Moroccan Jews reflect on effects of Zionist migration program to Israel

Morocco’s Jewish community, once vibrant and thriving, has dwindled to around 2,000 members—a dramatic drop from the estimated 225,000 who lived in the country in 1960.

The decline began in 1961, about five years after Morocco gained independence from France. A large-scale emigration took place under a Zionist operation known as Operation Yachin, coordinated by Israeli intelligence (Mossad) in partnership with King Hassan II. The majority of Moroccan Jews relocated to Israel through this initiative.

To facilitate the migration, Israel reportedly paid $500,000 upfront, along with $100 per emigrant for the first 50,000 Moroccan Jews and $250 for each additional person. The U.S.-based Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society also contributed an estimated $50 million to support the effort.

Jacob Cohen, a Jewish Moroccan writer who chose to remain in the country, reflected on the psychological influence of Zionist groups at the time.

“I was convinced that we had to leave, that Moroccan Jews had no future in Morocco. This is the great success of the Zionist organisations present in Morocco,” he told Middle East Eye.

"There was no overt antisemitism; the few Jews who lived in Morocco had no problems,” he added. “But there was this widespread feeling that the future was no longer there, if not for themselves, then at least for their children."

Fanny Mergui, 80, who left Casablanca in 1961, remembers the scene vividly.

"They sent buses from entire villages to Casablanca, and I spent my childhood watching those people leave. You could just cross the street and you were right there where the ships docked, right in front of our eyes."

But she says life in Israel did not match the promises made. "It was a colonial ideology. The European Jews, who were the first to settle in Palestine from Russia back in the 1880s, considered themselves superior to us and we could only ever be second-class citizens."

Mergui and others later tried to return to Morocco, but emigration had been structured as a one-way journey. “We went into the streets carrying portraits of King Mohammed V, saying, ‘We want to return home.’ But it wasn’t possible,” she said. Though King Mohammed V died in 1961, his image was symbolic—he had famously protected Moroccan Jews during World War II by refusing to hand them over to the Nazis.

Cohen concluded that both sides suffered irreparable loss.

“Morocco lost a potential community of up to two million people who could have contributed to its development and diversity. And the Jewish people lost a rich, 15-century-old civilization that had evolved and flourished on Moroccan soil.”