel: I was Jonah in the belly of the whale, when were arrived there [Israel], . . .
we w ere greeted with indifference, in a housing center, stupidly we thought
we would be celebrated on arrival . . . my Hebrew from yeshiva [traditional Jewish religious academy] was useless, what a shock, we needed a translator, a
Jew from here [Morocco], an immigrant, he spoke their Hebrew, which was
comforting though the man b ehind the desk made fun of his accent, then
this guy [the official behind the desk] asked if we had syphilis, tuberculosis, or trachoma, then he said: no big deal we have hospitals here and your origin
will be written down on the file, no big deal!122
Teddy-Yeshouaa then describes being transferred to one of the ma’abarot, Israeli transit camps resembling tent cities with substandard sanitation and services, where immigrants remained until other housing became available. The official who met them there tells him, “ ‘There you go,’ he said, ‘you’ll stay h ere for a while, then w e’ll see, a fter all, for the first time,’ he laughed ironically, ‘after all, you’ll be better off than in the caves you lived in in the Atlas [mountains].’ Dumbfounded, we looked at each other, we w eren’t sure
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hether we had lived in caves or not, caves! . . . Look at me, this man wasn’t w kidding, he said to us: ‘now you will become Jews, you were idolaters.’ ”123 The history of Israel’s reception of Jews from the MENA region and their “absorption” process is not a focus of The Sultan’s Communists.124 That said, El Maleh’s negative depiction of Teddy-Yeshouaa’s arrival finds ample corroboration in scholarship on the topic of North African and Middle Eastern Jews as subject to racism and substandard living conditions. The tortured nature of Teddy-Yeshouaa’s tourism and sense of national belonging allows an inversion of “homelands” between Israel and Morocco. As Oren Kosansky eloquently puts it, “While the ritualized longing to return to a homeland (in Israel) fostered Moroccan emigration in the 20th century, it also provides a sanctifying diagram of contemporary migration from a homeland (in Morocco). The substitution of Morocco for Israel as a sacred Jewish homeland at the center of a global diaspora is accomplished in a range of discourses and practices, including t hose of saint pilgrimages.”125 This explains André Levy’s observation, on one of his trips back to Morocco, of Moroccan Jews from Israel kissing the ground on landing, a gesture typically associated with Jews making aliyah to Israel.126 Such trips became openly possible in the late 1970s, a fter King Hassan II worked assiduously with Israel, Egypt, and the United States first to bring Egyptian president Sadat to Israel in 1977 and then to secure the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, following the 1978 Camp David accords.127 Soon after, the Council of the Jewish Communities of Morocco (CCIM in French) began to centralize hillulot (pilgrimages) and combine them with sweeping touristic visits in Morocco, actively recruiting the Moroccan Jewish “diaspora” in Israel, France, Canada, and beyond.128 Hassan II, always an adept politician, saw the value in Jewish tourism and working with the United States amidst the broader troubles in the region; such a closer partnership, already strong due to Cold War alliances, would bring economic gains.129 Thus, Morocco began to strengthen existing ties with Israel as well. From May 12–13, 1984, the Rabat Hilton hosted an international Conference of the Moroccan Jewish Community, including prominent members of the Moroccan Jewish community, several notable Israeli politicians, and American and European Jewish leaders. Israeli representatives, many of whom w ere not of Moroccan origin, included high-ranking Knesset members from the Likud
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Party, the Labor Party, and the Tami (Mizrahi-dominated) Party. Clarifying the political dynamic, Meir Shatrit of Likud reportedly said, “Our presence in Morocco strengthens the position of King Hassan vis-à-vis the US and world Jewry.”130 Moroccan officials opened the conference, and then-crown prince Muhammad (King Muhammad VI since Hassan II’s death in 1999) attended the conference’s concluding dinner. The crown prince’s involvement received favorable press coverage in Morocco, cementing Morocco’s “moderate,” “tolerant,” and “liberal” reputation all the while, as previously discussed, hundreds of political prisoners w ere tortured and hidden from the rest of 131 the world. Two years later, King Hassan II met with then-Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres in July 1986 and opened relations that would become formally established in the early 1990s.132 The CCIM organized its first widely internationally organized pilgrimage in 1986. As Oren Kosansky notes, the group sent out “glossy brochures written in French to émigrés in France, Canada and Israel” that included the following enticements: If your employment and your means permit. . . . If you are enchanted by Jew-
ish events, especially those celebrated by a warm, authentic and Mediter-
ranean community. . . . If your origins are Moroccan or if your parents or
grandparents lived in Morocco. . . . If a blue sky, picturesque countryside, the
colors of true nature, and spontaneous hospitality tempt you, d on’t hesitate!
Come celebrate the pilgrimage in honor of Rebbi Shimon Bar Yohai. The
tourist circuit associated with these events will reintroduce you to, or ac-
quaint you with, the Rif and the Atlas [mountain ranges], the imperial cities
rich with history, ancient and modern Morocco where for nearly two thou-
sand years our community has existed and produced many eminent rabbis.133
The Moroccan state, via a touristic campaign of the national airline Royal Air Maroc, even invited American Jewish journalists to visit Morocco on an eight-day voyage, resulting in glowing reports encouraging Americans to see the wonders of this kingdom—ignorant, of course, of the political prisoners embedded within this economy as so poignantly illustrated by the tongue- in-cheek campaign of UNEM discussed earlier.134 So prized was Moroccan Jewish tourism to the Moroccan economy that a prominent Jewish businessman and Serfaty’s chaperone into exile, Serge Berdugo, was appointed
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f ig ur e 8. King Muhammad VI smiles on the proceedings of a hillula in honor of Rabbi Yitzhak Ben Gualid, Tetuan 2010. Photo by author, February 2010, at the hillula of Rabbi Yitzhak Ben Gualid in Tetuan, Morocco.
Minister of Tourism in 1993.135 The 1990s witnessed increased organized Jewish tourism, a phenomenon that has only accelerated into the twenty-first century. The state participates actively in the hillulot and the visits, supplying police and military guards; portraits of Moroccan monarchs Muhammad V, Hassan II, and Muhammad VI on display; and, of course, ubiquitous flags (Figure 8).136 All of this public promotion of Morocco as a “tolerant” and “liberal” state, worthy of investment and strong international support, took place against a backdrop of suffering, human rights abuse, and disappearances of political dissidents. While the end of the Cold War compelled Hassan II to release political prisoners and loosen state strictures, the most significant transition occurred in 1999, with Hassan II’s death and Muhammad VI’s ascendance to the throne. At the beginning of his rule, Muhammad VI established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address the Years of Lead. He also invited Abraham Serfaty back to Morocco from exile in France, recognizing
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his Moroccan citizenship. Edmond Amran El Maleh, too, soon returned to Morocco with the new regime; Sion Assidon also made Casablanca once again his home. By this point, Simon Lévy had channeled his energies from leftist politics into the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum. This museum received enhanced governmental support in the early 2000s with the new king and became a requisite stop on the Moroccan Jewish tourist circuit. In the years before his death in 2011, Lévy would often lead tours in the museum or approach visitors and (rather emphatically) explain to them the significance of each item. The museum’s overarching thesis, and that of Lévy himself, was one of Moroccan Judaism’s inherently rooted nature in Morocco, Jewish patriotic contributions to the nation, and the unbreakable bond between Jewish and Muslim Moroccans. This argument was wholly consistent with how Lévy led his political career and his life. In death, Abraham Serfaty, Edmond Amran El Maleh, and Simon Lévy were all hailed in the press by government officials as national symbols of Morocco’s patriotic Jewish heritage. Each has a state-sponsored foundation e ither in progress or completed, and Lévy has been the subject of a national Moroccan television documentary. As recently as 2013, one of Lévy’s projects came to posthumous fruition. In addition to the museum and outreach to Moroccan Jews to involve them further in the museum’s work, Lévy’s foundation identified at-risk Jewish sites across the country and received a combination of state and private support for their rehabilitation. He died before the completion and dedication of the most recent site, Slat al-Fassiyine, a former synagogue in the mellah of Fez that had been converted into a boxing ring a fter the majority of the Fez Jewish community departed in the 1950s and 1960s. One of Lévy’s sons, Jean Lévy, a doctor working in Germany, assumed custody of this project and secured German government support. A g rand opening ceremony took place in February 2013, attended by Moroccan government officials, Jewish community representatives, German diplomats, and representatives of the United States and other countries. King Muhammad VI did not attend, but he did prepare a statement that the then-prime minister, Abdelilah Benkirane from the Islamist PJD (Parti de la justice et du développement; Justice and Development Party) read aloud on the king’s behalf. A few notable excerpts from that statement follow:
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This synagogue is testimony to the richness and diversity of the kingdom of Morocco’s spiritual heritage. Blending harmoniously with the other compo-
nents of our identity, the Jewish legacy with its rituals and specific features, has been an intrinsic part of our country’s heritage for more than three thousand years.
As is enshrined in the kingdom’s new Constitution, the Hebrew heritage
is indeed one of the time-honored components of our national identity. For
this reason, I wish to call for the restoration of all the synagogues in the other Moroccan cities so that they may serve not only as places of worship, but also as forums for cultural dialogue and for the promotion of our cultural values. Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Moroccan people’s cultural traditions, which are steeped in history,
are rooted in our citizens’ abiding commitment to the principles of coexis-
tence, tolerance and concord between the various components of the nation, under the wise leadership of the Kings of the glorious Alaouite Dynasty and in
keeping with the sacred mission with which the Almighty has entrusted me. As Commander of the Faithful, I am committed to defending the faith
and the community of believers, and to fulfilling my mission with respect
to upholding freedom of religion for all believers in the revealed religions, including Judaism, whose followers are loyal citizens for whom I deeply care. I want to assure you that I s hall continue to look a fter you and seek to defend the above ideals and principles.
I reiterate my deep care and consideration for your Jewish community
and pray that Almighty God grant you success in your endeavors to serve the well-being of the nation.137
This pronouncement underscores the historic possessive and protective relationship of the makhzan to Moroccan Jews and the responsibility of Moroccan Jews to contribute to the state. The statement also underscores Morocco as a liberal, moderate Muslim state. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States, Morocco’s geostrategic positioning became more relevant than ever. Within a few months of the attacks, King Muhammad VI met with then-president George W. Bush to begin discussions toward a Free Trade Agreement in 2002. A few months later, Morocco faced its own terrorist attack from Muslim extremists in Casablanca, which disproportionately
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targeted Jewish and tourist sites across the city and gave the makhzan latitude to crack down on Islamist opposition. The Free Trade Agreement, formalized in 2004, led to Morocco’s status as a non-NATO ally of the United States, alongside Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain from the MENA region, leading to significant US military investment in Morocco.138 The Cold War had ended, putting pressure on the monarch to release political prisoners and liberalize state policy. With the onset of the Global War on Terror following 9/11, Morocco gained renewed strategic importance for the United States as a “moderate” Muslim ally in the MENA region.139 Continued investment in the Jewish past in Morocco, Jewish tourism, and more have become critical tools of the state in such an international political climate; even the former pariahs, the Moroccan Communist Jews on the (prominent) margins of the Moroccan political community and the Jewish community for so long, became the “Sultan’s Communists,” the very emblems of Moroccan progress and tolerance on the global stage.
o From the 1970s to the coronation of King Muhammad VI in 1999, Moroccan Jews simultaneously represented boons and liabilities to the Moroccan state. Most Moroccan Jews, at home and abroad, welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate their patriotism and fealty to Morocco at the moment of the 1975 Green March. At the same time, opposition groups, such as Abraham Serfaty’s Ila al-Amam, rejected Moroccan claims to the Western Sahara, leading to prison sentences for their members that would ultimate serve to crystallize an international human rights campaign to free Serfaty and other dissidents. The United States supported Morocco in the Green March materially and ideologically, against the Polisario independence forces backed by Algeria. While the makhzan continued to oppress leftist opposition during the Years of Lead, the Moroccan state carefully cultivated Moroccan Jewish tourism as an example of the state’s “tolerance” and “liberalism” on the global stage. The US–Moroccan relationship changed, however, toward the end of the Cold War, when an international h uman rights campaign against Morocco culminated with such damning publications as Gilles Perrault’s 1991 Notre
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ami le roi, setting off an international crisis. This book came a fter decades of international h uman rights campaigning on the part of local Moroccan and diaspora Moroccan h uman rights organizations, as well as Amnesty International, many of which focused their campaigns around Abraham Serfaty. Simon Lévy, meanwhile, lost his electoral bid in the 1990s due in part, it is rumored, to his Jewishness, and he withdrew from PPS activity to focus on preservation of the Jewish past through his Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum in Casablanca. When Hassan II died in 1999, his son Muhammad VI became king. He welcomed back dissidents such as Serfaty, and El Maleh returned voluntarily. The new king also established a Truth and Reconciliation commission to address the Years of Lead. When 9/11 struck in 2001 and Casablanca experienced a terrorist attack in 2003 that disproportionately targeted Jewish sites, Moroccan and US interests aligned against a new international threat in the Global War on Terror. This politi cal climate made Moroccan Jews, including leftists who had previously been state pariahs, into national assets who demonstrated Moroccan liberal ideas in the face of intolerance. The commodification of Moroccan Jews, already in place since the late 1970s, came to include Moroccan Jewish Communists as well, symbols of tolerance against religious extremism. The long proprietary relationship of the makhzan and Moroccan Jews ultimately included even former enemies of the state. As perceived primary political opposition to the makhzan turned from leftists to Islamists in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Morocco was able to lionize Moroccan Jewish Communists as heroes, embracing them on their own terms.
S CA R I F I CAT I O N : A CO N C LU S I O N
The swiftness of scarification is astonishing in this country, the wounds we hide, the wounds we show.
—Edmond Amran El Maleh, Aïlen ou la nuit du récit
In Morocco’s capital city of Rabat, the Royal National Archives house most of Simon Lévy’s personal papers. Jamaâ Baïda, a scholar of Moroccan Jewish history, directs the national archival project. Adjacent to these archives sits a state-sponsored foundation in honor of Edmond Amran El Maleh, which in turn is down the street from Muhammad V University, where Mohammed Kenbib mentors students working on Moroccan Jewish history. Nearby, the Royal National Library houses works and papers from Lévy, El Maleh, and Abraham Serfaty. All of these institutions are near the Royal Palace in Rabat, a sprawling complex that h ouses the elaborate apparatus of the makhzan. Inside the palace, André Azoulay, special advisor to King Hassan II (r. 1961– 1999), as well as King Muhammad VI (1999–present), maintains an office for the state-sponsored business of enhancing Muslim–Jewish relations at home and abroad. A May 2018 issue of the popular national history magazine Zamane (Time), which is sold in news kiosks across Morocco, was devoted to “Moroccan Jews and Revolutionaries,” featuring glowing profiles of Moroccan Jewish patriots.1
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Lévy, El Maleh, Serfaty, and Azoulay share some particular biographical details: they w ere each once members of the Moroccan Communist Party; they were each pariahs of the state and the broader Jewish community, often compelled into forced exile; they w ere all anti-Zionist, patriotic Moroccan Jews. Now they are all officially vaunted as state heroes. They belong to Morocco, and they represent the makhzan’s commitment to celebrating a shared Moroccan Jewish past as much as they represent a Moroccan Jewish political devotion to Morocco. Moroccan Jews engaged in national liberation politics joined the PCM for its pluralistic, universalist platform. This platform allowed them to negotiate multiple allegiances and identities in the midst of profound demographic and political change. This book has argued that, for them, Moroccan identity was inclusive of the Jewish and Muslim past, imbued with shared experiences, dialects, religious traditions, and cultural expressions unique to Morocco. For them, Morocco was the only possible home for Moroccan Jewry, and they implored the Moroccan Jewish community to join in solidarity with the w hole of the Moroccan nation, Muslims and Jews alike. In the process, they became “the Sultan’s Communists,” a modern reinvention of a premodern political paradigm. However, the vast majority of Moroccan Jews rejected these Jewish Communists, with the exception of André Azoulay. Azoulay, a fter all, was only very briefly a member of the PCM. He was lauded in a November 2018 issue of the American Jewish online magazine Tablet as “the most powerful Jew in the Muslim world” for his prominence in the makhzan and for representing the public face of Moroccan cultural liberalism.2 The trajectories of Simon Lévy, Edmond Amran El Maleh, and Abraham Serfaty w ere differ ent. Simon Lévy founded the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum in the Casablancan suburb of l’Oasis (The Oasis) in the early 1990s. However, during his years of political activism in the PCM and its various legal or illegal iterations, Lévy was a pariah of the broader Jewish community. As a politically active and subversive Jew, first against the colonial French Protectorate authorities and then against an increasingly authoritarian in dependent Moroccan monarchy, Lévy and his fellow Jewish Communists represented liabilities to the broader Jewish community.
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El Maleh had been the de facto leader of the PCM during the early 1950s when its Muslim secretary general, Ali Yata, was in exile at the height of Morocco’s national liberation struggle. El Maleh would ultimately leave the PCM in the early 1960s b ecause of his intensified critique of the party’s “slavish” devotion to Stalinism and, allegedly, because he was pushed out for his prominent leadership of the party during the critical years of struggle for Moroccan independence. El Maleh left Morocco for France in 1965 a fter the makhzan’s bloody suppression of student riots in Casablanca; at the age of 60, he would become one of Morocco’s most prolific novelists, addressing nearly obsessively the departure of Moroccan Jews in the 1950s and 1960s and his own disillusionment with the PCM and the independent state itself. Abraham Serfaty, like Lévy and El Maleh, worked with the PCM during the struggle for national liberation. Unlike Lévy and El Maleh, Serfaty broke with the PCM to eventually found a far-left political party in the early 1970s, Ila al-Amam (Forward, in Arabic); he would spend nearly twenty years in Moroccan prisons, where he was subjected to torture and solitary confinement for his subversive activities against the state. Serfaty was ultimately exiled to France. All three of t hese men w ere reviled by the majority of the Moroccan Jewish community as threats to communal stability, as subversives undermining Moroccan Jewish “gratitude” and “devotion” to France, and then to the sultan, whose title was changed to “king” shortly a fter independence. As “Jews who did politics,” to use El Maleh’s formulation, Lévy, El Maleh, and Serfaty represented a threat to the broader Moroccan Jewish community, which tried so desperately to distance itself from these troublesome figures. The fear was that, even though constitutional principles might define them as individual men, they were and would remain Jews as a category, and thus the “negative” actions of one could reflect poorly on the community as a whole. Lévy, El Maleh, and Serfaty represent a neglected Moroccan, regional, and transnational story in modern Jewish history: they w ere Moroccan Jews who fought for the national liberation of their country from French and Spanish colonialism. They rejected Zionism flatly as a form of imperialism, and they placed their Moroccan identities and allegiances above their Jewish backgrounds. The main national liberation party, Istiqlal (Independence, in Arabic) was predicated on Islam as a credo for Moroccan independence
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(achieved in 1956). The Moroccan Communist Party was the most potent, viable means of political activism for Moroccan Jews interested in the national liberation struggle from France and Spain. The interwar period witnessed an efflorescence of political affiliations and ideologies available to Moroccan Jews. When the Second World War broke out and France capitulated to Germany in 1940, the anti-Semitic Vichy regime and its attendant legislation were applied not only in France but also in its colonies, Morocco included. This experience, during which Moroccan Jews often lost their property, homes, jobs, and educational opportunities, served to galvanize the Moroccan Jewish community into political action. In the postwar period, the wide variety of political options available to Jews began to narrow as the mainstream national liberation movement, predicated on Islam, gained ground and the modern state of Israel was established in 1948. In the broadest strokes, Moroccan Jews faced an increasingly stark political choice: depart or remain, choose Zionism or Communism. In either trajectory, Jews w ere the active architects of their political destinies. In the struggle for national liberation from France, achieved in 1956, Moroccan Jews were most represented in the Moroccan Communist Party, because it welcomed religious and ethnic minorities in a more inclusive, universalist understanding of the potential independent Moroccan nation. After inde pendence, the decades that followed were ones of intense political repression and the co-opting of political parties, in the context of two failed coups d’état and numerous uprisings. Meanwhile, Moroccan Jews left the country in rec ord numbers, primarily for Israel, as anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism were increasingly conflated. Events in Israel, notably the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1967 war, and the 1973 war, all exacerbated tensions for the Moroccan Jewish community in a regional context of Nasserism and pan-Arabism. By the time of the 1975 Green March and into the 1990s, a much-reduced but dedicated Moroccan Jewish community remained, working in accordance with the makhzan’s international and national goals. On King Hassan II’s death in 1999 and regime change to the current King Muhammad VI, even the Moroccan Jewish Communists became complicit with state projects as they became national heroes and emblems of state tolerance.3
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Morocco still maintains a robust Jewish community—the largest in the Middle East and North Africa outside of Israel, Turkey, and Iran. The vast majority of Jews live in Casablanca, with graying pockets in Tangier, Fez, Rabat, and Marrakesh. Generous estimates suggest about 2,000 Jews remain in Morocco, many of whom have children and extended family members in France and Israel. Although there is a young Jewish population in Morocco, it is relatively small and unlikely to persist for long. Despite (or perhaps because of ) these numbers, g reat interest exists among Moroccan academics, institutions, and students in the Jewish past. Since Simon Lévy’s death in 2011, Zhor Rehihil, the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Museum’s Muslim curator, has led the institution. When I asked her in 2009 about her c areer trajectory, she answered with a question of her own: “Is a h uman being marked by the events that surround his birth?”4 Zhor Rehihil was born in 1967, following the Arab–Israeli Six-Day War. A Muslim woman from Casablanca, Rehihil was born after most of Morocco’s Jews had left. Rehihil’s narrative of how she came to be the curator of the only Jewish museum in the Arab world shares a common inspiration with French litera ture scholar Ronnie Scharfman’s assessment of Edmond Amran El Maleh’s book, Mille ans, un jour. Scharfman writes, “The ‘Mille ans,’ or thousand years of Maleh’s title . . . refers to the presence, since time immemorial, of an already pluralistic, heterogeneous Jewish population, speaking several different languages, inhabiting both urban and rural communities. The ‘un jour,’ or one day, on the other hand, articulates the lighting flash moment of their disappearance from the scene of Moroccan history and memory.” 5 El Maleh himself, in an interview with Marie Redonnet, described the exodus of Jews from Morocco as a “true hemorrhage.”6 Rehihil grew up with family stories about Jewish friends and places, and she wondered what happened to them; she grew up in a city that once had street names such as Synagogues Street, with Jewish booksellers and publishers along it. The streets had been renamed by the time she began her work preserving Jewish objects and texts in the early 1990s. Rehihil is hardly alone as a Moroccan Muslim interested in her country’s Jewish history. She is an employee of the Moroccan state, and student groups, notably the Mimouna group (so named for the post-Passover holiday in Morocco in which Jews and Muslims gather together and eat symbolic festive
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foods), have shown interest in collaborating with the museum. Many Moroccan universities have esteemed faculty members working on Jewish subjects, including Mohamed Kenbib, Jamaâ Baïda, and Mohammed Hatimi. There is interest among Moroccan Muslims in learning Hebrew, and some prominent Moroccan Muslims have traveled to Israel to engage with Israelis of Moroccan heritage. Such exchanges have produced an efflorescence of films nostalgic for the famed “coexistence” and “tolerance” of Morocco. Films and texts of about the Moroccan Jewish past often toggle between considering “the exodus” as uniquely a product of Zionism or of Arab nationalism, depending on the political agenda and location of the producer. Lévy, El Maleh, and Serfaty routinely come up in the Moroccan press, nearly ten years a fter their deaths, and magazines like Zamane have devoted multiple issues to Jewish Morocco, including its radicals. National television stations have created documentaries on specific Jewish figures, such as Simon Lévy, or on Moroccan Jewish subjects. There is a dizzying variety and intensity of interest, particularly when compared with other countries of the region. The story of Moroccan Jewish Communists challenges standard narratives of Moroccan Jewish outmigration, anticolonial agitation, and the very nature of national identity building and the inclusion of minorities. At the margins of Moroccan majority politics and the majority Moroccan Jewish community, Moroccan Jewish Communists such as Lévy, Serfaty, and El Maleh have become the very faces of Morocco’s modern Muslim–Jewish convivencia narrative. State power, protection of the Jewish minority, and even political dissidence mutually reinforce one another in a triangulation of narrating Moroccan “authenticity” and the politics of belonging. The Moroccan Jewish Communists attempted to bring attention to the national and international wounds addressed in this book from the 1920s into the 1990s, just as the state has re-narrated these wounds in the name of post–Cold War Moroccan liberalism and tolerance. As a result, each party benefits from the actions of the other. The scarification El Maleh wrote of is now visible, and it is refreshing.
