168 · Dalit Atrakchi
received its independence: France’s exile of Sultan Ben-Yussuf on 20 Au-
gust 1953 and the riots that broke out the following year created a further
polarization of the Jews and the Muslims. The majority of Jews felt no
real bond to the Nationalist Movement, and only a few of them, most of
whom were young, educated, and westernized and held leftist world-
views, were members of the Nationalist parties. They belonged to the
left wing of the Istiqlal headed by Mehdi Ben-Barka, who left the party in
1959 and established the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (UNFP).
Both of these parties, as well as the Parti Démocratique d’Indépendance
(PDI), tried to attract Jews by defining the situation as a Zionist prob-
lem and not as a Jewish problem. However, only a number of Jews an-
swered their call. The Istiqlal party, headed by ̔Allal al-Fassi and Aḥmad
Balafrej, claimed they were devoted to equal rights for the Jews, and to
show how easy it was for the Jews to join the party, they exempted them
from swearing their allegiance to the Istiqlal party on the Quran.^23
In a report sent by Meir Grossman (an Israeli emissary to the Casa-
blanca Jewish community) sent to the Jewish Agency headquarters in
Jerusalem, he claimed that the Istiqlal was trying to create an alternative
to the leadership of the Jewish Communities Council by pretending this
was an attempt to “create a solidarity between Jews and Muslims, in
order to enable the Jews to take part in Morocco’s political life.” Jewish
community leaders considered this an attempt to increase the involve-
ment of those Jews connected to the Istiqlal in the inner politics of the
Jewish community by those who believed in complete integration of the
Jews in Moroccan society.^24
In an interview of al-Fassi by Arnold Mandel, for the Jewish-French
newspaper L’Arche, dated Paris, October 22, 1958, al-Fassi explained his
approach:
My position concerning Zionism isn’t only against [Zionism]. In
New Morocco, all political parties that receive instructions from
outside must be banned. Do you know that the Zawiya [Muslim
mystical orders] are prohibited in Morocco, despite the crucial role
they played in our history? Are we considered anti-Muslim because
we do not approve of the existence of Muslim orders? In this respect
we are... as anti-Jewish as we are anti-Muslim.^25Although al-Fassi stated that he was not against the study of the He-
brew language and Judeo-Arabic as part of the heritage of the Moroccan