Morocco pro-Palestinian event pretends to hold Jews at gunpoint

Video of Casablanca protest shows 2 men in keffiyehs holding apparently toy rifles at backs of 2 bearded men in black robes, top hats

A still image from a video of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Casablanca, Morocco, in which 'Jews' are held at gunpoint by keffiyeh-clad protesters, October 25, 2015. (screen capture: alyaexpress-news.com)
A still image from a video of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Casablanca, Morocco, in which 'Jews' are held at gunpoint by keffiyeh-clad protesters, October 25, 2015. (screen capture: alyaexpress-news.com)

A pro-Palestinian demonstration in the Moroccan city of Casablanca on Sunday featured men dressed as Haredi Orthodox Jews who were being pushed forward at gunpoint by masked men wearing keffiyehs.

The demonstration was held with permission from local police, according to a report that appeared Sunday on the news website alyaexpress-news.com. It also featured a video of the event, which drew many thousands of participants.

In the video, two men wearing keffiyehs, or Arab headdresses, are seen toting what appear to be toy rifles behind two bearded men wearing black robes and top hats during a march that also featured Palestinian flags, including a very large one carried by dozens of people, and a model of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Expressions of anti-Semitism are relatively rare in Morocco, whose king and government have invested millions of dollars in recent years in restoring Jewish heritage sites. In February, the restoration project was honored at an event in Paris attended by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Some 250,000 Moroccan Jews left Morocco in the 19 years that followed Israel’s establishment in 1948. A few dozen Jews were killed in at least three pogroms that occurred between 1938 and 1954, according to Shmuel Trigano, a lecturer of political sociology at Paris X University Nanterre. Several thousand Jews remain in the kingdom.

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