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N O T ES
Introduction
1. Edmond Amran El Maleh, Parcours immobile (Paris: Maspero, 1980), 53. 2. Abraham Serfaty quoted in the December 1961 issue of the magazine, France- Pays Arabes; also quoted in Arlette Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc Contemporain: Images d’un Devenir (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, SA, 2002), 89. 3. Simon Lévy’s numerous scholarly works make this argument, as well as the narrative presented in the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum he founded in the mid-1990s. 4. Many thanks to Jonathan Wyrtzen for suggesting this felicitous conceptual phrasing at the Yale University Jewish History Colloquium on December 6, 2018; many thanks in turn to Michael Rom for inviting me to present my work in this forum. Wyrtzen was citing the seminal work of Daniel Schroeter, particularly The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). Wyrtzen himself wrote an excellent book on Moroccan national identity formation and twentieth-century politics: Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015). 5. El Maleh, Parcours immobile, 99. El Maleh’s original context for the phrase is a discussion of the growth of the left in Morocco. I e arlier used El Maleh’s phrasing in the section header of the conclusion to my chapter, “Fissures and Fusions: Moroccan Jewish Communists and World War II,” in The Holocaust and North Africa, ed. Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019), 185–204, esp. 203–204. 6. For Moroccan Jewish history, see works by Aomar Boum, Daniel Schroeter, Michael M. Laskier, Susan Gilson Miller, Emily Gottreich, Yaron Tsur, André Chouraqui,
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Mohammed Kenbib, Jamaâ Baïda, Mohammed Hatimi, Haïm Zafrani, André Lévy, and Jessica Marglin cited in the Bibliography. 7. Several excellent scholarly works describe Jewish involvement in national political life in the region; many of them, not coincidentally, focus on Jews in the Communist Parties of respective countries. The mid-to late 1990s saw the beginning of work on Jews and radical politics in the Middle East, including Zachary Lockman’s Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) and Joel Beinin’s The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Since then, Rami Ginat’s A History of Egyptian Communism: Jews and their Compatriots in Quest of Revolution (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2011); Orit Bashkin’s New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), Pierre-Jean Le Foll-Luciani’s Les juifs algériens dans la lutte anticoloniale: trajectoires dissidentes (1934–1965) (Rennes: PU Rennes, 2015), and Lior Sternfeld’s Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018) have all made important, groundbreaking contributions to the story of Jews and political belonging in the MENA. 8. For example, Ezra Mendelson’s edited volume, Essential Papers on Jews and the Left (New York: NYU Press, 1997), does not include the MENA despite its stated global comparative framework. More recently, Philip Mendes’s Jews and the Left: The Rise and Fall of a Political Alliance (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014) has a few small sections dedicated to the MENA. 9. Alma Rachel Heckman, “Jewish Radicals of Morocco: Case Study for a New Historiography,” Jewish Social Studies 23, no. 3 (Spring/Summer 2018): 67–100, esp. 70. 10. For two fantastic studies on Jews and Ottoman imperial citizenship, see Michelle U. Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010) and Julia Phillips Cohen, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). The works referenced in note 7 also, of course, directly tackle the subject of Jewish national political life in the MENA and “belonging” in a MENA nationalizing context, in addition to discussing Jewish Communism in the region. 11. As will be clear from Chapters 4 and 5 of this book, more radical organizations during these decades included the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (UNFP), the Union Nationale des Etudiants du Maroc (UNEM), and Ila al-Amam (Forward, in Arabic). 12. Susan Slyomovics, The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). 13. Many other scholars have found the concept of “belonging” and the phrasing “politics of belonging” useful in their studies of very different contexts from the one explored in this book. This literature includes Sallie Westwood and Annie Phizacklea, Trans-Nationalism and the Politics of Belonging (London: Routledge, 2000); Stephen
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astles and Alastair Davidson, Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics C of Belonging (London: Routledge, 2000); Nira Yuval-Davis, The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations (London: SAGE, 2011); and Natalie Masuoka and Jane Junn, The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion, and Immigration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). What differentiates my use of the term is the possessive nature of the colonial powers and the makhzan vis-à-vis Jews in this precise Moroccan context. 14. Jessica Marglin, Across L egal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). 15. See Abigail Green’s Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 16. See Michael M. Laskier, The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco, 1862–1962 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983); and Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860–1925 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), and Images of Sephardi Jewries in Transition, 1860–1939: The Teachers of the Alliance Israelite Universelle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993); see also work by Esther Benbassa, Frances Malino, and o thers regarding the Alliance Israélite Universelle in the Bibliography. Lia Brozgal and Sarah Abrevaya Stein recently edited a novella written by an Alliance teacher, Vitalis Danon, who was posted in Tunisia; the novella demonstrates the internalization of such dynamics: Vitalis Danon, Ninette of Sin Street: A Novella by Vitalis Danon, ed. Lia Brozgal and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, trans. Jane Kuntz (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017 [originally published in 1938 as Ninette de la rue du Péché: une nouvelle populiste]). 17. Albert Memmi, La Statue de sel (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1966 [1955]), 123. 18. See Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 19. See Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel, eds., Colonialism and the Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017); Joshua Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith: The Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010); Maud S. Mandel, Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2014); and Ethan B. Katz, The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 20. I take the term “Sultan’s Jews” from Daniel Schroeter’s brilliant monograph The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 21. For one example among many works that address this subject, see David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 22. See Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University
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Press, 2012); Julia Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration c. 1800–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); David Sorkin, “The Port Jew: Notes Toward a Social Type,” Jewish Social Studies (Spring 1999): 87–97; Lois Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); and, last but not least, David Cesarini, ed., Port Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550–1950 (New York: Routledge, 2002). 23. See Daniel Schroeter, Merchants of Essaouira: Urban Society and Imperialism in Southwestern Morocco, 1844–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and The Sultan’s Jew. 24. Ibid. 25. Schroeter, The Sultan’s Jew, 4–5: The disabilities of the dhimmis, as defined by the so-called “Pact of ‘Umar” . . . are stressed. This approach suggests a bleak picture pf Jewish life in Morocco. A recent generation of Moroccan historians has taken exception to this negative portrait of Jewish life in Morocco. . . . The general thrust of their argument is that the Jew was protected by the Makhzan, and that this tended to overshadow the disabilities associated with the Pact of ‘Umar (i.e., the protective connotation of dhimma—the contract obligating the Islamic state to protect its non-Muslim subjects—is stressed). . . . Jews henceforth became either the unwitting victims of foreign powers which greedily withdrew a portion of the population from the jurisdiction of the Makhzan, or guilty of abusing the new system of protection that had emerged. Implicit in t hese arguments is that the Jews, as a consequence, were to play an extremely small role in the modern nationalist movement, and instead, tended to identify themselves with the colonial regime. 26. There has been an efflorescence of work on this subject in recent years. See, for example, Susan Gilson Miller, A History of Modern Morocco (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Wyrtzen, Making Morocco; and David Stenner, Globalizing Morocco: Transnational Activism and the Postcolonial State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019). 27. See Aomar Boum, Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013); Daniel J. Schroeter and Joseph Chetrit, “Emancipation and Its Discontents: Jews at the Formative Period of Rule in Colonial Morocco,” Jewish Social Studies 13, no. 1 (Autumn 2006): 170–206; and Jessica Marglin, “Modernizing Moroccan Jews: The AIU Alumni Association in Tangier, 1893–1913,” Jewish Quarterly Review 101, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 574–603; they all illustrate this point. Michael M. Laskier, Susan Gilson Miller, Emily Gottreich, Yaron Tsur, André Chouraqui, Mohammed Kenbib, Jamaâ Baïda, Mohammed Hatimi, Haïm
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Zafrani, André Lévy, and many more all have published excellent work on this topic, much of which is cited in the Bibliography. 28. Many thanks to the incomparable Sarah Abrevaya Stein, who distilled these chapter titles during a manuscript workshop at UC Santa Cruz on February 11, 2019, supported by the University of California Humanities Institute (UCHRI) Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop grant.
Chapter 1
Epigraph: “Note relative aux aspirations de la population israélite de Casablanca,” July 7, 1933, Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN) 1MA/250-1 (“Communauté Juive, dossier general”). 1. Press clipping La Presse Marocaine, June 25, 1936, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 2. See the following books regarding the development of national liberation politics in Morocco: Robert Rézette, Les Partis Politiques Marocains (Paris: Cahiers de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques partis et élections 70, Librairie Armand Colin, 1955); John P. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation: The Origins and Rise of Moroccan Nationalism, 1912–1944 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967); and Susan Gilson Miller, A History of Modern Morocco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Jonathan Wyrtzen’s Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015) unpacks the processes of Moroccan national identity formation during the colonial period and its ramifications, with emphasis on Morocco’s Arabo-Muslim nationalist identity and the place of Berbers, Jews, and women within ideologies of national unity. Further, on a more comparative note, this kind of fluidity also characterized Jews and Communist politics elsewhere in the MENA in the same time period, notably Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, and Iran. 3. “Algerians” is an umbrella term in this context—in this chapter it refers to Jews and Muslims of Algerian origin; most Algerian Jews had French citizenship, whereas most Algerian Muslims did not. 4. For a detailed account of the history of Casablancan urban development, see André Adam, Histoire de Casablanca, des origines à 1914 (Aix-en-Provence: Éditions Ophyrs, 1968) and Casablanca: Essai sur la transformation de la société marocaine au contact de l’Occident, Tome 1, seconde édition revue et corrigé (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1972). 5. See William A. Hoisington, Lyautey and the French Conquest of Morocco (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995). 6. Adam, Casablanca: Essai sur la transformation, 292. 7. Ghislaine Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth Century Western Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 383–400.
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8. Jacques Berque, French North Africa: The Maghrib Between Two World Wars, trans. Jean Stewart (New York: Praeger, 1967 [originally published in 1962]), 172. 9. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 111. 10. “Sharifian” here refers to the ruling Alaouite Dynasty’s familial descent from the Prophet Muhammad; hence the “Sharifian Empire” of Morocco. 11. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 116. Phosphates are used primarily for agriculture and industrial manufacturing; they also figure as common additives in food and drink, as well as cleaning products. 12. Albert Ayache, “Les grèves de juin 1936 au Maroc,” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 12, no. 3 ( Jul.–Sept. 1957): 418–429, esp. 428. 13. Albert Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc: Tome 1: 1919–1942 (Paris: Éditions l’Harmattan, 1982), 12. Ayache notes that of this number, approximately 2,000 Moroccans were permitted to remain working in France. 14. According to Albert Ayache, approximately 900,000 French workers went on a 24-hour strike on October 12, 1925 to protest ongoing war in Morocco and Syria. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 32. See also David Henry Slavin, “Anticolonialism and the French Left: Opposition to the Rif War, 1925–1926” (PhD diss., Corcoran Department of History, University of V irginia, 1982). 15. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 14. 16. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 116. 17. See Ayache, “Les grèves de juin 1936 au Maroc,” 418–429, esp. 419. 18. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 87–88. 19. In Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 141. 20. Robert Montagne, Révolution au Maroc (Paris: Éditions France-Empire, 1953), 9–10. 21. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 35. 22. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 34. 23. Apathy and antipathy toward politics were also common, although despite one’s own feelings, public perception might still slot someone into one or several political categories. Most Moroccan Jews were not actively involved in politics. 24. It is unclear whether Léon Sultan formally belonged to a Zionist organization. I have found evidence of his financial contributions and stewardship of a Moroccan team for the Maccabiah Games of 1932. 25. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, footnote 4, 178–179. 26. Léon René Sultan, Contribution à l’étude de l’abus des droits: thèse pour le doctorat en droit. (Constantine: Imprimérie M. Attali aîné, 1926). His thesis was publicly defended and published, earning him high honors and two qualifications: Diplomé d’Etudes Supérieures de Droit Public (Diploma in Advanced Studies of Public Law) and Diplomé de Législations Algérienne, Tunisienne et Marocaine et de Droit Musulman (Diploma in Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan Law, and Muslim Law). He dedicated his thesis to his grandfather, his parents, his uncle (a Mr. A. Sultan, a lawyer
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in Constantine) and to his fiancée Mademoiselle Fortunée Bensidoun, who would soon accompany him to Casablanca. 27. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 178. 28. Parts of this short subsection on Léon René Sultan w ere previously published in Alma Heckman, “Multivariable Casablanca: Vichy Law, Jewish Diversity, and the Moroccan Communist Party,” “Jews of Morocco and the Maghreb: History and Historiography,” special issue, Hespéris-Tamuda LI, no. 3 (2016): 13–34. 29. Compared to Morocco, Tunisian Jews received French or Italian citizenship at a much higher rate. For more information on the complexity of French citizenship among Algerian Jews, see Sarah Abrevayah Stein, Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 30. Numerous documents in CADN 1MA/250-1 (“Communauté Juive, dossier general”). 31. Works by Michael M. Laskier, Aron Rodrigue, Esther Benbassa, Frances Malino, and others have established the academic study of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Since their foundational studies, many others haven taken up the torch. 32. See Michael M. Laskier, The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco, 1862–1962 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983). 33. Mohammed Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc: 1859–1948 (Rabat: Université Mohammed V, Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, 1994), 477–478. 34. During the Second World War and a fter, Zionist leaders in the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish settlement in Palestine) and in the early decades of the state of Israel actively recruited MENA Jews to emigrate. These efforts were very much a part of the growth of popularity of Zionism in Morocco in the postwar period. 35. Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 498. See also Jamaâ Baïda, “Situation de la Presse au Maroc sous le ‘Proconsulat’ de Lyautey (1912–1925),” Hespéris-Tamuda XXX, no. 1 (1992): 67–92 and “La Presse Juive au Maroc entre les Deux Guerres.” Hespéris- Tamuda XXXVII (1999): 171–189. 36. “Assimilation et Racisme: Notre Editorial,” L’Avenir Illustré, April 8, 1927. Accessed via the Historical Jewish Press digital project of Tel Aviv University, http:// www.jpress.nli.org.il/O live/APA/NLI/?action=tab&tab=browse&pub=VDC&_ga =2.22458427.129404482.1562968967-682435174.1562870547#panel=document (accessed March 29, 2019). 37. Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 518. 38. “Loyauté Juive,” L’Avenir Illustré, March 11, 1927. Accessed via the Historical Jewish Press digital project of Tel Aviv University, http://www.jpress.nli.org.il /O live/APA/NLI/?action=tab&tab=browse&pub=VDC&_ga=2.22458427.129404482 .1562968967-682435174.1562870547#panel=document (accessed March 29, 2019). 39. Aomar Boum, “Partners Against Anti-Semitism: Muslims and Jews Respond to Nazism in French North African Colonies, 1936–1940,” Journal of North African Studies 19, no. 4 (2014): 554–570.
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40. “l’Inspecteur des institutions israélites à monsieur le controleur civil, chef de la région de la chaouia, à Casablanca,” Casablanca, February 24, 1930, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 41. “Note relative aux aspirations de la population israélite de Casablanca,” July 7, 1933, CADN 1MA/250-1 (“Communauté Juive, dossier general”). 42. See Wyrtzen, Making Morocco, 138–139. 43. For detailed work on the Berber dahir, see Edmund Burke III, “The Image of the Moroccan State in French Ethnological Literature: A New Look at the Origin of Lyautey’s Berber Policy,” in Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa, ed. Ernest Gellner and Charles Micaud (Toronto: Lexington Books, 1972), 175–199; Gilles Lafuente, La politique berbère de la France et le nationalisme marocain (Paris: Harmattan, 1999); and Katherine Hoffman, “Berber Law by French Means: Customary Courts in the Moroccan Hinterlands, 1930–1956,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 52, no. 4 (2010): 851–880. 44. See Patricia Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Race in Colonial Algeria (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995) and David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) for more on the French policy of distinguishing Berbers and Arabs. 45. The Italian claim to Libya was couched in similar terms. Under Benito Mussolini, fascist Italy was awash in the supposedly resurrected “greatness” of Rome. Thus, ancient Roman territories became “fair game” for fascist Italian expansion, notably Libya as it had been part of the long-departed Roman empire. Extant Roman ruins and contemporary building projects underscored this linkage, as explained in Mia Fuller’s article, “Building Power: Italy’s Colonial Architecture and Urbanism, 1923–1940,” Cultural Anthropology 3, no. 4 (November 1988): 455–487. 46. William A. Hoisington, “Cities in Revolt: The Berber Dahir (1930) and France’s Urban Strategy in Morocco,” Journal of Contemporary History 13, no. 3 ( July 1978): 433– 448, esp. 433. 47. Hoisington, “Cities in Revolt,” 435. 48. Wyrtzen, Making Morocco, 139. 49. See Wyrtzen, Making Morocco, 139–141. 50. “Note pour le Chef du Cabinet Préfecture de Police,” note regarding incidents taking place December 25, 1930, Paris Police Archives Série GB, BA 1676. 51. “Note pour le Chef du Cabinet Préfecture de Police.” 52. For more on Emir Shakib Arslan and Moroccan nationalism during the interwar period see William L. Cleveland, Islam Against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). 53. Gotz Nordbruch, “Islam as a ‘Giant Progressive Leap’—Religious Critiques of Fascism and National Socialism, 1933–1945,” in “Islamofascism,” special issue, Die Welt des Islams 52, nos. 3/4 (2012): 499–525, esp. 506.
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54. Nordbruch, “Islam as a ‘Giant Progressive Leap,’ ” 499–525. 55. Nordbruch, “Islam as a ‘Giant Progressive Leap,’ ” 499–525. 56. Eric Calderwood, Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 253. 57. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation, 151. 58. On interwar political developments in the Levant, see the following works: Philip Shukry Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) and The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); and Michael Provence, The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 59. “Report of le chef du service du control civil a monsieur le contrôleur civil, chef de la région de Rabat, March 4, 1932,” CADN 1MA/250-24 (“23 janvier-1925–6 décembre 1938”). 60. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation, 265. 61. For more information regarding the intersection of Nazism, Italian fascism, and the Spanish Civil War and how these powers connected to Moroccan nationalist groups, see work by Daniel Schroeter, John Halstead, Isabelle Rohr, Eric Calderwood, Ali al-Tuma, Anthony Beevor, Helen Graham, Manuel Agudo, José E. Álvarez, Walter B. Harris, and others. Francis R. Nicosia and Boğaç A. Ergene’s edited volume, Nazism, The Holocaust, and the Middle East: Arab and Turkish Responses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018) is also instructive on this score. 62. Article from l’Union Marocaine, July 19, 1933, author not listed, CADN 1MA/250-1 (“Communauté Juive, dossier general”). 63. “Note de renseignements,” Casablanca, April 14, 1933, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 64. “Bulletin de renseignements,” April 19, 1933, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 65. “Lettre trimestrielle avril-juin 1933,” from Prosper Cohen, Meknes to Paris, June 19, 1933, AIU archives (FR_AIU_AH_MAR_B_012-38.pdf ). 66. See Paul F. Jankowski, Stavisky: A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002). See also Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 95 and 104. 67. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 95–96. 68. Jamaâ Baïda, “Le communisme au Maroc pendant la période coloniale (1912– 1956),” in “Rethinking Totalitarianism and its Arab Readings,” special issue, Orient- Institut Studies 1 (2012), https://www.perspectivia.net/publikationen/orient-institut -studies/1-2012/baida_communisme (accessed July 7, 2019).
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69. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 99. 70. Rézette, Les Partis Politiques Marocains, 69–70. 71. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 101. 72. Rézette, Les Partis Politiques Marocains, 87 and 90. 73. See Rézette, Les Partis Politiques Marocains, 88–90. 74. John P. Halstead once wrote on this point: “If Communism is a doctrine, Moroccan nationalism was its antithesis. Rarely could one meet two Moroccans who agreed about the future shape of their country or the route to independence”; Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation, 152. 75. “Lettre trimestrielle Janvier-Mars 1934” from Prosper Cohen, Meknes, to AIU HQ (FR_AIU_AH_MAR_B_012-36.pdf ). 76. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 16 au 31 Mai 1934,” FR CAOM: COL 1AFF-POL 901. 77. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 16 au 31 Mai 1934.” 78. For more information and context on the Constantine riots, see Joshua Cole, Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019) and his 2012 article: “Constantine Before the Riots of August 1934: Civil Status, Anti-Semitism, and the Politics of Assimilation in Interwar French Algeria,” Journal of North African Studies 17, no. 5 (Dec. 2012): 839–861. 79. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 1er au 15 Août 1934,” FR CAOM: COL 1AFF-POL 901. 80. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 1er au 15 Août 1934.” 81. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 16 au 31 Mai 1934,” FR CAOM: COL 1AFF-POL 901. 82. “Note de renseignements” Casablanca, Aug. 29, 1934, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 83. Baïda, “La Presse Juive au Maroc entre les Deux Guerres,” 171–189, esp. 174. 84. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, footnote 4, 178–179. 85. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 1er au 15 Septembre 1934,” FR CAOM: COL 1AFF-POL 901. By the “perfidious role” of Jews in early years of Islam, the author refers to the history of Jews in Yathrib (today known as Medina), the site of Muhammad’s hijra from Mecca in 622 CE.
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lthough some Jews joined Muhammad, others worked against him in league with the A Meccans. 86. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 1er au 15 Septembre 1934.” 87. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 1er au 15 Septembre 1934.” 88. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 1er au 15 Septembre 1934.” 89. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 16 au 30 Septembre 1934,” FR CAOM: COL 1AFF-POL 901. 90. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 16 au 30 Septembre 1934.” 91. “Ministère de l’intérieur à Monsieur le PREFET DE POLICE, AS Propagande allemande parmi les Nord-Africains,” Paris, December 1, 1934, Police Archives, Série GB BA 1676. In December 1933, Mr. Haack had been appointed the head of Nazi propaganda in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia—a full month before Adolph Hitler was sworn in as chancellor of the Third Reich and had traveled to Syria and Lebanon on behalf of his office. 92. “Bayane: ila al-khouanna al-muslimin kafa ‘an al-halab filistin [Announcement: to our Muslim Brothers On The State Of Affairs in Palestine].” From General Lauzanne, Commandant for the Taza region to the Director of Indigenous Affairs, May 25, 1935, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). See also Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014); and Israel Gershoni, ed., Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015). 93. Report February 21, 1935, Police Archives, Série GB BA 1676. 94. “A.S. de la Propagande allemande qui s’excerce en Afrique du Nord,” February 1935, Police Archives, Série GB BA 1676. 95. Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 502. 96. Arsalane Chakib, “Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire du PCM durant la période coloniale” (PhD diss., Université Hassan II, Faculté des Sciences Juridiques, Economiques et Sociales, Casablanca, 1985), 29. 97. See Daniel Schroeter’s chapter, “Philo-Sephardism, Anti-Semitism, and Arab Nationalism: Muslims and Jews in the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco During the
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Third Reich,” in Nazism, the Holocaust, and the Middle East: Arab and Turkish Responses, ed. Francis R. Nicosia and Boğaç A. Ergene (New York: Berghahn, 2018), 179–241. 98. “Appel au Judaisme Marocain,” l’Avenir Illustré, February 28 1935, p. 11. Accessed via the Historical Jewish Press digital project of Tel Aviv University, http://www.jpress .nli.org.il/O live/APA/NLI/?action=tab&tab=browse&pub=VDC&_ga=2.22458427 .129404482.1562968967-682435174.1562870547#panel=document (accessed July 22, 2019). 99. “Appel au Judaisme Marocain.” 100. Boum, “Partners Against Anti-Semitism,” 554–567, esp. 557. 101. “Résidence Générale de la République Française au Maroc, Direction des Affaires Politique: Situation Politique et Economique, période du 1 au 15 Aout 1935,” ANOM FR CAOM: COL 1AFF-POL 901. 102. Letter October 5, 1935, from protectorate official to Paris, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 103. Letter October 5, 1935, from protectorate official to Paris. 104. Boum, “Partners Against Anti-Semitism,” 564. 105. “Le Commissaire Chef de la Sûreté Régionale à Monsieur le Directeur des Services de Sécurité (Rabat),” February 16, 1936, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 106. “Oujda, le 17 février 1936, le contrôleur civil, chef de la region d’Oujda à monisieur le Délégué à la Résidence Générale, Rabat,” CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 107. “Fès 18 juillet 1935, Direction des services de sécurité du Maroc,” CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 108. “Fès 18 juillet 1935, Direction des services de sécurité du Maroc.” 109. Issue of Le Populaire, May 28, 1935, Paris Police Archives, Série GB BA 1676. 110. Le Maroc Socialiste, November 21, 1936, in Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 558. 111. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 16 au 30 juin 1935,” ANOM FR CAOM: COL 1AFF-POL 901.ANOM FR CAOM: COL 1AFF-POL 901. 112. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 12, 35, 85. 113. Ayache, “Les grèves de juin 1936 au maroc,” 418–429. 114. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 87–89. 115. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 87–89 and 46. 116. “Note de Renseignements” June 3, 1936, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 117. “Note de Renseignements” June 3, 1936. 118. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 143. 119. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 159.
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120. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 159–160. 121. Wyrtzen writes of the period of spring to fall of 1936 as replete with nationalist uprisings as well; Making Morocco, 166–168. The water protests of Meknes in 1937 were particularly trenchant; see Adam Guerin, “ ‘Not a Drop for the Settlers’: Reimagining Popular Protest and Anti-Colonial Nationalism in the Moroccan Protectorate,” Journal of North African Studies 20, no. 2 (2015): 1–22. 122. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 178. 123. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 221. 124. “RESIDENCE GENERALE DE LA REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE AU MAROC, Direction des affaires politiques: Situation Politique et Économique, Période du 16 au 30 juin 1936,” FR CAOM: COL 1AFF-POL 901). The 1936 Great Revolt, spurred in part by the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, led to his expulsion from Palestine, from which he traveled to Germany, met with Hitler, and consulted on the creation of a Bosnian Muslim military group under the purview of the Nazis. 125. Clipping from La Voix Française, June 18, 1936: “LE PERIL JUIF,” CADN 1MA/250-24: 23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 126. Clipping from La Voix Française, June 18, 1936 du 18 Juin 1936: “LE PERIL JUIF.” 127. Press clipping from La Voix Française, June 27, 1936, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 128. “Bulletin de renseignements,” Tangier, July 2, 1936, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 129. “À Monsieur le Directeur des Affaires Indigènes,” July 8, 1936, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 130. Quoted in Boum, “Partners Against Anti-Semitism,” 565, who in turn quotes from Robert Assaraf, Mohammed V et les juifs du Maroc à l’époque de Vichy (Paris: Plon, 1997), 109. 131. “À monsieur le Directeur des Affaires Politiques, Rabat.” Undated, although previous document in file was July 1936. Subversive letter “À nos frères musulmans” attached. CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 132. “À monsieur le Directeur des Affaires Politiques, Rabat.” 133. La Voix Française, July 14, 1936, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 134. Published in La Voix Française, July 14, 1936. 135. La Voix Française, July 14, 1936. 136. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 223. 137. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 193–194; Clarté, no. 2, December 26, 1936. 138. “Unir: Bulletin Communiste de Rabat Sud—Mois de février 1939,” CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 139. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 178.
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140. Numerous files in CADN MAROC DI 319 (Partis Politiques de Gauche). 141. Files in CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). While Jews were disproportionately represented within the Popular Front and its composite parties, Muslims w ere active as well, albeit in smaller numbers. Mehdi Lemniai of Fez was a leader in that city’s branch of the PCM. Lemniai’s efforts to extend into the medina (the traditional Muslim quarters) of Fez met with hostility from Allal al-Fassi’s CAM, which maintained a more Islamist understanding of Moroccan national identity. Mehdi Lemniai worked in the theater, was the president of Fez’s chapter of the Alumni Association of Moulay Idriss High School, and was also a member of local nationalist circles before joining the PCM. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 221–222. 142. “Fédala le 9 Aout 1938, l’Inspecteur-chef, chef de la Brigade Spéciale, à Monsieur le Commissaire Divisionnaire, Casablanca” and “Parti Populaire Français, Casablanca le 8 Aout 1938,” both in CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 143. Albert Ayache Le Maroc: bilan d’une colonisation, with preface de Jean Dresch (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1956), 340–341. See Guerin, “ ‘Not a Drop for the Settlers,’ ” 1–22. 144. Ayache Le Maroc: bilan d’une colonisation, 340–341. 145. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 225. 146. Ayache, Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc, 226. 147. See, for example, the membership roster of the Ligue des droits de l’homme of Safi in January 1938. “Safi le 10 Janvier 1938, Le commissaire, chef de la sûreté régionale, à monsieur le contrôleur civil chef du territoire,” CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). Also the membership roster for Ligue des droits de l’homme of Fez in February 1938, featuring numerous Moroccan Jewish surnames: “Fès le 18 février 1938 Note de Renseignements,” CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 148. “Note de renseignements,” Jan. 26, 1938, CADN 1MA/250-31 (“associations juives” 13 juin 1936–23 mars 1965). 149. “Bulletin de renseignements politiques (source: informateur sérieux),” May 25, 1938, CADN 1MA/250 24: 23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 (“antisémitisme”). 150. Note from “le Général de Division, Chef de la Région Meknès,” May 24, 1938, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 151. “Note de renseignements,” Safi, July 9, 1938, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 152. “Note de renseignements,” December 6, 1938, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 153. “L’inspecteur des Institutions Israélites à Monsieur le Contrôleur Civil, chef de la Région de Casablanca,” Dec. 14, 1938, CADN 1MA/250-1. 154. “Note de renseignements,” Rabat, June 28, 1938 CADN 1MA/200/319. 155. See numerous files in CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 156. “Note de Renseignements,” Rabat, January 5, 1939, CADN 1MA/250/1-3.
