Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Morocco

Showing posts with label Morocco. Show all posts

Thursday, July 14, 2022

The other Abraham Accords benefit that the progressives won't talk about: Far less antisemitism in the Arab world

On Wednesday, Morocco's King Mohammed VI chaired a meeting of the Council of Ministers. A remarkable thing occurred:

At the end of the Council's proceedings, the Minister of Interior made before His Majesty the King, may God preserve Him, a presentation on the measures elaborated, pursuant to the High Royal Instructions on the organization of the Moroccan Jewish community.

These measures are based on the supreme responsibility of His Majesty the King as Commander of the Faithful and guarantor of the free exercise of worship for all Moroccans, all religious confessions included, and come to enshrine the Hebrew tributary as a component of the Moroccan culture rich of its multiple tributaries.

The scheme submitted to the High Appreciation of His Majesty the King, drawn up after extensive consultations with representatives of the Jewish community and personalities belonging to it, includes the following bodies:

1- The National Council of the Moroccan Jewish Community:

It is responsible for managing the affairs of the community and safeguarding the cultural and religious heritage and influence of Judaism and its authentic Moroccan values. Regional committees of the Council will be responsible for managing the day-to-day issues and affairs of the community's members.

2- The Committee of Moroccan Jews living abroad:

It works to consolidate the ties of Moroccan Jews living abroad with their country of origin, to strengthen their cultural and religious influence and to defend the supreme interests of the Kingdom.

3- The Foundation of Moroccan Judaism:

Its mission is to promote and watch over the Jewish-Moroccan intangible heritage, to safeguard its traditions and to preserve its specificities.

King Mohammed VI was always sympathetic towards his Jewish subjects, but until the Abraham Accords he couldn't have allowed an organization for Moroccan Jews abroad - for the simple reason that most of them live in Israel.

This brings up an additional benefit of the Abraham Accords: it has significantly reduced the amount of antisemitism in the media of Gulf countries and Morocco.

The ADL's polls from 2014 in the states most affected by the Abraham Accords indicated that in Morocco, 80% of the citizens held antisemitic attitudes; UAE 80%, Bahrain 81%, Saudi Arabia 74%, Oman 76%.. The Palestinian territories was 93%.

Until there is a new survey, we won't know how much the Accords have reduced Arab antisemitism, but it is a fair bet that with fewer antisemitic articles and stories in the media - and far more stories sympathetic to Jews - the attitudes of the citizens will be positively impacted towards Jews.

The progressives who never admitted that there was an Arab antisemitism problem likewise will not admit that reducing Arab antisemitism is a clear win from a human rights perspective. They try to spin the agreements as if they are somehow making human rights worse for the Arab signatories, when in fact when they are more favorably disposed towards Jews they are also more open to all non-Muslims.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Algeria media upset "Zionists" attended a mass Muslim circumcision ceremony in Morocco

Algerian news site Echorouk Online claims that there was a major normalization crime in rival nation Morocco:

[The Moroccan kingdom] focused on its provocative activities, the latest of which was the organization of a circumcision ceremony for children of poor and needy Moroccan families under the supervision of a Zionist delegation consisting of hardened criminals, in order to create a propaganda scene that serves the Zionist agenda and the Zionist subversive penetration into the depths of Moroccan society, according to the

The Moroccan Observatory for Anti-Normalization stated that “in a very dangerous step, and considered a crime with full descriptions, some agents of normalization in the city of Fez organized a circumcision ceremony for more than 500 children and a medical examination for more than 200 women free of charge, in order to receive, honor and highlight the faces of Zionist terrorism, represented by a delegation from the officers of the Zionist war army, for whom everything was arranged,” in Kharja bearing “a lot of very dangerous symbols.”

In the context, the observatory said that Moroccan women were lured from the poorest neighborhoods in Fez, “with the aim of making the scene of propaganda a servant of the Zionist agenda and the Zionist subversive penetration into the depth of Moroccan society and beautifying the faces of Zionist terrorism in the eyes of Moroccans.” According to the observatory, what happened in Fez is “a major crime by all standards, and accordingly it is necessary to arrange the positions it requires, whether by the state or society, otherwise the country is heading to the bottom, the bottom of the comprehensive Zionist disgrace.”

It took a while but I found video of the supposed event.

It seems that an Israeli named Avraham Avizemer arranges tours of Morocco for Israelis, and this was part of one tour. It wasn't an official Israeli delegation.

Avizemer was born in Casablanca and formerly worked for the Israeli Navy, which is what makes him a Zionist criminal, apparently.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Morocco's universities, and then its government, are in danger of Zionist takeover!

Arab media - especially in Algeria - have been issuing dire warnings in the past couple of days:

The National Working Group for Palestine and the Moroccan Observatory against Normalization expressed their concern about the "escalating Zionist penetration of universities and higher institutes in Morocco through the accelerated normalization steps ."

In a letter they addressed to the National Syndicate for Higher Education, the two anti-normalization bodies warned of the danger of revealing “a number of infiltrations and deceptions of the tools of the Zionist enemy and its intelligence services, hidden and declared, to the university campus through a series of what were called scientific and research activities framed by officers and leaders of the Zionist army with a number of university institutions, under misleading descriptions and names, and with great secrecy over their true identities."

