Framing religious tolerance for public diplomacy – the monarchy’s instrumentalisation of Morocco’s Jewish community
By Andreas Wüst
1. Introduction
On the 10th of December 2020, many observers of Moroccan policies were taken by surprise when the United States of America declared to recognise Morocco’s claims on the internationally debated territory of Western Sahara in exchange for Morocco normalising its diplomatic relations with Israel. To bolster its image and obtain the international recognition for its claims, the kingdom – like all regimes – , relies on elements of what Joseph Nye has called “soft power”, defined as “the ability to affect others to obtain the preferred outcomes by the cooptive means of framing the agenda, persuasion, and positive attraction” (Nye 2011, p. 19).
A country’s soft power relies on its culture, values, and policies, provided that they are considered attractive, consistent, inclusive, and legitimate (Nye 2009). Public diplomacy is an important element in harnessing soft power and can be described as “an international actor’s attempt to manage the international environment through engagement with a foreign public” beyond governmental bodies (Cull 2009, p. 12). Of all varieties of public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy is among the most commonly applied (Cull 2019, p. 62).
In Morocco’s case, it is crucial to take into account the perception of Israel and Jews in order to understand the risk the regime takes by promoting Jewish heritage in the context of normalising political relations with Israel. There are no large-scale studies about the Moroccans’ stance towards Jews and Israel. However, according to a smaller yet representative sociological study by El Ayadi et al. (2006), 66,3% of the 1156 interviewed people felt closer to an Afghani Muslim than a Moroccan Jew (12,9%). This statistic stands out even more starkly when looking at the number of people older than 60 years who have seen the consequences of the two Arab-Israeli wars: 82,1% of them (against 6,9%) expressed this preference, while among the under 25-years-old the difference is less pronounced, yet still significant (52,9% vs. 16,72%).
While the Moroccan religious history has been marked by the frequentation of the same sanctuaries of religious saints acknowledged by both Muslims and Jews, in 2006 over 41% of the Moroccans disapproved of maintaining such shared sanctuaries and practices (only 19,2% were supportive), with over 45,6% of the Moroccans opposedt the diffusion of such shared festivals by the media (24,1% were supportive). Benstead (2019) further shows that 37,3 % of all Moroccans in 2016 believed that Israel was to blame for the rise of Daesh. She also noted that the support for recognising Israel fell from 32 % in 2006 to 24 % in 2011. She suggests that liberalisations in those countries affected by the social uprisings could explain this decline and similar developments in the MENA region. New avenues for expressing attitudes towards foreign policies were opened at this time, and the tendency to falsify polls about such topics was reduced.
In November 2020, the German Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation and KEEVON Global Research published a more recent study shortly before the official normalisation of relations between Morocco and Israel in December 2020 (Brakel & Barak 2020). According to this study, 70% of the interviewed Moroccans declared having an unfavourable view of Israel, the highest rate among the surveyed Arab countries. In the same poll, 63% did not support the recent normalisations of relations between other Arab countries (such as UAE and Bahrein) and Israel. In comparison, 43% were even convinced that Israel constitutes the biggest threat to regional security, and 61% outrightly refused that Israel had the right to exist as a nation-state of the Jewish people (when asked about Israel’s right to exist without mentioning its Jewish identity, still 56% opposed the statement).
2. Amir al Mouminine and the Jewish presence in Morocco
In Morocco, the king is not only the head of the state but also the commander of the faithful (amir al mouminine). This title goes back to the immediate successors of the prophet Mohammed, i.e. Omar, Othman and Ali, as well as the caliphs of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties (Rausch 2012, p. 67). They claimed religious authority over the community of believers derived from a divine blessing that placed them above all political factions and debates. This constitutionally sanctioned title renders the king the symbol of national unity and makes him the warder of the community of believers (Tozy 1999, 90ff.).
Technically, the title amir al mouminine declares the monarchy’s claim to leadership for all book religions, with a special authority over Muslim subjects and the Jewish community (Kenbib 2016). Historically, Jews were the Sultan’s dhimmis – non-Muslim subjects obliged to pay the jizya, a special tax/tribute for their safety in the empire – they benefitted from his protection against both, the attacks by Muslim subjects and the harassment of other dhimmis. At the same time, the closeness to the palace assured the Sultan control over those Jews who had come to wealth and influence through commerce and trade, some of whom also served as Sultan’s advisors and legates/ambassadors (Amiar 2022). Furthermore, the creation of Mellahs also provided the Sultan with political legitimacy (Gottreich 2007, p. 27).
