Casablanca, Morocco - Last Friday’s election here was watched closely around the world as an electoral bellwether for moderate Islam, but the moderate Islamists were not the only candidates to draw attention for their religious views.
No fewer than five Moroccan Jews, three of them women, ran in the elections. None of them ended up winning a seat in Parliament, but they represented a record number of Jewish candidates and they made their presence felt during the campaign.
Over the past month, they took to the streets of Morocco’s largest city and to the airwaves of Al Jazeera to win support, often making their case to veiled women and bearded men. And to hear the candidates tell it, the citizens of this conservative Muslim Arab country gave them a fair hearing.
“I campaigned in the slums where the Islamists are present, and I was very well received and it touched me deeply,” Susan Abittan, a fiery 53-year-old social worker, said two days after the election in an interview at her modest apartment in Casablanca. “They know that I am involved in social issues, and this is what they want.”
Abittan announced her candidacy in late July, when King Mohammed VI publicly called on his countrymen to become involved in the legislative elections. The king’s appeal, according to most observers, was intended to dilute the electoral power of the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party, which was expected to win the most seats in parliament.
The Justice and Development Party, modeled on the eponymous ruling party in Turkey, ended up second in the polls, which saw only a 37% turnout of registered voters. Many attributed the party’s disappointing showing largely to the recent proliferation of small political parties, which by election day totaled 33.
Abittan joined the Party of Initiative for Cooperation and Development, one of two parties to feature Jewish candidates. Abittan and fellow Jewish candidates Susan Cohen, Joseph Levy, Solange Cohen and Maguy Kakon all ran in Casablanca, where nearly half of Morocco’s 5,000 Jews live.
The country’s Jews are proud of their history and are quick to note that most of their brethren who left during the 1950s for Israel, France or the United States remain strongly attached to their homeland. The Moroccan government, for its part, has generally embraced those who remained, and its support of the community has been held up as a symbol of Arab moderation and tolerance.
Indeed, the political backing given to the Jewish candidates in last week’s election was notable in a country where hard-line policies are anathema to the government. When Abittan was asked if the Interior Ministry, which organized the elections, had encouraged her to run, she answered: “Of course they did. The Interior Ministry and the local authorities told me I should because I am a militant.”
Nonetheless, all five Jewish candidates stressed that their religion had nothing to do with their decision to run. The main impetuses behind their candidacies, they said, were patriotism and a sense of belonging to Morocco.
“I wanted the people to know that I was there for Morocco,” said Abittan, whose family arrived in the Sahara region centuries ago from Ethiopia. “I am a Moroccan and proud to be one.”
Levy, a candidate for the Party of the Social Center, sounded a similar note.
“I entered politics as a Moroccan, not as a Jew,” said Levy, whose father fought alongside Moroccan nationalists against French colonial rule during the 1950s.
The candidates expressed bewilderment when questioned about campaigning as a Jew in an Arab Muslim country, pointing out that Morocco has had a Jewish minister, a Jewish ambassador and a Jewish adviser to the king. A number of observers, however, told the Forward that the candidacies serve the government’s aim of promoting an image abroad, and particularly in the West, of Morocco as a moderate Muslim country at a time when political Islam is on the rise.
The effects of this campaign have apparently reached far and wide. In a speech that Al Qaeda released last week, Osama bin Laden said that “the Jewish community in Morocco today is one of the largest communities in the world. They are alive with us, and we have not incinerated them.”
Bin Laden had some of his facts wrong: Morocco’s Jewish community is hardly one of the largest — and even the campaign-trail picture of tolerance painted by Abittan differs sharply from the accounts of two Moroccan reporters who followed the race and spoke to the Forward on condition of anonymity. Locals to whom the reporters talked about the candidates consistently asked why foreign candidates had entered Morocco’s elections, or stated that voting for a Jew was against Islam.
Abittan disputes this claim, stating that her 25 years of social work had earned the respect of local Jews and Muslims alike. She noted that an Islamist baker in her neighborhood had offered his support, and that one of the other Jewish candidates, banker Solange Cohen, ran in a well-known Islamist stronghold in Casablanca’s suburbs.
“We didn’t get the votes, because we started too late,” she said, “People, when they heard ‘Cohen,’ did not run away; they were curious.”