The message focused on the danger of this penetration on the future of Moroccan universities and on scientific research in their institutions, especially on students and youth, and on the future of the country as a whole, calling for the necessary vigilance and mobilization to confront it.

The head of the Moroccan Observatory against Normalization, Ahmed Wehman, said in an interview with Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that “the Zionist penetration into the Moroccan university is a targeting of the country’s elites and an investment in tightening control over Morocco and its capabilities through the creation of a Zionist elite that will be empowered to occupy senior positions in the economic, social and cultural centers of the state, to rule it as a Moroccan front for the Zionist entity’s rule of Morocco.”

They figured it all out!

Interestingly, I did not see this article in Moroccan media. It might be censorship, it might be self-censorship, or it might be just too stupid to publish.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Jews murdered in Morocco on multiple occasions from 1894-1912: They must have been Zionists

September 1894:

In a roundup of the year's stories in 1903 from the Louisville Courier-Journal, we see this from July 26:

(I could not verify this incident.)

In November 1903, the New York Times reported:

September 1906:

April 1912:

Well, we know that Jews lived in peace in Arab lands for centuries before Zionism. After all - the Arabs keep telling us that!

These Arabs who murdered Jews every few years must have been just anti-Zionist.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The strange route of the first Royal Air Maroc flight from Casablanca to Tel Aviv

From AFP:

Royal Air Maroc took off from Morocco’s economic capital Casablanca bound for Tel Aviv on Sunday, in the carrier’s first direct flight to the Jewish state since the two countries normalized ties in 2020.

Aviation sources and local media sources said a Moroccan business delegation was on the inaugural flight, delayed by three months because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Casablanca/Tel Aviv for 400 euros ($440). Who would have believed it?” tweeted David Govrin, head of Israel’s liaison office in the Arab state.

The Moroccan carrier RAM is to fly four times a week between Casablanca and Tel Aviv, while Israeli airlines launched flights to Morocco’s Marrakesh last July, although they were suspended in late November because of coronavirus travel curbs.

Here is the route that the flight took:

Flights between Morocco and Israel cannot go in a straight line because Algeria, Libya and probably Tunisia would not allow them to fly over their airspace. So the flight must pass over parts of Spain, Italy and Crete.

But that isn't the only reason for the flight path.

Algeria doesn't only block overflights from and to Israel - it bans any air traffic to and from Morocco! The ban took effect last September over their own cold war.

Flights from Casablanca to Cairo take a very similar route, avoiding Algerian airspace:

Interestingly, there do not appear to be any direct flights from Morocco to Jordan.

Which means that in one sense, Israel's ties to Arab Morocco are closer than those of Jordan.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Read all about it here!

There is lots more antisemitism in Morocco's official Religious Affairs Ministry site

Yesterday I reported that an official page at Morocco's Religious Affairs Ministry included an admiring article about an Arabic translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

It turns out that there are plenty of other examples of state antisemitism on that site.

While most of Morocco's official websites are complimentary to Jews and talk about coexistence, the Religious Affairs Ministry site has a definite problem with Jews.

An article describes how crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire converted to Islam in order to subvert the nation and turn it towards Western ways, like changing the weekend from Friday to Sunday. It also says that Jews control the media worldwide.

Another expands on the popular Arab theme of how much Zionists hated Mizrahi Jews, making this absurd claim: "In October 1948, the Jewish Agency decided to stop the immigration of Eastern Arab Jews to Israel, and its spokesmen declared the following: 'We must not forget that the State of Israel was established on the Palestinian lands to solve the problem of Ashkenazi Jews.'" Then the Zionists changed their minds, the article says, because they couldn't attract enough Ashkenazi Jews.

This article about the tiny and irrelevant anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism starts off with classic antisemitic tropes:

Despite the strength and tyranny of the World Zionist Party and its control over many means of propaganda and media, and its control over the political and economic machine in many capitals of Western Europe, there is a group of Jews who have had enough courage to challenge it and challenge its domination.

Then we have "The Hostile Attitude of the Jews towards the Holy Prophet," an example of pure antisemitic incitement, which starts off with:

Some people think that the war between Arabs and Jews is: the war of Arab nationalism on one side and Jewish nationalism on the other, and that the cause of the sinful Zionist aggression is: the love of Jewish national expansion at the expense of the Arab countries, as they are Arab countries only!
So...some people think. But the truth is: The Jews’ motive for recurring aggression is the mean religious hatred that their innate nature - since their first day - has been imprinted on, and which they inherited from their ancient forefathers.
The present war is: a war between Islam and Judaism, frankly and without the veil, and if the Arab countries embraced a religion other than Islam, they would not see aggression.

The article also says "Jews carry in their hearts the black hatred of all humanity, and believe that they are the dear children of God, and the rest of the people were from the breeds of mules and donkeys."

Another says that the Western Wall has no holiness for Jews, and they made up a story that it was sacred to them so that they could use it as a means to take over all of Jerusalem.

