Interwar Morocco was home to a thriving anti-fascist political scene with intimate connections to France and Spain. Politically active Moroccan Jews and Muslims were found in the ranks of many different anti-fascist organizations, above all the International League Against Antisemitism, or the LICA after its French acronym (Ligue internationale contre l’antisémitisme). Through organizations like the LICA, Moroccan Jews and Muslims responded to rising fascism and antisemitism out of a sense of shared political values.

Alma Rachel Heckman is the Neufeld-Levin Chair of Holocaust Studies and Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Her book The Sultan’s Communists: Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging was published by Stanford University Press in 2021.

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