'Everyone lost': How a Zionist migration programme deprived Morocco of its thriving Jewish community

Middle East Eye

5 days ago

It is no secret that many Jews left Morocco for Israel in the 1960s, under a Zionist programme formally known as Operation Yachin.
A covert mission engineered by the Mossad and run by the Jewish Agency, Operation Yachin aimed to increase the population of Jews in the recently proclaimed state by taking them from Morocco. Other similar operations took place all over the world at the time.
Between 1961 and 1964, nearly 90,000 Jews, or 54.6 percent of the kingdom's community, are thought to have left Morocco. Prior to the operation, around 225,000 Jews were living in the North African country.
As many as 160,000 Jews of Moroccan origins are reported to live in Israel nowadays, forming the second largest migrant group after Jews from ex-Soviet republics.
The more unknown aspect of this period is embodied by the Moroccan Jewish community that remained - or returned from Israel just after migrating and living there for a few years. They constitute the 2,000 Jews that live in the country today - the largest remaining Jewish community in North Africa.
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Jewish Moroccan author Jacob Cohen describes this once thriving Jewish community as "a rare species".
Born in 1944 in Meknes, Cohen forms part of the minority group who remained in Morocco during the mass migration. He watched his community evaporate before his eyes.
"I was convinced that we had to leave, that Moroccan Jews had no future in Morocco. This is the great success of the Zionist organisations present in Morocco," he told Middle East Eye.
One thing was clear, he said: "There was no overt antisemitism; the few Jews who lived in Morocco had no problems. But there was this widespread feeling that the future was no longer there, if not for themselves, then at least for their children."
'It was a tragedy'
According to various academic sources, Operation Yachin followed an understanding between Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and the late Moroccan King Hassan II.
To compensate Morocco for the loss of valuable community members, Israel reportedly agreed to pay $500,000, plus $100 per emigrant for the first 50,000 Moroccan Jews who left, and $250 for each additional emigrant. The New York-based Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society reportedly contributed $50 million towards Yachin.
Fanny Mergui, 80, from Casablanca, was one of the thousands who left in 1961. She remembers how Israeli youth movements came to Morocco to convince Jews to leave and, for those like herself who had the "right profile", to join the movement.
'I watched all those people leaving the medina - grandmothers, grandfathers, young and old people… all crying. People weren't leaving with joy in their hearts'
- Fanny Mergui, 80, Moroccan Jew
"[They said that] Morocco was independent [from French colonial rule from 1956], and we had our own country [Israel], we no longer had any reason to stay in Morocco," Mergui told MEE.
She started attending the youth clubs created by the Jewish Agency, the operative branch of the World Zionist Organisation in charge of fostering immigration of Jews to Israel, when she was 10. These clubs were a way of spreading Zionist propaganda to youth.
"I lived to the rhythm of Israeli culture - the homeland, the songs of the pioneers, socialism, freedom, emancipation, fraternity," she said.
The propaganda was efficient, and from her home in the historical district, Mergui was in the prime location to watch the operation unravel.
"They sent buses from entire villages to Casablanca, and I spent my childhood watching those people leave. You could just cross the street and you were right there where the ships docked, right in front of our eyes."
Mergui described the state in which people left as a "kind of departure psychosis".
"I watched all those people leaving the medina - grandmothers, grandfathers, young and old people, with their couscous pots, baskets, spices, all crying. It was a tragedy. People weren't leaving with joy in their hearts," Mergui recalled.
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The Jews were perfectly integrated into the predominantly Muslim Moroccan society, to which they had belonged for over 2,000 years.
"Muslim Moroccans weren't attacking us, they weren't telling us to leave, quite the opposite," she told MEE.
However, at the time, Mergui said the Zionist movement and the migration project promised "modernity" and access to a new world.
"When I left, in my mind, and for many Moroccan Jews, Israel had always existed. We didn't think we were going to a country that had just come into being. To us, it was the Holy Land. It was our country. It was the land of the Bible," she said.
"We were going home, returning home, period. We didn't understand what was really happening. It took me a lifetime to understand what happened to my community," she added.
Returning to Morocco
A well-informed anonymous source told MEE that in addition to travelling for free to Israel, the migrants were offered a permanent place to stay.
However, once in Israel, Moroccan Jews, like other immigrants from Arab countries, realised that reality was not as the Zionist movement had described it to them.
In Israel, Moroccans became the first to form what was called the "Arab neighbourhoods", Mergui said, describing them as "completely desolate areas".
"If you wanted a roof you had to build one yourself," she said, adding that Arab Jews were the poorest out of the arriving communities.
The remaining buildings in the Mughrabi (Moroccan) Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City on 12 June 1967, after its demolition by Israel to broaden the space in front of the Western Wall (Ilan Bruner/Israeli Government Press Office/AFP)
Racism between communities and inequality were also an issue.
"It was a colonial ideology. The European Jews, who were the first to settle in Palestine from Russia back in the 1880s, considered themselves superior to us and we could only ever be second-class citizens."