And here's one that starts with an admiring quote from a 1928 book:

The Jews traditionally hate other religions, and from this hatred arose in them a greed to plot against all humankind. From this plot they come to work for the demise of every non-Israeli entity and its replacement by a Zionist international rule. This is their plan that they followed.

These are just some of the articles, and only ones that talk about Jews. They also have a lot of articles about how Zionists and Israel are evil.

It seems incongruous that the official websites of a nation Israel is at peace with should still include so many examples of pure Jew-hatred and incitement.

Official Moroccan government site praises "Protocols:" "Global Judaism is a demonic force"

The Moroccan Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs has a lengthy article on its official government website praising an Arabic version of the antisemitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The article, which has been on the site since at least 2017, describes an edition of the book that was written by Ajaj Nuwaihid, a Lebanese historian who moved to Jerusalem in the 1920s. There, he became a close colleague of the infamous Jew-hating Mufti of Jerusalem and helped him start a political party in 1932.

The Waqf site summarizes the book:

Global Judaism is a demonic force with a secret organization, which likens itself to a snake, and this snake has a 9-stage scheme.

This plan started from the time of the Babylonian captivity 24-25 centuries ago, and the end of the last phase was at the end of this twentieth century, and in Palestine.

“Strength” in global Judaism is its ability to conceal its attributes from the world, and spread the mist around itself so that the world remains confused about the Jewish truth.

The most skilled thieves in the world, and if they mastered the technical trick of stealing, piercing walls, manipulating iron locks, acrobatic climbing in the dark, speed of movement, surprising with the barrel of a pistol, using drugs and covering their palms with gloves and paint.

Nuwaihid's book is not merely a translation of the Russian forgery, but it is an expansion of it, where he warns the Arab world about the plots of the Jews that can be seen in the Talmud and even back to how they destroyed the Amalekite "hero," Haman.

Nuwaihid ties the Jewish plot to modern Zionism, as most Arab writings about the Protocols do. According to him, they were disseminated in the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland:

In that conference, which included the most notorious demons and heads of demons, its members and sects competed, individually or in collaborators, in devising the most dangerous plan to destroy and exclude the world. The conferees studied a criminal plan to enable the Jews to control the world.

The article goes on to say the Russian secret police got hold of the Protocols by starting a fire that forced the Jews out of the meeting hall and allowed the Russians to grab the secret papers.

This Arabicized version of the Protocols says that the "satanic Jewish thinking reaches the domination of the world by a Jewish government after the sabotage of Christian Orthodox Russia, Catholic Europe, the Pope and then Islam."

(The theme that the Protocols were connected to Zionism is quite popular in the Arab world. This Egyptian writer claims that the Protocols were written by early Zionist pioneer Ahad Ha'am.)

This article is pure antisemitism and pure anti-Zionism, and it does not even pretend to distinguish between the two. It says "the undoubted truth is that one of the Jewish fingers lies behind every call that disparages moral values and aims to destroy the rules upon which human society has been based for all time." It gives examples of Communism (Marx) and existentialism (Sartre, whom it claims was half-Jewish.)

Morocco may have signed a peace treaty with Israel and it may be the most philosemitic Arab country, but that is not saying much when these sorts of slanders and lies can be published on an official Moroccan government website.

The Arab lobby in Washington

I had missed this important interview in RealClearPolitics with Al-Monitor’s Congressional Correspondent Julian Pecquet about the Arab lobby in Washington. Excerpts:

Can you give us a brief overview of Mideast lobbying in Washington?

[Arab nations are] forced to rely on armies of former officials and assorted influence-peddlers and image-makers to get their way. Often times in the Middle East, those goals include preserving the status quo or trying to put some controversy or other to bed rather than seeking any positive development.

That’s what you’re seeing right now with Saudi Arabia’s massive $9 million a year campaign to kill legislation allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue the kingdom. The Saudis are also working hard to preempt the inevitable negative media coverage from the pending release of a 2002 preliminary inquiry into the attacks.

The same is true of Egypt. Since late 2013, Cairo has been working with the Glover Park Group to shake off the pariah status that followed President Mohammed Morsi’s overthrow, and lift all remaining restrictions on military and economic aid.

The Lebanese, for their part, want to protect their banking industry from new sanctions on the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. And the United Arab Emirates has kept a close watch on the debate over the Export-Import Bank’s reauthorization, which the UAE has relied on extensively to help build its world-beating airline industry.

Other actors want a shot at political power, with interesting regional dynamics. These include the Iraqi Kurds’ bid for more autonomy (which Baghdad has lobbied against) and the Syrian opposition’s efforts to gain support against Bashar al-Assad (with an assist from the Saudi lobby).

Which Mideast country -- or countries -- might surprise the casual American observer for its outsize influence in our nation’s capital?

