Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies

This chapter explores the Moroccan Communist Party’s (PCM) evolution into a national liberation party in the post-war period. It addresses urban Jewish communal attitudes to the movement for independence and the available marketplace for political ideas and ideologies, including the accelerating popularity of Zionism. As Jews began to leave Morocco for Israel, those Jews who were members of the PCM entrenched themselves in national liberation politics. Included in this chapter is the fatefully violent year of 1952, when union activists spearheaded bloodily suppressed popular protests. This prompted Protectorate officials to exile most of the PCM’s Central Committee’s European leaders as well as notable Moroccan Jewish leaders in an attempt to diffuse the situation. The chapter ends on an optimistic note, with the al-Wifaq (“Entente,” a nationalist group dedicated to Jewish and Muslim cooperation) organization in 1956 celebrating Jewish-Muslim political victories and the future of the Moroccan state. This cautious euphoria, however, was short lived.