De-Westernizing Morocco: Pre-Migration Colonial History and the Ethnic-Oriented Self-Representation of Tangier’s Natives in Israel

• Main Author: Aviad Moreno
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea CDEC 2012-11-01
• Series: Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History
• Subjects: Jews; Arab countries; Mediterranean; Israel; oral history; Morocco; Moroccan Jews; Tangier
• Online Access: http://Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Beer-Sheva, Israel)

The article presents and analyzes the self-representing narrative strategies through which westernized Jewish immigrants from Tangier (Morocco) de-westernize their personal pre-migration colonial history in the context of the ethnic conflict in Israel. By so doing, the article challenges from a new perspective the general post-Zionist notion according to which ethnic revivals among Moroccan Jews in Israel came about in opposition to the European-oriented national narrative; A narrative that had distorted their authentic Mizraḥi culture and history, often in the form of de-Arabization. In an attempt to explain the motivations for de-westernization, the article further implies that not merely did the ethnic revival of Tangier’s natives not match the general post-Zionist notion, but moreover that it had often formed shape in the course of contrasting it. Only through de-westernized self-representations, could Tangier’s natives contest the general representation of Moroccans as Mizraḥim with the sense of “their own” Moroccan ethnic history.