Ignoring Public Anger: Academic Normalization Between Morocco and ‘Israel’ Moves Forward

Since Morocco embarked on the path of normalization with “Israel”, the Zionist presence has begun to seep into multiple sectors, including higher education. This trend has prompted growing warnings about its repercussions on shaping the awareness of rising generations.

In the latest chapter of this trend, a number of Moroccan university professors took part in an international academic conference hosted by the Academic College in the occupied city of Ashkelon, near the Gaza Strip, on October 19, 2026. Their participation sparked a wave of widespread criticism among Moroccan academics and human rights activists.

The conference was dedicated to exploring coexistence between Jews and Muslims and strengthening cultural and academic relations between Morocco and “Israel”. 

It was attended by the Israeli entity’s former Defense Minister Amir Peretz, against whom an arrest warrant was previously issued in Britain over accusations of war crimes during the 2006 aggression on Lebanon.

According to the Sawt Al-Maghrib website on October 20, 2026, the participating Moroccan academics included Miloud Loukili. 

He is a professor at Mohammed V University in Rabat and Morocco’s former representative on the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf for the 2023–2028 term, from which he resigned on June 28, 2024.

The conference was organized in partnership with the Israeli Regional Cooperation Office, Bar-Ilan University, and the Dahan Center. It brought together the head of the Moroccan Liaison Office in “Tel Aviv”, Abderrahim Beyyoudh, alongside officials and academics from both sides, while its sessions discussed history, culture, language, and Jewish heritage in Morocco.

Loukili stood out among the speakers. He opened his address in Hebrew with “Shalom haverim”, meaning “Peace, friends”, before continuing in English and clearly expressing his pride in Moroccan-Israeli relations.

“I feel at home, and I am proud of Israeli-Moroccan relations, which constitute fertile ground for dialogue, culture, knowledge, and scientific research,” Loukili said.

He went further, presenting the conference as a sign of renewed ties between the two sides: “Your conference today is like a bird heralding the spring of Israeli-Moroccan relations and coexistence between Jews and Muslims.”

“I am proud to be Moroccan, and proud of Morocco’s Jewish residents,” he added. He also mentioned the opening of a museum of Jewish community heritage in the city of Fez, as part of what he described as efforts to preserve Jewish heritage in the Kingdom.

Calls for Boycott

Ahead of the conference, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of “Israel” (PACBI) and the Moroccan Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (MACBI) called for a boycott of the gathering. They stressed that Moroccan universities are not a platform for whitewashing genocide.

The statement, issued on October 18, 2026, called on all Moroccan academics to withdraw immediately from the “shameful conference”. 

It said the conference brings together and equates the colonizer and the colonized, and exploits Moroccan Jewish heritage and the discourse of coexistence to whitewash a genocidal regime.

The statement urged Moroccan academics to commit to the boycott call issued by Palestinian civil society in 2005.

It also called on all Moroccan universities to reject any institutional representation at the conference and to end normalizing cooperation agreements with Israeli academic institutions.

It appealed to unions, academic associations, and student bodies in Morocco, the Arab region, and the world to confront this normalizing infiltration by all available peaceful means, and to stand in solidarity with imprisoned Palestinian students and academics.

The statement concluded that Moroccan universities are too great to be used as a tool to whitewash a regime that bombs Gaza’s universities, raids the universities of the West Bank and Jerusalem, assassinates their scholars, and arrests their students.

The event drew widespread reactions from activists and supporters of the Palestinian cause. Among them was Aziz Hanawi, Secretary-General of the Moroccan Observatory Against Normalization, who described what happened as compounded misery in a Facebook post on October 20, 2026.

“It is a misery whose proponents insist on drowning in the disgrace of rushing toward normalization, serving the propaganda that beautifies the face of the criminal, bloody, racist, murderous Zionist entity. All curses upon it,” he added.

Similarly, the Moroccan Front for Supporting Palestine and Against Normalization considered the participation of Moroccan universities in the conference part of the Moroccan regime’s ongoing official normalization with the criminal Zionist entity.

In a statement issued on October 19, the Front drew attention to an official declaration by the Zionist education minister about an educational and cultural cooperation program with Morocco. 

The program includes a plan to teach Hebrew in Morocco, with Zionist bodies taking part in opening more Hebrew-language centers in the country.

The Front stressed that this approach is not part of independent scientific research. Rather, it said, the aim is to influence the awareness of young people, deepen educational normalization, and consolidate relations with the Zionists.