Morocco has to be one of the most interesting cases. The kingdom spends upwards of $3 million a year on more than a half-dozen lobbying and PR firms -- not to mention a seven-figure donation to the Clinton Foundation -- to project a friendly image. Mind you, we’re talking about a relatively poor country that’s still eligible for Millennium Challenge Corporation grants. All of that lobbying is directed at one main goal: obtaining U.S. approval -- or at least tacit acquiescence -- for its exploitation of the disputed Western Sahara, where Sahrawi activists have long demanded a vote on independence. The campaign has been largely successful, with neither the State Department nor Congress in any great rush to upset the apple cart and undermine a longtime Western ally by ushering in a potentially ungovernable new state on its borders.

Here's his story about the Clinton Foundation taking a million dollars from Morocco from April 2015:

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton is endorsing the illegal exploitation of disputed lands and risks undermining four decades of UN diplomacy by taking money from Morocco, critics say.

Clinton, who's expected to announce her candidacy for the Democratic nomination April 12, has come under fire for accepting foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation, most recently a $1 million donation from OCP, a fertilizer giant owned by the Moroccan government. Left unsaid in the initial reports: OCP — the Office Chérifien des Phosphates — is a major player in the exploitation of mineral resources from the Western Sahara, a disputed territory known as the “last colony in Africa” that Morocco took over after colonial power Spain abandoned it in the 1970s.

“You’ve heard of blood diamonds, but in many ways you could say that OCP is shipping blood phosphate,” Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., told Al-Monitor. “Western Sahara was taken over by Morocco to exploit its resources and this is one of the principal companies involved in that effort.”

A co-chairman of the Western Sahara Caucus and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, Pitts is one of a small handful of lawmakers willing to buck Morocco, a longtime US ally that runs a massive lobbying and PR operation in Washington. On April 10, he sent a letter to the Clinton Foundation, first obtained by Al-Monitor, along with House Foreign Affairs human rights panel Chairman Chris Smith, R-N.J., asking the foundation to refund the money and “discontinue its coordination with OCP.”

A spokesman for the foundation did not return an email request for comment.

Later reports say that OCP gave as much as $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, and Hilary Clinton has been an outspoken advocate for Morocco's position vis a vis the Western Sahara.

Segments of the Arab lobby seems to be quite effective in Washington. Funny how few people talk about it.

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Moroccan BDS activists announced that they managed to intimidate dozens of produce wholesalers in the country to stop selling Israeli dates, especially ahead of Ramadan when the demand for dates is high.

One of the merchants confirmed to the media that the requests by wholesalers to buy Israeli dates have ended "as a result of the success of the pressure campaign."

One activist said, "How can we accept the existence of this product on our plates, especially during the holy month of Ramadan, knowing that what we spend on these dates contributes to the perpetuation of the Israeli occupation and oppression of the people of our beloved Palestine?

This article says that the campaign was kickstarted by a Jewish anti-Zionist who noticed the Israeli goods in markets earlier this year.

This is hardly the first time that the issue has come up. Al Jazeera wrote about the exact same phenomenon of Israeli dates coming to Morocco ahead of Ramadan some nine years ago and I covered the paranoia then.

However, the amount of Israeli goods entering Morocco has been steadily increasing, from watermelons to chocolates to clothing to electronics.

How do these goods enter the Arab nation?

Importers in the autonomous Spanish areas of Ceuta and Melilla are bringing them in from Spain. Thousands of Moroccans flock to the enclaves daily to buy Western-made goods at discount.

One importer started to remove any tags that showed that the goods were from Israel, but consumers demanded to know where they were from. This didn't stop them from wanting to buy them.

One merchant said, "Many people in the beginning rejected (Israeli goods,) but with the passage of time some people began to, and some do not care about the source, even if it is Israeli. When they see quality goods they buy."

Whether the BDSers actually won this battle is hard to know because they are the only ones relaying this news. But they are definitely losing the war, as the amount of Israeli exports to Morocco has been steadily increasing year after year.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Jewish pilgrimages in Tunisia and Morocco end without incident

Over this past week, there were two major pilgrimages to Jewish shrines in Arab nations.

The most famous one was to Tunisia, where hundreds of Jews went on an annual visit to the ancient synagogue in Djerba.

It is the top story in The Arab Weekly, a beta site of what is apparently a new English-language newspaper:

More than 2,000 pilgrims gathered at Africa’s oldest synagogue on the southern Tunisian island of Djerba despite a warning by the Israeli government that the Jewish festival could be targeted by terrorists.

In an event unique in the Arab world, pilgrims, especially Jews of Tunisian descent from around the world, take part every year in the Lag Ba’omar festival at Djerba’s Ghriba synagogue. Pilgrims pay respect at tombs of famous rabbis, make vows, light candles and engage in celebrations.

Braving searing heat and security concerns, pilgrims danced and chanted amid heavy security measures aimed at warding off potential jihadist assaults.

Approximately 1,500 Jews live in Tunisia, down sharply from an estimated 100,000 before the country won independence from France in 1956.

“The way Tunisia treats its Jewish citizens and all its minorities serves as a strong positive model for the rest of the world,” said Knox Thames, US State Department special adviser for religious minorities. Thames participated in some parts of the pilgrimage ritual.

The Jewish community of Djerba is said to date back around 2,600 years ago. The Ghriba synagogue was built in 587BC.