It did not take long for the new immigrants to contest the situation.
"Moroccan Jews took to the streets with portraits of King Mohammed V, saying 'We want to go back home', but this was not possible; it was a one-way trip," Mergui said. Although Mohammed V passed away in 1961, the protesters used his image as the late king was known for protecting Jews during World War II, when he refused to surrender the Moroccan Jewish population to the Nazi regime.
Returning home was an option that was not readily available to most Jewish Moroccans. As the operation was clandestine, they did not have legitimate travel documents and their passport situation was tied to the agreements concluded with Morocco, she explained.
After the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Mergui herself wished to return to Morocco and was given the opportunity to by becoming a leader of the Zionist youth club which helped recruit people into the movement.
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"I was overjoyed, not because I was going to work for the Zionist movement, but because they gave me the chance to question that rushed departure from Morocco."
Israel was not home for Mergui. "I was immersed in a foreign culture, one I appreciated, of course - I learned a lot, I won't deny it. I became politicised. I met young people from all over the world," she said.
While she used to see Zionism "like any other colonial movement that needed to settle", everything changed for her after 1967 and Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.
"I began to realise that was the real issue and understand what was really going on. I gave up completely on living in Israel."
Before returning to Morocco, Mergui studied at the University of Vincennes in Paris, where she learned about the history of Palestine.
"It shaped my academic and political path and my conscience was awakened."
During her time in France, Mergui became active in politics, campaigning both for the Israeli Black Panthers, a group seeking social justice for Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in Israel, and for the Palestinian cause.
On the 'verge of extinction'
The Moroccan public overtly supports the Palestinian cause and opposes the normalisation deal signed with Israel in 2020 - and Jews in the kingdom seem to share a similar perspective.
Most of the Moroccan Jews keep a low political profile; however, many members of the community condemn Israeli actions. Rabat is home to some renowned pro-Palestine Moroccan activists of Jewish origin, like Sion Assidon, a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Morocco.
However, Middle East politics is not the only reason why the country's Jews decided to stay - or return.
Haim Crespin, born in the northern Moroccan city of Ksar al-Bebir in 1957, described his reason to stay in the kingdom as "not politically motivated".
'Everything is being done to protect, support and preserve [the Jewish identity]. But its end seems inevitable, and even if it survives, it will be reduced to its simplest form'
- Jacob Cohen, Moroccan Jewish author
He was a child when the Jewish mass migration happened.
"My father was a businessman, and we had a good life here. I also opened my restaurant 25 years ago. Not every Jew's reason to stay in Morocco is founded on political aspects," he told MEE.
The restaurateur, who now lives in Rabat, defends his family's choice to remain in the country despite some difficulties that he considers not to be specific to Morocco.
While some Jewish people interviewed by MEE said they perceived a rise in antisemitism in the kingdom, there is no reliable data on the issue. In any case, that is not enough to force people to leave, Crespin said. "People move because of fear, but this happens all over the world, so why move?"
Cohen, on the other hand, is pessimistic about the fate of the Jewish community in Morocco, which the writer likened to being on the "verge of extinction".
He himself decided to leave for France after he said he "encountered certain personal problems" when working as an assistant professor in Casablanca that made him think that "Moroccan Jews were generally right not to consider Moroccan society to be sufficiently tolerant and egalitarian to give Jews the positions they deserve".
However, he recognises that the kingdom has made efforts to safeguard the country's historical Jewish identity.
In 1997 the Foundation of Moroccan Jewish Heritage established the first Jewish museum in the Arab world in Casablanca, which still operates today. The foundation has preserved over 167 Jewish cemeteries and shrines throughout the kingdom.
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In 2011, the new Moroccan constitution recognised the Hebraic identity as an integral part of Moroccan identity and, in 2020, King Mohammed VI approved the rollout of education on Jewish history and culture in primary schools. A prominent Moroccan Jewish adviser to the king, Andre Azoulay, played a role in emphasising the importance of this official recognition.
"Everything is being done to protect, support and preserve it. But its end seems inevitable, and even if it survives, it will be reduced to its simplest form," Cohen said.
"Nothing can be done against this verdict of history," he added, highlighting the major losses posed by Operation Yachin.
"On the Moroccan side, everyone lost. The country lost a potential community of one to two million people who could have contributed to its development, diversity and harmony.
"On the Jewish side, it was the irreversible eradication of a civilisation that had 15 centuries to form and flourish."
When describing the migration period, Mergui likes to use the metaphor of people fleeing a burning building.
"The Moroccan Jewish community was completely at a loss. They had no idea what would become of them, it was like being in a house on fire, and people are fleeing," she said.
"Then what do you do? Well, you run like everyone else."