An Open Letter to King Mohammed VI

[Image of a portrait of King Mohammed VI in Casablanca. Image by slettvet/Flickr.] [Image of a portrait of King Mohammed VI in Casablanca. Image by slettvet/Flickr.]

An Open Letter to King Mohammed VI

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following open letter was written by Moroccan journalist Hamza Mahfoud on 11 November 2014, in response to King Mohammed VI`s speech marking the anniversary of the Green March. The open letter was originally published in Arabic on Huna Sotak and translated to English by Abdellah Laaraj. Since its publication, the open letter has been widely disseminated on social media, drawing a wide range of responses.]

Dear King,

I am writing regarding the Sahara after having watched your speech last Thursday. I would like to present the point of view of a Moroccan citizen who wished he were in a stronger position to defend his country. The reality is that he found himself split between the overwhelming desire to do so and the simultaneous constraints. How can anyone possibly defend his nation when it is ruled by authoritarianism, governed by a regime that fails to respect basic human rights, and is dedicated to perpetuating systematic favoritism and internal, pervasive corruption?

Forgive me for responding to your following words: "Enough exaggerations about Morocco and enough misuse of our fundamental rights and freedoms to conspire against our nation." You are suggesting once again that defending human rights and freedom of speech, especially with those that hold differing views, is "national treason" or, at the very least, aiding and abetting it.

I think, with all due respect, that our differing positions on the Western Sahara is not a crime. But rather, I believe that the continuous consolidation of power and wealth in one hand, your own royal one, is the crime.

To invoke human rights in the defense of those who hold a different point of view is not a crime. To continue violating those same rights and justifying each one of your actions with new reasons, while at the same time failing to put the responsible parties on trial and, instead, providing them with impunity, is indeed the crime.

No one can argue that there is a dictatorship in Algeria, but I can assure you that the best course of action on your part to win the argument is not empty rhetorical exchanges with your opponent, but rather that you finally enter the global club of democratic nations, and refrain from mixing money and power. Today, the Western Sahara is demanding independence and tomorrow we do not know how many regions of the country will be seeking to break away should the palace`s unjust rule continue.

It seems a strange statement to make when Your Highness claims that the disputed Western Sahara costs Morocco seven dirhams for every one dirham of revenue it generates. How can someone from Eastern Sahara absorb this kind of assertion? The people in the non-disputed lands who are both extremely loyal and patriotic live under frail infrastructures and are marginalized. Why should they not call for secession to get your attention rather than remain under your control, suffering, while witnessing their Western neighbors enjoy their privileges? 

How can you convince all the citizens of Morocco`s regions that the country is for everyone, when most of them were not granted the fundamental human conditions required in order to live in dignity. Some of them were forced to immigrate, the rest were swept along in the tide of abject poverty. You did quote your grandfather with regard to those who are jealous of Morocco, but you did not quote him when he said: "I am amazed that he who cannot afford his daily bread has not already appeared with his sword wielded at the people."

Are we to understand from your talk that if the Sahrawis accept the autonomy proposal, it means that the huge expenditures will be eliminated and that they will be treated just like everyone who believes in and supports national unity?

Forgive me for asking too many questions, but it is a fun game that Your Majesty began ever since you asked "Where is the wealth?" Moroccans screamed out that it is all in your pocket and your friends` pockets; the remaining balance of wealth sits in the pockets of other individuals who are immune, people within your inner circle. They all amassed that wealth unethically through profiteering and the exploitation of their positions of power and influence, yet no one heard our screams.

From past visits to various world cities where decisions are made, whether in Washington, New York, Paris, or Brussels, I assure you, Your Majesty, that there are many Moroccans and friends of Morocco who are high-level professionals and scholars, seeking a firm and sound project to defend. Instead, they found nothing except for a continuation of authoritarianism, human rights abuses, and financial and political corruption. The result is that all these failings pushed them further away and dissuaded them from getting involved with Morocco. 

Forgive me for informing you that your words "Morocco will stay in its Sahara until God inherits Earth and who is on it" are a fallacy, Your Highness. We have no idea whether or not Morocco will exist a hundred years from now as "injustice warns of the ruin of nations," according to our forefather Ibn Khaldun. I do not foresee an enduring Morocco under these conditions: tolerance and coexistence for Moroccans are not compatible with your unjust system of governance.

May peace be with you.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412