The synagogue became the site of an annual pilgrimage of Jews from Tunisia and abroad. Known as the Hiloula, which translates as “celebration”, the event takes place on the holiday of Lag Ba’omer in commemoration of the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai, a legal scholar reputed to have performed miracles.

The event isn't quite unique, because there was another Hiloula festival in Morocco as well for Lag B'Omer. From Morocco World News:

Hundreds of Jewish pilgrims from around the world gathered on Thursday in the city of Ouazzane (north) to celebrate the Hilloula.

On this occasion, a ceremony was organized by the Council of Jewish Communities in Morocco in the mausoleum of rabbi Amrane Ben Diwane and was attended by pilgrims from Morocco and abroad.

The ceremony was held in the presence of several Moroccan officials as well as by civilian and military figures.

Aloun Sami, a member of the Council of Jewish Communities in Morocco, told MAP that the celebration of this annual religious ceremony showcases the attachment of Moroccan Jews to their homeland, where they enjoy full respect.

There is an element of Tunisia and Morocco bending over backwards to show their support for Jews to the West, but that doesn't mean that their efforts are unappreciated. Indeed, those two countries are anomalous in the Arab world as to how they protect their tiny remaining Jewish communities.

A Moroccan news site had a 10-minute feature on these pilgrimages a couple of years ago, where it gathered over 350,000 views with much debate in the comments between those who support Jews and the (much noisier) blatant antisemites.

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Video of Jews dancing in Morocco's airport goes viral

From Morocco World News:

In a scene that speaks volumes of Morocco’s openness, tolerance, cross-cultural understanding and peace in face of difference, a group of Jews arrive at Casablanca Mohammed VI airport singing and dancing their ritualistic Talmudic dance as an expression of their gratitude for Morocco.

The scene, which can rarely happen across the Middle East and North Africa except in Morocco, features a group of Jews at the airport’s checkpoint dancing and singing in very apparent joy, some wearing Moroccan traditional clothes but many others wearing their full Jewish attire such as the kippah, the black hat and suit, etc.

What was remarkably interesting on the faces of Morocco’s guests is the sense of security and comfort they expressed through dancing and through their smiling faces while being checked. Morocco has admitted its cultural diversity including its Jewish influence in the 2011 constitution.

The full story of who they were and what they went to see in Morocco is at Yeshiva World News.

While it looks like no one at the airport was terribly concerned over these "Talmudic rituals," Arabic media called the behavior "provocative."

I'm not sure how wise it was for them to make a scene at the airport either, especially at the security, making the jobs of the workers a little harder. For the most part I have not yet seen Moroccans being too insulted by this.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

"Anti-Zionists" criticize Jewish film festival in Morocco

Scene from one of the films shown

JTA reports:

Nearly 500 people attended the first Jewish film festival of Casablanca, which was organized in the Moroccan city by a Sephardic Jewish woman from Atlanta.

The three-day event, which ended Wednesday at the offices of Casablanca’s SOC club, featured three films about the “consequences of the emigration of the Jews from the fabric of Moroccan society,” the organizer, Vanessa Paloma, told JTA on Thursday. Each screening drew about 150 viewers, she said.

One of the two fictional features screened was “Aida,” which was also Morocco’s submission to the Academy Awards for best foreign language film, about a Paris-based Jewish music teacher’s battle with cancer.

The other was “Midnight Orchestra,” a 2015 production about the son of a Jewish musician who left Morocco amid racial tensions spurred by the Yom Kippur war.

Reactions to the festival were overwhelmingly positive, said Paloma, a singer of Judeo-Spanish music and a researcher on identity and the arts in Moroccan Judaism. She has lived in Casablanca since 2009 with her Moroccan-Jewish husband, Maurice Elbaz, who helped her produce the festival on a shoestring budget that sufficed because the filmmakers waived their fees.

But the event also provoked negative reactions in Morocco, which despite being one of the Muslim world’s few countries where Jewish heritage is celebrated openly, nonetheless has a vociferous anti-Israel lobby that at times resorts to anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Jaouad Benaissi, an author and former member of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces party, complained on Facebook about the festival’s theme, writing that “man-made artworks have nothing to do with religion,” and therefore the Jewish theme was inappropriate – a message similar to that of Abdelilah Jouhari, a journalist who accused Paloma of “trying to make business with religion,” as reported by the news site Le 360.

There were plenty of other criticisms.

The Secretary General of the Moroccan Observatory Against Normalization with the Zionist Entity, Aziz Hnawa, couched his criticism on the claim that such a festival is discriminatory on the basis of religion and race. Meaning that a Jewish film festival discriminates against non-Jews. He said that such a festival could be used to foment unrest among other minority groups in Northern Africa, who might demand their own film festivals!

He also was upset that some of the films referred to Israel as opposed to "The Zionist Entity."

Film critic Hassan Benslakhh said that to organize such a festival in Morocco is a high provocation.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Morocco proves acting like a bully works

Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara is, by any measure, far more oppressive than anything Israel is doing in the territories.