Bouchta Masaaf, a member of the Moroccan Observatory Against Normalization, said that when a politician normalizes, the stab is obvious. But when normalization wears an academic coat and is marketed in the name of scientific research and intellectual dialogue, the infiltration becomes more dangerous.

In a Facebook post on October 22, Masaaf stressed that what happened on Monday in occupied Ashkelon, just kilometers from wounded Gaza, goes far beyond a passing academic conference.

The human rights activist said the most dangerous aspect is the attempt to market normalization through the gateway of coexistence and cultural relations. 

He said it targets some of society’s finest young people, students and researchers, so that the occupation appears to be an ordinary knowledge partner and moral principles become negotiable in the face of interests and opportunities.

“Herein lies the invisible stab,” Masaaf said, the occupation becomes familiar in the academic sphere and is repackaged under glittering titles that conceal its crimes and the suffering of its victims.

He concluded that “participation in such forums goes beyond the limits of individual choice. It raises questions about the moral responsibility of university institutions, the values they pass on to their students, and the image they present of their position on the occupation.”

The Most Dangerous Form of Colonialism

On the human rights front, lawyer and activist Miloud Abo reflected on the intellectual dimensions of this participation. 

He stressed that it confirms what Edward Said used to say: the most dangerous form of colonialism is not the one that comes with a tank, but the one that comes with a diploma, scientific research, and the academic seminar.

“Edward used to say that the true intellectual cannot be neutral. He either stands with the victim or becomes part of the executioner’s machine, even if he wears the cloak of science,” Abbouz wrote in a Facebook post. He added that what we see in the Ashkelon photo is exactly what Said condemned throughout his life.

He continued, “Academics leave their universities in Rabat, Casablanca, and Fez and travel to take a smiling group photo in an occupied city, next to people whom their own people describe as war criminals. They think they represent openness, progress, and universal science, while in reality they represent the final break with their cause.”

He said that every participant in the seminar represents the intellectual who accepts laundering the occupation’s crimes with a lecture on coexistence or a research paper on innovation. 

“The occupation does not only need an army; it needs someone to grant it academic legitimacy,” he said.

He stressed that “in the past, normalization came in a politician’s suit; today it comes in an academic suit and tie, with a conference badge. And this is the most dangerous cloak.”

Halima Chouika, Deputy Secretary-General of the National Labor Union of Morocco, said this participation explains why the academic field has been flooded with careerists, opportunists, and superficial people.

“These are the ones being prepared for the dirty work. Otherwise, the architects of normalization would not have found anyone to take this normalizing step,” Chouika added in a Facebook post.

The union leader stressed that “the true university professor, the genuine intellectual and academic researcher, knows very well that helping to whitewash normalization is completely at odds with ethics, knowledge, science, and all human values.”

Academic Abdelaziz al-Btywy also warned that participating in the Ashkelon Academic College conference amounts to a Zionist infiltration of the Moroccan academic community. He called it an insult to the Moroccan university and its intellectual, rights-based, and activist history against all forms of academic normalization.

In a Facebook post on October 21, 2026, al-Btywy added that “being a university academic means, in addition to your intellectual training, possessing the required minimum of critical faculty and political awareness to take a stand in support of the causes of truth, justice, and freedom.”

He continued, “Without that, you are nothing but a stain of shame on the university’s forehead. You become a symbol of the intellectual poverty of a scholastic mindset that serves the slogans of savage imperialism and is haunted by the illusion of superiority and detachment from humanity’s concerns.”

Researcher and writer Driss El Ganbouri said this is not the first time Moroccan academics have traveled to the entity to take part in meetings under this charming diplomatic title, and it will not be the last.

In a Facebook post on October 21, El Ganbouri explained that the figures show the number of Jews currently living in Morocco barely exceeds 2,000, yet these two thousand drain the energy of a country of forty million.

“If someone living in the Amazon heard about these seminars and conferences on coexistence between Jews and Muslims in Morocco, they would think there were twenty million Jews and twenty million Muslims,” he added.

He continued, “Someone may say that the number of Moroccan Jews in Israel is very large, and that is true. But why did they leave for Palestine, and why should I follow them to talk about coexistence with them when they chose to leave? Had they wanted coexistence, they would have stayed.”