After World War II, the creation of Israel and in the subsequent wars in the Middle East, most Moroccan Jews left the kingdom. The remaining Jews are technically not part of the umma, the community of Muslim believers concerned by the spiritual authority of amir al mouminine. Nevertheless, they recognise the political dimension of this leading position, guaranteeing the Jews’ protection under the very laws the king defends (Schroeter 2018, p. 222).
3. Exploiting Jewish heritage for geopolitical purposes
The presence of Jews in Morocco has always been exploited by the Moroccan regime. But the virtual absence of Jews in the kingdom nowadays (only around 2000–3000 individuals in a population of over 30 million) plays in the hands of the Moroccan regime. The exodus of thousands of Jewish families from Morocco and the lamentable situation of Jewish heritage in the country, the result of years of omission and disinterest, have laid the ground for today’s strategy to capitalise on the decision to preserve and renovate Jewish memory. The kingdom can now claim to protect Jewish heritage in Muslim land while also pointing to the unbroken presence of Jews in Morocco under the protection of a Muslim ruler (Berdugo [2010] 2012). The fact that Muslims take care of Jewish memory is the real selling point nowadays.
This narrative change did not come overnight but resulted from authoritarian learning. In the sense of Cull (2019), the regime proved itself an excellent listener to internal actors and external partners. Externally, the monarchy seems to have understood that the international community (and the USA, Israel and the West in particular) are sensible to questions of religious freedom and tolerance (Wainscott 2017, p. 91). Internally, one of the driving forces of this politics of rapprochement is the king’s advisor André Azoulay, himself a Moroccan Jew. Born in Essaouira, the experienced PR professional, Azoulay had been made royal advisor by Hassan II in 1994 after he had worked for BNP Paribas Bank in Paris. Under Mohammed VI, he maintained his position and has since worked as an indefatigable lobbyist in Morocco and abroad to make the kingdom’s narrative about a diverse, tolerant and moderate society heard and acknowledged.
A few weeks before the official agreement between the USA, Israel and Morocco which would stipulate the normalisation of diplomatic relations between the Jewish state and the kingdom in exchange for the USA’s recognition of Morocco’s claims on Western Sahara, Azoulay published a statement which perfectly summarises his role in promoting Morocco’s image:
It is definitely a lack of humility to tell you how proud I am as a moroccan Jewish citizen, to belong to a worldwide very selective and snubish [sic] Club.
-Selective being Consellor [sic] of H.M the King Mohammed VI, direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed and Commander of all our Faiths, we Peoples of the Holly and Sacred Books.
-Snubish [sic] due to the fact that in this period of denial, clashes and collective regression, I feel deeply gifted as a citizen of a Moslem country who, by its Constitution, refers to Judaism as one of its founding pillars. Doing so, Morocco mirrors in direction of the world community of Nations the resilience and the art of being and living together with our differences and making this diversity as the central engine of the modernity of our society.[1]
In this statement, Azoulay emphasises his prominent position as a Jew at the service of a Muslim ruler and stresses all non-Muslim communities’ recognition of his political and spiritual authority. This contributes to an image of Moroccan exceptionalism and paints this composition as a role model for peaceful coexistence in the world. Here, the transmitter of the messages becomes almost as important as the message itself (Régragui 2013, 85ff.).
Throughout his career, Azoulay has backed up his claims with actions. In an interview, he explained his idea to revitalise the Jewish history of his hometown Essaouira and how to exploit it for the development of the city:
Incidentally, this glorious time [in the 19th century] – we can say – was somewhat a Golden Age for the city of Essaouira, economically, diplomatically, and demographically. It may be a bit reductive and probably caricatural, but the inhabitants of Essaouira have associated this Golden Age with the Jewish presence; it is a bit short and short-cut, and it is obviously more complex than that. But mythology – we know that and need to understand what we have learnt concerning the Greeks- that Greek mythology is not about scientific exactness of history but about having the mythology serve a bigger project. So, when I was appointed [advisor of the king] and when people saw that I am of Jewish faith and that I had taken responsibilities with the king, a certain popular dynamic and popular expectation was set rolling that maybe Essaouira would maybe get back its old [golden] days and that with André Azoulay close to the king everything will be different. So I told myself: Why not have this myth as well – just like the Greeks have succeeded to do it – serve a purpose?[2]
What André Azoulay, a trained PR strategist, explains is not only telling with regards to the culture-oriented nature of Essaouira’s development concept, but it is also revealing about the way culture can be used to appeal to an international public that believes in universal values of tolerance and pluralism.