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157. “Note de Renseignements,” Rabat, January 7, 1939, CADN 1MA/250/1-3. 158. “Note de Renseignements,” Casablanca, December 24, 1938, CADN 1MA/250/1-3. 159. See several documents in CADN 1MA/250/1-3 regarding this group from winter 1939 in particular. 160. Multiple files in CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”), as well as MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 161. See, for example, the report from “Le commissaire divisionnaire à Monsieur le controleur civil chef des services municipaux” regarding the League des droits de l’homme, Fez, May 25, 1939, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 162. “Note de renseignements,” Fez, May 25, 1939, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 163. Numerous files in CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 164. “Note de renseignements,” Rabat, April 21, 1939, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 165. “Le Commissaire Chef de la Sûreté régionale à Monsieur le Controleur Civil chef du poste de contrôle,” Khouribga, April 27, 1939, le 27, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 166. Numerous files in CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 167. “La Voix des Femmes: Organe du Comité de Rabat du Rassemblement Mondial des Femmes Contre la Guerre et le Fascisme,” June 1938 (specific date not indicated), CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 168. “Note de renseignements,” Rabat, February 15, 1939, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 169. “Note de renseignements,” Casablanca, April 21, 1939, “Casablanca, le 21 Avril, Note de Renseignements” (CADN MAROC DI 319: “Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 170. Numerous files in Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis (which holds the PCF archives), 3 MI 6 / 92 Séquence 598—“Résolutions, projets de résolutions, manifestes” (1933). 171. Numerous files in Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis (which holds the PCF archives) (1933). 172. “Note de renseignements,” Casablanca, February 28, 1939, CADN 1MA/250-31 (“associations juives 13 juin 1936–23 mars 1965”).
Chapter 2
Epigraph: Edmond Amran El Maleh, Parcours immobile (Paris: Maspero, 1980), 37. 1. Abraham Serfaty and Mikhaël Elbaz, L’insoumis: Juifs, Marocains et rebelles (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2001), 89. 2. See the bibliography for work by Rézette, Halstead, and Wyrtzen (among others) for a thorough treatment of the Istiqlal Party during this time period.
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3. Both Yaron Tsur and Mohammed Hatimi brilliantly tackle the question of choice and the period of the national liberation struggle. See Yaron Tsur, Kehilla kriah: yehudi maroko ve haleahmiut 1943–1954 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 2001) and Mohammed Hatimi, “Al-Jama’at al-yehudiyat al-maghribiya wa al-khiyar al-sa’ab bayn nida’ al-sahyuniya wa-rihan al-Maghrib al-mustaqil: 1941–1961” (Utruhat al-Dawla [thèse d’Etat], Université de Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah-Fès, 2007). 4. It is difficult if not impossible to generalize about the experiences of Jews in Morocco during the Vichy period. See Alma Rachel Heckman, “Multivariable Casablanca: Vichy Law, Jewish Diversity, and the Moroccan Communist Party,” in “Jews of Morocco and the Maghreb: History and Historiography,” special issue, Hespéris- Tamuda LI, no. 3 (2016): 13–34 and “Fissures and Fusions: Moroccan Jewish Communists Before, During, and After WWII,” in The Holocaust and North Africa, ed. Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Aomar Boum (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019), 185–204. 5. Brian Edwards, Morocco Bound: Disorienting America’s Maghreb, from Casablanca to the Marrakesh Express (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 59. 6. This narrative has been reproduced in a myriad of newspaper headlines around the world and is the subject of what promises to be an incisive book by Aomar Boum and Daniel Schroeter. See also Daniel Schroeter, “Vichy in Morocco: The Residency, Muhammad V and His Indigenous Jewish Subjects,” in Colonialism and the Jews, ed. Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 215–250. In this chapter, Schroeter deftly points out that there is no corroborating documentation for this statement, but the power of repeating the many versions of this narrative is a reflection of Moroccan national and Moroccan Jewish identity of recent decades. It forms also part of a larger debate regarding the position of Muslims, and especially Muslim Arabs, toward Jews and Nazi Germany in World War II, which in turn reflects the contemporary divide of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The polemics about Muhammad V’s benevolence toward the Jews during World War II or, more generally, the argument over Muslims as “good’ or ‘bad,’ which has s haped most of the interpretation of the Vichy period and the Jews of Morocco, tells us much about present political debates but obfuscates a more complex set of historical circumstances. (217) 7. Daniel J. Schroeter, The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 8. Letter from Sémach to M. le Président, 20 Septembre 1939 Archives AIU Délégation du Maroc, 1er versement Dossier 400. 9. From Délégué to Monsieur le (AIU) Président, November 17, 1939 Archives AIU Délégation du Maroc, 1er versement Dossier 400. 10. Letter from Mme R Lévy to AIU President, Casablanca, October 12, 1939, AIU Archives MAROC VI E 130, Dossier 766 Chemise 7: Madame Raphael Lévy 1939–40.
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11. Letter from Mme R Lévy, to AIU President, Casablanca, November 6, 1939 AIU Archives MAROC VI E 130, Dossier 766 Chemise 7: Madame Raphael Lévy 1939–40. 12. Letter from Mme Sara Béhar to AIU President, Fez, December 10, 1938, AIU Archives MAROC XII E 208, Carton 675 (12): Mme Béhar, Sara 1928–1932. 13. Letter from M. Sémach to AIU President, Rabat, November 2, 1939, Archives AIU Délégation du Maroc, 1er versement Dossier 400. 14. Letter from M. Sémach to AIU President, Rabat, November 2, 1939. 15. “La League des droits de l’homme activités Meknès 1939,” calling for improvement in living standards for “indigènes,” Georges Botbol in the Fez section 1939, CADN MAROC DI 319 (Partis Politiques de Gauche). 16. “Memorandum” Department of State Division of Near Eastern Affairs, December 21, 1939. NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State Central Decimal File, 1930–1939, from 881.00/1595 to 881.001/20, Box 6990. 17. “Memorandum” Department of State Division of Near Eastern Affairs, December 21, 1939. 18. “Memorandum” Department of State Division of Near Eastern Affairs, December 21, 1939. 19. “Memorandum” Department of State Division of Near Eastern Affairs, December 21, 1939. 20. “Note de renseignements,” Casablanca, June 7, 1940, CADN 1MA/250-24 (23 janvier 1925–6 décembre 1938 “antisémitisme”). 21. Michael R. Marrus and Richard O. Paxton’s Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981) represents a trail-blazing work on this subject. 22. On June 6, 1936, in the Chamber of Deputies celebrating Blum’s (and the Popu lar Front’s) victory, Xavier Vallat said, “Your accession to power, Mr. Prime Minister, is undeniably a historic date. For the first time, this old Gallo-Roman country will be governed . . . by a Jew. . . . I note that France w ill have for the first time its own Disraeli . . . I say what I think . . . which is that in order to govern a peasant nation like France, it is better to have someone whose origins, modest though they may be, lie deep in the entrails of our soil, rather than a subtle Talmudist”; quoted in Pierre Birnbaum, Léon Blum: Prime Minister, Socialist, Zionist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 2. 23. For a subtle analysis regarding Vichy France and North Africa, see Daniel Schroeter, “Between Metropole and French North Africa: Vichy’s Anti-Semitic Legislation and Colonialism’s Racial Hierarchy,” in The Holocaust and North Africa, ed. Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019), 19–49. Daniel Lee’s piece in the same volume, “The Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives in Tunisia” (pp. 132–145), illustrates the unevenness of the CGQ J’s policy enforcement through the Tunisian case study. Marrus and Paxton’s Vichy France and the Jews does not truly integrate North Africa but offers a clear and, at the time, ground- breaking examination of Vichy policy in the French Hexagon, including the CGQ J.
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24. Kenbib, “Moroccan Jews and the Vichy Regime,” 543. 25. Kenbib, “Moroccan Jews and the Vichy Regime,” 544. 26. Kenbib, “Moroccan Jews and the Vichy Regime,” 545. 27. Kenbib, “Moroccan Jews and the Vichy Regime,” 547. 28. Kenbib, “Moroccan Jews and the Vichy Regime,” 547. 29. Aomar Boum, “Partners Against Anti-Semitism: Muslims and Jews Respond to Nazism in French North African colonies, 1936–1940,” Journal of North African Studies 19, no. 4 (September 2014): 554–567, esp. 565. 30. Aomar Boum, “Partners Against Anti-Semitism,” 565. 31. Kenbib, “Moroccan Jews and the Vichy Regime,” 549. 32. Quoted in a letter from Raymond D. Bensimhon to Monsieur le Général Commandant la Région de Fes, Fez, November 12, 1941, USHMM Archives, Selected Rec ords from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (Rg-81.001M.0001.00000016). 33. Letter from Raymond D. Bensimhon to Monsieur le Général Commandant la Région de Fes, Fez, November 12, 1941. 34. Letter from Raymond D. Bensimhon to Monsieur le Général Commandant la Région de Fes, Fez, November 12, 1941. 35. Clippings from La Vigie Marocaine, December 20, 1933, “L’inauguration d’une plaque commemorative sur la maison des Bensimhon, où fut hébergé le père de Foucauld, il y a 50 ans”; and Press Marocaine no. 7396, December 20, 1933, “En l’honneur de Ch. De Foucault [sic]: La cérémonie de la pose de la plaque commemorative sur la maison qu’il habita en notre Mellah (juillet-août 1883),” USHMM Archives, Selected Records from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (BNRM Rg81.001M.0001.00000034 and Rg-81.001M.0001.00000036). 36. By virtue of a petition launched against Raymond Bensimhon to overturn this ruling it is possible to establish that he did achieve an exemption in the first place. The petition was based on the grounds that Bensimhon had a dopted “an honest Christian” name but his real name was “Rahamine.” It is unclear what became of this petition. Letter authored by a number of French business o wners in Fez to Monsieur le Commissaire Résident Général du Maroc, Secrétariat général du protectorat, USHMM Archives, Selected Records from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (BNRM Rg-81.001M.0001.00000019). 37. Author interview with Simon Lévy, May 7, 2010, in Casablanca. 38. Dahir of August 5, 1941 (11 rejeb 1360), “Prescrivant le recensement des juifs marocains,” Rabat, August 5, 1941, USHMM Archives, Selected Records from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (BNRM RG-81.001M.0002.00000017). 39. Dahir of August 5, 1941 (11 rejeb 1360), “relatif au statut des juifs marocains,” USHMM Archives, Selected Records from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (BNRM RG-81.001M.0002.00000022).
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40. As Aomar Boum and Daniel Schroeter argue in their forthcoming book proj ect, and as Daniel Schroeter argues in “Vichy in Morocco,” protecting the sultan’s image was a priority of Vichy authorities, as the legitimacy of the Residency rested on the symbolism of the sultan. As a result, Schroeter argues that concern for French colonial legitimacy in fact mitigated the extent of Vichy anti-Semitic measures. 41. Letter from M. Léon René Sultan to Monsieur le Conseiller du Gouvernement Chérifien, Rabat. Casablanca, March 30, 1942, USHMM Archives, Selected Records from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (BNRM RG 81.001M.0004.00000197). 42. Letter from M. Léon René Sultan to Monsieur le Conseiller du Gouvernement Chérifien, Rabat. Casablanca, March 30, 1942. 43. “Direction de l’Instruction Publique: Note sur l’organisation de l’enseignement israélite au Maroc,” Rabat, January 8, 1942, USHMM Archives, Selected Rec ords from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (BNRM RG 81.001M.0012.00000381-2). Letter from “Le Conseiller du Gouvernement Chérfien” to “Monsieur le Secrétaire Général du Protectorat” undated but likely Spring 1942, says that AIU schools “sont réservées aux seuls élèves juifs avec un personnel purement juif,” USHMM Archives, Selected Records from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (BNRM RG 81.001M.0012.00000384-6). 44. A number of documents demonstrate this inconsistency. For example, a letter from “Grillet” à Monsieur le Maréchal de France Chef de l’État Français, VICHY, Rabat, December 13, 1940, and others in the same correspondence batch. USHMM Archives, Selected Records from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (BNRM RG 81.001M.0012.00000559-62). 45. Several documents in Moroccan National Library Archives attest to this. USHMM Archives, Selected Records from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (BNRM RG-81.001M.0007.00000454-6 references epidemics “ravaging” the mellahs). 46. Kenbib, “Moroccan Jews and the Vichy Regime,” 547. 47. The history of MENA Jews claiming foreign passports or foreign “protections” has roots in the early modern period through the nineteenth c entury, when Jews in many parts of the MENA gained foreign protection through capitulatory rights. By the Second World War, however, France did not recognize capitulatory rights. This partic ular history would have devastating consequences for a small number of Libyan Jews with British citizenship, who w ere deported to Bergen-Belsen in Nazi Germany. For more information regarding Libya, see Jens Hoppe, “The Persecution of Jews in Libya Between 1938 and 1945: An Italian Affair?,” in The Holocaust and North Africa, ed. Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019): 50–75. 48. “Expulsion d’étrangers” letter from “Le Général d’Armée Noguès, Commissaire Résident Général de la République Française au Maroc, Commandant en Chef à Son
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Excellent Secrétaire d’État au Affaires Étrangers,” September 26, 1940, USHMM copy of archives from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France, USHMM RG 43.006M, Reel 16 (“Vichy-Maroc”). 49. Telegram to Resident General Noguès in Rabat from “Rochat” in Vichy, Jan. 8, 1941, 6 p.m. USHMM copy of archives from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France, USHMM RG 43.006M, Reel 16 (“Vichy-Maroc”). 50. Telegram from Noguès (unclear to whom), Rabat, January 15, 1941, USHMM copy of archives from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France, USHMM RG 43.006M, Reel 16 (“Vichy-Maroc”). 51. Telegram from Noguès (unclear to whom), Rabat, May 30, 1941, USHMM copy of archives from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France, USHMM RG 43.006M, Reel 16 (“Vichy-Maroc”). 52. Telegram from Noguès (unclear to whom), Rabat, May 30, 1941. 53. Letter from Tangier, June 10, 1941, to/from unclear, USHMM copy of archives from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France, USHMM RG 43.006M, Reel 16 (“Vichy-Maroc”). 54. “Note pour le cabinet du ministre,” Vichy, June 16, 1941, USHMM copy of archives from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France, USHMM RG 43.006M, Reel 16 (“Vichy-Maroc”). 55. “Note pour le cabinet du ministre,” Vichy, June 16, 1941. 56. “Note pour le cabinet du ministre,” Vichy, June 16, 1941.The Argentinian Embassy, for one, was concerned for its citizens on board the Alsina as demonstrated by a telegram citing this concern from Vichy, June 20, 1941: “L’Ambassade d’Argentine a attiré mon attention sur la situation d’une soixantaine d’Argentins passagers de l’ Alsina qui sont menacés d’internement. En raison de l’intérêt que nous avons, notamment du point de vue de notre ravitaillement, à ménager le Gouvernement argentin, ainsi que l’opinion publique de ce pays, je vous serais reconnaissant de réserver aux passagers en question le traitement le plus favorable que permettent les circonstances, et, en tout cas, de ne pas les envoyer dans un camp de concentration.” 57. l’Humanité, 5 Novembre, 1941. 58. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 30 Juin au 6 Juillet 1940,” Archives nationales d’outre- mer (ANOM), ANOM FR CAOM/ COL/1AFF-POL/1424. 59. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 30 Juin au 6 Juillet 1940.” 60. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 23 au 29 Juin 1940,” ANOM FR CAOM/COL/1AFF-POL/1424. 61. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 14 au 20 Juillet 1940,” ANOM FR CAOM/COL/1AFF-POL/1424. 62. “Bulletin de Renseignements politiques et Economiques du 28 Juillet au 3 Août 1940,” ANOM FR CAOM/COL/1AFF-POL/1424.
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63. “Bulletin de Renseignements politiques et Economiques du 28 Juillet au 3 Août 1940.” 64. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 15 au 21 Septembre 1940,” ANOM FR CAOM/COL/1AFF-POL/1424. 65. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 27 Octobre au 2 Novembre 1940,” ANOM FR CAOM/COL/1AFF-POL/1424. 66. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 3 au 9 Novembre 1940,” ANOM FR CAOM/COL/1AFF-POL/1424. 67. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 29 Août au 4 Septembre 1941,” ANOM FR CAOM/COL/1AFF-POL/1424. 68. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 5 au 12 Septembre 1941.” 69. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 10 au 16 Novembre 1940,” FR CAOM/COL/1AFF-POL/1424. See also: “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques du 14 au 20 Juillet 1940,” FR CAOM COL 1AFF-POL 1424. 70. Letter from Joseph J. Schwartz Vice-Chairman of the JDC to Mme Hélène Benatar, March 17, USHMM Archives, Hélène Benatar papers, copied from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP) RG-68.115, Reel 12 as well as American Friends Service Committee, Casablanca, report by Leslie O. Heath, November 7, 1942, AFSC Box 1 folder 33 of 36. 71. For new work addressing Vichy camps and daily life, see several chapters in Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein’s edited volume, The Holocaust in North Africa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019). 72. Maurice Vanino-Wanikoff, “Le régime des camps en Afrique du Nord,” in Le combattant volontaire juif 1939–1945, edité à l’occasion du 25ème anniversaire de l’union des engages volontaires en anciens combattants juifs 1939–1945 (Paris: Abexpress, 1971): 80–82, esp. 80. 73. Michel Abitbol, Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord sous Vichy (Paris: G. P. Maisonneuve & Larose, 1983), 104–105. 74. Abitbol, Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord sous Vichy, 104. 75. Abitbol, Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord sous Vichy, 104. 76. “Note pour M. le Délégué du Gouvernement en Afrique Française sur les réfugiés et indésirables étrangers au Maroc,” Rabat, January 17, 1941, USHMM copy of archives from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France, USHMM RG 43.006M, Reel 16 (“Vichy-Maroc”). 77. “Note pour M. le Délégué du Gouvernement en Afrique Française sur les réfugiés et indésirables étrangers au Maroc,” Rabat, January 17, 1941. 78. “Note pour M. le Délégué du Gouvernement en Afrique Française sur les réfugiés et indésirables étrangers au Maroc,” Rabat, January 17, 1941. 79. Susan Gilson Miller is completing a book on refugees in Morocco during the Second World War and the work of Hélène Cazès Benatar with that population. The
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working title for this book is Out of Morocco: Nelly Benatar and the Refugee Crisis in North Africa During World War II. 80. Letter from Madame Hélène Cazès Benatar to Monsieur le Contrôleur Civil en Chef de la Région Civile de Casablanca, Casablance, November 14, 1941, USHMM/ Private Collection of Hélène Benatar, copied from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP) (RG-68.115, Reel 1, RG-68.115M.0001.31). 81. Poster advertising a speech by Mme Hélène Benatar, undated, sponsored by the JDC, USHMM/ Private Collection of Hélène Benatar, taken from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP) (RG-68.115, Reel 1, RG-68.115M.0001.41). 82. Poster advertising a speech by Mme Hélène Benatar, undated, sponsored by the JDC. 83. “Curriculum Vitae de 1939 à 1942” of Hélène Cazès Benatar, USHMM/ Private Collection of Hélène Benatar, taken from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish P eople Jerusalem (CAHJP) (RG-68.115, Reel 1, RG-68.115M.0001.53). 84. “Curriculum Vitae de 1939 à 1942” of Hélène Cazès Benatar. 85. File labeled “SULTAN L.R, 12 rue Bouskoura-Casablanca,” which contains a number of pieces of correspondence between Léon René Sultan and Hélène Cazès Benatar. Documents date within February 1942. USHMM REEL 4: Private Collection of Hélène Benatar, taken from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP) (RG-68.115, RG-68.115M.0004.412-15). 86. Letter from Adolf Besmann to Hélène Cazès Benatar, Berguent, January 1, 1943. USHMM REEL 5 Private Collection of Hélène Benatar, taken from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish P eople Jerusalem (CAHJP) (RG-68.115M.0005.386-7). 87. Leslie O. Heath letter to his wife, November 22, 1942, USHMM American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Box 1, folder 29 of 36. 88. Leslie O. Heath letter to his wife, November 22, 1942. 89. Abitbol, Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord sous Vichy, 174. 90. Susan Gilson Miller, A History of Modern Morocco (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 143. 91. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 145. 92. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 145. 93. Jamaâ Baïda, “The American Landing in November 1942: A Turning Point in Morocco’s Contemporary History,” Journal of North African Studies 19, no. 4 (Sept. 2014): 518–523, esp. 519. 94. “The President’s Log at Casablanca, January 14–25, 1943,” in Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1968), 530–532. 95. Baïda, “The American Landing in November 1942,” 519.
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96. Baïda, “The American Landing in November 1942,” 519. 97. “Joint Chiefs of Staff Minutes at White House meeting, Washington, DC, January 7, 1943,” “Secret,” in Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1968), 505–514. 98. “Proceedings of the Conference,” in Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1968), 537–732, 607–608. 99. “Proceedings of the Conference,” 537–732, 607–608. 100. David Stenner, “Did Amrika Promise Morocco’s Independence? The Nationalist Movement, the Sultan, and the Making of the ‘Roosevelt Myth,’ ” Journal of North African Studies 19, no. 4 (Sept. 2014): 524–539, esp. 531. 101. Baïda, “The American Landing in November 1942,” 519. 102. Baïda, “The American Landing in November 1942,” 519. 103. Baïda, “The American Landing in November 1942,” 520. 104. Baïda, “The American Landing in November 1942,” 520. 105. Baïda, “The American Landing in November 1942,” 521–522. 106. Lots of detailed information regarding the Luna Park camp is available in Reels 7 and 10 of USHMM/ Private Collection of Hélène Benatar, taken from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP) (RG-68.115). 107. See, for example, the JDC Casablanca “intake” form dated November 30, 1942 for Pinkas Josef Thumim of Poland, born December 14, 1893, who arrived in Morocco with his wife and 5-year-old child. Thumim was a rabbi by profession, taken in by Mr. Haïm Nahmany in Casablanca. Thumim and his family had been in the camp of Sidi-el-Ayachi. USHMM/ Private Collection of Hélène Benatar, taken from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP) (RG-68.115, Reel 6, RG-68.115M.0006.00000476). 108. Letter from Warren E. Pugh of “Headquarters Western Task Force” to Mme Hélène Cazès Benatar, December 23, 1942, USHMM/ Private Collection of Hélène Benatar, taken from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP) (RG-68.115, Reel 6, RG-68.115M.0006.00000490). 109. See, for example, the “Certificat de Travail” dated March 12, 1943, in Casablanca for a certain Spaniard born in Barcelona named “Guillermo” (no last name listed) who was interned in the Bou Arfa camp and then worked as a printing technician for two newspapers, La Vigie Marocaine and Le Petit Marocain. USHMM/ Private Collection of Hélène Benatar, taken from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP), Reel 7 (RG-68.115.0007.00000601). Reel 7 of this collection has a number of such documents, including another from “Huileries & Savonneries du Maroc” in Casablanca, dated April 16, 1943, and addressed to Mme Benatar; it indicated that this company had hired a number of workers who had been previously interned in
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the forced labor camps of Bou-Arfa and Jerada and was seeking to take in workers from the camp of Oued-Akrouch as well. It seems that a substantial number of former prisoners were employed by the Moroccan soap industry. 110. Letter from G. Meier to Mme Hélène Benatar, Bou-Arfa, May 10, 1943, USHMM Private Collection of Hélène Benatar, taken from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP), Reel 8 (RG-68.115M.0008.00000248). 111. American Friends Service Committee report on “Camps in North Africa,” dated November 7, 1942. American Friends Services Committee files at USHMM Box 1, folder 33/36: Nov. 7, 1942. In same box and series, see also “Camps d’internements au Maroc, dits “Groupes de Travailleurs Étrangers, December 28, 1942. 112. Letter from Walter Brandweiner to HICEM officers in Morocco, Oujda Hospital, December 29, 1942. Mr. Brandweiner wrote the following (translated into French from an unknown language by HICEM officers before passing it along to the AFSC): Je me permets de demander le Comité de bien vouloir me dire s’il y a moyen de me libérer d’un Camp de Travail. J’ai 41 ans et j’ai été du 28 Mai 1938 jusqu’au mois d’Août 1939 dans des Camps de Concentration en Allemagne où j’ai perdu aussi mes parents, il n’y a personne qu s’occupe de moi. Je suis entré en France avec un Visa d’une durée d’un jour avec l’autorisation du Gouvernement français pour combattre comme engagé volontaire contre l’Allemagne. Interné en France dans différents Camps je m’engageais pour la durée de la guerre à la Légion et après malgré étant demobilisé, envoyé pour 18 mois à Bou Arfa. J’ai travaillé à Casablanca comme spécialiste en marroquineries et ai fait des modèles pour les Galeries Lafayettes et Maison Larde. Il y a deux mois la police m’a envoyé—comme illegal—à Bou Arfa Camp Discipline et puis à l’Hopital, alors de l’Hopital à au Prison. Du Prison je fus envoyé à BEN OUKIL et une dizaine de jours plutard à l’Hopital à Oujda où je me trouve encore aujourd’hui. Je souffre encore des blessures reçues aux Camps de Concentration de DACHAU et BUCHENWALDE. Je vous prie de faire quelque chose pour moi et si vite que possible car je souffre maintenant 5 ans et je ne crois pouvoir supporter cela encore longtemps, je suis à la fin de mes forces. USHMM American Friends Services Committee files, Box 2, folder 28/123. 113. “Memorandum for Milton Eisenhower on Refugees,” United States Government Office of War Information, Casablanca, December 21, 1942, USHMM AFSC Box 1, folder 33 of 36. 114. Robert Watson, “Between Liberation(s) and Occupation(s): Reconsidering the Emergence of Maghrebi Jewish Communism, 1942–1945,” Modern Jewish Studies 13, no. 3 (November 2014): 381–398, esp. 392–393. 115. Watson, “Between Liberation(s) and Occupation(s),” 387. 116. Watson, “Between Liberation(s) and Occupation(s),” 387.
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117. Watson, “Between Liberation(s) and Occupation(s),” 387. 118. Watson, “Between Liberation(s) and Occupation(s),” 387. 119. Watson, “Between Liberation(s) and Occupation(s),” 387. 120. Watson, “Between Liberation(s) and Occupation(s),” 387. 121. Watson, “Between Liberation(s) and Occupation(s),” 387. 122. Watson, “Between Liberation(s) and Occupation(s),” 387. 123. François Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century, trans. Deborah Furet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 358. 124. Overlooking, of course, the fateful collapse of the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact of August 23, 1939 (also referred to as the Hitler-Stalin pact). The USSR was, of course, pushed into a more antagonistic stance t oward Germany in 1941 when Hitler decided to attack the USSR in Operation Barbarossa. 125. Jacob Moneta, La politique du Parti communiste français dans la question coloniale, 1920–1963 (Paris: François Maspero, 1971), 149–150. See also Danièle Joly, The French Communist Party and the Algerian War (London: MacMillan, 1991). 126. Fouad Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc: Tome I, 1930–1956 (Paris: Editions l’Harmattan, 1990), 281–282. 127. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 282. 128. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 283. 129. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 243. 130. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 244. 131. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 287. 132. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 291. 133. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 245. 134. “Note de Renseignements, Origine Police,” August 5, 1944, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Parties Politiques de Gauche”). 135. “Note de Renseignements, Origine Police,” August 5, 1944. 136. “Note de Renseignements, Origine Police,” August 5, 1944. 137. “Suite à la note de renseignements de ce jour,” June 25, 1944, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 138. “Résolutions prises par la Conférence du Comité Central du Parti Communiste Marocain,” Casablanca, June 18, 1944, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 139. “Bulletin de Renseignements,” April 4, 1944, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 140. “Renseignements,” Casablanca, June 24, 1944, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Partis Politiques de Gauche”). 141. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 245. 142. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 246. 143. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 246.