El Ganbouri added that the advocates of normalization living in Morocco first need seminars on coexistence between Moroccan Muslims and Muslim Moroccans. 

He said they are strangers to Moroccan culture who openly declare that Jews are closer to them than their jugular vein, and that, to them, Islam is a rebellious devil.

Coexistence With Criminals

In the same context, the Moroccan Union of Higher Education and Scientific Research strongly criticized the participation of research professors affiliated with Mohammed V University in Rabat and Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez in the seminar.

In a statement issued on Thursday, October 22, 2026, the union stressed that the gathering took place just a few kilometers from the largest human prison in history, where more than one and a quarter million Palestinians are besieged under the harshest conditions of deprivation.

The statement added that the conference also came after “Israel” killed more than eighty thousand martyrs, most of them children and women, in the most horrific ways. 

It said “Israel” destroyed eighty percent of residential homes, as well as mosques, hospitals, schools, and universities, and assassinated scholars, teachers, and professors.

Accordingly, the union asked, “How can these people affiliated with the Moroccan university seek coexistence with criminals whose hands are stained with the blood of innocent children and women? And how can they seek friendship and coexistence with Zionists who provoke the feelings of 2.2 billion Muslims, more than a quarter of the world’s population, by violating and attacking their sacred sites in defiance of Security Council resolutions and international law?”

The statement stressed that “these normalizers are an aberration in the Moroccan university. They are a small band, an exception, a lost group walking against the current of history, as a sweeping awakening spreads across all Western societies after October 7 exposed the ugly face of the unjust Zionist regime, revealed its crimes and terrorism, and showed the justice of the Palestinian cause.”

The union affirmed that the Moroccan university, with its honorable historical positions, will remain steadfast on the front lines in defense of our national cause and the cause of Palestine. It said the university will remain impossible to subdue, however much some try to tame it through a few stray outliers.

The union concluded by calling on all research professors in all universities and higher education institutions to remain vigilant in confronting and containing every attempt at Zionist infiltration. 

It renewed its support for the Palestinian people’s resistance to liberate their country from the river to the sea and to liberate Al-Aqsa Mosque by all available means.

Mohamed Ben Massoud, a member of the national bureau of the National Union of Higher Education, affirmed that the academics who normalize with Zionist criminality represent neither Moroccan professors nor the Moroccan university.

In a post on his Facebook account, Ben Massoud said it is a disgrace and a shame to attend a conference alongside the Zionist war minister in the occupied city of Ashkelon, just a few kilometers from glorious Gaza, which witnessed the most horrific genocide of the modern era.

He added that the blood of Gaza’s martyrs has not yet dried and the cries of its widows and orphans still echo all around. He called for an end to normalization with the usurping entity and for a clear break from this shame.

Issam Rajouani, a professor of sociology at Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra and an activist on the Palestinian cause, affirmed that this conference and others like it are concrete evidence of the duty to confront the tide of Zionist infiltration in Moroccan universities.

Rajouani told Al-Estiklal that a firm stand must be taken against this wave of normalization, which he said is very likely to sweep through the Moroccan university and the academic community at every level.

The university professor described participation in the Zionist conference in the occupied territories as a grave matter, saying that “we must rise against attempts to drag the Moroccan university into the swamp of Zionization and normalization.”

The Moroccan researcher also affirmed that academics around the world refuse to be a vehicle for whitewashing “Israel’s” crimes by allowing its narrative to be promoted at such seminars or meetings.

He pointed out that the brutality of the Zionist entity and the growth of the academic boycott movement against it worldwide have widened academic opposition to “Israel’s” participation in activities around the world.

In this context, Rajouani stressed that academic normalization has become morally unacceptable among academic elites and intellectuals around the world.

He said any departure from this trend, whether by engaging with the entity or inviting it to scientific activities, is a flagrant violation of a moral consensus that has taken on a global dimension today.

He noted that the boycott also finds its logical justification in the fact that the occupation’s academic institutions cannot be separated from its colonial system. 

He added that the boycott is a test of the ability of peoples, elites, and academic institutions to resist Zionist infiltration and normalization agreements.

Rajouani stressed that scientific platforms must not be allowed to become a means of whitewashing the occupation’s crimes and justifying its crumbling narrative under the cover of so-called academic freedom or value neutrality.

He explained that this rejection also stems from commitment to the principles of the global boycott movement, which holds that the academic community is not neutral when it is an integral part of the colonial structure and system.