A brief recap:

In 1975, in violation of a World Court judgement, Morocco invaded the former Spanish colony and effectively annexed it. The people who lived in the territory, the Sahrawi, fled in their thousands as their villages were burned and livestock slaughtered.

Tens of thousands were driven into refugee camps across the border with Algeria where they remain to this day, surviving as best they can on pitiful levels of humanitarian aid. Those who stayed in their homes face severe repression in a police state which maintains an armed force over 100,000 strong for a population of just 500,000.

Also, Morocco moved hundreds of thousands of Moroccans to Western Sahara to change its demographics and ensure that it would not be separated again.

Morocco is also far more aggressive than Israel when it comes to how people treat it. The latest example comes from how Morocco reacted when Ban Ki Moon referred to the Western Sahara as occupied:

Escalating an angry dispute with the leader of the United Nations, Morocco gave the organization a 72-hour deadline on Thursday to evacuate 84 members of its mission in the disputed Western Sahara territory.

The Moroccan order threatened to paralyze the work of the mission, which has played a peacekeeping role for 25 years.

The United Nations Security Council held urgent private consultations on Thursday afternoon over the Moroccan order, which came a day after Morocco announced a big cut in civilian support for the mission; withdrawal of its $3 million in financial support; and other unspecified steps.

The president of the Security Council for March, Ambassador Ismael Abraão Gaspar Martins of Angola, emerged later to tell reporters that members were continuing to talk and that they wanted to ensure the mission’s stability. He offered no specifics but said, “every problem has a solution.”

The moves suddenly transformed Western Sahara, a former Spanish protectorate riven by a war for independence after it was seized by Morocco in 1975, from a sensitive, percolating issue into something more pressing.

It complicated the Security Council’s agenda in the midst of crises in Syria, Yemen, Libya and other hot spots.

The Moroccan foreign minister, Salaheddine Mezouar, who held a tense meeting with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday at Mr. Ban’s office at the United Nations, said his country’s actions were a response to what he called Mr. Ban’s “unacceptable statements and condemnable actions” in describing Western Sahara as an occupied region.

Mr. Ban used that terminology during a trip this month to neighboring Algeria, where he visited a camp for Western Sahara refugees.

In an unusually blunt response, Mr. Ban reiterated to the foreign minister that Western Sahara’s status had yet to be decided. Mr. Ban also said he had been personally offended by protests directed at him and the United Nations in Morocco last Sunday over his perceived bias on the Western Sahara dispute.

Morocco routinely arrests journalists who report on protests by the Sahrawi. It acts with an impunity and aggression far beyond what Israel has ever done.

And it is rewarded. The UN and EU refuse to call the Western Sahara "occupied," but "disputed," as this NYT article does. There is very little press coverage about the repression and thuggery practiced by Moroccan troops. Even HRW and Amnesty, whose members have been expelled from Morocco, refuse to call Western Sahara "occupied."

The only difference I have found is that Israel didn't annex the West Bank, and says that its status is disputed. Yet Jerusalem, which Israel does claim, is never referred to as "disputed" by the media or the UN and EU.

In other words, Morocco plays hardball, and it is rewarded by the people it treats with contempt. Israel tries to act like a good citizen and accommodate those who are hostile to its very existence and who use any excuse they can to damn the Jewish state - and it results in more negative coverage and contempt by the world community for its actions.

There is a lesson or two here.

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Morocco and Jordan join GCC in calling Hizballah a terrorist organization

Sky News Arabia confirms that Morocco and Jordan have also declared Hizballah to be considered a terrorist organization, joining the Gulf states who declared the same last week.

This goes beyond the EU position that only Hizballah's "military wing" is considered terrorist.

Morocco made its declaration last week at a meeting of the Arab Interior Ministers in Tunisia. That group as a whole also issued a statement not binding on its members declaring Hizballah to be terrorist, although Tunisia did not agree to that wording and said that Hizballah "has played an important role for Lebanon and the Palestinian cause."

As reported here before, Iran is very upset over this but so far the only ones supporting Iran in this matter are Algeria, Syria, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis and Israeli Arab ministers.

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The Palestinian Authority supports the occupation and settlements (of Western Sahara)

Hypocrisy abounds:

In a working visit to Morocco, a Palestinian delegation met with the leader of opposition party l’Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires, known as USFP, according to Arabic daily Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki in its Friday issue.

USFP leader Driss Lachgar discussed the Moroccan Sahara with Abbas Zaki, member of the Fatah Central Committee.

According to the daily, both leaders agreed that “the issue of the Moroccan Sahara and that of Palestine will now be at the center of their diplomatic cooperation.”

The meeting was held in presence of the Ambassador of Palestine to Morocco, Amine Ahmed Mohamed Abou Hassira, as well as three other Fatah leaders alongside Abba Zaki.

The working visit of the Palestinian delegation comes just weeks after Palestinian Foreign Minister Ryad El Maliki visited Morocco and declared Palestine’s support for Morocco’s territorial integrity.

According to the same source, Minister El Maliki stated Palestine’s position in favor of “a settlement of the conflict within the framework of Morocco’s sovereignty.”