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144. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 246. 145. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 246. See also Albert Ayache with René Gallissot and Georges Oved, Maroc des origines à 1956: Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Maghreb (Paris: Les Editions de l’Atelier/Editions Ouvrières, 1998). According to Benseddik (247), the UFM had plans for food programs and elementary education, but neither were successful or perhaps were not even launched. 146. Ayache, Maroc des origines à 1956, 39–40. 147. “Renseignements: Sûreté Régionale de Casablanca,” Casablanca, August 5, 1944, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Paris Politiques de Gauche”). 148. “Renseignements: Sûreté Régionale de Casablanca,” Casablanca, August 14, 1944, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Parties Politiques de Gauche”). 149. “Renseignements: Sûreté Régionale de Casablanca,” Casablanca, September 18, 1944, CADN MAROC DI 319 (“Parties Politiques de Gauche”). 150. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques: du 20 juillet au 5 aout 1944,” ANOM FR CAOM COL 1AFF-POL 1424. 151. “Bulletin de Renseignements Politiques et Economiques: du 20 juillet au 5 aout 1944,” ANOM FR CAOM COL 1AFF-POL 1424. 152. “Bulletin de Renseignements No. 2, février 1945,” ANOM FR CAOM COL 1AFF-POL 1424. 153. “Bulletin de Renseignements No. 2, février 1945.” 154. “Bulletin de Renseignements No. 5, mai 1945,” ANOM FR CAOM COL 1AFF-POL 1424. 155. “Bulletin de Renseignements No. 5, mai 1945.” 156. “Bulletin de Renseignements No. 5, mai 1945.” 157. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 327. 158. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 327. 159. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 327. 160. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 327. 161. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 327. 162. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 328. 163. Ayache, Maroc des origines à 1956. 164. “Ali Yata,” in Ayache, Maroc des origines à 1956, 227–228. 165. Arsalane Chakib, “Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire du PCM durant la période coloniale” (PhD diss., Université Hassan II, Faculté des Sciences Juridiques, Economiques et Socialies, Casablanca, 1985), 93. 166. Chakib, “Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire du PCM durant la période colonial,” 94. 167. Simon Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines (Rabat: Centre Tarik Ibn Ziyad, 2001), 66. 168. Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines, 66.
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169. Marie Redonnet, Entretiens avec Edmond Amran El Maleh (Paris: Éditions La Pensée Sauvage, 2005), 109. 170. Redonnet, Entretiens avec Edmond Amran El Maleh, 110. 171. Redonnet, Entretiens avec Edmond Amran El Maleh, 110. 172. Redonnet, Entretiens avec Edmond Amran El Maleh, 114. 173. Redonnet, Entretiens avec Edmond Amran El Maleh, 116. 174. Serfaty and Elbaz, L’insoumis, 97. 175. Author interview with Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh, August 26, 2013, in Paris. 176. Author interview with Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh, August 26, 2013, in Paris 177. Author interview with Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh, August 26, 2013, in Paris. 178. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 247. 179. Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 247. Indeed, at the tenth PCF Congress from June 26–30, 1945, Maurice Thorez, the PCF secretary general, addressed the colonial question, proclaiming that the PCF’s role was to “create the conditions for a free, confident and brotherly union between the colonial peoples and the French people, this should be the objective of a truly democratic and truly French political activity.” With Algeria more than Morocco in mind, Thorez went on to say, “We have always said that the right to divorce d oesn’t mean the obligation/need to divorce. We have never stopped proving that, for example, the [best] interest of North Africans lies in their union with the p eople of France”; Benseddik, Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc, 248. 180. Letter from “Le Conseilleur du Gouvernement Chérifien” to “Monsieur le Directeur des Affaires Politiques,” February 23, 1944, USHMM Archives, Selected Records from the National Library of Morocco (BNRM), 1864–1999 (RG-81.001M .0020.00000773-779).
Chapter 3
1. Report from “Direction des services de sécurité publique,” Rabat, May 11, 1950. French Protectorate Police report, Rabat 11 May 1950, CADN 1MA/200/324. Suitcase detail contained in protectorate report to the Sultan, Casablanca, April 17, 1950, CADN 1MA/200/327. 2. Protectorate report to the Sultan, Casablanca, April 17, 1950, CADN 1MA/200/327. 3. Copy of PCM (Région de Casablanca du Parti Communiste Marocain) tract in defense of Serfaty: “Un attentant policier vient d’être commis contre un jeune et ardent patriote: Abraham SERFATY, secrétaire de la région de Casablanca du parti communiste marocain,” distributed April 1950, attached to protectorate police file dated April 25, 1950, CADN 1MA/200/327. 4. Copy of PCM (Région de Casablanca du Parti Communiste Marocain) tract in defense of Serfaty: “Un attentant policier vient d’être commis contre un jeune et ardent patriote.”
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5. Report from “Direction des services de sécurité publique,” Rabat, May 11, 1950. French Protectorate Police report, Rabat 11 May 1950, CADN 1MA/200/324. 6. Email communications with Jean and Jacques Lévy, sons of Simon and Incarnation Lévy, December 13, 2015. 7. See works in the bibliography by Rézette, Halstead, and Wyrtzen, among others, for more information on these political parties. 8. Arsalane Chakib, “Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire du PCM durant la période coloniale” (PhD diss., Université Hassan II, Faculté des Sciences Juridiques, Economiques et Socialies, Casablanca, 1985), 118, and Simon Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines (Rabat: Centre Tarik Ibn Ziyad, 2001), 66. Simon Lévy’s published work functions both as primary source text and reference material throughout this book, as he was one of the primary figures active in the PCM. 9. Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines, 66. 10. Edmond Amran El Maleh, Parcours immobile (Paris: Maspero, 1980), 55. 11. Edmond Amran El Maleh, Espoir no. 197, December 4, 1949, CADN DI/ MA/200/323. 12. Robert Montagne et al., Naissance du Prolétariat Marocain: enquête collective exécutée de 1948 à 1950 (Paris: Peyronnet & Cie, 1952). 13. Montagne et al., Naissance du Prolétariat Marocain, 13, 135–136. 14. Montagne et al., Naissance du Prolétariat Marocain, 135. 15. Montagne et al., Naissance du Prolétariat Marocain, 250. 16. Montagne et al., Naissance du Prolétariat Marocain, 285. 17. Montagne et al., Naissance du Prolétariat Marocain, 285–286. 18. Montagne et al., Naissance du Prolétariat Marocain, 287. 19. Allal al-Fassi, The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa, trans. Hazem Zaki Nuseibeh (Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1954), 218. 20. Al-Fassi, The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa, 223. 21. For more on this subject, see Jessica Maya Marglin’s book, Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). 22. Al-Fassi, The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa, 373. 23. Al-Fassi, The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa, 218. 24. See Daniel Schroeter’s classic work on this topic: The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). See also Jonathan Wyrtzen, “Negotiating Morocco’s Jewish Question,” in Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 179–218. 25. “Étude sur les Réformes Possibles à Apporter à l’Organisation des Comités de Communautés Juives au Maroc,” from M. Botbol, inspector of Jewish institutions, 1944 (specific date not included), CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”).
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26. “Note au sujet du problème juif au Maroc,” Janvier 1944, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 27. “Note pour Monsieur Boniface, Directeur des Affaires Politiques, Rabat: ‘Situation psycologique de la jeunesse juive,’ ” undated but most likely 1944, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 28. Numerous documents in CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 29. “NOTE au sujet de la réorganisation des comités des communautés israélites,” June 1944, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). See also documents in CADN 1MA/250/4-8b (“direction de l’intérieur questions juives”). 30. Note on “Activité communiste” from “Le Contrôleur Civil Chef de la Région de Rabat” to “Monsieur le Directeur des Affaires Politiques, Résidence Générale,” Rabat, April 5, 1944, CADN Maroc DI 319. 31. “Note de Renseignements, Secrétariat Politique,” Rabat, March 24, 1947, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“Questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 32. “Note de Renseignements: La situation en milieu israélite, Secrétariat Politique,” Rabat, July 3, 1947, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“Questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 33. Report from La Vigie Marocaine, June 10, 1947, quoted in letter to “Excellence” (the Sultan) from Léon Kubowitzki, New York, July 11, 1947, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“Questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 34. Clipping from La Voix Juive, May 4, 1945, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“Questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 35. For example, reports from the Direction des services de sécurité publique on “Politique Israélite,” Rabat, May 15, 1946, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“Questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 36. Documents in CADN 1MA/250/45a-47 (“Direction de l’interieur, Questions Juives”). 37. Report from General Laparra, Chef de la Région de Fès to Monsieur le Directeur de l’Intérieur, Rabat, Fez, March 24, 1954, CADN 1MA/250/15a-17 (“Questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 38. A number of documents in CADN 1MA/250/15a-17 and CADN 1MA/250/1820 mention such tracts. 39. “Bulletin de Renseignements sur la colonie juive et sur le mouvement sioniste,” January 31, 1948, CADN 1MA/250/18-20 (“Questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 40. Arlette Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain: Images d’un devenir, introductory note by Abraham Serfaty and preface by Yolande Cohen (Paris: S. N. Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner S.A., 2002), 79. As with Simon Lévy’s texts, Arlette Berdugo’s 2002 book is useful as both a primary and secondary source. Given
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that Abraham Serfaty penned introductory remarks for the text, Berdugo’s work clearly benefited from Moroccan leftist support. 41. “Note Pour P.1: Secrétariat Politique,” Rabat, February 14, 1947, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“Questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 42. “Direction des Services de Sécurité Publique: Bulletin de Renseignements sur la Colonie Juive du Maroc et sur le Mouvement Sioniste,” January 31, 1948, CADN 1MA/250/18-20 (“Questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 43. “Direction des Services de Sécurité Publique: Bulletin de Renseignements sur la Colonie Juive du Maroc et sur le Mouvement Sioniste,” January 31, 1948. 44. “Direction des Services de Sécurité Publique: Bulletin de Renseignements sur la Colonie Juive du Maroc et sur le Mouvement Sioniste,” January 31, 1948. 45. Report on “La Vie Politique” by “Direction des Services de Sécurité Publique,” 26 juin 1946, CADN MAROC DI/200/319. 46. Numerous documents in CADN MAROC DI/200/319. 47. “Procès-Verbal” of Albert Pilo, September 3, 1946, CADN MAROC DI/200 /325. 48. “Procès-Verbal” of Albert Pilo, September 3, 1946. 49. “Renseignements,” Rabat, March 14, 1945, CADN 1MA/200/325. 50. “Note de Renseignements,” Rabat, August 30, 1946, CADN Maroc DI 319. 51. Abdesellam Bourquia, “STALINE: l’homme qui a resolu la question nationale,” in HAYAT ECH CHAAB no. 21, in “Direction des services de securite publique, La Vie Politique,’ ” Rabat, January 20, 1950, CADN 1MA/200/324. 52. “LE MANIFESTE DU PARTI COMMUNISTE MAROCAIN POUR UN MAROC UNI ET INDEPENDANT—FRONT NATIONAL MAROCAIN,” August 1946, CADN Maroc DI 319. 53. “Direction des Services de Sécurité Publique: La Vie Politique,” Rabat, September 3, 1946, CADN 1MA/200/325. 54. “Renseignements,” Casablanca, August 29, 1946, CADN 1MA/200/325. 55. “Procès-Verbal” of Albert Pilo, September 3, 1946. 56. “Bulletin de Renseignements,” January 1, 1947, CADN DI/1MA/200/323. 57. “Bulletin de Renseignements,” January 31, 1947, CADN DI/1MA/200/323. 58. Copies of t hese leaflets in “Direction des Services de Sécurité Publique,” Rabat, October 21, 1947. These leaflets were pasted on shutters of the PCM HQ, 25 Rue de la République in Rabat, CADN DI/1MA/200/323. 59. “NOAR: BULLETIN MENSUEL DE L’ASSOCIATION DE LA JEUNESSE JUIVE ‘CHARLES NETTER,’ ” January–February 1947 issue, “LE MELLAH ACCUSE! Voir nos grandes enquêtes à l’intérieur,” CADN 1MA/250/18-20 (“questions juives”). 60. “Direction des services de sécurité publique: la vie politique,” Rabat December 13, 1947, CADN 1MA/250/15a-17 (“direction de l’intérieur questions juives”).
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61. “Contact: M. Isaac DAHAN, président de l’Association des Anciens Elèves de l’Alliance Israélite—conversation du 20 mars 1947 avec M. SECRETAN,” March 21, 1947, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 62. “Contact: M. Isaac DAHAN, président de l’Association des Anciens Elèves de l’Alliance Israélite—entretien du 23 Mars 1947 avec M. SECRETAN,” March 24, 1947, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 63. “Contact: M. Isaac DAHAN, président de l’Association des Anciens Elèves de l’Alliance Israélite—entretien du 23 Mars 1947 avec M. SECRETAN.” 64. “Le Jeune Moghrebin,” June 20, 1947, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 65. “Le Jeune Moghrebin,” July 5, 1947, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 66. “NOTE au sujet de l’article intitulé ‘Nous demandons aux Juifs de montrer leur nationalité marocain—Un juif marocain s’occupe de la fuite des Juifs du Maroc vers la Palestine’ paru sans le no. 3 du 18 Juillet 1947 de l’édition arabe du ‘Jeune Moghrébin,’ ” Rabat, July 25, 1947, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 67. “NOTE au sujet de l’article intitulé ‘Nous demandons aux Juifs de montrer leur nationalité marocain—Un juif marocain s’occupe de la fuite des Juifs du Maroc vers la Palestine’ paru sans le no. 3 du 18 Juillet 1947 de l’édition arabe du ‘Jeune Moghrébin.’ ” 68. Al-Raï al-‘Am, January 12–26, 1948, quoted in Mohammed Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc: 1859–1948 (Rabat: Université Mohammed V, 1994), 672. 69. Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc: 1859–1948, 685. 70. Michael Laskier, Israel and the Maghreb: From Statehood to Oslo (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), 50 71. Laskier, Israel and the Maghreb, 50. 72. Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 676. 73. “Proclamation de Sa Majesté le Sultan” quoted in “Résidence Générale de la République Française au Maroc, Copie de telegramme au depart,” Rabat May 23, 1948, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). See also Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 676–677. 74. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 83. 75. “Parti Communiste Marocain, région de Casablanca: Bulletin Intérieur: Instruisons-Nous Halte la guerre de Palestine,” June 1948, CADN DI/1MA/200/323. 76. “Parti Communiste Marocain, région de Casablanca: Bulletin Intérieur: Instruisons-Nous Halte la guerre de Palestine,” June 1948. 77. Laskier, Israel and the Maghreb, 47. 78. Laskier, Israel and the Maghreb, 47. 79. “Rapport du Bureau de l’Union Général des Syndicats Confédérés du Maroc sur les évènements d’Oujda-Djerrada du 7 juin 1948,” CADN 1MA/250/30-32. See also Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 677–687, on the events in Oujda and Jerada of 1948.
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80. “Rapport du Bureau de l’Union Général des Syndicats Confédérés du Maroc sur les évènements d’Oujda-Djerrada du 7 juin 1948,” CADN 1MA/250/30-32. 81. “Rapport du Bureau de l’Union Général des Syndicats Confédérés du Maroc sur les évènements d’Oujda-Djerrada du 7 juin 1948.” 82. “Le Commissaire principal, chef de la Sûreté Régionale, Oujda à Monsieur le Directeur des Services de Sécurité Publique, Rabat: Object: des évènements survenus à Oujda et Djérada, le 7 Juin 1948,” Oujda, July 6, 1948, CADN 1MA/250/30-32. 83. “Le Commissaire principal, chef de la Sûreté Régionale, Oujda à Monsieur le Directeur des Services de Sécurité Publique.” 84. “Rapport du Bureau de l’Union Général des Syndicats Confédérés du Maroc sur les évènements d’Oujda-Djerrada du 7 juin 1948,” CADN 1MA/250/30-32. 85. PCM tract titled “La Voie de la Liberté c’est l’union et la lutte sur le sol national,” June 14, 1948, CADN DI/1MA/200/323. 86. PCM tract titled “La Voie de la Liberté c’est l’union et la lutte sur le sol national,” June 14, 1948. 87. “Le Commissaire principal, chef de la Sûreté Régionale, Oujda à Monsieur le Directeur des Services de Sécurité Publique.” 88. Laskier, Israel and the Maghreb, 53. 89. Letter from the “Comité de la communauté israélite Oujda” to the Resident General, July 28, 1948, CADN 1MA/250/30-32. This number varies among sources to as high at forty-six, but all agree it is somewhere in the forties. 90. “Jeunes Juifs de France et de l’Afrique du Nord la Patrie Vous Appelle,” attached to “Renseignement,” Casablanca September 18, 1948, CADN 1MA/250/15a-17 (“direction de l’intérieur questions juives”). 91. Author interview with Fahd Yata (Ali Yata’s son), February 14, 2014, in Casablanca. 92. Author interview with Fahd Yata, February 14, 2014. 93. Author interview with Fahd Yata, February 14, 2014. 94. “Il est signalé” report on leftists, their names, and activities, April 15, 1949, Taza, discusses Moroccan Jews selling Espoir, CADN DI/1MA/200/323. See also report, “Direction des services de sécurité publique, La Vie Politique,” Rabat, June 16, 1949: “Les nommés LAMOUREUX, AHMED BEN EL MAHDI, MAATI BEN HADJ YOUSFI et AYACHE, ont vendu le 6 juin, une vingtaine d’exemplaires du journal ‘Espoir.’ Les acheteurs ont été surtout des boutiquiers juifs.” CADN DI/1MA/200/323. 95. “Direction des services de sécurité publique: La Vie Politique,” Oujda, February 24, 1950, CADN 1MA/200/327. 96. “Direction des services de sécurité publique: La Vie Politique Rabat,” Oujda- Fez, March 18, 1950, CADN 1MA/200/324. 97. “Direction des services de sécurité publique: La Vie Politique,” Rabat April 26, 1950, CADN 1MA/250/45a-47 (“Direction de l’intérieur, Questions Juives”).
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98. PCM propaganda from Casablanca attached to “Direction des services de sécurité publique: La Vie Politique,” Rabat, May 3, 1950, CADN 1MA/200/327. 99. PCM propaganda from Casablanca attached to “Direction des services de sécurité publique: La Vie Politique,” Rabat, May 3, 1950. 100. Report in “Direction des services de sécurité publique: La Vie Politique,” Rabat May 19, 1950, CADN 1MA/250/24-26a. 101. “Direction des services de sécurité publique: La Vie Politique,” Rabat May 19, 1950. For clarity’s sake, Stalin was not Jewish; Lenin did have one Jewish grandparent, but it is highly unlikely Lenin was ever aware of this Jewish background, as it was not revealed u ntil well a fter Lenin’s death. What is more interesting are the reasons b ehind such persistent fascination with their supposed Jewishness, which Yohanan Petrovsky- Shtern explores in Lenin’s Jewish Question (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). 102. “Cours Politiques du PCM Région de Casablanca,” July 17, 1950, PCM, CADN 1MA/200/324. 103. “Le Contrôleur Civil Chef de la Région de Casablanca à Monsieur le Directeur de l’Intérieur, Section Politique, Rabat,” on the topic of “Association ‘France- URSS,’ ” Casablanca, March 7, 1951, CADN 1MA/200/328. 104. PCM tract, “Ali Yata est arrêté: Halte à la Répression,” July 15, 1950, CADN 1MA/200/327. 105. “Direction de l’intérieur: Le 16 octobre à 10h20, le tribunal civil place sous la présidence de M. GENARD, s’est réuni pour se prononcer sur la nationalité d’ALI YATA et FERHAT MOHAMED,” Casablanca, October 18, 1950, CADN 1MA/200/324. 106. “Direction de l’intérieur: Le 16 octobre à 10h20, le tribunal civil place sous la présidence de M. GENARD.” In and of itself, this legal precedent is suspicious, as Amzellag is a common Moroccan Jewish surname and unlikely to belong to a Turkish Jew; it is possible the meaning of “Turkish” h ere extends to formerly Ottoman parts of North Africa. 107. “Direction de l’intérieur,” Casablanca, October 31, 1950, CADN 1MA/200/324. 108. See files in CADN 1MA/200/324 and CADN 1MA/200/327. 109. “Note de Renseignements,” Casablanca, January 11, 1951, CADN 1MA/200/324. 110. “Direction de l’intérieur,” Casablanca, February 13, 1951: “Le 10 février, de 16 à 18 heures, la section casablancaise de l’union des femmes a tenu une réunion au local ‘FRANCE-URSS,’ rue Sarah Bernhardt,” CADN 1MA/200/328. 111. “Note pour Monsieur le Résident Général,” Rabat, April 20, 1951, CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 112. “Union contre les Assassins de Nos Enfants: À tous les Juifs Marocains de Casablanca,” November 13, 1951, attached to “Direction de l’intérieur,” November 25, 1951, CADN 1MA/200/327. 113. “Union contre les Assassins de Nos Enfants: À tous les Juifs Marocains de Casablanca,” November 13, 1951.
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114. “Extraits du Procès Verbal de la Séance de l’Executif du Congrès Juif Mondial qui s’est tenue a New York le 18 décembre 1951,” CADN 1MA/250/15a-17 (“direction de l’intérieur questions juives”). 115. “Conseil des communautés israélites du Maroc, Rabat, Congrès 1952: Motions,” CADN 1MA/250/1-3 (“questions juives, direction de l’intérieur”). 116. Article in al-Bayane no. 908, December 9, 1977, PCF archives Seine-Saint- Denis, 67 J/ 80. 117. “L’exil et le Royaume: Les suites de l’affaire Serfaty,’’ in Jeune Afrique, no. 1604, September 25–October 1, 1991, PCF archives Seine-Saint-Denis, 357J/42. Their father had worked in Brazil along with a wave of other Moroccan Jewish workers in the rubber industry in the early twentieth century. Regarding the legal complications of capitulations and extraterritoriality, see Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth C entury (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 118. Chakib, “Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire du PCM durant la période colonial,” 262. 119. Susan Gilson Miller, A History of Modern Morocco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 150. 120. Zaki M’Barek, Le Mouvement de libération marocain et l’indépendance inachevée, 1948–1958 (Rabat: Éditions & Impressions Bouregreg, 2009), 175. 121. Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines, 66. 122. Simon Levy documentary, part 2, 9:17–21:33, on Moroccan television, “Al- Oula”—al-Shahid al-Maghribi (“the Moroccan Witness”) ma’aa Shim’aoun Lévy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI9ihglfSgE (accessed June 22, 2019). 123. Chakib, “Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire du PCM durant la période colonial,” 247. 124. Chakib, “Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire du PCM durant la période colonial,” 274. 125. Chakib, “Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire du PCM durant la période colonial,” 275, 278. 126. In M’Barek, Le Mouvement de libération marocain et l’indépendance inachevée, 47. 127. M’Barek, Le Mouvement de libération marocain et l’indépendance inachevée, 77. 128. This is an example of a pro-Zionist Judeo-Arabic tract emphasizing the risk of violence in the mellah and how it is a religious duty to go to Palestine; Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic tracts w ere widely distributed in late December 1952 in Casablanca and Meknes. CADN 1MA/250-18-20 (“Direction de l’Interieur Questions Juives”). 129. Michael M. Laskier, “The Instability of Moroccan Jewry and the Moroccan Press in the First Decade A fter Independence,” Jewish History 1, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 39–54, esp. 39.
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130. Maud Mandel, Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 38–39. 131. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 153. 132. Chris Silver is working on a book manuscript tentatively titled The Voice of the Maghrib: Jews, Muslims, and M usic in Twentieth C entury North Africa, which emerges out of his dissertation, “Jews, Music-Making, and the Twentieth Century Maghrib” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2017). 133. La Voix des Communautés, numéro 56, Novembre 1955, http://www.jpress.nli.org .il/Olive/APA/NLI/? action=tab&tab=browse&pub=VDC&_ ga=2. 253139599. 785659390 .1562870547-682435174.1562870547#panel=document (accessed July 11, 2019). 134. La Voix des Communautés, numéro 56, Novembre 1955. 135. “Traduction d’une émission radiophonique de langue arabe, Radio Damas,” February 23, 1955, “Comment Israél traite les Juifs d’Orient,” CADN D1/1MA/250/24-26a. 136. On this point see Orit Bashkin’s Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017) and Bryan K. Roby’s The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle, 1948–1966 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2015). 137. “Traduction d’une émission radiophonique de langue arabe, Radio Damas,” April 4, 1955, “Juifs du Maghreb arabe prenez garde à Israël,” CADN D1/1MA/250/24-26a. 138. “P. E. Gilbert Ambassadeur de France en Israel à Son Excellence Monsieur Pierre Mendes-France Président du Conseil et Ministre des Affaires Etrangères Paris,” Tel Aviv, August 9, 1954, CADN 1MA/250/15a-17. 139. “Extrait d’un Article de RABI, paru dans le journal ‘la Voix des Communautés’ no. 50, Avril 1955,” CADN 1MA/250/3 (“Questions juives”). 140. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 150–151. 141. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 152. 142. Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines, 136. 143. Quoted in Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc: Des origins à nos jours, 181. 144. Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 181–183. 145. Laskier, Israel and the Maghreb, 73. 146. “El Wifaq,” March 15, 1956, CADN 1MA/250/30-32. 147. Laskier, Israel and the Maghreb, 73. 148. Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines, 50. 149. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 81. 150. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 81–82. 151. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 82. 152. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 81–82. 153. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 82.
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154. Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines, 67. 155. France-Pays Arabes, December 1961. Quoted in Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 89. 156. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 90. 157. Clipping from L’écho du Maroc, January 6, 1956, “L’avenir du juif au Maroc: thème d’une conférence organisée hier sous la présidence de S.A.I. Moulay Hassan,” CADN 1MA/250/3 (“Questions juives”). 158. Clipping from L’écho du Maroc, January 6, 1956, “L’avenir du juif au Maroc: thème d’une conférence organisée hier sous la présidence de S.A.I. Moulay Hassan.” 159. Report on “Milieux Israélites” attached to report dated January 19, 1956, CADN 1MA/250/3 (“Questions juives”). 160. “Note de renseignements: Object: Soirée Gala organisée par l’Association ‘El Wifaq,’ ” Rabat, February 13, 1956, CADN 1MA/250/30-32. 161. “Note de renseignements: Object: Soirée Gala organisée par l’Association ‘El Wifaq,’ ” Rabat, February 13, 1956. 162. “El-Wifaq/l’Entente: Bulletin spécial, prix 100 frs, 1er juillet 1956–30 septembre.” Many thanks to Aomar Boum for sharing this source, which he in turn received from Daniel Schroeter. The Wifaq bulletins come from the Raphael Benazeraf Collection, File 13, Yad Ben-Zvi, The Documentation Center of North African Jews during WWII. 163. “Note: Réunion du Comité ‘El Wifaq,’ ” Marrakesh, February 29, 1956, CADN 1MA/250/30-32. 164. “Extrait d’un article paru dans le journal ‘Er-Rai el-Am’: ‘Cadima,’ ” February 22, 1956, CADN 1MA/250-18-20 (“Direction de l’Interieur Questions Juives”). 165. On this point, see Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 176–178. 166. Quoted in Robert Assaraf, Juifs du Maroc à travers le monde: Émigration et identité retrouvée (Paris: Éditions Suger/Suger Press, 2008), 58. 167. Quoted in Assaraf, 58. 168. See Jonathan Wyrtzen, Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 217–218. 169. Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines, 49. 170. Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines, 134. 171. Titled “Appel du WIFAQ à la Nation Marocaine.” Many thanks to Emily Gottreich for sharing this document, which she in turn got from Daniel Schroeter. Schroeter received his copy from Paul Dahan of the Centre de la Culture Judéo- Marocaine (CCJM) in Brussels, Belgium. A copy of this call is available on the CCJM’s website: judaisme-marocain.org/recherche. 172. “Appel du WIFAQ à la Nation Marocaine.” 173. Bou‘Azza Ben‘Achir, Edmond Amran El Maleh: Cheminements d’une écriture (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997), 19. 174. El Maleh, Parcours immobile, 55.