This becomes particularly evident in the case of Bayt Dakira in Essaouira. After years of renovation, the former synagoguewas inaugurated in January 2020 in a ceremony covered by national and international media in the presence of King Mohammed VI and several international officials, including the UNESCO director-general, Audrey Azoulay, the German ambassador Götz Schmidt-Bremme and the Director of the Moroccan office of the German Konrad-Adenauer Foundation, Steffen Krüger.[3] According to several interviews conducted by the author with Moroccan officials close to the dossier, the project originated with Azoulay’s discovery of the lamentable state of the former synagogue of the Morocco-British Jewish family, Simon Attia.[4] He decided to make a pedagogical centre from the ruinous building. He got personally involved in acquiring national and international funds from Germany and other partner states for its renovation and valorisation between 2014 and 2018.
The project was finally carried out in collaboration between André Azoulay’s civil society group, Association Essaouira Mogador, the Moroccan Ministry for Culture and the Jewish community. The place was designed not to be a backwards-oriented history museum but instead, as a space combining the spirituality of the restored synagogue, research facilities, and a commemorative narrative centred on peaceful coexistence and cultural exchange between Jews and Muslims.[5] This idea is underlined by the two holy scripts, Torah and Qur’an, exposed in the atrium „communicating with each other” and symbolic banners exposed in the entrance and elsewhere which feature two code-mixed slogans blending typical Muslim and Jewish greetings of peace: Shalom Alaykoum – Salam Lekoulam.[6]


Photograph by the Author.
Another important focus of the place is King Mohammed V’s relationship with the Jews of his country and his role in saving Jews from Nazi persecution during WW2. As Boum (2020, p. 209) has argued, memorial spaces like Bayt Dakira are central to „the branding of a Moroccan ‘convivencia’ (coexistence)”. This involves an intellectual revival of the peaceful and mutually enriching multiethnic and multiconfessional setting of medieval Andalusia and its use as a „Moroccan cultural and interfaith commodity”. During the king’s visit to Bayt Dakira on the 15 January 2020, Azoulay underscored that, under the leadership of King Mohammed VI,, Morocco provides „the compass” to a world severely in need of orientation in times of moral decline.
This narrative also reflects what Katarzyna Pieprzak has called a “museology of disaster”, a way of arranging collections and narratives so as to offer an idealised contrast to a threatening external reality (Pieprzak 2020). It is therefore hardly surprising that the inauguration of Bayt Dakira was prominently featured on the website of Morocco’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which presented the king as the guardian of religious diversity and the protector of Jewish memory.[7] In this way, the Foreign Ministry sought to reinforce the sovereign’s image internationally as the promoter of a pluralistic and inclusive national identity.
4. When loose ties become diplomatic relations…
While the public promotion of Jewish heritage before 2016 was part of a general strategy to improve Morocco’s image on the international level,[8] it has become pivotal to Moroccan foreign policy since the US presidency of Donald Trump. The Trump administration placed the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the top of his political agenda and charged Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to broker the questionable ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan for the Israel-Palestine conflict that included the recognition of Israel by Arab states.
De facto, diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel have long been closer and more cordial than between Israel and most other Arab states, not least due to the large number of Israelis with Moroccan backgrounds. Hence, the programmes for foreign delegations in Morocco today regularly include visits to the Jewish museum in Casablanca or Jewish cemeteries, most prominently for the US ambassador and Donald Trump’s Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, during the latter’s visit to Morocco in October 2020.[9]
Incidentally, the Chief Rabbi of Morocco David Pinto maintains close personal and friendly ties with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and author of the US-American “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People” plan. Pinto is also said to have played a significant role in the authorisation of Ivanka Trump’s conversion to Judaism and her marriage to Kushner (Boum 2017, p. 154). During Kushner’s visit to Morocco on 28–29 May 2019, Pinto guided him to the tomb of his revered grandfather Haim Pinto. At the occasion, the Rabbi praised the long tradition of the Moroccan kings’ protection of his Jewish subjects, by referring to the purported refusal of the late King Mohammed V to extradite them to the Nazi forces,[10] thereby prominently forging the Moroccan nation brand of a historically reliable partner morally and culturally close to the west and the US.
