Hatred of Jews and Independent Morocco
Mossad historian Eliezer Shoshani upheld the notion of the timeless universality of hatred toward Jews, which he conceived as an invariant of social history. According to him, “the experience of the past—and even more so the lesson of the mass annihilation of the Jewish communities of Nazi Europe—demonstrates that social structures patiently built over generations can be irreversibly destroyed once an uncontrollable corrosive wave breaks out.”
From this perspective, the condition of Jewish diasporas would not have fundamentally changed since the Jews’ departure into exile. Admittedly, the establishment of the State of Israel altered the sense of national and Jewish belonging; yet, in his view, a diaspora remains a diaspora, a minority remains a minority, and hostility toward the foreigner—and more specifically toward the Jew—remains structural. From this premise followed, in his opinion, an imperative to intervene: Israel was obliged to act in Morocco, whether or not local Jews explicitly requested such intervention.
Within this logic, the dispatch of Mossad emissaries to Morocco did not differ, in his eyes, from the missions carried out by Israeli agents parachuted into occupied Europe during the Second World War. He further asserted: “If the State of Israel is reproached both for what it does and for what it refrains from doing, then the accusation of interference in the fate of Jews in the diasporas will, paradoxically, be welcomed with sympathy. Better still, such an act provides an additional justification for the very existence of the State of Israel on the international stage.”
Nevertheless, Shoshani was compelled to acknowledge that the Moroccan reality did not conform to the interpretive framework he had initially constructed. He thus conceded: “It became apparent that the immediate danger to the physical existence [of Moroccan Jews] was not as pressing as had been assumed. Nonetheless, there is neither lasting hope nor a viable future for a Jewish diaspora in Morocco, and as long as it exists, a sword of Damocles will continue to hang over its head. The years that have elapsed since Morocco’s independence until today [1964] have not confirmed the alarmist assessments that had prevailed regarding the presumed situation of the Moroccan Jewish diaspora. Instead of the persecutions, in their various forms, that were considered inevitable, a general climate of tolerance emerged, and Jews were even permitted to leave the country in a relatively free manner.
The policy of tolerance adopted by the Moroccan authorities made it difficult to maintain a state of operational tension, both among rank-and-file Mossad agents and among the leadership of the clandestine defense organization. Within the ‘Misgeret,’ a climate of relaxation, and even of loss of meaning, gradually took hold. When years pass without acts of violence by the majority and without repressive decrees, the psychological equilibrium of those preparing for action is inevitably destabilized.”
Thus, according to Shoshani, the very absence of persecution generated psychological imbalance among the emissaries, deprived of the moral and strategic justification for their mission. The Mossad’s chief of staff in Paris, Ephraim Ronel, likewise acknowledged his mistakes and admitted that the sinking of the Egoz was in no way justified. He stated:
“This event confronted us with a fundamental question: do we have the right to endanger the lives of Jews—men, women, and children—when no immediate danger of pogrom threatens them and when no situation of pikuach nefesh exists?”
Despite this awareness, the Misgeret headquarters in Paris continued to exert strong pressure on the emissaries and demanded the continuation of clandestine immigration operations, regardless of the human cost. Ronel specified: “In this context, groups of Jews were repeatedly sent toward the border, by various routes, without our having the necessary time to verify the safety of the passages. This was an extremely dangerous gamble, based on an excessive reliance on luck.”
A deep rift thus opened between official ideology and the empirical reality on the ground. This tragic discrepancy led to the shipwreck at sea of forty-four people—precisely those whom the Israelis claimed to have come to rescue. The dominant Zionist narrative thereby distorted the perceptions of the emissaries, confining them within a preconceived reading of the situation. Nevertheless, in moments of lucidity, some among them acknowledged the manifest inadequacy between their ideological convictions and the facts observed in the field.