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175. El Maleh, Parcours immobile, 103–104. 176. Marie Redonnet, Entretiens avec Edmond Amran El Maleh (Paris: Éditions La Pensée Sauvage, 2005), 73. See also Ronni Scharfman, “The Other’s Other: The Moroccan Jewish Trajectories of Edmond Amran El Maleh,” Yale French Studies 1, no. 82 (1993): 135–145. 177. See Scharfman, “The Other’s Other,” 135–145. 178. Abraham Serfaty and Mikhaël El Baz, L’Insoumis: Juifs, Marocains, et rebelles (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 2001), 100. 179. There is a wide body of literature on the topic of Moroccan Jewish migration. See work by Yaron Tsur, Michael Laskier, and Aviad Moreno for analysis of migrant networks and motivations. 180. “Résidence générale de la République Française au Maroc, Région de Casablanca à Monisieur le directeur de l’intérieur, Rabat,” May 17, 1949, CADN DI/1MA/200/323.
Chapter 4
Epigraph: Eric Laurent, Hassan II: La mémoire d’un roi (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1993), 104. 1. Author interview with Fahd Yata, February 14, 2014, in Casablanca. 2. Email exchange with Jacques and Jean Lévy, January 13 and 14, 2020. 3. Author interview with Incarnation Lévy and Jean Lévy, December 23, 2013, Casablanca, as well as email exchange between author and Jean and Jacques Lévy, December 13, 2015. It was common practice for “fraternal” Communist parties to invite comrades for such vacations. 4. See, for example, work by Susan Slyomovics on human rights in Morocco. Tahar Ben Jelloun has written a number of fictionalized accounts of brutality in Moroccan prisons. 5. Michael M. Laskier, “The Emigration of Jews from the Arab World,” in A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day, ed. Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013): 415–433, esp. 421. 6. Copy of “Speech of the King at the Cabinet Investiture, May 26, 1960,” translated by Robert W. Chase, attached to report sent to DC by Embassy Rabat, June 17 1960, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State; Central Decimal File, 1960–63, from 771.00/1-360 to 771.00/9-660, Box 1999. 7. Susan Gilson Miller, A History of Modern Morocco (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 156. Classic works on the monarchy’s segmentation politics, policy of delaying elections, constitutional crises, and makhzan suppression of the left during the 1960s and 1970s include John Waterbury, The Commander of the Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elite—A Study in Segmented Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970) and Maâti Monjib, La monarchie marocaine et la lutte pour le pouvoir: Hassan II face à l’opposition nationale, de l’indépendance à l’état d’exception (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992).
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8. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 156. 9. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 164. 10. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 156. 11. Foreign Service Dispatch from Rabat to DC, February 1, 1960, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal File, 1960–1963, from 771.00/12-462 to 771.00 (w)/1-561, Box 2001. 12. Author interview with Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh, August 26, 2013, in Paris. 13. Author interview with Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh, August 26, 2013. 14. Mostafa Bouaziz, Aux Origines de la Koutla Démocratique (Casablanca: Université Hassan II Aïn Chok, 1997), 112. 15. “EN AVANT POUR UNE CONSTITUTION DEMOCRATIQUE,” from Simon Lévy’s private papers, courtesy of the Lévy family. 16. “EN AVANT POUR UNE CONSTITUTION DEMOCRATIQUE.” 17. Copies of La Nouvelle Garde, founded in 1960, Simon Lévy’s private papers. 18. François Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century, trans. Deborah Furet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 487. 19. Furet, The Passing of an Illusion, 463. 20. Airgram, May 9, 1963, from AmConsul Casablanca to Department of State, subject: “The Moroccan Jewish Community and the Parliamentary Election,” NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, 1963, from POL 2-1 JOINT WEEKAS MOR to POL 14 ELECTIONS MOR, Box 3990. 21. Airgram, May 9, 1963, from AmConsul Casablanca to Department of State, subject: “The Moroccan Jewish Community and the Parliamentary Election.” 22. Airgram, May 9, 1963, from AmConsul Casablanca to Department of State, subject: “The Moroccan Jewish Community and the Parliamentary Election.” 23. “APPEL aux Citoyens Marocains Israélites,” from Simon Lévy’s private papers. 24. “APPEL aux Citoyens Marocains Israélites.” 25. “APPEL aux Citoyens Marocains Israélites.” 26. “APPEL aux Citoyens Marocains Israélites.” The list includes “Doctor Jo BENDELAC, former member of the Community Committee; Léon ELMALLEM, legal license, former member of the Community Committee; Marc SEBBAH, teacher, former vice-president of the Community Committee; Ralph BENAROSH MAOUDY, lawyer; Sam BENSOUSAN, employee [not specified in what]; Jacques COHEN, commercial representative; Isaac LEVY, teacher; Simon LEVY, teacher; Isaac MELLOUL, middle- school director; René OHANA, legal intern; Abraham SERFATY, engineer; Evelyne SERFATY, secretary.” 27. “Morocco: General Political Situation,” November 11, 1960, Central Zionist Archives (CZA), Z6/1885 (General J-R, 1961). 28. Airgram, from Amconsul Casablanca to Department of State, May 25, 1963, subject: “Defeated Jewish Parliamentary Candidate Comments on the Elections,” NARA
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RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, 1963, from: POL 2-1 JOINT WEEKAS MOR to: POL 14 ELECTIONS MOR, Box 3990. 29. Airgram, from Amconsul Casablanca to Department of State, May 25, 1963, subject: “Defeated Jewish Parliamentary Candidate Comments on the Elections.” 30. Airgram, from Amconsul Casablanca to Department of State, May 25, 1963, subject: “Defeated Jewish Parliamentary Candidate Comments on the Elections.” 31. Memorandum of Conversation, May 19, 1963, dinner, participants: Meyer TOLEDANO, Defeated Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (UNFP) Candidate and R. Peter SPICER, L abor Officer, American Consulate General, Casablanca, and Mrs. SPICER, at the Residence of Mr. R. Peter Spicer, Casablanca, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, 1963, from POL 2-1 JOINT WEEKAS MOR to POL 14 ELECTIONS MOR, Box 3990. 32. Airgram, November 15, 1963, from AmEmbassy Rabat to Department of State, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, 1963, from POL 2-1 JOINT WEEKAS MOR to POL 14 ELECTIONS MOR, Box 3990. 33. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 167. 34. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 168. 35. Author interview with Jean Lévy, December 22, 2013, in Casablanca. 36. Foreign Service Dispatch, from AmConGen, Casablanca, August 3, 1960, to DC, subject: Fifth Annual Congress of the Union Nationale des Etudiants Marocains, took place in Casablanca July 16–20, 1960, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State; Central Decimal File, 1960–63, from 771.00/1-360 to 771.00/9-660, Box 1999. 37. See examples of La Nouvelle Garde, in Simon Lévy’s private papers. For this point I am refereeing the February–March 1963 edition of La Nouvelle Garde: Bulletin des lycées et collèges de Casablanca. 38. La Nouvelle Garde no. 9, December 1962, in Simon Lévy’s private papers. 39. Bouaziz, Aux Origines de la Koutla Démocratique, 43. 40. Kenza Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973: Espoirs de révolution culturelle au Maroc. Préface Abdellatif Laâbi (Casablanca: Éditions du Sirocco, 2013), 30. 41. Bouaziz, Aux Origines de la Koutla Démocratique, 143. 42. Bouaziz, Aux Origines de la Koutla Démocratique, 143–144. 43. Laurent, Hassan II, 46. 44. Laurent, Hassan II, 23. 45. Bouaziz, Aux Origines de la Koutla Démocratique, 144. 46. Bouaziz, Aux Origines de la Koutla Démocratique, 144. 47. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 56. 48. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 56. 49. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 56.
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50. Arlette Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain: Images d’un devenir (Paris: S. N. Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner S.A., 2002), 81–83. 51. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 84–85. 52. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 87. 53. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 92. 54. Michael M. Laskier, “The Instability of Moroccan Jewry and the Moroccan Press in the First Decade a fter Independence,” Jewish History 1, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 39–54, esp. 42. 55. “CONFIDENTIAL, to: Mr. Marc Turkow, Dr. Vojtech Winterstein, Dr. Nalia Ross; from: Paul W. Freedman; subject: Morocco,” March 24, 1961, CZA Z6/1544 (WJC NYC 1961). 56. “CONFIDENTIAL, to: Mr. Marc Turkow, Dr. Vojtech Winterstein, Dr. Nalia Ross; from: Paul W. Freedman; subject: Morocco.” 57. Telegram from American Embassy in Rabat to Secretary of State in Washington, DC, January 13, 1961, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, 1960–1963, from 771.00/1-461 to 771.00/7-562, Box 2000. 58. “NON AU SIONISME! NON A L’ANTI-SEMITISME!” signed Abdallah Layachi, Casablanca, January 25, 1961. Simon Lévy’s personal papers. 59. Author interview with André Azoulay in his office in the Rabat Royal Palace complex, December 24, 2013. I am very grateful to Aomar Boum for arranging my meeting with Azoulay. 60. “CONFIDENTIAL, to: Mr. Marc Turkow, Dr. Vojtech Winterstein, Dr. Nalia Ross; from: Paul W. Freedman; subject: Morocco,” March 24, 1961, CZA Z6/1544 (WJC NYC 1961). 61. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 92, 62. Agnès Bensimon, Hassan II et les juifs: Histoire d’une émigration secrète (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1991), 14. Bensimon reports that in the 1980s, the Begin administration made a national holiday of the Pisces sinking, on 23 Tevet (corresponding to early January in the Gregorian calendar), “the day of remembrance for the clandestine networks from North Africa” (17). 63. “CONFIDENTIAL, to: Mr. Marc Turkow, Dr. Vojtech Winterstein, Dr. Nalia Ross; from: Paul W. Freedman; subject: Morocco.” 64. “NON AU SIONISME! NON A L’ANTI-SEMITISME!” 65. Simon Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines (Rabat: Centre Tarik Ibn Ziyad, 2001), 51. 66. Personal papers of Ralph Benarrosh, consulted during interview in Paris with him on August 26, 2013. Also in personal papers of Simon Lévy. The list of printed signatories is as follows (as the petition circulated, it garnered additional handwritten signatures referenced for the 250 number): “Abraham SERFATY, Ingénieur Civil des Mines à Rabat; Joseph LEVY, Fonctionnaire du Ministère de la Fonction Publique à
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Rabat; Roger COHEN, Chargé de Mission à la BNDE à Rabat; Charles ELALOUF, Docteur en Médecine à Rabat; David COHEN, Docteur en Médecine à Khemisset; Jo BENDELLAC, Docteur en Médecine à Khouribga; Samuel BENAROCH, Directeur à l’Office Chérifien des Phosphates à Rabat; Evelyne SERFATY, Secrétaire à Casablanca; Ralph BENAROSH MAOUDI, Avocat à Casablanca; René OHANA, Attaché au Parquet à Casablanca; Judah AZUELOS, Adjoint au Chef du Service des Finance Extérieures à Rabat; Léon ELMALLEM, Inspecteur des Finances à Rabat; Simon LEVY, Professeur à Casablanca; Amram [Edmond] ELMALEH, Professeur à Casablanca; Isaac LEVY, Professeur à Casablanca; Elie GABAY, Directeur d’Ecole à Casablanca; San ZRIHEN, Instituteur specialize à Casablanca; Huguette RUIMY, Institutrice à Casablanca; Albert OIKNINE, Agent de la SMD, Membre de la Fédération de l’Eclairage à Casablanca; Armand ATTAR, Ingénieur à Casablanca; Meyer ALBO, Inspecteur des Télécommunications à Casablanca; Samuel AMAR, Ingénieur à Casablanca; Alain FYMAT, Ingénieur à Casablanca; Jacques SEBAG, Ingénieur à Casablanca.” 67. Email exchange with Jean and Jacques Lévy, December 13, 2015. 68. Laskier, “The Instability of Moroccan Jewry and the Moroccan Press,” 45. 69. Laskier, “The Instability of Moroccan Jewry and the Moroccan Press,” 45. 70. Laskier, “The Instability of Moroccan Jewry and the Moroccan Press,” 46. 71. Laskier, “The Instability of Moroccan Jewry and the Moroccan Press,” 47. 72. Laskier, “The Instability of Moroccan Jewry and the Moroccan Press,” 48. 73. AL MOUKAFIH, December 22, 1961, Simon Lévy’s personal papers. 74. AL MOUKAFIH, December 22, 1961. 75. Author interview with Jean Lévy, December 22, 2013, in Casablanca. 76. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 92. 77. Letter from Eleanor Roosevelt to King Muhammad V, November 11, 1959, CZA Z6/1431. 78. Letter from Paul W. Freedman to WJC members, March 24, 1961, CZA Z6/1544. 79. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 92. 80. Telegram, Feb. 27, 1961, from Rabat to Secretary of State, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, 1960–1963, from 771.00/1-461 to 771.00/7-562, Box 2000. 81. Telegram, Feb. 28, 1961, from Rabat to Secretary of State, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, 1960–1963, from 771.00/1-461 to 771.00/7-562, Box 2000. 82. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 97. 83. In Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 98. 84. In Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 98. 85. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 98–99.
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86. La Voix des Communautés: Organe mensuel de la fédération des communautés israélites du Maroc, no. 15, May–June 1962. Accessed via the Historical Jewish Press digital project of Tel Aviv University, http://www.jpress.nli.org.il/Olive/APA/NLI/?action =t ab&tab= b rowse&pub= V DC& _g a= 2 .22458427.1 29404482 .1562968967 -6 82435174 .1562870547#panel=document (accessed July 12, 2019). 87. In Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 99. 88. In Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 99. 89. In Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 216. 90. Quoted in Aomar Boum, Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), 116. 91. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, “They Should Act with Similar Strength: El Romance de Sol, the Virgin Tsadekket Venerated for Her Stance Against Women’s Intermarriage,” unpublished manuscript, 2012, 12. See also Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, “De tu boca a los cielos: Jewish Women’s Songs in Northern Morocco as Oracles of Communal Holiness,” Hespéris-Tamuda LI, no. 3 (2016): 239–261. 92. Paloma Elbaz, “They Should Act with Similar Strength,” 12. 93. Paloma Elbaz, “They Should Act with Similar Strength,” 13–14. 94. Boum, Memories of Absence, 117. 95. Boum, Memories of Absence, 117. 96. Boum, Memories of Absence, 118; and Laskier, “The Instability of Moroccan Jewry and the Moroccan Press,” 44. 97. Laskier, “The Instability of Moroccan Jewry and the Moroccan Press,” 45. 98. “LETTRE OUVERTE A MESSIEURS MARC SEBBAH ET DAVID AZOULAY,” Casablanca, September 25, 1961, signed Ralph BENAROSH, Roger COHEN, Joseph LEVY, Simon LEVY and Abraham SERFATY, Simon Lévy’s personal papers. 99. “LETTRE OUVERTE A MESSIEURS MARC SEBBAH ET DAVID AZOULAY,” Casablanca, September 25, 1961. 100. “LETTRE OUVERTE A MESSIEURS MARC SEBBAH ET DAVID AZOULAY,” Casablanca, September 25, 1961. 101. Foreign Service Dispatch, February 15, 1962, from Embassy Rabat to DC, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal File, 1960–63, from 771.00(W)/8-361 to 771.11/1-460, Box 2002. 102. Foreign Service Dispatch, February 15, 1962, from Embassy Rabat to DC, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State. 103. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 99. 104. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 100. 105. In Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 100. 106. In Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 106. 107. Berdugo, Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain, 108.
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108. Lévy, Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines, 51. 109. “COMMUNIQUE,” July 1967, Simon Lévy’s personal papers. 110. “COMMUNIQUE,” July 1967. 111. “COMMUNIQUE,” July 1967. 112. Quoted in Boum, Memories of Absence, 118. 113. Boum, Memories of Absence, 118–119. 114. Boum, Memories of Absence, 119. 115. Letter from Max Melamet to Mr. André Jabès (both of the World Jewish Congress), February 19, 1968, CZA Z6/1180/2. 116. Letter from André Jabès to Mr. J. Barnett (both of WJC), January 19, 1968, CZA Z6/1180/2. 117. Letter from André Jabès to Mr. J. Barnett (both of WJC), January 19, 1968. 118. “Memorandum from the American Jewish Congress,” October 7, 1970, CZA Z6/1180/2. 119. Letter from André Jabès to Mr. R. Spanien, July 8, 1964, CZA Z6/1165. 120. Letter from André Jabès to Mr. R. Spanien, July 8, 1964. 121. “MOROCCO: General Political Situation,” November 11, 1960, CZA Z6/1885. 122. “MOROCCO: General Political Situation,” November 11, 1960. 123. Author interview with Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh, Monday August 26, 2013, in Paris. 124. Author interview with Simon Lévy, May 7, 2010, in Casablanca. 125. Letter from Dr. Nahum Goldmann to Golda Meir, June 30, 1970, CZA Z6/2396. 126. Letter from Dr. Nahum Goldmann to Dr. Natan Lerner, March 30, 1973, CZA Z6/2441. 127. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 169–170. 128. Author interview with Raphaël (Ralph) Benarrosh, August 26, 2013, in Paris. 129. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 56. For more information on Souffles/al- Anfas and anthology of translated pieces, see Olivia Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio, eds., Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). 130. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 23. 131. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 17. 132. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 17. 133. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 23. 134. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 49. 135. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 49–50. 136. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 50. 137. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 51. See also Ali Yata, Luttes derrière les barreaux (Casablanca: Editions Al Bayane, 1996), 12.
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138. Document in Yata, Luttes derrière les barreaux, 396–397, dated October 11, 1963, printed in Casablanca. 139. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 51. 140. Yata, Luttes derrière les barreaux, 451–453. 141. “DECLARATION DE ALI YATA A L’AUDIENCE FINALE DE LA COUR D’APPEL DE RABAT, LE 14 JANVIER 1970,” Simon Lévy’s personal papers. 142. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 63. 143. Sefrioui, La revue Souffles 1966–1973, 116. 144. Paloma Elbaz, “They Should Act with Similar Strength,” 144. 145. Serfaty, Abraham, and Mikhaël Elbaz, L’insoumis: Juifs, Marocains et rebelles (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2001), 213. 146. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 175. 147. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco 175. 148. Airgram from AmEmbassy Rabat to Dept of State July 17, 1971, subject: The Moroccan Coup Attempt of July 10, 1971, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Political & Defense, from POL 15-1 MOR to POL 23-9 MOR, Box 2487. 149. Airgram Rabat to Dept State, July 31, 1971, subject: Coup Attempt: Where did the King Hide? NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Political & Defense, from POL 15-1 MOR to POL 23-9 MOR, Box 2487. 150. Airgram from Amconsul Casablanca to Dept of State, September 28, 1971, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Political & Defense, from POL 15-1 MOR to POL 23-9 MOR, Box 2487. 151. Airgram from Amconsul Casablanca to Dept of State, September 28 1971, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Political & Defense. 152. Will D. Swearingen, Moroccan Mirages: Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions, 1912– 1986 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 177. 153. Swearingen, Moroccan Mirages, 177. 154. Airgram from AmEmbassy Rabat to Dept of State, August 19, 1972, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Political and Defense, from POL 2-2 MOR to POL 7 MOR, Box 2485. 155. Malika Oufkir, General Oufkir’s daughter, wrote a compelling memoir with the help of Michèle Fitoussi on this period and the family’s subsequent time in the prisons of Hassan II; La Prisonnière (Paris: Grasset, 1999). 156. Airgram from Rabat to Dept State Jan. 19, 1973, NARA RG 59 General Rec ords of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Political and Defense, from POL 2-2 MOR to POL 7 MOR, Box 2485.
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157. Airgram from AmConsul Casablanca to Dept of State October 3, 1972, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Political and Defense, from POL 2-2 MOR to POL 7 MOR, Box 2485. 158. Airgram from AmEmbassy Rabat to Dept of State, October 12, 1973, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Political and Defense, from POL 2-2 MOR to POL 7 MOR, Box 2485. 159. Airgram from AmConsul Casablanca to Dept State Feb. 27, 1973, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Politi cal and Defense, from POL 2-2 MOR to POL 7 MOR, Box 2485. 160. Airgram from AmEmbassy Rabat to Dept of State, September 26, 1973, NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Political and Defense, from POL 2-2 MOR to POL 7 MOR, Box 2485. 161. Airgram from Rabat to Dept State Jan. 19, 1973 and Airgram from AmEmbassy Rabat to Dept State Feb. 23, 1973, both in NARA RG 59 General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, Political and Defense, from POL 2-2 MOR to POL 7 MOR, Box 2485. 162. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 169. 163. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 169. 164. Miller, A History of Modern Morocco, 187. 165. Abdeltif Menouni, Le Syndicalisme ouvrier au Maroc (Casablanca: Les Editions Maghrébines, 1976), 109. 166. Bouaziz, Aux Origines de la Koutla Démocratique, 152. 167. Susan Slyomovics, The Performance of H uman Rights in Morocco, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 21. 168. Yata, Luttes derrière les barreaux, 476. 169. File 35 7 J43 in the Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis has ample evidence of this material, spreading across continents. 170. See Bryan K. Roby, The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle, 1948–1966 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015) and Orit Bashkin, Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017).
Chapter 5
Epigraph: Letter from A. Kaplan and Feder to Mr. P. M. Klutznick, Dr. N. Goldmann, and Dr. G. M. Riegner, “Congrès Juifs Mondial, Département des Affaires Internationales,” Evian, July 21, 1978, CZA Z6/2523 (Europe Varia 1977). 1. This number is according to internal Moroccan state reports. 2. There are, of course, many parallel trajectories of political opposition and social struggle of interest during this period, including wider leftist opposition, the Amazigh (Berber) movement for increased social and political rights, and the women’s movement.
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The monarchy employed (and continues to employ) similar methods of cooptation as to that of the PCM/PLS/PPS and the Jews within it. 3. James Benjamin Loeffler’s Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018) offers a sophisticated analysis of international Jewish figures and the development of modern human rights discourse and multilateral organizations. See also Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) and Lynn Hunt, Inventing H uman Rights: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007). 4. Marguerite Rollinde, “La Marche Verte: un nationalism royal aux couleurs de l’Islam,” Le Mouvement social, no. 202 ( Jan.–Mar. 2003): 133–151, esp. 137. 5. Rollinde, “La Marche Verte,” 144. 6. Rollinde, “La Marche Verte,” 140. 7. Rollinde, “La Marche Verte,” 141. 8. David Seddon, “Morocco and the Western Sahara,” Review of African Political Economy 38 (April 1987): 24–47, esp. 24–25. 9. Rollinde, “La Marche Verte,” 133. 10. Stephen Zunes and Jacob Mundy, The War for Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2010), 4. 11. Zunes and Mundy, The War for Western Sahara, 10. 12. Quoted in Pierre Vellas, “La Diplomatie marocaine dans l’affaire du Sahara Occidental,” Politique étrangère 43, no. 4 (1978): 417–428, esp. 422. 13. Quoted in Rollinde, “La Marche Verte,” 136, footnote 8; Hassan II, Le Défi (Paris: Albin Michel, 1976), 175. 14. Rollinde, “La Marche Verte,” 138. 15. Seddon, “Morocco and the Western Sahara,” 25. 16. Quoted in Yahia H. Zoubir and Karima Benabdallah-Gambier, “Morocco, Western Sahara, and the F uture of the Maghrib,” Journal of North African Studies, 9, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 49–77, esp. 53. 17. Zunes and Mundy, The War for Western Sahara, 6. 18. Vellas, “La Diplomatie marocaine dans l’affaire du Sahara Occidental,” 424. According to Yahia H. Zoubir and Karima Benabdallah-Gambier, the United Nations did not and does not recognize the validity of the Madrid Accords; it recognized the Sahrawi right to self-determination in 1963 and continues to restate this support. However, UN positions remained largely ignored up u ntil it established a cease-fire in 1991. See Zoubir and Benabdallah-Gambier, “Morocco, Western Sahara, and the F uture of the Maghrib,” 51. 19. Zunes and Mundy, The War for Western Sahara, 12, 17–20. 20. Zunes and Mundy, The War for Western Sahara, 13. 21. Zunes and Mundy, The War for Western Sahara, 17. 22. Zunes and Mundy, The War for Western Sahara, 18. Saudi Arabia also gave Morocco extensive funding for this effort. See Rollinde, “La Marche Verte,” 145.
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23. Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, AM Maroc E 080S, clipping from al-Bayan, October 22, 1975, “Les marocains de confession juive sont mobilisés avec le peuple unanime: le sentiment national n’est pas un vain mot” by Simon Lévy. 24. Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, AM Maroc E 080S, clipping from al-Bayan, October 22, 1975, “Les marocains de confession juive sont mobilisés avec le peuple unanime: le sentiment national n’est pas un vain mot” by Simon Lévy. 25. Pierre Birnbaum, Les Fous de la République: Histoire politique des Juifs d’Etat, de Gambetta à Vichy (Paris: Fayard, 1992). 26. Simon Lévy, “Le judaïsme marocain, une reference pour la coexistence judéo- arabe,” Confluences Méditerranée 9 (Winter 1994): 131–138, esp. 135. 27. “Annual Report 1975, American Joint Distribution Committee, Casablanca,” Archives of the American Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC), NY 1965/74 Reel 24. 28. “Memorandum for File: Morocco-Démarch by Jewish Community for Backing of King Hassan’s Sahara Venture,” from Stanley Abramovich, Geneva, November 6, 1975, Archives of the American Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC), NY 1965/74 Reel 24. 29. “Memorandum for the File: Morocco—Demarche by Jewish Community for Backing of King Hassan’s Sahara Venture.” 30. “Memorandum for the File: Morocco—Demarche by Jewish Community for Backing of King Hassan’s Sahara Venture.” 31. “Point de vue: Pour Sion Assidon, par Laurent Schwartz,” Le Monde, June 6, 1981, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 80. 32. Author interview with Sion Assidon, January 30, 2014, in Mohammedia, Morocco. 33. All of t hese details emerge from an interview I conducted with Sion Assidon on January 30, 2014, in Mohammedia, Morocco. 34. Author interview with Sion Assidon, January 30, 2014. 35. Author interview with Sion Assidon, January 30, 2014. 36. Author interview with Sion Assidon, January 30, 2014. 37. “Option: Bulletin d’information MAROC, no. 52, 2/1981, ‘Lettre de Prison.’ ” Kenitra, Prison Centrale, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67J/78. 38. “Point de vue: Pour Sion Assidon, par Laurent Schwartz.” 39. “Point de vue: Pour Sion Assidon, par Laurent Schwartz.” 40. See, for example, such wonderful leaflets as “Lettre ouverte a Abraham Serfaty,” publication of the Association Française d’Amitié et de Solidarité avec les Peuples d’Afrique (Montreuil, France), Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives, 67 J 80. 41. “Maroc: La repression au Maroc du temps du protectorat 1951–1992 les expulsions,” by René Toussant for ADATAM—Association de défense des anciens travailleurs au Maroc, Paris, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives, 67 J 80. 42. “Témoignage d’Evelyne Serfaty,” first published in Souffles edition de Paris, no. 1, printemps 1973. Reprinted in Abraham Serfaty, Le Maroc, du Noir au Gris (Paris: Éditions Syllepse, 1998): 13–17, esp. 13.