As Moroccan media suggest, the ball for the quid pro quo concession – ‘Moroccan Sahara’ for diplomatic ties with Israel – was likely already set rolling during this official visit to Morocco by Jared Kushner[11] but the conclusion to negotiations arrived only on the eve of Donald Trump’s presidency. If the Kingdom was to take advantage of the American government’s desire to secure Donald Trump’s political legacy at all costs, it was a closing window of opportunity for the mutually beneficial deal. Demonstrations were silenced and the parties’ margins to oppose measures in foreign policy matters have long been severely curtailed.[12]
Morocco was the fourth Arab country to ‘normalize’ their diplomatic ties and was thus not isolated in this position. Additionally, in autumn 2020, a new military escalation of the conflict with the Polisario Front in the buffer zone near Guerguerate in Western Sahara may have been perceived by government officials as an opportunity to make use of many Moroccans’ desires for a definitive solution to the situation. It is very likely that the closeness of the two events is not mere coincidence but reflects the will to surf the wave of anger against Algeria and its protégé, the POLISARIO front.
In the weeks after the normalisation agreement signed in December 2020, it is interesting how Moroccan media insisted on the fact that during the side programme, high-ranking Israeli officials visited the Mausoleum of King Mohammed V and Hassan II in Rabat as if to underline the Israeli government’s tribute and acknowledgement of the two kings’ outstanding achievements.[13] Yet, in 2021, still only around 41% of the Moroccan population appeared to approve of Morocco’s normalisation of relations with Israel (Arab Barometer 2021) – one has to admit though that this was the highest rate among the evaluated countries in the MENA region. Against the backdrop of the ongoing war and atrocities in Gaza, however, this ratio dropped significantly to only 13% (Arab Barometer 2024, p. 36) and the promotion of Jewish heritage in Morocco became ever riskier.
Notes
[1] Association Mimouna (2020).
[2] Digital interview with André Azoulay conducted on 23 August 2021.
[3] Cf. MAP (2020).
[4] Interview of the author with an official of Morocco’s Ministry of Culture, conducted at Bayt Dakira on 13 August 2021 and digital interview with an official of Bayt Dakira, conducted by the author on 03 June 2020.
[5] See also le Matin (2019).
[6] Conversation with André Azoulay, conducted at Bayt Dakira, on 12 May 2024.
[7] Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, de la Coopération Africaine et des Marocains Résidant à l’Etranger (2020).
[8] Digital interview with an official of Bayt Dakira, conducted by the author on 03 June 2020.
[9] Oudrhiri (2020).
[10] Torah Box (2019).
[11] Majdi (2020).
[12] Cf. Ahdani (2020). In 2013 and 2017 several parties tried to sanction by law any effort to normalise relations with Israel. Finally, the laws were not adopted due to the refusal of royal support, a sign of the high-level priority of the Moroccan Jewish heritage for the kingdom’s nation brand of openness towards the world, cf. Ahdani (2018); Hakari (2021).
[13] TelQuel (2021).
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About the Author
Andreas Wüst is a Junior Fellow at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS). Since October 2018, after completing his studies in Classics at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and Sorbonne in Paris, he worked as a PhD student with the African Politics and Development Policy Chair at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. By the end of November 2024, he submitted his PhD thesis analysing the use of cultural policies as a means of autocratic power maintenance in Morocco. He has also published on Moroccan soft power, focusing on cultural and sports diplomacy. Furthermore, he has co-authored “Jemen – der vergessene Krieg”, a book about the ongoing war in Yemen, published in 2019 with C.H. Beck. Outside academia, Andreas Wüst also worked as a policy advisor for development policies at the German Bundestag and gained practical work experience as a conference organiser and intern in Tunisia.
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Citation: Andreas Wüst, Framing religious tolerance for public diplomacy – the monarchy’s instrumentalisation of Morocco’s Jewish community, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 17.02.2026, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/64372
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