Defending Israel with David Harris- Mustapha Ezzarghani Returns

Be- beyond your own personal story, Mustafa, there's always been a sense in the Jewish world that Morocco is different as a country than some of the other Arab countries.

As you know, for example, my wife was born and raised in Libya, and the experience of Jews in Libya was completely erased.

There are no Jews left.

To the extent that Morocco is different, what do you think explains the difference in its attitude to Israel today, or in the fact that there is still a small, not a big, but a small Jewish community, and there is a sense in Morocco that Jewish history is part of Moroccan history? Is there something, a, a secret sauce or a secret recipe?

Of course.

There are many, uh, many reasons.

First of all, we are a very old civilization.

Morocco is not Algeria.

Um, Morocco is not Qatar.

Morocco is a 1,200-old civilization.

And we admire our civilization.

We admire our history.

We admire our origins.

And we, when we go back and learn about our history and our civilization, we found out that taking the Jews out of the pictures is taking most of our history.

Mm.

Erasing them is erasing our own history.

Weakening them is weakening our own identity.

You can't have a Moroccan history, Moroccan civilization, Moroccan identity without the Jewish aspect of it.

So we understood that it's not our benefits to weaken or to hurt or to erase part of who we are, part, uh, part of our identity, which is the Moroccan Jewish community in, in Morocco.

Also, these people had contributions.

They lived with us.

We experienced the human connection to them.

These were very good people, very honest people.

Something that news cannot change, because you experienced it in the streets, in your shops, in their day-to-day r- I- in your day-to-day relationship with them.

So it's really hard to destroy that.