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43. “Témoignage d’Evelyne Serfaty,” 13. 44. “Témoignage d’Evelyne Serfaty,” 13–14. 45. “Témoignage d’Evelyne Serfaty,” 13. 46. “Maroc: La repression au Maroc du temps du protectorat 1951–1992 les expulsions” by René Toussant for ADATAM. 47. Lettre ouverte à Abraham Serfaty,” publication of the Association Française d’Amitié et de Solidarité avec les Peuples d’Afrique (Montreuil, France), Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives, 67 J 80. 48. “Le cas de Maurice SERFATY, fils unique d’Abraham SERFATY,” report on political prisoners from the Association des parents et amis de disparus au Maroc, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 81. 49. Author interview with Maurice Serfaty, February 17, 2014, in Casablanca. 50. “Le cas de Maurice SERFATY, fils unique d’Abraham SERFATY” report on political prisoners. 51. Abraham Serfaty, “Témoignages sur les tortures,” March 3, 1972, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 411 J 14. 52. “Morocco Briefing,” March 1991, Amnesty International Publications, 3. 53. “Option: Bulletin d’information MAROC, no. 52, 2/1981, ‘Lettre de Prison.’ ” Kenitra, Prison Centrale. 54. “Option: Bulletin d’information MAROC, no. 52, 2/1981, ‘Lettre de Prison.’ ” 55. “Option: Bulletin supplement à la revue ALIKHTIAR ATHAROUI, MAROC, no. 3 Décembre 1979, l’Opinion progressiste mondiale et la question du Sahara . . . Répression au Maroc: un lourd bilan,” Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67J/78. 56. “Option: Bulletin supplement à la revue ALIKHTIAR ATHAROUI, MAROC, no. 3 Décembre 1979.” 57. “Option: Bulletin supplement à la revue ALIKHTIAR ATHAROUI, MAROC, no. 3 Décembre 1979.” 58. “Option: Bulletin supplement à la revue ALIKHTIAR ATHAROUI, MAROC, no. 3 Décembre 1979.” 59. “Les relations du regime marocain avec le sionisme,” l’Option, March 1981, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67J/78. 60. Lévy, “Le judaïsme marocain, une reference pour la coexistence judéo- arabe,” 131. 61. “Press Survey: World Jewish Congress,” February 11, 1977, CZA Z6/1017. 62. “Goldmann Meets Moroccan King, Paris, Feb. 6, 1977 ( JTA),” CZA Z6/1017. 63. Report from A. Kaplan, World Jewish Congress (WJC) Paris to members of the WJC Executive Committee, October 3, 1979, CZA Z6/2680. 64. See Daniel Schroeter’s book The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
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65. “Memorandum from World Jewish Congress,” from Philip M. Klutznick to Officers of the World Jewish Congress, December 4, 1978, CZA Z6/2523. 66. Letter from A. Kaplan and Feder to Mr. P. M. Klutznick, Dr. N. Goldmann, and Dr. G. M. Riegner, Evian, July 21, 1978, CZA Z6/2523. 67. Bernabé López García, “Simon Lévy, dans ma mémoire,” in Simon Lévy, un marocain juif with contributions from Driss Ksikes, Ángeles Vicente, Bernabé López García, and Simon Lévy (Tangier: Khbar Bladna, 2013), 43–64, 43–45, and esp. 51. 68. López García “Simon Lévy, dans ma mémoire,” 51–52. 69. “Aux électeurs et électrices de la 3ème Circonscription (Commune d’Aïn Diab),” from Simon Lévy’s personal papers, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Jean and Jacques Lévy, Simon Lévy’s sons, for granting me access to this treasure trove of documents. 70. Synagogue circular in Moroccan Judeo-Arabic, 1976, endorsing Georges Berdugo and Amram Amzellag with no mention of Lévy. Personal papers of Simon Lévy. 71. Isaac Deutscher, “The Non-Jewish Jew,” in The Non-Jewish Jews and Other Essays, ed. with an introduction by Tamara Deutscher (London: Verso, 2017), 25–41. 72. “Simon Lévy, Votre Conseiller Rend Compte de Six Années de Mandat Communal au Service des Citoyens.” Simon Lévy’s personal papers. A million thanks to Jean and Jacques Lévy. 73. “Simon Lévy, Votre Conseiller Rend Compte de Six Années de Mandat Communal au Service des Citoyens.” 74. “Simon Lévy, Votre Conseiller Rend Compte de Six Années de Mandat Communal au Service des Citoyens.” 75. Email exchange with Jean and Jacques Lévy, December 13, 2015. 76. Email exchange with Jean and Jacques Lévy, December 13, 2015. 77. Email exchange with Jean and Jacques Lévy, December 13, 2015. 78. López García, “Simon Lévy, dans ma mémoire,” 43–45. 79. López García, “Simon Lévy, dans ma mémoire,” 46–47. 80. Author interview with Simon Lévy, May 7, 2010, in Casablanca. 81. An edited volume emerged from this organization. See Juifs du Maroc: Identité et Dialogue. Actes du Colloque international sur la communauté juive marocaine: vie culturelle, histoire sociale et evolution (Paris, 18–21 décembre 1978) (Grenoble: Éditions La Pensée Sauvage, 1980). 82. UNEM Toulouse propaganda from 1979. Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 80. 83. For more on Menebhi and other women imprisoned during the Years of Lead, see Fatnah El Bouih’s Talk of Darkness, trans. Mustapha Kamal and Susan Slyomovics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008). 84. Numerous documents in the Archives de Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 80.
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85. “Au Maroc, ‘Libéralisme’? . . . ‘Tolérance’ . . . Libération de tous les détenus politiques! Appel pour la journée du 10 décembre 1979, anniversaire de la Déclaration Universelle des Droits de l’Homme,” from the Comité de lutte contre la répression au Maroc (Paris), December 10, 1979, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 80. 86. “Au Maroc, ‘Libéralisme’? . . . ‘Tolérance’ . . . Libération de tous les détenus politiques!” 87. “Point de vue: Pour Sion Assidon, par Laurent Schwartz.” 88. “Point de vue: Pour Sion Assidon, par Laurent Schwartz.” 89. “Morocco Briefing,” March 1991. 90. Resolution from the European Parliament, “Sur les droits de l’homme au Maroc et libération de Abraham SERFATY,” November 21, 1990, Archives de la Seine- Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 80. 91. Resolution from the European Parliament “Sur les droits de l’homme au Maroc et libération de Abraham SERFATY.” 92. Malika Oufkir’s memoir, La Prisonnière (Paris: Grasset, 1999). 93. “Lettre ouverte à Abraham Serfaty,” publication of the Association Française d’Amitié et de Solidarité avec les Peuples d’Afrique (Montreuil, France). 94. “Lettre ouverte à Abraham Serfaty.” 95. Gilles Perrault, Notre ami le roi (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1990). 96. “Le Livre qui Dérange: ‘Notre ami le roi,’ ” clipping from magazine or newspaper, source unclear/not included. Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 80. 97. “Le Livre qui Dérange: ‘Notre ami le roi.’ ” 98. André Levy, Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli Anthropologist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 164–165. 99. Letter from Abraham Serfaty to “Camarade” Georges Marchais, Secretary General of the French Communist Party, written from the Central Prison in Kenitra, April 26, 1991, published and distributed in a 1991 ADATM pamphlet, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 80. 100. “Report” from Amnesty International, International Secretariat, January 5, 1990, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 80. 101. “Morocco Briefing,” March 1991. 102. “Morocco Briefing,” 1. 103. “Morocco Briefing,” 13. 104. Abraham Serfaty and Mikhaël Elbaz. L’insoumis: Juifs, Marocains et rebelles (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2001), 244–245. 105. Le Courrier de l’ADATAM, Association de défense des anciens travailleurs au Maroc (ADATAM), September 13, 1991, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 80.
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106. Le Courrier de l’ADATAM, Association de défense des anciens travailleurs au Maroc (ADATAM), September 13, 1991. 107. “Les retrouvailles avec Dédé [Abraham Serfaty’s nickname] Serfaty,” l’Humanité September 21, 1991, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives 67 J 80. 108. “Les retrouvailles avec Dédé [Abraham Serfaty’s nickname] Serfaty,” l’Humanité September 21, 1991. 109. “Le bagne de Tazmamart rasé? Nouveau recul de Hassan 2,” l’Humanité September 21, 1991, Archives de la Seine-Saint-Denis, PCF archives, 67 J 80. 110. “Le bagne de Tazmamart rasé? Nouveau recul de Hassan 2,” l’Humanité September 21, 1991. 111. Levy, Return to Casablanca, 175–176. 112. See in particular Oren Kosansky and Aomar Boum, “The ‘Jewish Question’ in Postcolonial Moroccan Cinema,” International Journal of M iddle East Studies 44, no. 3 (August 2012): 421–442, and this quotation considering the growth of Moroccan cinema that treated Jewish subjects: “the figure of the postcolonial Jew could only guardedly be paraded to demonstrate the liberal virtues of the independent Moroccan state” (423). See also Paul A. Silverstein, “A New Morocco? Amazigh Activism, Political Pluralism, and Anti-Anti-Semitism,” Brown Journal of World Affairs 18, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2012): 129–140. 113. Stephen Zunes and Jacob Mundy, “The Franco-American Consensus,” in Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2010), 66. 114. Oren Kosansky, “Tourism, Charity, and Profit: The Movement of Money in Moroccan Jewish Pilgrimage,” in “Value in Circulation,” special issue, Cultural Anthropology 17, no. 3 (August 2002): 359–400, esp. 373. 115. Edmond Amran El Maleh, Mille ans, un jour (Paris: La Pensée Sauvage, 1986), 155. 116. Kosansky, “Tourism, Charity, and Profit,” 362. 117. For an exhaustive compendium of work on the Jewish “saints” of Morocco, see Issachar Ben Ami’s Saint Veneration Among the Jews in Morocco (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998) and Yoram Bilu’s Without Bounds: The Life and Death of Rabbi Ya’aqov Wazana (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000). For information on Lalla Soulika specifically, see Sharon Vance, The Martyrdom of a Moroccan Jewish Saint (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 118. El Maleh, Mille ans, un jour, 155. 119. El Maleh, Mille ans, un jour, 157. 120. El Maleh, Mille ans, un jour, 158–159. 121. Levy, Return to Casablanca, 1, 184; Kosansky, “Tourism, Charity, and Profit,” 370–371. 122. El Maleh, Mille ans, un jour, 162.
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123. El Maleh, Mille ans, un jour, 163. 124. See, for example, Orit Bashkin, Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel (Stanford University Press, 2017) and Bryan K. Roby, The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle, 1948–1966 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015). 125. Kosansky, “Tourism, Charity, and Profit,” 369–370. 126. Levy, Return to Casablanca, 184. 127. Levy, Return to Casablanca, 188. 128. Kosansky, “Tourism, Charity, and Profit,” 367–368. 129. Levy, Return to Casablanca, 188. 130. Quoted in Abdul-Krim Abdul-Nasr, “Morocco and the M iddle East Conflict,” Journal of Palestine Studies 14, no. 1 (Autumn 1984): 57–161, esp. 158. 131. Abdul-Nasr, “Morocco and the Middle East Conflict,” 158–159. 132. Levy, Return to Casablanca, 181–182. 133. Kosansky, “Tourism, Charity, and Profit,” 359. 134. Kosansky, “Tourism, Charity, and Profit,” 372–373. 135. Kosansky, “Tourism, Charity, and Profit,” 368. 136. Levy, Return to Casablanca, 192–193. 137. Many thanks to Zhor Rehihil, director of the Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum since Simon Lévy’s death and curator for many years before that, for giving me this document from the opening ceremony of Slat al-Fassayin on February 11, 2013. 138. Gregory W. White, “Free Trade as a Strategic Instrument in the War on Terror? The 2004 US-Moroccan F ree Trade Agreement,” M iddle East Journal 59, no. 4 (Autumn 2005): 597–616, esp. 606–607. 139. Zunes and Mundy, “The Franco-American Consensus,” 70, and White, “Free Trade as a Strategic Instrument in the War on Terror?,” 603.
Conclusion
Epigraph: Edmond Amran El Maleh, Aïlen ou la nuit du récit (Paris: Maspero, 1983), 15. 1. “Marocains Juifs et Révolutionnaires,” Zamane: Le Maroc d’hier & d’aujourd’hui 90 (May 2018). 2. Armin Rosen, “André Azoulay Is the Most Powerful Jew in the Muslim World: What Else Keeps the Jewish-Moroccan Relationship Alive?,” Tablet Magazine, November 15, 2018, https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/274963/most -powerful-jew-in-the-muslim-world (accessed November 20, 2018). 3. I am thinking of Kendra Salois’s concept of “complicity” as a form of agency for subjects operating within a limited field of power in contemporary Morocco. Salois explores this in her forthcoming book tentatively titled Values that Pay: Complicity and Sincerity in Contemporary Moroccan Life.
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4. Interview with Zhor Rehihil, November 11, 2009, in Casablanca. Original French: “Est-ce qu’un être humain est marqué par les évènements qui encadrent sa naissance?” 5. Ronnie Scharfman, “The Other’s Other: The Moroccan Jewish Trajectory of Edmond Amran El Maleh,” Yale French Studies 1, 82 (1993): 135–145, esp. 136. 6. Marie Redonnet, Entretiens avec Edmond Amran El Maleh (Paris: Éditions La Pensée Sauvage, 2005), 73.
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B I B LI O G R A P H Y
Archives
AGA—Archivo General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares, Spain ANOM—Archives nationales d’outre mer, Aix en Provence, France CADN—Centre des Archives Politiques de Nantes, Nantes, France CAHJP—Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, Israel CZA—Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel JDC—Joint Distribution Archives, Jerusalem, Israel, and New York City, USA NARA—National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, USA PCF Archives—Les archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris, Seine- Saint-Denis, France Police Archives—Les Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Paris, France Royal National Archives—Archives du Maroc, Rabat, Morocco UKNA—United Kingdom National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom USHMM—Archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, USA
Additionally, I made extensive use of the personal papers of Simon Lévy, to which his wife Incarnation and his sons Jean and Jacques gave me generous access. Many of these papers are now stored in the Royal National Archives—the Archives du Maroc in Rabat, Morocco.
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Books and Articles
Abdel-Kader, A. Razak. Le Monde Arabe à la veille d’un tournant. Paris: François Maspéro, 1966. Abdul-Nasr, Abdul-Krim. “Morocco and the Middle East Conflict.” Journal of Palestine Studies 14, no. 1 (Autumn 1984): 157–161. Abitbol, Michel. Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord sous Vichy. Paris: G. P. Maisonneuve & Larose, 1983. Achcar, Gilbert. The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. Translated by G. M. Goshgarian. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010. Adam, André. Histoire de Casablanca: des origins à 1914. Aix-en-Provence: Éditions Ophrys, 1968. Adam, André. Casablanca: Essai sur la transformation de la société marocaine au contact de l’Occident. Tomes 1& 2. Paris: Éditions du centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1972. Agudo, Manuel Ros. La Gran Tentación: Franco, el Imperio Colonial y el proyecto de intervención española en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Barcelona: Styria, 2008. Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif, ed. Beyond Colonialism and Nationalism in the Maghrib: History, Culture, and Politics. New York: Palgrave, 2000. Albert, Phyllis Cohen. The Modernization of French Jewry: Consistory and Community in the Nineteenth Century. Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1977. Alcalay, Amiel, ed. Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1996. al-Fassi, Allal. The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa. Translated by Hazem Zaki Nuseibeh. Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1954. Al-Tuma, Ali. “Moros y Cristianos: Religious Aspects of the Participation of Moroccan Soldiers in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).” In Muslims in Interwar Europe: A Transcultural Historical Perspective, edited by Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad, and Mehdi Sajid, 151–177. Leiden: Brill: 2016. Álvarez, José E. The Betrothed of Death: The Spanish Foreign Legion During the Rif Rebellion, 1920–1927. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Arendt, Hannah. “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition.” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 2 (April 1944): 99–122. Arzalier, Francis, Ed. Expériences socialistes en Afrique 1960–1990. Pantin: Le Temps des Cerises, 2010. Assaraf, Robert. Mohammed V et les juifs du Maroc à l’époque de Vichy. Paris: Plon, 1997. Assaraf, Robert. Une certaine Histoire des Juifs du Maroc: 1860–1999. Paris: Jean- Claude Gawsewitch Éditeur, 2005.
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Assaraf, Robert. Juifs du Maroc à travers le monde: Émigration et identité retrouvée. Paris: Éditions Suger/Suger Press, 2008. Ayache, Albert. Le Maroc: bilan d’une colonisation. Preface by Jean Dresch. Paris: Editions Sociales, 1956. Ayache, Albert. “Les grèves de juin 1936 au Maroc.” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 12, no. 3 ( Jul.–Sept. 1957): 418–429. Ayache, Albert. Le Mouvement syndical au Maroc: Tome 1: 1919–1942. Paris: Éditions l’Harmattan, 1982. Ayache, Albert, René Gallissot, and Georges Oved. Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier: Maghreb: Maroc des Origines à 1956. Paris: Les Éditions de l’Atelier/Éditions Ouvrières, 1998. Aydin, Cemil. The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan- Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Aydin, Cemil. The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Baïda, Jamaâ. “Situation de la Presse au Maroc sous le ‘Proconsulat’ de Lyautey (1912–1925).” Hespéris-Tamuda XXX, no. 1 (1992): 67–92. Baïda, Jamaâ. “La Presse Juive au Maroc entre les Deux Guerres.” Hespéris-Tamuda XXXVII (1999): 171–189. Baïda, Jamaâ. “Le communisme au Maroc pendant la période coloniale (1912–1956).” In “Rethinking Totalitarianism and its Arab Readings,” special issue, Orient- Institut Studies 1 (2012), https://www.perspectivia.net/publikationen/orient -institut-studies/1-2012/baida_communisme (accessed July 7, 2019). Baïda, Jamaâ. “The American Landing in November 1942: A Turning Point in Morocco’s Contemporary History.” Journal of North African Studies 19, no. 4 (September 2014): 518–523. Balfour, Sebastian. Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Bartal, Israel. The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881. Translated by Chaya Naor. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Bashkin, Orit. The Other Iraq: Pluralism, Intellectuals and Culture in Hashemite Iraq 1921–1958. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Bashkin, Orit. New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012. Bashkin, Orit. Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017. Basri, Driss, Michel Rousset, and Georges Vedel. Le Maroc et les Droits de l’Homme: Positions, Réalisations et Perspectives. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994. Beevor, Antony. The B attle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006.
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Behar, Moshe, and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite. Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Politics, and Culture, 1893–1958. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2013. Beinin, Joel. Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948–1965. London: I. B. Taurus, 1990. Beinin, Joel. The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005. Ben‘Achir, Bou‘Azza. Edmond Amran El Maleh: Cheminements d’une écriture. Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997. Ben Ami, Issachar. Saint Veneration Among the Jews in Morocco. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. Benbassa, Esther. Une diaspora sépharade en transition: Istanbul XIXe-XXe siècles. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1993. Benbassa, Esther. The Jews of France: A History from Antiquity to the Present. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Benseddik, Fouad. Syndicalisme et Politique au Maroc: Tome I, 1930–1956. Paris: Editions l’Harmattan, 1990. Bensimon, Agnès. Hassan II et les juifs: Histoire d’une émigration secrète. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1991. Berdugo, Arlette. Juives et Juifs dans le Maroc contemporain: Images d’un devenir. Introductory note by Abraham Serfaty and preface by Yolande Cohen. Paris: S. N. Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner S.A., 2002. Berque, Jacques. French North Africa: The Maghrib Between Two World Wars. Translated by Jean Stewart. New York: Praeger, 1967. Bilu, Yoram. Without Bounds: The Life and Death of Rabbi Ya’aqov Wazana. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000. Birnbaum, Pierre. The Jews of the Republic: A Political History of State Jews in France from Gambetta to Vichy. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Birnbaum, Pierre. Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Hill and Wang, 2002. Birnbaum, Pierre. Léon Blum: Prime Minister, Socialist, Zionist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. Birnbaum, Pierre, and Ira Katznelson, eds. Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Blatman, Daniel. For Our Freedom and Yours: The Jewish Labor Bund in Poland, 1939–1949. Translated by Naftali Greenwood. London: Valentine Mitchell, 2003. Bouaziz, Mostafa. Aux Origines de la Koutla Démocratique. Casablanca: Université Hassan II Aïn Chok, 1997.
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Bouguerra, Mohamed, and Sabiha Bouguerra. Histoire de la littérature du Maghreb: Littérature francophone. Paris: Ellipses, 2010. Boum, Aomar. “From ‘Little Jerusalems’ to the Promised Land: Zionism, Moroccan Nationalism and Rural Jewish Emigration.” Journal of North African Studies 15, no. 1 (March 2010): 51–69. Boum, Aomar. Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013. Boum, Aomar. “Partners Against Anti-Semitism: Muslims and Jews Respond to Nazism in French North African Colonies, 1936–1940.” Journal of North African Studies 19, no. 4 (September 2014): 554–567. Boum, Aomar, and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, eds. The Holocaust in North Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019. Bourget, Carine. The Star, the Cross and the Crescent: Religions and Conflicts in Francophone Literature from the Arab World. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2010. Bourquia, Rahma, and Susan Gilson Miller, eds. In the Shadow of the Sultan: Culture, Power, and Politics in Morocco. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Burke III, Edmund. “The Image of the Moroccan State in French Ethnological Literature: A New Look at the Origin of Lyautey’s Berber Policy.” In Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa, edited by Ernest Gellner and Charles Micaud, 175–199. Toronto: Lexington Books, 1972. Burke III, Edmund. Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: Precolonial Protest and Resis tance, 1860–1912. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Calderwood, Eric. Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Campos, Michelle U. Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Castles, Stephen, and Alastair Davidson. Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics of Belonging. London: Routledge, 2000. Cesarini, David, ed. Port Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550–1950. London: Routledge, 2002. Chafer, Tony, and Amanda Sackur, eds. French Colonial Empire and the Popular Front: Hope and Disillusion. London: Macmillan, 1999. Chakib, Arsalane. “Contribution a l’étude de l’histoire du PCM durant la période coloniale.” PhD diss., Université Hassan II, Faculté des Sciences Juridiques, Economiques et Socialies, Casablanca, 1985. Clancy-Smith, Julia. Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration c. 1800–1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Clement, Jean-François, and Jim Paul. “Trade Unions and Moroccan Politics.” MERIP Reports no. 129, Insurrection in North Africa, October 1984. Washington, DC: MERIP.
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Cleveland, William L. Islam Against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985. Cohen, Julia Phillips. Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Cole, Joshua. Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. Dalle, Ignace. Le règne de Hassan II, 1961–1999: Une espérance brisée. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2001. Danon, Vitalis. Ninette of Sin Street: A Novella by Vitalis Danon. Edited with an Introduction and notes by Lia Brozgal and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Translated by Jane Kuntz. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017 [first published 1938 as Ninette de la rue du Péché: une nouvelle populiste]. Daoud, Zakya. Maroc: les années de plomb, 1958–1988, chroniques d’une résistance. Paris: Éditions Manucius, 2007. Deutscher, Isaac. “The Non-Jewish Jew.” In The Non-Jewish Jews and Other Essays, edited with an introduction by Tamara Deutscher 25–41. London: Verso, 2017. Dubin, Lois. The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Dunn, Ross E. Resistance in the Desert: Moroccan Responses to French Imperialism 1881–1912, London: Croom Helm, 1977. Edwards, Brian. Morocco Bound: Disorienting Americ a’s Maghreb, from Casablanca to the Marrakesh Express. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. El Ayadi, Mohammed. “Les Mouvements de la jeunesse au Maroc: l’émergence d’une nouvelle intelligentsia politique durant les années soixante et soixante- dix.” In Émeutes et mouvements sociaux au Maghreb: Perspective comparée, edited by Didier Le Saout and Marguerite Rollinde, 201–230. Paris: Karthala, 1999. El Bouih, Fatnah. Talk of Darkness. Translated by Mustapha Kamal and Susan Slyomovics. Austin: University of Texas at Austin, 2008. El Maleh, Edmond Amran. Parcours immobile. Paris: François Maspero, 1980. El Maleh, Edmond Amran. Aïlen ou la nuit du récit. Paris: Maspero, 1983. El Maleh, Edmond Amran. Mille ans, un jour. Paris: La Pensée Sauvage, 1986. El Maleh, Edmond Amran. Le retour d’Abou El Haki. Paris: La Pensée Sauvage, 1990. El Maleh, Edmond Amran. Abner Abounour. Casablanca: Éditions Le Fennec, 1995. El Maleh, Edmond Amran. Lettres à moi-même. Casablanca: Éditions Le Fennec, 2010. El Maleh, Edmond Amran (text), and Ahmed Ben Smaïl (photos). Lumière de l’ombre: périple autour de sidi ben Slimane al-jazûlî. Casablanca: Editions Eddif, 2003. Feliu, Laura, and Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs, eds. Communist Parties in the Middle East: 100 Years of History. London: Routledge, 2019.
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Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943. Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1968. Forst, Robert D. “The Origins and Early Development of the Union Marocaine du Travail.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 7, no. 2 (Apr. 1976): 271–287. Frankel, Jonathan. Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Frankel, Jonathan. Crisis, Revolution, and Russian Jews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Fuller, Mia. “Building Power: Italy’s Colonial Architecture and Urbanism, 1923– 1940.” Cultural Anthropology 3, no. 4 (Nov. 1988): 455–487. Furet, François. The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century. Translated by Deborah Furet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Gallissot, René. Le Patronat Européen au Maroc: Action sociale, action politique, 1931–1942. Paris: Éditions EDDIF, 1990. Gershoni, Israel, ed. Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Ginat, Rami. A History of Egyptian Communism: Jews and their Compatriots in Quest of Revolution. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2011. Gottreich, Emily. The Mellah of Marrakesh: Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco’s Red City. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Gottreich, Emily Benichou, and Daniel J. Schroeter, eds. Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Graham, Helen. The War and Its Shadow: Spain’s Civil War in Europe’s Long Twentieth Century. Portland, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2012. Green, Abigail. Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Green, Nancy L. The Pletzl of Paris: Jewish Immigrant Workers in the Belle Epoque. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986. Guerin, Adam. “ ‘Not a Drop for the Settlers’: Reimagining Popular Protest and Anti-Colonial Nationalism in the Moroccan Protectorate.” Journal of North African Studies 20, no. 2 (2015): 1–22. Halstead, John P. Rebirth of a Nation: The Origins and Rise of Moroccan Nationalism, 1912–1944. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. Harris, Walter B. France, Spain, and the Rif. London: Edward Arnold, 1927. Harrison, Olivia, and Teresa Villa-Ignacio, eds. Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015.
