Moroccans Pulling for Native Son in Israel

(Chron.com)
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI and LAURIE COPANS Associated Press Writers
BOUJAD, Morocco — Past a faded green door, under washing flapping from a line, stands a dilapidated house that represents the beginning of a Jewish odyssey. The house on the Darb al-Kadareen alley in this town's Jewish quarter was once the home of a toddler named Armand Perez who would take the Hebrew name Amir Peretz and become the Israeli Labor Party's candidate for prime minister in Tuesday's election.
His date of birth _ March 9, 1952 _ and the years of his parents' births are meticulously recorded in Boujad's Town Hall in both the Western and Islamic calendars.
Today, no one in this farming town 170 miles from Rabat, the capital, remembers the boy who left at age 4. But some recall his father, David Perez, telling how he cried _ as did some of the town's Muslims _ when he and other Jews sold their houses half a century ago and immigrated to Israel.
Those were tumultuous times. Israel was at war with the entire Arab world. Its Zionist mission was to gather in the Jews of the diaspora, and that included as many of Morocco's 200,000 Jews as wanted to go. Some left as soon as Israel came into existence in 1948, and many more _ 5,000 a month _ after Morocco won independence from France in 1956.
Today, while most Arab countries remain off-limits to Israelis, Morocco is welcoming back its former citizens in droves on visits to trace their roots, among them Amir Peretz. He came in 1993, along with his father and stepmother, his mother having died some years earlier.
Boujad has grown from a village to a town of 42,000, farming wheat, barley and sheep on the surrounding plains.
Old-timers are aware that a native son is campaigning to become Israel's prime minister and are cheering for him. They also know that of the three leading candidates, he is the most dovish toward the Palestinians.
"We hope he does become prime minister," said Mohammed Zine Eddine, Boujad's top municipal official. "It would be good if peace comes from Boujad."
The warm ties between Arabs and Jews in the town decades ago could have been a model for a different Middle East, untroubled by religious barriers and animosity, living and trading with each other and baby-sitting each other's kids.
"We treated the Jews well," said Mohammed Aloumi, 68, who owns a hardware store in Boujad, and hoped Peretz would reciprocate in his treatment of the Palestinians.
But Peretz is the underdog in the election, partly because his background is in trade unionism and he is seen as too left-wing and too inexperienced in security issues.
Still, the very fact that he has risen to lead a party always ruled by European-descended Ashkenazim is a landmark for the Israeli melting pot.
Peretz says he has fought all his life against the "ethnic demon" _ the charged relations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, as Jews from the Middle East and North Africa are collectively called.
The troubled relationship dates to the 1950s and '60s, when Sephardi immigrants were used as foot soldiers in a Zionist campaign to populate the desert and came to inhabit the margins of Israeli society.
The Peretz family lived in a tent camp, then in the desert town of Sderot, today a frequent target of Palestinian missiles fired from the nearby Gaza Strip. In Morocco, David Peretz was an accountant and also worked at a gas station. In Israel, he was a factory laborer.
Amir was the youngest of three children. His mother got sick after his birth, and he was nursed by an Arab woman. Peretz has remarked that being nursed by an Arab may have helped shape his dovish opinions.
"We were one big house, the Jews and the Arabs in our neighborhood. We had great relations. We didn't care who was Arab and who was Jewish," said Peretz's uncle, Moshe Elbaz, who now lives in Israel.
When the Arabs heard that Israel had been established, "there were some street protests. But there wasn't much violence, only at the end and never by our neighbors," he said.
Aloumi, the hardware merchant, recalled the day the Peretz family left town.
"One day, they came over and said 'salama, salama' (goodbye) and left. We were sad. We wanted them to stay," said Aloumi. "David was crying."
"They were nice people," he added.
More than 200,000 Jews once lived in Morocco. Today, some 6,000 Jews are left, many of them well-to-do. There are none in Boujad.
But those who come back to Boujad often kiss the walls and doors of their former homes, visit the cemetery and pay respects at the grave of Side Eddahabi, a spiritual leader of Boujad Jews.
When Peretz recently returned on his second visit, he was the guest of Morocco's King Mohammed VI.
And should he score an upset election victory? "We will congratulate him," said Zine Eddine, the town official.