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Morocco's Jews face jolt to coexistence
by Jamey Keaten
AP (20.05.2003)/ HRWF Int. (26.05.2003) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email: info@hrwf.net - Morocco's Jews were once a thriving community of at least 250,000 people, with entire neighborhoods in Casablanca's old city that wore skullcaps and respected the kosher diet.
Now numbering at most 5,000, Morocco's Jewish community is coming to grips with deadly terror attacks that, while not killing any Jews, appeared to target Jewish religious and community sites.
Of the five places where suicide bombers launched near-simultaneous attacks Friday night, three had Jewish connections the Circle of the Israelite Alliance community center, the Israelite cemetery in the old Medina quarter and a Jewish-owned Italian restaurant.
A dozen attackers, ages 18 to 24, used homemade explosives stuffed into backpacks for the bombings that killed 29 bystanders, a security official said on condition of anonymity.
Two suspects have been arrested and were providing valuable information in the investigation, authorities said.
The attackers, all Moroccan, were believed to be Islamic extremists with ties to international terror groups. They had recently returned from an unspecified Persian Gulf country, said the official.
Authorities found chemicals that could be used to make explosives in a home in the Attacharouk neighborhood on Casablanca's eastern edge, the official news agency MAP said Tuesday. It was not immediately clear whether they was linked to the bombings.
Many Jews in the North African nation of 31 million people said they enjoy peaceful lives and a good relationship with Muslims overall. The community is concentrated in Casablanca.
"There are no Jews, only Moroccans," King Mohammed V, the present king's grandfather, told Jewish leaders when Nazis came hunting for Jews during World War II.
"'Nothing will happen to you that won't happen to me,'" the king assured community leader Joseph Berdugo, said Berdugo's son Serge, who is now president of the Jewish Community of Morocco.
But last week's attacks have left an undercurrent of unease for some Jews, who were as surprised as the rest of Morocco that such terror had struck.
"Of course we're worried, you can't just turn the page and pretend nothing happened," Joe Kadoch, a co-owner of the Italian restaurant, said. "But I don't think we were targeted it was more the symbols of the West, or nightlife and alcohol."
He said the restaurant, Positano, has received hundreds of letters, faxes and phone calls from people expressing support from across the country.
Jews began arriving in Morocco as early as the first century, before the first Arabs moved to the area largely inhabited by the indigenous Berber population. Waves of Jews and Muslims fled to Morocco from Spain during its Inquisition in the 15th century.
The most recent heyday of Jewish life was in the early 1950s, when up to 280,000 lived in many parts of Morocco while it was a French protectorate, community leaders said.
Intermittent anti-Semitic attacks, international tensions and the lure of the newly formed state of Israel founded in 1948 led many Jews to leave Morocco. One high point of emigration came after the Arab-Israeli Six Day War in 1967 stirred fears of a backlash against Jews in Morocco.
After waves of departure to Israel, France, the United States and elsewhere, the few Jews who remain are often strong backers of the king.
Israeli government statistics show that about 165,000 Jews emigrated to Israel from Morocco. With their descendants, they number about 500,000 today, representing about 10 percent of Israel's Jewish population of 5.3 million.
Andre Azoulay is a top adviser to Morocco's king, and is said to be one of the highest-ranking Jews in government in the Muslim world. "I'm not ready to give up or surrender because of the terrorists," he said in a telephone interview from Rabat, the capital.
The most visible damage from the bombings was at the community center, where dozens of Jews had congregated the night before for conversation, kosher dinner or card games. It was closed Friday night for the Sabbath, and no one was inside when the attacks took place.
Amid rubble, overturned and broken chairs and the charred entrance that now looks as if it never had a door, three symbols survived: A portrait of King Mohammed VI, two large crystal chandeliers and a kosher certificate for the center's restaurant.
"The king, the light and the religion were untouched. It was miraculous but nobody's going to complain about a miracle," Berdugo said.
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Moroccan women fear extremism
Rising fundamentalist tide in Moroccan kingdom makes women first victims of attacks over their modern lifestyle
by Isabelle Ligner
Middle East Online (22.05.2003)/ HRWF Int. (26.05.2003) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email: info@hrwf.net - The Islamic extremism that fuelled last week's suicide bombings in Casablanca poses particular problems for Muslim women who find themselves increasingly under pressure and at risk of attack over their modern lifestyle.
Already expected to conform to strict rules governing their dress and behaviour, women living and working in Morocco's economic capital fear the attacks could be a warning sign of a rising fundamentalist tide.
Twenty-year-old Jamila is a student from Sidi Moumen, a shantytown neighbourhood that was also home to the majority of the bombers who launched the May 16 suicide attacks, leaving 41 people dead including 12 attackers in a series of synchronised blasts across the city.
For more than a year she has faced regular harassment, insults and threats on the way from her family apartment to the college where she is training as a secretary.
"It started with people spitting when I walked past, insulting me and my family. Then, one day in March, I was threatened in broad daylight by a man with a knife," said Jamila, who asked for her real name to remain secret.
"He told me over and over: 'You are going to die because you are a sinner'," said the young woman, who has since abandoned her jeans and tee-shirt and taken to wearing a headscarf.
Across Casablanca there are frequent reports of women being insulted and harrassed because of their dress style.
"Recently in the centre of town, a group of men crowded around me calling me a prostitute because I was wearing a short tee-short and skirt," said Nadia Ziane, a young maths teacher.
"Such humiliations are becoming more and more frequent, in this city once thought of as liberal."
"Women need to fight to put an end to this madness," she said.
"In recent years, women here have been under terrible pressure to wear a headscarf and traditional Muslim dress covering their whole body, to observe prayers and give up studying and devote themselves instead to the home," agreed Yasmina Ramid, a volunteer in a local literacy centre.
"Methods range from 'advice' to physical aggression," she said, adding that the pressure sometimes came from within the women's own families.
"Coming from a brother or a husband, such pressure can be a way of taking out their frustration over a lack of money or work on their wives and sisters," she explained.
But in the majority of cases, it is "local hardboys turned preachers" who exert the most pressure on women, Ramid said.
The men themselves often have only a superficial knowledge of Islam but are using religion as a means to exert power, she explained.
And a neighbourhood such as Sidi Moumen, where extreme poverty and promiscuity combine with a lack of education, can become a breeding ground for fundamentalism.
Some observers, including Ramid, see the Casablanca bombings as the sign that Islamic extremism is on the increase, raising fears of more violence against women who fail to meet the extremists' standards.
"There are men here who no longer hesitate to kill in the name of religion," said Zeinab, a mother of four daughters who herself wears a traditional white headscarf.
"As far as I am concerned, religion is a personal matter, and a woman should only wear a scarf if she chooses to," she said.
Across the country, rights groups continue to campaign for better access to education and work for Morocco's women, 70 percent of whom are illiterate, and for the age of marital consent to be raised from 15 to 20.
Some Islamic fundamentalists consider these aspirations to be a violation of Islamic doctrine.
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