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Hatimi, Mohammed. “Al-Jama’at al-yehudiyat al-maghribiya wa al-khiyar al-sa’ab bayn nida’ al-sahyuniya wa-rihan al-Maghrib al-mustaqil: 1941–1961.” Utruhat al-Dawla [thèse d’Etat], Université de Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah-Fès, 2007. Heckman, Alma Rachel. “Multivariable Casablanca: Vichy Law, Jewish Diversity, and the Moroccan Communist Party.” In “Jews of Morocco and the Maghreb: History and Historiography,” special issue, Hespéris-Tamuda LI, no. 3 (2016): 13–34. Heckman, Alma Rachel. “Jewish Radicals of Morocco: Case Study for a New Historiography.” Jewish Social Studies 23, no. 3 (Spring/Summer 2018): 67–100. Heckman, Alma Rachel. “Fissures and Fusions: Moroccan Jewish Communists Before, During, and After WWII.” In The Holocaust and North Africa, edited by Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Aomar Boum, 185–204 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019). Herf, Jeffrey. Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Hertzberg, Arthur. The French Enlightenment and the Jews. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. Hess, Jonathan M. Germans, Jews, and the Claims of Modernity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Hobsbawm, Eric. How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Hoffman, Katherine. “Berber Law by French Means: Customary Courts in the Moroccan Hinterlands, 1930–1956.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 52, no. 4 (2010): 851–880. Hoisington, William A. “Cities in Revolt: The Berber Dahir (1930) and France’s Urban Strategy in Morocco.” Journal of Contemporary History 13, no. 3 ( July 1978): 433–448. Hoisington, William A. Lyautey and the French Conquest of Morocco. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Hoppe, Jens. “The Persecution of Jews in Libya Between 1938 and 1945: An Italian Affair?” In The Holocaust and North Africa, edited by Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, 50–75. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019. Hunt, Lynn. Inventing H uman Rights: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. Hyman. Paula. The Jews of Modern France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Joffé, E. G. H. “The Moroccan Nationalist Movement: Istiqlal, the Sultan and the Country.” Journal of African History 26, no. 4 (1985): 289–307. Joly, Danièle. The French Communist Party and the Algerian War. London: MacMillan, 1991. Judt, Tony, ed. Resistance and Revolution in Mediterranean Europe 1939–1948. New York: Routledge, 1989.
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Juifs du Maroc: Identité et Dialogue. Actes du Colloque international sur la communauté juive marocaine: vie culturelle, histoire sociale et evolution (Paris, 18–21 décembre 1978). Grenoble: Éditions La Pensée Sauvage, 1980. Kaspi, André, ed. Histoire de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle de 1860 à nos jours. Paris: Armand Colin, 2010. Katz, Ethan. The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Kenbib, Mohammed. Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc: 1859–1948. Rabat: Université Mohammed V, Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, 1994. Kenbib, Mohamed. “Moroccan Jews and the Vichy regime, 1940–2.” Journal of North African Studies 19, no. 4 (September 2014): 540–551. Kenbib, Mohamed. Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc: Des origins à nos jours. Paris: Éditions Tallandier, 2016. Khoury, Philip Shukry. Syrian and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Kosansky, Oren. “Tourism, Charity, and Profit: The Movement of Money in Moroccan Jewish Pilgrimage.” In “Value in Circulation,” special issue, Cultural Anthropology 17, no. 3 (August 2002): 359–400. Kosansky, Oren, and Aomar Boum. “The ‘Jewish Question’ in Postcolonial Moroccan Cinema.” International Journal of M iddle East Studies 44, no. 3 (August 2012): 421–442. Lafuente, Gilles. La politique berbère de la France et le nationalism marocain. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999. Landau, Rom. Moroccan Drama: 1900–1955. London: Robert Hale, 1956. Laroui, Abdallah. L’Histoire du Maghreb: un essai de synthèse. Paris: Librairie François Maspero, 1970. Laroui, Abdallah. Les origins sociales et culturelles du nationalisme marocain (1830–1912). Paris: Librairie François Maspero, 1977. Laskier, Michael M. The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco, 1892–1962. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983. Laskier, Michael M. “The Instability of Moroccan Jewry and the Moroccan Press in the First Decade after Independence.” Jewish History 1, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 39–54. Laskier, Michael M. Israel and the Maghreb: From Statehood to Oslo. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. Laskier, Michael M. “The Emigration of Jews from the Arab World.” In A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day, edited by Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora, 415–433. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Laurent, Eric. Hassan II: La mémoire d’un roi. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1993.
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Leff, Lisa Moses. Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. Le Foll-Luciani, Pierre-Jean. Les juifs algériens dans la lutte anticoloniale: trajectoires dissidentes (1934–1965). Rennes: PU Rennes, 2015. Levin, Nora. While Messiah Tarried: Jewish Socialist Movements, 1871–1917. New York: Schocken Books, 1977. Levy, André. Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli Anthropologist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Lévy, Simon. “Le judaïsme marocain, une reference pour la coexistence judéo-arabe.” Confluences Méditerranée, no. 9 (Winter 1994): 131–138. Lévy, Simon. Essais d’histoire et de civilisation judéo-marocaines. Rabat: Centre Tarik Ibn Ziyad, 2001. Lockman, Zachary. Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Loeffler, James Benjamin. Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and H uman Rights in the Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Lopez García, Bernabé. “Simon Lévy, dans ma mémoire.” In Simon Lévy, un marocain juif, with contributions from Driss Ksikes, Ángeles Vicente, Bernabé López García, and Simon Lévy, 43–64. Tangier: Khbar Bladna, 2013. Lorcin, Patricia. Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Race in Colonial Algeria London: I. B. Tauris, 1995. Loudiy, Fadoua. Transitional Justice and Human Rights in Morocco: Negotiating the Years of Lead. New York: Routledge, 2014. Lydon, Ghislaine. On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross- Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce, and Daniel Zisenwine, eds. The Maghrib in the New Century: Identity, Religion, and Politics. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2007. Malino, Frances. The Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux: Assimilation and Emancipation in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1978. Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Marglin, Jessica. “Modernizing Moroccan Jews: The AIU Alumni Association in Tangier, 1893–1913.” Jewish Quarterly Review 101, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 574–603. Marglin, Jessica Maya. Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Marrus, Michael R. The Politics of Assimilation: A Study of the French Jewish Community at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
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I N D EX
Page numbers in italic indicate figures. Abd al-Hafid, Sultan, 11 Abdeljelil, Omar ben, 48 Abitbol, Simon and Yemma, 116 Action Française (French Action), 39, 73, 74 ADATAM [Association de défense des anciens travailleurs au Maroc] (Association for the Defense of Former Workers in Morocco), 206, 212 Aflalo, Albert, 133 Africa, Scramble for, 11 Afrique du Nord Illustrée, L’ [North Africa Illustrated] (right-wing journal), 38 AG [Association générale] (General Association), 26 Agadir Crisis (1911), 11 Agoumi, Abdelwahab, 136 Aïlen ou la nuit du récit (El Maleh), 224 AIU (Alliance Israélite Universelle), 14, 28, 63, 111, 233n16; anti-Semitism and, 33–34, 38, 41; Arabic-language instruction in schools of, 127;
Arabization policies and, 166–167; as first avenue of Moroccan Jewish politicization, 30–31; Francophile republicanism and, 22, 68; French civilizing mission and, 9–10; LICA and, 56, 61; outbreak of Second World War and, 70, 71; refugees and, 82; “regeneration” goal of, 9–10, 30; Vichy regime and, 77; al-Wifaq events and, 135; Zionism opposed by, 94 al-Akhbar al-Dounia (World News), 161 Alaoui, Mamoun, 96 Alaouite Dynasty, 165, 221 Algeciras Conference (1906), 11 Algeria, 3, 10, 20, 26, 103; AIU (Alliance Israélite Universelle) in, 30; antiSemitism in, 41; border war with Morocco [“War of the Sands”] (1963), 151, 170; Constantine riots (1934), 33, 41–42, 47; FLN organization, 155; independence (1962), 169; Polisario Front supported by, 182, 222; war of independence in, 133 Alliancism, 22, 28
3 0 2 I ndex
ALN [Armée de Libération Nationale] (Army for National Liberation), 128, 129 Amar, David, 162, 193 Amazigh (Berber) Jews, 2, 275n2 American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), 82–83, 88, 254n112 American Jewish Committee, 192–193 Amicale des combattants de la cause anticoloniale (Association of Fighters for the Anticolonial Cause), 206 Amicales Communistes (Communist Associations), 93, 140 Amicales (labor organizations), 26, 49 Amiel, Menachem, 123 Amnesty International, 174, 186, 196, 201, 204; Hassan II and, 210; Serfaty as figurehead for, 205, 223 Anfa meeting (1943), 90 anticolonial movements, 1, 4, 5, 24, 56 anti-fascism, 6–7, 15, 16, 23, 39, 68; economic crisis and, 49; European anti-fascist organizations, 51; national liberation struggle and, 93, 100; Popular Front and, 103 Antifascist Committee, 48 anti-Semitism, 7, 15, 21, 48, 97, 156; antiZionism conflated with, 16, 106, 118, 120, 124, 164, 173, 227; appeals to Moroccan Muslims, 53–54; “JudeoBolshevism” trope, 45, 52, 87, 124, 125; Moroccan nationalisms and, 33–46; in postwar Morocco, 95, 122; rise of, 24, 30, 51–52, 64, 79–80; of Vichy France, 15, 64, 69, 71, 227, 249n40; Zionism in mutual reinforcement with, 158 al-Aqsa mosque ( Jerusalem), 43 Arabic language, 8, 13, 14, 53, 69; Jewish youth educated in, 95; Moroccan Jews and, 110; as national language, 110, 116; Nazi and Vichy propaganda
in, 74; PCM propaganda/ publications in, 92, 96, 111, 115; Sultan’s command of, 28 Arabization, 14, 36, 166–167, 169, 170 “Arab-Jewish” identity, 1, 2 Arab League, 119, 128, 145, 191 Arafat, Yasser, 168 Arslan, Emir Shakib, 36, 37, 43 Ashkenazi Jews, 5, 75–76, 175 Asoulin, Armand, 133 Assidon, Sion, 153, 170, 177, 193, 213; human rights campaign on behalf of, 196; imprisonment and torture of, 185–187, 199, 204; makhzan defied by, 179; opposition to Western Sahara annexation, 180, 184; release from prison, 205, 220 assimilation, 112, 113 Association de défense des droits de l’homme au Maroc (Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Morocco), 201, 205 Association des parents et amis de disparus au Maroc (Association of Parents and Friends of the Disappeared in Morocco), 201 Association des travailleurs marocains en France (Association of Moroccan Workers in France), 206 Association française d’amitié et de solidarité avec les peuples d’Afrique (French Association for Friendship and Solidarity with African Peoples), 206 Atlantic Charter, 87 Avenir Illustré, L’ (The Illustrated Future), 32, 42, 63, 113 Ayache, Albert, 27, 51, 96, 236n14 Ayache, Fréa, 93 Ayache, Germain, 92, 93 Azoulay, André, 156, 198, 224, 225 Azoulay, David, 133, 162 Azoulay, Isaac, 60
I ndex
BAHAD [Brith Halutzim Datiyim] (Alliance of Religious Pioneers), 124 Baïda, Jamaâ, 86, 224, 229 Balafredj, Ahmed, 48 Balafrej, Anis, 40 Bandung Conference (1955), 128, 149 Belafrej, Ahmad, 37 belonging: complications of colonialism and, 9–12; embrace of Moroccanness, 100; paradox of, 3; political and social, 71; politics of, 9, 24, 67, 69, 232n13 Benaïm, Abraham (“Albert”), 61 Benane, Eugène, 50 Ben Aomar, M’Hamed, 96 Benarrosh, Raphaël (Ralph), 99, 100, 140, 147–148, 150, 157; Arabization policy and, 166; ostracized by Jewish community, 186; outmigration of Moroccan Jews and, 159; Zionism opposed by, 164 Benatar, Hélène Cazès, 82–83, 88 Ben Barka, Mehdi, 133–134, 144, 151, 180, 191; assassination of, 146, 170, 189; sentenced to death, 152; on UNEM subversive pamphlet, 200, 203 Benchimol, Eli, 116 Benchimol, Samuel, 51 ben Daoud, Seddik 51 Bendellac, Joseph, 164 Ben Diwan, Rabbi Amran, 41 Ben-Gurion, David, 120 Benisty, Haïm, 164 Ben Jelloun, Tahar, 169, 170 Benkirane, Abdelilah, 220 Ben Maati, Lahcen, 96 Ben Mekki, Abdenbi, 95–96 Ben Muhammad, Benkirane, 121 Ben Seddik, Mahjoub, 163 Bensimhon, Judah, 75 Bensimhon, Raymond, 74–75, 76 Benzaquen, Bellida, 78
303
Benzaquen, Léon, 116–117, 134, 137, 154, 159, 185 Berber dahir (1930), 35–36 Berdugo, David, 135 Berdugo, Georges, 182, 184–185, 192 Berdugo, Serge, 211, 218–219 Birnbaum, Pierre, 184 Black Panther Party, 171 Blood Libel crisis (Damascus, 1840), 10 Blum, Léon, 21, 37, 46, 47, 49; derided by Vichy anti-Semites, 73, 247n22; election of (1936), 50; as hated figure to fascists, 53 Botbol, Georges, 61, 72 Botbol, Maurice, 110 Bou Arfa work camp, 88, 254n109 Bouazza, Tayeb, 96 Boum, Aomar, 33, 165, 214, 246n5, 249n40 Bourquia, Abdesselam, 115 Brazil, Moroccan Jews in, 211 Brozgal, Lia, 233n16 Bush, George W., 221 CAM [Comité d’Action Marocaine] (Moroccan Action Committee), 23, 40, 42, 57, 96, 244n141 Camp David accords (1978), 217 Canada, 175, 185, 207, 218 Cartan, Henri, 204 Casablanca, city of, 11, 17, 27, 47, 100; anti-Semitic actions in, 80; Carrières Centrales bidonville, 127, 129, 130, 133; industrial zones of, 49, 130; Jewish sites bombed (2003), 18; leftist organizations in, 60, 73; as Morocco’s most industrialized city, 25; Moulin de la Gaieté as PCM stronghold, 62; Muslim extremist terrorism in, 221–222; Nasser’s visit to, 145, 155, 156, 157; as port of exit for refugees, 85; in postwar period, 107–110; show trial (1977) in, 188; Spanish Republican refugees in, 62; Sultan (Léon René)
3 0 4 I ndex
Casablanca (continued ) in, 28–29; uprising/riots (1965) in, 143, 146, 149, 152–154, 168, 169, 177, 180, 190, 199, 226; US soldiers in, 65, 69, 88; violence between Jews and Muslims in, 38, 39; Zionist activity in, 123–124 CCIM [Conseil des Communautés Israélites] (Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco), 161, 162, 217, 218 Ceuta enclave (Spain), 11, 181 CGT [Confédération générale du travail] (General Labor Confederation), 26, 91 Charles Netter Association, 112 Cherki, Naima, 136 Chic, Morice, 50 Choquet, Gustave, 204 Christianization, 36 Churchill, Winston, 86 cinemas, Jewish-owned, 47, 56 citizenship, 5, 11, 13, 28; dhimmi (protected) status and, 13; formation of, 6; French, 10, 28, 30, 63, 188, 235n2 Clarté [Clarity] (Communist newspaper), 51, 55 Cohen, Prosper, 38–41 Cohen, Roger, 158 Cold War, 4, 5, 8, 106, 141; Bandung Conference and, 149; end of, 204, 213, 214, 219; Israeli–Arab conflict and, 145; Morocco in pro-Western camp, 178, 190; post–Cold War realignments, 213–223; US influence in Morocco and, 85; waning of French power during, 103 colonialism, 3, 4, 19, 22, 35 Colonna, Michel, 93 Comintern (Communist International), 43 Comité de défense des libertés et droits de l’homme (Committee for the Defense of Freedom and Human Rights), 206
Comité de Libération du Maghrib (Committee for Maghribi Liberation), 128 Comité de lutte contre la répression au Maroc (Committee for Fighting Repression in Morocco), 201 Comité mondial des femmes contre la guerre et le fascisme (Global Women’s Committee Against War and Fascism), 62 Comité pour la libération d’Abraham Serfaty et d’autres prisonniers politiques au Maroc (Committee for the Liberation of Abraham Serfaty and Other Political Prisoners in Morocco), 206 Commisariat Général aux Questions Juives [CGQJ] (Commissariat for Jewish Questions), 73, 247n23 “Committee for the Defense of North Africa” (Nazi front organization), 36 Communism, 3, 4, 68; “Internationale” song, 63, 115; popularity following Allied victory, 90–91, 98 Communist Party, Chinese, 149 Communist Party, French. See PCF [Parti Communiste Français] Communist Party, Moroccan. See PCM (Parti Communiste Marocain) Communist Party, Spanish, 55 Corcós, Fernand, 32 court Jews, in Christian Europe, 12, 13 Crémieux, Adolphe, 10 Crémieux Decree (1870), 10, 28, 30, 76–77, 85, 86 Croix de Feu, 39, 45, 47–48, 74 Cuban revolution (1959), 169 Cultural and Social Association of Moroccan Jewish Students in Paris, 154 Danon, Vitalis, 233n16 Dayan, Moshe, 191
I ndex
de Gaulle, General Charles, 91 Deutscher, Isaac, 195 dhimmi (protected) status, 13–14, 110, 117, 234n25 diaspora, Jewish, 3 Dieudonné, Jean, 204 Djian, Edgar, 50 Dome of the Rock ( Jerusalem), 32, 43 Douieb, Abdelmajid, 197 Dubin, Lois, 12–13 Dupuy, Charles, 93 Durel, Paul, 91, 93 Éclaireurs Israélites ( Jewish youth scouting organization), 114 Egypt, 36, 42, 47; Nasser government, 128; peace with Israel, 191, 217; Suez crisis (1956), 138; UAR union with Syria, 155; as US ally, 222 Eisenhower, General Dwight, 85, 86 Elbaz, Mikhaël, 171 El Kadmiri, Habib, 136 El Khayari, Thami, 197 El-Maghribi, Sami, 136 El Maleh, Edmond Amran, 1, 2, 6, 90, 99, 100, 148; on being a revolutionary, 65; critical role in national liberation struggle, 97–98; as de facto head of PCM, 103, 122, 139, 226; departure from PCM, 149, 154; as Espoir editor, 123; on “game of complex margins,” 4, 231n5; makhzan defied by, 179; Mille ans, un jour (A Thousand Years, a Day), 141, 214–217, 228; on Moroccan identity, 102; Moroccan independence and, 134; Moroccanness of Jews asserted by, 107; return from exile, 220, 223; as state hero, 225; on wounds (scarification) of history, 224, 229. See also Parcours immobile [Motionless Journey] Elmalem, Jean, 172
305
Elmallem, Léon, 164 Engel, Sidney, 172 Espoir [Hope] (PCM newspaper), 62, 102, 103, 107, 116; editors of, 123, 142; as PCM’s main newspaper, 57 Étoile Nord-Africaine (North African Star), 43 European Parliament, 196, 205 al-Fajr [Dawn] (newspaper), 158 fascism, 15, 20, 21, 30, 43; defeat in Second World War, 105; European pro-fascist organizations, 46; fascist Italy, 36, 37, 238n45; Free French forces against, 65; French fascist organizations, 57; Italian claims to Libya, 238n45; Jews depicted in propaganda of, 46; Popular Front strategy against, 23; rise of, 24, 28, 33, 35. See also Croix de Feu; Nazism; Vichy France al-Fassi, Allal, 36, 42, 119, 244n141; deported to Equatorial Africa, 57; on Moroccan identity, 161; al-Wifaq events and, 138 al-Fassi, Muhammad, 37, 43, 48 FDIC [Front pour la Défense des Institutions Constitutionelles] (Front for the Defense of Constitutional Institutions), 149–150, 158 Fédération Nationale des Libres Penseurs de France et des Colonies, 60 Federation of Peace Fighters, 48 Federation of Republican Fighters, 48 Fez, city of, 11, 25, 47, 180, 228; leftist activity in, 71–72; riots (1965), 153; Spanish Republican refugees in, 62 Fez, Treaty of, 11 FLN [Front de Libération Nationale] (National Liberation Front), 155 Fondation D. Mitterand, 206 Foucauld, Father Charles de, 9, 75
3 0 6 I ndex
France/French colonial empire, 2, 3, 25, 100, 207; civilizing mission of, 9–10, 35, 63; colonial wars in Algeria and Indochina, 133; defeated by Nazi Germany, 68, 73; Free French forces, 65, 66, 91, 93, 99; Jewish loyalty to, 29–30; Jewish–Muslim relations and, 11; Moroccan Jewish emigration to, 175; Morocco divided up with Spain, 11; Muslims conscripted into French armed forces, 72; Popular Front in, 21; postwar weakness of, 7, 76, 95; as “protector” of minorities, 14, 48; Western Sahara conflict and, 182. See also French Protectorate; republicanism, French; Vichy France Franco, General Francisco, 37, 62, 181, 182 Franco-Spanish Treaty, 11 Free Thought, 48 French Foreign Legion, 82 French language, 13, 28, 53, 59, 69, 113; Alliance curriculum in, 110; PCM propaganda in, 92; replacement by Arabic in public sphere, 116; Soviet propaganda in, 125 French Protectorate, 28, 30, 33, 46, 108, 211, 225; Jewish political-social world and, 110–118; Muhammad V’s symbolic role, 69; promotion of vertical ties to French Empire, 35; reforms and, 40; response to postwar anti-Semitism, 122; surveillance of political movements, 42, 44, 48–49, 59, 60, 61, 94; water diversion policy, 57 French Union, 91 Friends of the USSR, 46, 49, 50 Furet, François, 90, 149 Gabay, David, 60, 78 Gabay, Samuel, 78 Glaoui Pasha, 126 Global Conference of Students Against War and Fascism (Brussels), 43
Goldmann, Nahum, 167–168, 176, 185, 192 Green, James Frederick, 151 Green March (1975), 146, 176–179, 190, 192, 195, 222 Guedira, Reda, 149 Guevara, Che, 170 Haack, Hans Erich, 43, 241n91 Hached, Ferhat, 127 Hadassah, 192 Hadida brothers, 42 Haketía (Moroccan Judeo-Spanish), 18 Halakha ( Jewish law), 9 Halstead, John P., 37, 240n74 Hassan II, King, 2, 8, 15, 16, 156, 198; accession to throne, 141, 145; American Jewish leaders and, 192–193; Azoulay as advisor to, 224; as Crown Prince Moulay Hassan, 117, 122, 135–136, 160; death of, 177, 179, 196, 219, 223, 227; failed military coup attempts against, 172–173, 178–179; on governing Morocco, 143, 144; Green March and, 176, 179–185; human rights and, 189, 201, 204, 214; Israeli–Palestinian conflict and, 175; new constitution (1970) and, 171; nonaligned movement and, 149; peace process and, 217; political positioning of, 164–165, 173; state of emergency declared (1965), 153; “Years of Lead” repression and, 144, 190, 199, 212; Zionism and, 146, 191–192 Hatimi, Mohammed, 229 Hayat al-Shaab [Life of the People] (PCM Arabic-language newspaper), 115 Heath, Leslie O., 83–84 Hebrew language, 59, 94, 111, 113, 216 HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), 94, 165–166, 167, 172 al-Hilal al-Aswad (Black Crescent), 129
I ndex
hillulot (pilgrimages to tombs of saints), 215, 217, 219, 219 Hitler, Adolf, 37, 39, 40–41, 43, 59, 61, 241n91; decision to attack USSR, 255n124; racist policies of, 60–61; support for Moroccan nationalists, 80 Humanité, L’ [Humanity] (French Communist newspaper), 36 human rights, 8, 16, 23, 177, 204, 223; international campaign for Moroccan prisoners, 204–206; universal, 29 al-Husseini, Hajj Amin (Grand Mufti of Jerusalem), 37, 243n124 Ibrahim, Abdallah, 147, 159 Identité et Dialogue (Identity and Dialogue), 198 al-Ikhtiar al-Tharoui (The Revolutionary Option), 190, 191, 193 Ila al-Amam (Forward, in Arabic), 144–145, 168, 169–170, 171, 174, 186, 232n11; Moroccan claims to Western Sahara rejected by, 222; Serfaty as founder of, 144, 169, 176–177, 180, 226; split with PPS, 193 imperialism, 3, 101, 120, 121, 124, 180 Indochina, 125 International Anti-Jewish League, 74 International League Against AntiSemitism. See LICA International Prize for Human Rights in the Arab World, 207 Iran, 10, 30, 228 Iranian Revolution (1979), 182 Iraq, 36 Islam, 14, 27, 38, 164, 226; compatibility with Communism, 125, 170; Jewish converts to, 121; Jewish women forcibly converted to, 161–62; nationalism and, 36; as national religion, 110 Islamists, 223
307