“There is no need to make any comparison between the Palestinian cause and the Moroccan Sahara issue,” El Maliki stressed.

“We struggle against the Israeli occupation since 1948 and Morocco struggles for the achievement of its territorial integrity,” he added.

The Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara is about as clear-cut example of occupation as you can imagine. In 1975, the International Court of Justice ruled that Morocco and Mauritania has no legal claims on the land and that the native Sahrawi had the right to self-determination. Immediately afterwards, Morocco took over two thirds of the country and Mauritania the other third. In 1978, Mauritania made a peace deal with the Sahrawi and gave them their third of the land - and Morocco took that over as well (although a percentage of the and is controlled by the Sahrawis.) . Hundreds of thousands of Moroccan settlers have moved to the territory under army protection, and they now outnumber the natives by as much as 3-1.

Most nations consider Morocco's annexation of western Sahara to be illegal. .

For Palestinians to side with the occupiers and settlers in Western Sahara shows that their claims to be on the side of international law (and on the side of people under occupation) is a joke.

Notice also that while the Sahrawis make no claim against Morocco itself, this Palestinian foreign minister says explicitly that Israel is occupying Palestinian territory since 1948 - meaning that he admits that the PLO goal is to gain all of Israel. The claims of "occupation" to the West are a smokescreen.

(h/t Daled Amos)

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Tension mounts between Algeria and Morocco - and Jews are blamed

Here's an article in the North Africa Post telling the Moroccan side of the story of their long standing dispute with Algeria:

The deep causes of the antagonism between the two countries lie deep in the colonial legacy that left huge territorial imbalances penalizing Morocco and Tunisia in favour of Algeria.

After emerging from their independence struggle, Morocco and Tunisia were well aware that Algeria acquired its geographic extent at their expense and were hoping that an independent anti-colonial Algeria will repair the territorial injustices caused by colonialism. However, history took another course with the takeover of the army commanders in Algiers and the subordination of politicians. All the promises given by the political leaders of the Algerian provisional government prior to Algeria’s independence were renounced including the promise given to Morocco’s King Mohammed V to negotiate the borders in gratitude for Morocco’s support for the Algerian resistance and the Kingdom’s refusal to negotiate the status of the borders with France. Right after independence the omens of territorial consolidation began to manifest itself in the revolutionary military commanders that emerged as Algeria’s kingmakers. Thus, Tunisia was propelled to give up its territorial claims and signed an agreement recognizing the post-colonial borders with Algiers, while skirmishes took place with Morocco over the region of Tindouf. This low-intensity war in the early 1960s opposing Morocco and Algeria, known as “Sand war”, ended with a military victory for Morocco. However, the Kingdom fell short of retrieving what it deems historically Moroccan lands.

As a result, Algeria has been supporting the groups that are against Morocco's occupation of Western Dahara:

Strikingly enough, the very retrieval of Western Sahara by Morocco sounded the alarm bell for Algerian military junta who saw in the move an attempt to revive the aspirations for a “Greater Morocco,” an idea that resounds in history referring to an era where Moroccan dynasties ruled Mauritania, northern Mali and most of western Algeria.

But it is easier to blame Jews for these decades-old disputes.

Andre Azoulay

Algeria's Akbar El-Youm says that Jews are really the ones who are goading Morocco into confrontation with Algeria.

[We cannot] not rule out the existence of a dirty Zionist scheme that aims to ignite a war between Morocco and Algeria, two of the Arab countries that have so far escaped from the Arab infighting...These are not merely guesses and speculation, but a degree of certainty there is a real Zionist scheme aimed at fueling a fierce war between Algeria and Morocco similar to those that took place between Iraq and Iran during the 1980s that led to the exhaustion of the two countries both classified in the category of "Israel's enemies". There is no doubt that the Zionists will never forgive Algeria's unconditional support for the Palestinian cause, which made Algeria one of the most loved countries in the occupied Palestinian territories where their children raise the flag of our country through many of the clashes that took place recently between them and the Zionist occupation soldiers. It is known that the Jews were behind the lobby that controls the joints of the decision-making in Morocco, the Jew Azoulay is one of the most prominent of King Mohammed VI's advisers if not the most powerful of all, one of the defenders for the security of so-called Israel and supporters of two states (Israel and Palestine) on the holy land of Palestine. André Azoulay who also served as an adviser to King Hassan II is the face of a large Jewish community in Morocco, which is among the largest Jewish communities in the Arab and Islamic countries.

The article goes on to list other prominent Moroccan Jews, and uses as evidence of their nefarious nature that one of them said in a ceremony 6 years ago that "Jews will not disappear from Morocco, we have a long history here."

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Moroccan Jews alarmed by antisemitism at "pro-Palestinian" rally

From Algemeiner:

Thousands marched in Casablanca, Morocco on Sunday, in a show of solidarity for Palestinians amid the recent wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence, according to a video released by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Demonstrators — among them teenagers and young children — wearing smocks bespattered in red paint, or the colors of the Palestinian flag, chanted, “Death to Israel,” and “We will sacrifice our soul and our blood to you, Al-Aqsa,” in reference to the holy site in Jerusalem that has reportedly been at the center of the recent terror surge in Israel.

