Zionism in Morocco

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Organized Zionism, the 19th century European ethnocultural nationalist movement to establish a Jewish state through the colonization of Palestine,^[1] came to Morocco from Europe at the beginning of the 20th century.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} During the period of French and Spanish colonial rule, it spread slowly in Moroccan Jewish communities, especially in Tangier and the Spanish zone in the north, through Zionist associations and advocacy, as well as through Zionist literature and propaganda. The small but effective Zionist movement in Morocco was organized and led locally by a faction of secular, urban Jews educated in elite European educational systems, especially the schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU), and it had considerable support and sometimes direct intervention from Zionist organizations abroad.

The influence of Zionism in urban centers and along the coasts was very different from its influence in rural areas in the hinterland, such as villages in the Atlas Mountains, Sous valley, Draa valley, and pre-Sahara, and it appealed to different groups for different reasons. Urban, elite Moroccan Jews were divided on the question of Zionism: there were those who were invested in the project of Westernization and who saw Zionism as an obstacle to achieving integration with the Europeans; there were those who supported modern secular Zionism; and there were those who favored a Jewish-Muslim alliance in Morocco, perhaps most pronounced in the organization al-Wifaq. Scholars have seen Zionism and the Moroccan Nationalist Movement in the years leading up to Moroccan independence in 1956 as two nationalist movements in competition for the membership of Moroccan Jews, particularly those living outside of urban areas, characterizing both as seeing this population as 'theirs.' For many rural Moroccan Jews, in addition to economic reasons, the religious importance of the Land of Israel in their beliefs had a major role in their decision to emigrate.

Only after the establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine in 1948 was there significant Zionist emigration from Morocco. Emigration, organized and facilitated by Zionist groups from outside of Morocco, increased significantly in the period before Moroccan independence in 1956. From 1949 to 1956, Cadima, a migration apparatus administered by Jewish Agency and Mossad Le'Aliyah agents sent from Israel, organized the migration of over 60,000 Moroccan Jews to Israel. From 1961 to 1964, almost 90,000 Moroccan Jews were migrated to Israel in Operation Yachin, an Israeli-led initiative in which the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society paid King Hassan II a sum per capita for each Moroccan Jew who migrated to Israel.^[7] Although Moroccan Jews seeking to migrate to Israel faced restrictions from both the Moroccan and Israeli governments at different times, roughly two thirds of the Jews of Morocco eventually migrated to Israel.