Israel, 108, 124, 228; absorption of Jews from MENA region, 217; establishment of (1948), 2–3, 19, 66, 106, 119, 122, 227; Moroccan Jewish emigration to, 2, 3, 129–130, 142, 145, 154, 174; Sadat’s visit to, 217; as US ally, 222 Israeli–Arab conflict, 3, 4, 16, 116, 138, 145, 175, 192; Israeli–Palestinian peace process, 213, 217; October War (1973), 173, 227; Six-Day War (1967), 163–64, 186, 228 Istiqlal (Independence) Party, 7, 23, 42, 101, 122, 127; al-Alam newspaper, 173; anti-Semitic tracts published by, 160; appeal to Moroccan Jews, 111; founding of, 66; Green March and, 180; Islam as independence credo, 226–27; Jewish members of, 103; Koutla unity bloc with UNFP, 171; Manifesto of Independence (1944), 66, 85, 96, 106, 109–110; L’Opinion journal, 170; PCM criticized for inauthenticity by, 105, 124–125; UNFP formed as splinter from, 144; al-Wifaq (Accord) group created by, 133–141; Zionism opposed by, 118–119 Jabès, André, 165 JCM [ Jeunesses Communistes Marocaines] (Moroccan Youth Communists), 93, 94, 99, 102, 148, 208 JDC (American Joint Distribution Committee), 74, 82, 83, 88, 111, 126; Crown Prince Hassan and, 117; Green March and, 184, 185; al-Wifaq events and, 135; Zionist migration and, 121 Jerada, anti-Semitic violence in (1948), 121, 124, 126 Jeune Moghrebin [Young Moroccan] (nationalist newspaper), 117 Jeunesses Socialistes Autonomes (Autonomous Youth Socialists), 60
3 0 8 I ndex
Jewish Agency, 101, 111, 121, 135, 138; FDIC supported by, 150–51; Hassan II and, 165 Jewish holidays, 40, 41, 42–43, 124, 160, 228 Jewish National Fund, 94 Jewish Studies, 4, 5, 6 Jews, Algerian, 22, 29, 77; French citizenship of, 30, 235n2; migration to Morocco for work opportunities, 33 Jews, Moroccan: Communism identified with, 2; dhimmi (protected) status of, 117, 120; displaced beside lions of sultan’s menagerie, 11, 12; exit visas to Americas sought by, 81; human rights and, 185–193; interwar Jewish life, 28–33; Jewish Communists as minority within minority, 4–9; leftist and Communist groups joined by, 30; Nazi defeat celebrated by, 95; at outset of Second World War, 70–72; perceived complicity with colonialism, 7, 11; political apathy among, 58, 236n23; Popular Front leftists, 21, 55–63, 244n141; population figures, 173; post–Cold War realignments and, 213–223; postwar violence against, 121–122, 130, 132; as protégés of European powers, 9; racism of bourgeois Jewish community, 90; relations with Moroccan Muslims, 57–58; Six-Day War as swan song of Jewish life in Morocco, 163–164; state-sponsored appreciation of, 224; “Sultan’s Communists,” 12–14, 69, 103, 160, 222, 225; “Sultan’s Jews,” 11, 13, 15, 103, 175, 213 Judeo-Arabic language, 73, 110, 113, 138, 193 Kadima (Forward), 111–12, 130, 132, 137 Kenbib, Mohammed, 31, 224, 229
Kennedy, Senator Jack, 159 Keren Hayessod, 117 Khalil, Abou, 117–118 al-Khattabi, Abdelkrim, 26, 128 Kholti, Muhammad, 48 Khouribga, city of, 25–26, 57, 61, 91, 153, 155 Kichy, Pierre, 136 Korea, 125 Kosansky, Oren, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218 al-Koutla al-Watania [Fr. La Koutla] (National Bloc), 171 Laâbi, Abdellatif, 169, 170–171, 188 Labonne, Erik, 92 labor unions, 33, 105, 114, 116, 163, 174 Lalla Aicha, Princess, 136 Lamy, André, 172 language politics, 14 Laroui, Abdallah, 170 Laskier, Michael M., 155, 162 LDH [Ligue des droits de l’homme] (League for Human Rights), 21, 46, 48, 49, 244n147; Fez section of, 72; Popular Front and, 56; Protectorate surveillance of, 61 League Against Pogroms. See LICA (Ligue internationale contre l’antisémitisme) League for Human and Citizens’ Rights, 61 League of Nations, 35, 36 Lecache, Bernard, 32, 33, 46–47 leftism, 3, 4, 27, 33, 144–145 Lemniai, Mehdi, 244n141 Lenin, Vladimir, 124, 263n101 Levy, André, 213, 216, 217 Lévy, Incarnation Rojel, 16–18, 19, 103, 105, 125, 128, 143 Levy, Jacob, 103 Levy, Jacques, 123, 125 Lévy, Jean, 159, 220 Levy, Joseph (Youssef ), 103, 150, 164
I ndex
Lévy, Simon, 1, 2, 18–19, 75, 76, 93, 140, 231n3; amalgam of Judaism and Zionism protested by, 170; Arabization policy and, 166; arrested and tortured during uprising (1965), 143, 149; “belonging” and, 100; death of, 228; as electoral candidate, 193, 194, 195, 196–197; on “euphoria” of early independence years, 133; Green March and, 177, 180, 181, 182, 183–184, 195, 196; Jewish Heritage Museum and, 220, 223, 225; makhzan defied by, 179; outmigration of Moroccan Jews and, 159; on PCM and minorities, 105; personal papers of, 17, 224; on postwar appeal of PCM to Jews, 97; as state hero, 225; as student in Paris, 128; UNEM and, 152; vacation in Hungary, 144, 146; Zionism opposed by, 164, 191–192 Libre Pensée (Free Thought), 21, 56, 60, 61 LICA (Ligue internationale contre l’antisémitisme), 15, 21, 22, 53, 73, 97, 103; boycott of German products and, 41, 59; Le Droit de Vivre (The Right to Live) newspaper, 42; the left and, 46–50; Popular Front and, 32–33, 42, 61; women in, 62 Ligue des droits de l’homme (League for Human Rights), 206 Longuet, Robert-Jean, 40 López García, Bernabé, 198 Lyazidi, Muhammad, 37 Maccabiad Games ( Jewish Olympics), 45 Madrid Accords (1975), 181–182 Maghreb (review), 40 Maghrib, 10, 36, 43, 88, 108 Maison du Maroc [Dar al-Maghrib] (Morocco House), 128 makhzan (centralized state apparatus), 8, 9, 12, 67, 135, 142, 175, 233n13;
309
accommodationist policy toward, 193; coopted as instrument of colonialism, 24; dhimmi (protected) status and, 69, 76, 234n25; diminished power of, 22; “divide and rule” political strategy of, 147; FDIC party and, 149–150; human rights abuses and, 185; Jewish emigration from Morocco and, 145, 159; Jewish loyalty to, 207; leftist activism crushed by, 173; Moroccan Jewish past and, 225; Moroccanness of Jews and, 107; Serfaty released by, 210 Mandela, Nelson, 206–207, 208, 209 Maoism, 149, 169 Marchais, Georges, 208 Marestan (Libre Pensée speaker), 61–62 Marglin, Jessica, 9 Maroc Information [Information Morocco] (newspaper), 156 Maroc Rouge [Red Morocco] (PCM newspaper), 57 Maroc Socialiste (Socialist Morocco), 39, 40, 48, 51, 52, 54 Marrakesh, city of, 11, 25, 62, 153, 228 Marx, Karl, 40, 124 Mashash, Rabbi, 207 Mashriq (East), 43 Mauritania, 181, 182 Mazella, Lucette, 93, 96 Mazella, Michel, 92, 93, 96 Meir, Golda, 158, 167 Meknes, city of, 11, 25, 38, 47, 100; leftist organizations in, 62; mass protests over water policies, 57; riots (1965), 153; Spanish Republican refugees in, 62 Melilla enclave (Spain), 11, 74, 181 mellahs ( Jewish quarters), 9, 11, 39, 52, 220; ghettoization in, 54, 74; Zionism and, 119 Memmi, Albert, 10
3 1 0 I ndex
MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, 3, 5, 6, 19, 23, 37, 122, 154; AIU (Alliance Israélite Universelle) and, 30; capitulatory rights for Jews in, 249n47; Morocco’s exceptionalism in, 8, 15; place of Jews within and without, 67; “regeneration” of, 10; US interests and, 182; Zionism in, 4 Menebhi, Saïda, 200–201, 203 Messali Hadj, 37, 43 Middle East. See MENA Mille ans, un jour [A Thousand Years, a Day] (El Maleh), 141, 214–217, 228 Miller, Susan Gilson, 85, 168, 171, 173 Mimouna group, 228–229 Montagne, Robert, 27, 107–108 Montefiore, Moses, 10 Moroccan–Algerian border war [“War of the Sands”] (1963), 151, 170 “Moroccanization,” 16, 42, 170; of LICA, 47; of PCM, 64, 69, 99–100, 103 Moroccan Jewish Heritage Foundation and Museum (Casablanca), 1, 18, 198, 231n3; Lévy as founder, 220, 223, 225; Rehihil as curator, 228–229 “Moroccanness,” 7–8, 13, 105; Jewishness and, 16, 18; of Jews, 183; nationalist understandings of, 14 Moroccan Refugee Aid Committee, 82 Moroccan Union of Jews and Muslims, 47 Morocco: demographics and industries, 25–28; European settlers/workers in, 26–27, 87; increasing opposition and repression post-independence, 146–154; independence (1956), 3, 11, 19, 66, 212; Jewish exodus from (1950s–1960s), 4, 5, 15, 145, 229; Jewish heritage of, 1, 214, 281n112; Jewish refugees in, 73, 77–79; literacy rate at independence, 152; Muslim–Jewish social harmony in, 14; national identity politics of, 4, 7, 235n2, 244n141; refugees and
“undesirables” under Vichy, 81–83; “Sharifian Hymn” (national anthem), 94, 113, 114; state formation after independence, 144; tensions among Jews, Muslims, and Europeans, 34; “tolerant” self-presentation of, 8, 16; turning point (summer 1936), 50–55; US relations with, 221–223; Western Sahara claimed by, 146, 176–185, 207, 222; “Years of Lead” repression, 144, 190, 199, 219, 222, 223 Morocco, national liberation struggle of, 2, 3, 15, 25, 123, 205; PCM involvement in, 7, 16, 33, 92, 93–94, 100, 226–227; sultan as figurehead, 15–16 Morocco Society of America, 113 al-Moukafih [The Struggle] (PCM newspaper), 158–59 Mouvement Franciste, 39 Muhammad V (Sidi Muhammad Ben Youssef ), Sultan, 66, 69, 102, 107, 185, 246n5; death of, 141, 145, 160; deposed and exiled to Madagascar, 128; Istiqlal Manifesto and, 85; Moroccan independence and, 130, 134; popularity of, 178; radio address (1948), 119–120; return to Morocco (1955), 130–131; Vichy regime and, 76, 139, 157, 249n40; visit to New York (1957), 154; al-Wifaq events and, 136 Muhammad VI, King, 8, 14, 156, 179, 198; Azoulay as advisor to, 224; coronation of, 196, 210, 222, 227; as Crown Prince Muhammmad, 172, 218; portrait of, 219, 219; War on Terror and, 221–222 Muslims, Moroccan, 6, 7, 21, 52, 152; Arabs and Berbers, 35–36; as caretakers of Moroccan Jewish sites, 18, 228–229; conscripted into French armed forces, 72; disempowered by colonial state, 24; exploited in
I ndex
French colonial wars, 36; French Protectorate and, 30; identification with Palestinian Arab cause, 32; in the left, 46, 96; PCM efforts to recruit, 98; relations with Moroccan Jews, 57–58; social harmony with Jews, 7, 8, 9, 14 Mussolini, Benito, 61, 238n45 Naissance du Prolétariat Marocain [Birth of the Moroccan Proletariat] (Montagne, 1950), 107–108 al-Nasser, Gamal Abd, 128, 145, 155, 168 Nasserism, 137, 138, 141, 165, 227 Nataf, Elie, 38, 50 nationalism, Arab, 3, 4, 11, 24, 26, 229; Communism and, 125; Zionism conflated with Jewishness by, 175 nationalism, Moroccan, 21–22, 45, 112, 182; Berber dahir (1930), 35–36; Muslim identity and, 37; United States seen as liberator, 85 Nazism, 7, 24, 35, 37, 79; final defeat of, 95; ghettoization of Jews, 54; presence in Morocco under Vichy rule, 74; refugees from, 63; ties to pan-Arab/ pan-Islamic movements, 36, 41–42 Neciri, Mekki, 53 New Left, 168, 169 Nkrumah, Kwame, 170 Noar (pro-Zionist journal), 113, 117 Noguès, Resident General, 51, 70, 74, 78, 79; meeting with Roosevelt, 86, 87; US occupation forces and, 85 “non-Jewish Jew” conception, 195, 213 North Africa. See MENA Notre ami le roi [Our Friend the King] (Perrault), 207, 222–223 Nouvelle Garde, La [The New Guard] (Communist-affiliated review), 148–149, 152
311
Obadia, Mayer, 150 OCP [Office Chérifien des Phosphates] (Sharifian Office of Phosphates), 25, 134, 155, 236n10 Ohana, René, 164 Olam Katan (Small World), 57 Operation Yakhin, 145, 159 Option (clandestine leftist bulletin), 190, 191 Orientalism, European, 10, 15 ORT [Organisation Reconstruction Travail] (Organization for Reconstruction Work), 111, 113, 135, 192 OSE [Oeuvre de secours aux enfants] (Organization to Save the Children), 111, 113, 117, 135 Ottoman empire, 9 al-Ouezzani, Muhammad Hassan, 37, 43, 48 Oufkir, General, 144, 172, 191, 206 Oujda, city of, 46, 57, 79, 120–121, 124, 126, 141 Pact of ‘Umar, 13, 234n25 Palestine, 22, 26, 42, 52; British Mandate over, 21, 37, 111, 119, 122; Great Revolt (1936), 50, 51, 243n124; Jewish settlement in, 94, 112; pan-Arab nationalism and, 159; Partition Plan (1947), 120; problem of antiSemitism and, 61–62; revolt (1929) in, 31–32; Yishuv in, 42, 117, 237n34 Pan-African Festival (Algiers, 1969), 171 pan-Africanism, 170 pan-Arab movements, 21, 31–32, 165, 227; in Egypt and the Levant, 36; fascist allies of, 45–46; Jewish migration to Israel opposed by, 138; Zionism collapsed with Judaism by, 32 pan-Islamic movements, 21, 23, 31–32; in Egypt and the Levant, 36; fascist allies of, 45–46
3 1 2 I ndex
Parcours immobile [Motionless Journey] (El Maleh), 1, 65, 139–141, 231n5 Parti populaire français (French Popular Party), 57 patriotism, 7, 117, 195, 222; French, 70; Jewish, 4, 5; Moroccan, 1 Patton, General George, 85 PCF [Parti Communiste Français] (French Communist Party), 6, 26, 37, 39, 103, 134, 211; ambiguous relationship with PCM, 55–56; colonial question and, 257n179; Étoile Nord-Africaine and, 43; l’Humanité newspaper, 79, 208, 210, 212, 213; PCM origins in, 90, 115; surge in popularity following Allied victory, 91, 101 PCM (Parti Communiste Marocain), 6, 27, 51, 186; Allied war effort and, 92–93; ambiguous relationship with PCF, 55–56; clandestine activities of, 148–150, 170; disbanded (1960), 144, 147, 148; formation of, 33; illegality under Vichy regime, 67; Israel declaration of independence and, 120; Istiqlal’s claim of inauthenticity, 105, 124–125; Jewish Communists as minority within minority, 4; manifesto of, 115–116; membership of, 56; Moroccanization of, 40, 64, 69, 99–100, 103, 116; national liberation struggle and, 7, 16, 33, 92, 93–94, 103, 126–127, 129, 226; Palestine conflict and, 121; Popular Front and, 15, 22, 24, 55–63, 68, 100; publications and propaganda of, 17, 57, 158; reinstatement of (1943), 92; Serfaty’s arrest protested by, 102–103; Spaniards in, 105; suppression of, 16; universalist platform of, 225; vision for pluralistic Morocco, 18; women in, 103; Zionism rejected by, 134–135, 157. See also PLS; PPS
PDI [Parti Democratique de l’Indépendance] (Democratic Party for Independence), 103, 118, 122, 125, 129, 134, 136 “People of the Book” (ahl al-kitab), 13 Peres, Shimon, 218 Perrault, Gilles, 207, 222–223 Pétain, Marshal Philippe, 73, 82 Peyrouton, Resident General, 20–21, 51, 54 phosphate industry, 25–26, 236n11 Pilo, Abraham, 103, 114–115, 116, 123, 142 Pisces (illegal Zionist emigration ship), 145, 154, 156–157, 158, 270n62 PJD [Parti de la justice et du développement] ( Justice and Development Party), 220 PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), 165, 168 PLS [Parti de la Libération et du Socialisme] (Party of Liberation and Socialism), 144–145, 168, 169. See also PCM Polisario Front, 176, 180, 182, 184, 222 Ponsot, Resident General, 40 Popular Front, 15, 16, 20, 21, 100; anti-fascist umbrella of, 66; Blum government in France, 37, 46, 49, 50; as gateway to PCM adherence, 68; LICA ties to, 32–33; Moroccan branch of, 49, 55–63; Muslims active in, 56, 244n141; right-wing attacks on, 53 “Popular League for Germanism in Morocco,” 42 port Jews, of Mediterranean world, 12–13 PPS [Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme] (Party of Progress and Socialism), 144, 174, 195, 197, 223; al-Bayan (Statement) newspaper, 182, 183; cooptation by the makhzan, 178; Green March and, 176, 180, 182; split with Ila al-Amam, 193. See also PCM protectorate treaty (1912), 9, 25
I ndex
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 53, 161 PSF (Parti Social Français), 46 Rabat, city of, 11, 25, 27, 47, 100, 228; leftist organizations in, 60; mellah ( Jewish quarter), 39; riots (1965), 153; Royal National Archives, 224; Spanish Republican refugees in, 62 racism, 97, 162, 217 Radio Damascus, 131–132 al-Raï al-‘Am [The Opinion of the People] (Istiqlal newspaper), 118–119, 137, 138 Reagan, Ronald, 182, 214 Reconnaisance au Maroc [Investigating Morocco] (Foucauld, 1888), 9, 75 “red falcons,” 20, 53 Redonnet, Marie, 97, 228 Rehihil, Zhor, 228–229 republicanism, French, 15, 63, 90, 100; brittleness of, 95; disillusionment with, 114; emancipationist model and, 30; Sultan’s support for, 28, 29 Rif revolt (1959), 201 Rif War (1920–1926), 26, 35, 36, 90 Rojel, Incarnation. See Lévy, Incarnation Rojel Rojel, Rosalie. See Yata, Rosalie Rojel Roosevelt, Eleanor, 159 Roosevelt Franklin Delano (FDR), 66, 69, 85, 86–87, 90 Russian Revolution, 26, 35, 124 Sacco and Vanzetti case, 28, 89 Sadat, Anwar, 191 al-Salaam (Arabic-language newspaper), 43 Salois, Kendra, 282n3 Scharfman, Ronnie, 228 Schroeter, Daniel, 13, 15, 69, 246n5, 249n40 Schwartz, Laurent, 204–205 Seban, Mardochée, 50 Sebbagh, Isaac, 164
313
Sebbagh, Marc, 162 Sebbah, Marc, 133 Seddon, David, 181 Sefrioui, Kenza, 169 Sémach, Y. D., 71 Sephardi Jews, 2 Serfaty, Abraham, 1, 2, 17, 19, 94, 99, 123, 150; amalgam of Judaism and Zionism protested by, 170; arrested and tortured in 1970s, 173, 189, 199; Economic Ministry appointment, 154; expelled to France, 127–128; human rights campaign on behalf of, 187, 196, 204–212, 208, 209, 223; Ila al-Amam founded by, 169; invited back to Morocco from French exile, 219–220; as JCM leader, 102; makhzan defied by, 179; Marxist splinter group formed by, 144; OCP appointment of, 134, 155; opposition to Western Sahara annexation, 176–178, 180, 184; at Pan-African Festival (Algiers), 170–171; PCM joined by, 65–66, 90, 103; political consciousness shaped by war years, 67–68, 89–90, 100; as state hero, 225; on UNEM subversive pamphlet, 200, 203; Zionism opposed by, 164 Serfaty, Christine Daure, 207, 212 Serfaty, Evelyne, 17, 19, 65, 103, 105, 212; arrested and tortured, 187–188; expelled to France, 127–128 Serfaty, Maurice, 188 SFIO [Section française de l’internationale ouvrière] (French section of the Workers International), 39, 47, 50, 56, 60, 61 Shabiba Islamiyya (Islamic Youth), 171 Shari’a (Muslim law), 9 Shatrit, Meir, 218 Sidi El Ayachi (halfway-house camp), 88, 253n107 Slaoui, Houcine, 69
3 1 4 I ndex
Slat al-Fassiyine site, 220–221 Slyomovics, Susan, 8, 174 Socialists, 21, 27, 33 Sorkin, David, 12–13 Souffles [Breaths] (New Left journal), 169, 170–171, 188 South, Global, 115 Soviet Union (USSR), 16, 90, 98, 103, 204, 255n124; de-Stalinization of, 149; Israel recognized by, 120; Muslim Central Asian republics, 125, 170; victory in Second World War, 122 Spain, 2, 3, 25; colonial rule in Morocco, 7, 11, 14; convivencia in medieval Andalusia, 7, 109, 119, 136, 175, 229; Moroccan claims to Western Sahara and, 180, 181–182; Popular Front in, 21; Sephardi Jews exiled from (1492), 2 Spanish Civil War, 7, 23, 37, 50, 74; Franco’s victory in, 62; International Brigades in, 62, 81; LICA support for Spanish Republicans, 59; refugees from, 56, 62–63, 82, 103 Spanish language, 53 Stalin, Joseph, 115, 120, 124 Stalinism, 156, 226 Stavisky, Alexandre, 39 Steeg, Theodore, 27 Stein, Sarah Abrevaya, 233n16 stock market crash (1929), 35 Suez crisis (1956), 137, 227 Sultan, Fortunée, 93, 103, 116, 126 Sultan, Léon René, 20–23, 29, 33, 42, 50, 55, 114; death of, 100, 104–105, 114, 147–148; early life and education, 28–29, 236n26; French republicanism supported by, 28, 29; as hated figure to fascists, 53; Maccabiad Games and, 45; “Marc Forclaude” pseudonym, 56; as PCM leader, 64, 66, 67, 90; political fluidity of, 28, 63; “red falcons” and, 53; refugees and, 83;
Serfaty and, 90; Vichy regime and, 76–77; wartime activities, 92, 93, 99 sultan-turned-king, 9, 15 Syria, 26, 36 Syrian-Palestinian-Maghribi Committee, 36 Tahar, M’Hamed, 96 al-Tahrir [Liberation] (newspaper), 158 Tamazight language, 110 Tangier, city of, 11, 22, 53, 79, 106, 228 Terre retrouvée, La [The Reclaimed Land] (journal), 112 Tetouan, city of, 10, 11, 43 Third Worldism, 169, 171, 222 Thorez, Maurice, 56, 257n179 Thursz, Jonathan, 32 Toledano, Meyer, 150, 151, 165 Touré, Ahmed Sékou, 170 Toussaint, René, 212 Trans-Saharan Railway, 81–82 tujjar al-Sultan (“merchants of the Sultan”), 13 Tunisia, 10, 30, 50, 233n16 23 Mars movement, 168, 169, 170, 174, 177, 180, 193 UFM [Union des Femmes du Maroc] (Union of Women in Morocco), 93, 256n145 UGSCM [Union générale des syndicats confédérés du Maroc] (General Union of Confederated Syndicates of Morocco), 91, 127 UMT [Union Marocaine du Travail] (Moroccan Labor Union), 163 UNEM [Union Nationale des Etudiants du Maroc] (Moroccan National Students’ Union), 152, 168, 174, 186, 193, 218, 232n11; New Year greeting card of, 199–200, 200; pamphlet on tourism–repression link, 200–201, 202–203
I ndex
UNFP (Union Nationale des Forces Populaires), 144, 147, 149, 150, 158, 186, 232n11; break with Istiqlal (1959), 168; co-optation by the makhzan, 199; Green March and, 180; Koutla unity bloc with Istiqlal, 171; left splinter groups from, 169, 174; violent suppression of, 151–152, 153, 173 Union Marocaine, L’ [The Moroccan Union] ( Jewish newspaper), 38, 113 Unir [Unite]: The Communist Bulletin of South Rabat, 56 United Arab Republic, 145, 155 United Nations (UN), 7, 120, 181, 190, 196, 204 United States, 3, 16, 111, 185, 217; African Americans, 171; civil rights movement, 169; as imperialist power, 126; postwar ascendance of, 16, 76, 95; postwar military presence in Morocco, 108; refugees bound for, 78–79; War on Terror and, 221–222; Western Sahara conflict and, 182 USFP (Socialist Union of Popular Forces), 174, 186 Vallat, Xavier, 73, 247n22 Vichy France, 7, 67; anti-Semitic policies of, 15, 64, 69, 71, 74, 86, 99, 249n40; betrayal of French “protection” narrative by, 15, 68, 72, 73–81, 97, 126; defeated in North Africa, 66, 85; labor camps in Morocco, 18, 65, 68, 69, 81, 88; rule over French colonies, 227 Vietnam War, 169, 186 Vigie Marocaine, La (journal), 112 Voix des Communautés, La (journal), 113, 131, 132, 161, 162 Voix Française, La [The French Voice] (right-wing newspaper), 52, 53, 54–55 Voix Juive, La [The Jewish Voice] (Zionist newspaper), 94, 112
315
War on Terror, 179, 222, 223 Watson, Robert, 88, 89 al-Wifaq (Accord), 133–141, 154, 160 WJC (World Jewish Congress), 111, 150, 151, 155, 159, 185; Hassan II and, 165, 167–168, 192, 193; Jewish outmigration and, 127; Pisces sinking and, 157 World International Zionist Organization (WIZO), 94 World Muslim Congress, 45 World War, First (Great War), 25, 26, 35, 59, 81 World War, Second (WWII), 7, 15, 24, 56, 63, 210, 227; Allied victory, 90, 105; French defeat in, 68, 73; Jewish political belonging and, 67; Operation Barbarossa, 255n124; Operation Torch, 65, 66, 68, 83–90, 101, 103, 104, 108; PCM criticism of, 162; Soviet victory in, 122; waning of French power during, 103 World Zionist Organization (WZO), 31, 112 Wyrtzen, Jonathan, 35 al-Yad al-Souda (Black Hand), 129 Yata, Ali, 17, 96–97, 99, 101, 115; as brotherin-law to Simon Lévy, 128; death of, 197; as electoral candidate, 150, 151; imprisoned and exiled, 103, 122, 123, 226; on “militant patriots of the left,” 174; Moroccan monarchy and, 123; Moroccanness of, 125; return from exile, 139; War of the Sands and, 170 Yata, Fahd, 122, 123, 143 Yata, Rosalie Rojel, 103, 123, 125, 146 Youth Socialists, 42, 48, 50 Zafrani, Haïm, 133, 136 Zagury, Yahia, 28, 33–34, 54–55, 61, 110; appeals for calm and loyalty to France, 58; on Jewish enlistment in French armed forces, 71
3 1 6 I ndex
Zamane (Time) magazine, 224, 229 Zionism, 3–5, 7, 15, 63, 68, 101; AIU opposition to, 30; anti-Semitism in mutual reinforcement with, 158; Arab nationalist opposition to, 37; as form of imperialism, 226; French Zionist Federation, 113; growth during and after Second World War, 94–95; Haganah paramilitary organization, 122; increased popularity of, 141–142; Jewish anti-Zionism, 5, 164, 191–192, 225; Jewishness distinguished from,
152; Jews conflated with, 52, 118, 133; Keren Hayessod, 117; Maccabiad Games and, 45; Moroccan Jews of interwar period and, 31–32; Moroccan Jews of postwar period and, 154–168; outmigration of Moroccan Jews and, 127, 154, 155; rejected as threat to Moroccan nation, 8; religious and secular, 28; renewed postwar popularity of, 101; supported by majority of Moroccan Jews, 97; as umbrella term, 22; in Yishuv of Palestine, 237n34
Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture David Biale and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Editors This series features novel approaches to examining the Jewish past in the form of innovative work that brings the field into productive dialogue with the newest scholarly concepts and methods. Open to a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches from history to cultural studies, this series publishes exceptional scholarship balanced by an accessible tone that illustrates histories of difference and addresses issues of current urgency. Books in this list push the boundaries of Jewish Studies and speak compellingly to a wide audience of scholars and students.
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