Nadene Goldfoot
Morocco, an African country, is the 10th largest Muslim majority state religion country with 99% Sunni/Sufi Muslims with a population of more than 33,723,418 as of 2011-36.03 million in 2018.
The Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization agreement, officially the Abraham Accords Peace Agreement: Treaty of Peace, Diplomatic Relations and Full Normalization Between the United Arab Emirates and the State of Israel, was initially agreed to in a joint statement by the United States, Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on August 13, 2020, officially referred to as the Abraham Accords. The UAE thus became the third Arab country, after Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, to agree to formally normalize its relationship with Israel, as well as the first Persian Gulf country to do so. Bahrain and Sudan have followed.
Concurrently, Israel agreed to suspend plans for annexing parts of the West Bank. The agreement normalized what had long been informal but robust foreign relations between the two countries. The agreement was signed at the White House on September 15, 2020. It was approved unanimously by the Israeli cabinet on October 12 and was ratified by the Knesset on October 15. The UAE Parliament and cabinet ratified the agreement on October 19.
Many of Israel's immigrants have been from Morocco. Approximately 1 million Israeli Jews have at least partial family origin from Morocco, and they constitute the second-largest Israeli Jewish community after the Russian Jews in Israel. In Safed, there were many, both in my apartment building and on my teaching staff as head of the department and my principal as well in 1980-1985. Those I knew were trilingual-English, French and Hebrew, maybe quadlingual including Arabic as well. They are usually called multi lingual. Only three percent of people around the world can speak over four languages. Less than one percent of people worldwide are proficient in many languages. If someone is fluent in more than five languages, the person is called a polyglot. My Hebrew teacher in Haifa's Ulpan, Mr. Kohavi, spoke 16
languages. TV news said that Moroccan Israeli citizens were like a bridge between the 2 countries to help bring this about, but I give Jared Kushner a lot of credit in bringing 4 countries into peace at this time.
According to Times of Israel, Israel largely has Morocco to thank for its victory over its Arab enemies in the 1967 Six Day War, according to revelations by a former Israeli military intelligence chief.Oct 16, 2016. In 1965, King Hassan ll passed recordings to Israel of a key meeting between Arab leaders held to discuss whether they were prepared for war against Israel.
Jews have lived in Morocco since it was the Roman province of Mauritania.. Mauretania became a client kingdom of the Roman Empire in 33 BCE. It stretched from central present-day Algeria westwards to the Atlantic, covering northern Morocco, and southward to the Atlas Mountains. The situation deteriorated when Christianity was taken over by the Romans. Some Berber tribes is said to have converted to Judaism. Under Byzantine (Christian) rule in the 7th century, all synagogues were destroyed. Refugees from Spain in 1492 arrived. Life wasn't easy there; they had to wear distinctive black clothing, subjected to violent attacks. The French took over the country in 1912-55 and order was established. After 1948 many Jews left for Israel, France and Canada. In 1960 there were 159,803 Jews in Morocco. By 1990 there were 10,000.
The affection and respect between Moroccan Jews and the Kingdom of Morocco is still palpable. Every year rabbis and community leaders across the world are invited for the Throne Celebration held every July 30th in Rabat. During the celebration in 2014, Rabbi Haim A. Moryoussef of Canada dedicated his book "Le Bon Oeil - Ben Porath Yossef" to the King Mohammed VI and offered him a handwritten blessing on parchment wishing him a healthy, long and successful life.
Over the years the Moroccan Jews' DNA was examined and studied by numerous studies, the general image of it showed that in terms of Y-DNA it was mainly from the same Levantine source as the vast majority of the world's Jewry, meaning that they too are descendants of the Ancient Hebrews/Israelites from the Biblical times. In the case of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (in particular Moroccan Jews), who are apparently closely related, the non-Jewish component is mainly southern European.
Genetic research shows that about 27% of Moroccan Jews descend from one female ancestor. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA of the Jewish populations of North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Libya) was the subject of further detailed study in 2008 by Doron Behar et al. The analysis concludes that Jews from this region do not share the haplogroups of the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (M1 and U6) that are typical of the North African Berber and Arab populations. Similarly, while the frequency of haplogroups L, associated with sub-Saharan Africa, are present in approximately 20–25% at the Berber populations studied, these haplogroups are only present in 1.3%, 2.7% and 3.6% respectively of Jews from Morocco, Tunisia and Libya.
Behar et al. conclude that it is unlikely that North African Jews have significant Arab, or Berber admixture, "consistent with social restrictions imposed by religious restrictions," or endogamy. This study also found genetic similarities between the Ashkenazi and North African Jews of European mitochondrial DNA pools, but differences between both of these of the diaspora and Jews from the Middle East.
Resource:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/morocco-tipped-off-israeli-intelligence-helped-israel-win-six-day-war/#:~
:text=Israel%20largely%20has%20Morocco%20to,former%20Israeli%20military%20intelligence%20chief.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/292879
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauretania#:~:text=Mauretania%20became%20a%20client%20kingdom,Numidia%20as%20their%20client%2Dking.
https://geocrusader80.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/a-geographic-history-of-islamic-states-through-maps/
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