IN THE COURTS OF THE NATIONS - DataSpace - Princeton ...

AIU’s attention either through personal appeals or through collective petitions like the one
signed by Shalom.
Yet Shalom’s signature on this petition must be understood in the context of his family’s
multiple engagements with Moroccan legal authorities. This chapter seeks to re-think the ways
in which Jews sought the intervention of foreign consular officials and international Jewish
organizations in their legal affairs. As we have seen, consular officials became intimately
involved in the legal matters of Moroccan Jews and Muslims who had acquired foreign
nationality or protection. Foreign diplomats also increased their advocacy on behalf of Jews who
were Moroccan subjects and had no consular protection. Many foreign officials justified their
intervention on Jews’ behalf in the name of lofty ideals such as justice and religious equality,
although often they were just as interested in meddling in internal Moroccan affairs. Jews, too—
including those without protection—increasingly turned to foreign diplomats and international
Jewish organizations when they felt their rights were threatened. The history of foreign
intervention on behalf of Moroccan Jews is far better documented in the secondary literature than
the subjects discussed hitherto in this dissertation. Nonetheless—and perhaps especially because
there is a relative wealth of scholarship on foreigners’ intervention—it is worthwhile revisiting
foreign advocacy on behalf of Moroccan Jews in the context of Jews’ participation in the
Moroccan legal system and new evidence from the Moroccan archives.
I argue that the dominant historiography misrepresents the often fluid relationship among
Jews, foreigners, and the Makhzan; it portrays Jews as powerless victims of an oppressive
Moroccan state who sought to alleviate their suffering through the benevolent protection of
foreign officials. This depiction has its roots in the arguments Western diplomats used to justify
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