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Any Jew living in a moslem country who says what Abittan does is one of 2 things: suffering from mental disorder or saying what she knows the governing powers want to hear. My parents left Morocco in the late 40's. Life was never easy there for most jews.
Any person who knows Moricco knows that what these candidates said were lies. While Morocco is hardly the worst place in the Moslem world for Jews, its hardly an ideal place. Most are one Mosque sermon away from death! To have to depend on the munificence of a king is certainly not safety.
Morocco was the first country in the world to recognise the infant United States. During the Spanish Civil War, colonial levies from Spanish Morocco fought so well for General Franco (often rumoured to be the descendant of marranos, converted Jews) that he made them his personal bodyguard. Despite the ignorant descriptions of him as a "fascist" and racist, Franco sheltered thousands of Jews fleeing from Italy after Mussolini was overthrown and over the Pyrenees from France. In 1956, while "democratic" France was fighting to retain its part of Morocco, Spain granted the rest immediate independence on the understanding that the King would preserve the tradition of tolerance towards Jews and Christians. As this article shows, it has held up during all the twists and turns of Arab/Jewish politics over the past 50 years, in no small measure due to the wisdom of a man who is still ignorantly reviled as an ally of Hitler-- Francisco Franco.
I yearn for a time when they're will be no difference between a muslim, a jew, or a christian or any other religions alike. I yearn for a time when we are United as a human race not based on our religions. One GOD, we are either one or none.
If life in Morocco seems nice for Jews there, just give it time. Just give it time. Despite Jewish naivety about living amoung moderate muslims, and despite living under a benevolant King, things will change - eventually, for the worse. You will wish you had fled to Israel, France, the U.K., or America, like the rest of us who don't have to apologize for who we are and for our unrelenting support of Zionism and Israel.
P.S. GOD BLESS ISRAEL, GOD BLESS THE U.S.A. GOD BLESS ZIONISM.
I would just repeat the sentiments expressed on Friday by Jihane Tamri. It is certainly about time we learned to live with our differences and and accept one another as citizens of the same world.
Que l'on me permette de faire un comentaire en français concernant le commantaire de la personne qui pretend que la vie n'était pas facile pour les juifs au Maroc. L'érait-elle pour les musulmans? Pour son information, il y'vait pendant les années 40 au maroc, beaucoup plus de pauvre musulmans que de pauvres juifs...
Wonderful to hear of these three women who ran. Jews have always been grateful to the king and felt that without he's protection they would be dead. Life was extremely difficult for my family, the Jews around me and for me growing up in the 50s. I agree with M Medkouri who talked about the poverty of Muslims in Morocco. Life wasn't easy for them either, but we as Jews were terrified of stepping out the door where we were spat on and called "dirty Jew" "Sale Juif" and that was if we were not stoned by little children.
as a moroccan and a moslem,i feel no difference between me and my jewish "brothers and sisters".we are all moroccans,we all live in perfect harmony.i have manys friends that are jewish and christians but this religious labels is meaningless to me.all i see is these people are my county men and women.i wish the whole world unites against poverety,diseases,and not stirring up problems.god bless us all.
waarom niet beter ons maroccans pure!!!! ///en niet french jews
ah;ach la ida!? ida maghtbia pur ra mtkelmchi b francaiya mbrouk kakon
GOD BLESS MOROCCO AND ALL MOROCCANS :)
ZIONISM = NAZISM
Yes...God bless all Moroccans, both Muslims and Jews. My grandfather still tells stories about his Jewish neighbors from the 50's. It may have been that some Jews were mistreated in the past, but so did other minorities within Morocco in those days. Human beings in general have come a long way in terms of learning how to coexist with each other since the 50's. But there was never an institutionalized racism in Morocco or the Arab world in fact, the kind practiced by the West and until recently against the blacks in the US. In fact, Jews in the 50's were treated better than the Palestinians in today's Israel; certainly better than Palestinians are treated today by the crazy terrorist settlers. Having said all of that, Moroccans will never apologize for condemning Zionism and the racist policies the Apartheid entity of Israel. We will forever support the right of the Palestinians because, unlike the West, we do not have the guilt complex. Again, vive le Maroc and tous les Marocain.