Another part of the demonstration, also featured in a video uploaded to Facebook, shows two men dressed in Orthodox Jewish garb — albeit with obscenely tall cylindrical black hats — being led by West Bank Palestinian activists in black-and-white kaffiyehs (as opposed to the traditionally green ones worn by their counterparts in the Gaza Strip) holding toy assault rifles behind a miniature float of the Dome of the Rock.

At one point in the MEMRI video, the two “Orthodox” men are seen chipping away at the Dome of the Rock with pickaxes. They are subsequently rounded up, fake-stabbed and “executed.”

Moroccan Jews are aghast, and they have put together 3000 signatures on a petition condemning the play as well as another part of the rally where Muslim children trampled a Star of David. The petition says that people can demonstrate for whatever causes they want but to threaten an entire community like that is unacceptable.

The organizer of the demonstration defended the actions, Abdul Samad Fathi, denied that there was any anti-Semitism or incitement to kill Jews, saying that those who participated in the march were only referring to the "Zionist entity that usurped the land of Palestine and not the Jewish community that lived in peace and security with Muslims throughout the ages."

Fathi then raised the spectre of dual loyalties to the Moroccan Jews, telling CNN in Arabic: "Those who signed this petition are trying to fabricate an issue to change the subject of the debate which is to denounce crimes against the Palestinians. If the signatories are so keen on peace, why don't Moroccan Jews condemn those who join the ranks of the Zionist army and the killing of Palestinians?

He said that the play does not carry connotations of inciting the murder of Jews, but rather is aimed at Zionists

Iranian mindset revealed in spat with Morocco

From Middle East Monitor:

The Kingdom of Morocco has expressed its anger at the report published a few days ago by Iranian Fars news agency accusing Morocco of executing an "Israeli agenda". The report was entitled "Morocco prisoner to Zionist policies".

The official spokesman for the Moroccan government, Mustapha El Khalfi, stated yesterday that "Rabat strongly rejects any abuse directed at the Kingdom, regardless of its source," stressing that "regardless of the intentions and pretexts for the abuses directed at the country, they are rejected and unacceptable and must be condemned."

El Khalfi also added that, "Morocco is a sovereign, free, independent country that exercises its policies and sovereignty in accordance with the constitution that frames the state and is not subject to the dictations of any other party." He noted that "just as Morocco does not interfere in the internal affairs of any country, it firmly refuses to allow any other party to interfere in its affairs."

The next part is actually quite interesting:

The report was published by Fars, the media agency of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, one day after King Mohammed VI of Morocco hosted several foreign ambassadors appointed to work in the diplomatic sector in Rabat. These ministers included the new Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Taqi Moayyed, marking the thawing of relations between the two countries that's have been icy since 2009.

After five years of no diplomatic relations, Iran finally achieved its goal of rapprochement with Morocco - and the very next day they spit in Morocco's face.

What's going on?

Perhaps the answer is that Iran doesn't want friendly relations with the rest of the Muslim world - it wants to dominate the Muslim world. The hardliners in the Revolutionary Guards seem to subscribe to the view that weakness is despicable, and Morocco's making peace with Iran is a sign of weakness. Therefore, it invites Iran to assert its superiority by insulting its new friends.

It sure looks like that is how Iran treats the US with every new concession.

Unlike Egypt, Morocco welcomes Jewish pilgrims

Egyptian courts may have decided this week that they don't want Jews to visit the gravesite of Yaakov Abuhatzeira, making up ludicrous excuses to bar Jews from the country, but not all Arab countries are following suit.

There are a series of pilgrimages to the gravesites of famous rabbis in Morocco throughout the year. One of them is happening around now, as Jews of Moroccan origin from around the world are visiting the grave of Rabbi David Ben Baruch Hakohen Azogh.

These pilgrimages are known as hiloulot and they take place on the anniversaries of the rabbi's deaths. Many are also celebrated at Lag B'Omer in the spring.

Moroccan news media are quite supportive of the influx of Jewish pilgrims, even the ones from Israel. There were a number of sympathetic articles about this most recent pilgrimage to the town of Taroudant where Rabbi Azogh's grave is. The articles note how these pilgrimages are opportunities for members of Moroccan Jewish families now spread throughout the world to have reunions.

There is even a ten minute news video about the visits that seems to be very supportive of the influx of Jews to Morocco. Note one interviewee is clearly from Israel.

Morocco and Egypt ban "Exodus: Gods and Kings" Here's why.

Egyptian censors have decided to ban the Ridley Scott Biblical epic "Exodus: Gods and Kings."

Two reasons were given.

One is that the film apparently implies that the Jews built the Pyramids, a very touchy subject in Egypt.

The second is that the film characterizes the splitting of the "Red Sea" as the result of an earthquake, not as a direct miracle from Allah.

The Koran does discuss the Exodus story, including the splitting of the sea, in chapter 26.

Morocco censors also banned the film, but they did it after some theaters started the first showing, causing much confusion. No official reason was given, but Morocco had also banned the biblical film Noah.