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

He wrote to Bargāsh explaining that “I am telling you all this so that you will understand and
know how to answer, should someone say that we judged the first Jew who was killed in Safi
one way and judged the matter of the [other] aforementioned Jew another way.” 82 Meanwhile,
the two suspects were to be kept in prison.
Following Lalouche’s execution, Moshe Pariente wrote a letter to Moses Montefiore, the
AIU, and the Board of Delegates of American Israelites on behalf of the Jewish leaders of
Tangier (introduced above). 83 The letter urgently pleaded with the representatives of
international Jewish organizations to intervene with their respective governments to save the
“innocent” suspects: “A recommendation from these governments to their representatives, to this
effect, would be a great reprieve and breath [of relief] for the Jewish communities of
Morocco.” 84 On the one hand, Pariente argued that Ben Yehudah and Lalouche had been
executed without a proper trial; he reminded his western Jewish addressees that “these Muslim
countries lack the laws familiar in Europe, and there is no tribunal where one can appeal a case
to have it justified by judicial examination.” 85 On the other hand, Pariente clearly placed much
of the blame for the executions on the Spanish government (contrary to the interpretation offered
by Fenton and Littman). He recounted how the Junta of Tangier repeatedly appealed to Merry y
Colom, the Spanish ambassador, in an attempt to convince him to pardon Lalouche—without
any success. Pariente also explained that after Lalouche was executed, the Jews of Safi first
approached local Makhzan officials in the hopes that they would agree to stay the executions of
82 Wa-a‘lamnāka li-takūna ‘alā baṣīratin wa-ta‘rifa mā tujību bihi man ‘asā an yaqūla mā lanā ḥakamnā fī almaqtūli
bi-Asafī awwalan bi-shay’in wa-ḥakamnā bi-nāzilati hādha al-yahūdī al-madhkūri bi-shay’in ākhar (ibid.).
83 The letter is reproduced in the original Spanish in Bashan, Moshe Montefiore ve-yehudei Maroko, 221-5, and in a
contemporary French translation in Fenton and Littman, L’exil au Maghreb, 397-401. See also Littman, “Mission to
Morocco,” 177-8. The Board of Delegates of American Jews was founded in New York in 1859, and had already
sent funds to support Moroccan Jewish refugees from the Spanish occupation of Tetuan in 1860 (Kenbib, Juifs et
musulmans, 140).
84 Bashan, Moshe Montefiore ve-yehudei Maroko, 225.
85 Ibid.
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