Free Palestine

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but as a Moroccan Jew, I am not closer to being Arab than my Ashkenazi Jewish brethren. My family’s diaspora passed through North Africa. That does not make us Arab Jews. Jews in Arab and Muslim countries were not treated as Arabs. They were treated as Jews with a different community, different legal status, and different rules. This included the jizya tax under Islamic law. Moroccan Jews have a deep and particular connection to Morocco. Many also hold a deep loyalty to the Moroccan Crown. Yet that connection exists not because we were Arabs. It exists because Morocco, at its best, gathered its citizens under the banner of Moroccan nationality. When the King famously said during the Vichy period that there were no Jews or Muslims, only Moroccans, that was precisely the point. Nationality served to protect a people who were otherwise seen as distinct. Being a Jew from Morocco does not make me Arab any more than being a Jew from Poland makes an Ashkenazi Jew Polish in the ethnic sense. We are Jews from different diasporas but the same people.

Then why did all the Arab states vote NO on Resolution 194?

Watch closely new video showing the U.N. reaction: as courageous former hostage Ilana Gritzewsky confronts October 7th denier Reem al-Salem—by recounting the horrific abuse she suffered from Hamas—the U.N. rapporteur on violence against women sits there stone-faced. No empathy.