Moroccan Jewish Emigration in the Age of Independence Movement: A Reappraisal

From 1948 onwards, the Jews of the Arab world left the countries of their ancestors not to return. The bulk of these migrations, around six hundred thousand persons, settled in the newly created Jewish State of Israel, in ancient Palestine. Most of them were Moroccan Jews, as Moroccan Jewry was the biggest of the Arab world. Although motivations may seem obvious, the crash of two emerging and powerful opposite nationalisms, Arab and Jewish, several studies have already pointed out that the situation was much more complex. 2 The aim of this article is to avoid easy conclusions and to come as close as possible to the position of Jewish populations, in view of the Arab world's personal attitudes towards Zionism, the creation of the State of Israel, the emergence of Arab nationalism, and the independence claims of Arab countries. That is, it tries to understand how local Jewish populations were positioned, particularly in Morocco, in relation to the important political changes that were taking place in the North of Africa and the Middle East in the mid-XX th century: on one hand, the creation of the State of Israel and, on the other hand, the independence of the Maghreb countries. These ten years, in which nothing was written, determined the future of most of the Maghreb countries and their diverse populations.