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How the Sultan of Morocco Saved His Jewish Subjects During World War II

April 26 2017

Some 4,000 North African Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, but Moroccan Jewry survived virtually unscathed thanks to the efforts of Sultan Mohammed V, who had been placed on the throne by the French in 1912 when they made his country a protectorate. Richard Hurowitz writes:

When Paris fell to the Germans in July 1940, the sultan, then thirty, was put in a precarious position as Morocco came under the rule of the collaborationist French Vichy regime. Among their first acts, the new overseers sought to impose anti-Semitic laws in Morocco. Jews had lived in that part of the world since well before Carthage fell, and over a quarter-million called Morocco their home in 1940. Members of the community had served the sultans’ court as ministers, diplomats, and advisers. Mohammed V took seriously his role as “commander of the faithful,” which he viewed to include all “people of the book,” meaning Jews, Christians, and Muslims. . . . “There are no Jews in Morocco,” he declared. “There are only Moroccan subjects.”

Vichy authorities soon forced Mohammed V to promulgate two laws restricting certain professions and schools to Jews and requiring them to live in ghettos. In an act of resistance, the sultan declined to enforce the laws fully. . . . In 1941, for the first time, Mohammed V made a point of inviting senior representatives of the Jewish community to the annual banquet celebrating the anniversary of his sultanate and placing them in the best seats next to the French officials. . . . Although there were limits to his power, Mohammed V ensured that there were never round-ups of Jews in Morocco. . . . During Vichy rule—which lasted a little more than two years—no Moroccan Jews were deported or killed; nor were they forced to wear the yellow star. . . .

Throughout the sultan’s reign, he continued to protect his Jewish subjects. When the Arab world reacted violently to the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, the sultan reminded Moroccans that Jews had always been protected in their country and should not be harmed.

Read more at Los Angeles Times

More about: History & Ideas, Holocaust, Moroccan Jewry, Morocco, Muslim-Jewish relations, Righteous Among the Nations

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic