Victory of Normalization Over “Stupefaction

I must admit that the Royal Cabinet statement of December 10, 2020, took me completely by surprise. It announced the Kingdom’s intention to normalize its relations with Israel, alongside the United States’ recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over its southern provinces. Such a decision caught me off guard, despite an environment conducive to rapprochement following the decision by several genuine Arab states—those of the Persian Gulf—to fully normalize their relations with Israel. Why, then, did I not expect this Moroccan decision?

Quite simply, because effective power in Morocco—namely the Palace—had fallen victim to perpetual blackmail exercised in the name of the Palestinian cause, driven by a process of “stupefication” (tadbî’). The ruling authority had become virtually held hostage by this pressure, unable to free itself without incurring major political losses. This was compounded by the fact that those behind this blackmail, empowered by this culture of stupefication, constantly threatened to mobilize the streets and agitate the masses against any decision branded as a “betrayal” of the Palestinian cause—implicitly meaning normalization with Israel.

What exactly does this concept of “stupefication” (tadbî’) mean, which I mention here and will return to throughout our reflection? “Stupefication (tadbî’) is a term derived from the word for hyena (dhabu’), the well-known animal. In popular imagination, a ‘stupefied’ person (moudhabba’) refers to a submissive, docile, servile, and obedient being, stripped of free will and decision-making capacity after consuming hyena brain. This expression most commonly applies to a husband whose wife secretly slipped a piece of hyena brain into his food, turning him into a puppet incapable of disobeying or refusing her anything. In Morocco, since independence, the political class—together with the intellectual elite—has ‘fed’ Moroccans through schools, media, and state institutions with ‘hyena brain’ imported from the Mashriq. They have rendered them docile, obedient, servile, and gullible regarding everything stemming from racial Pan-Arabism, such as ‘noble lineage’ (nassab charif), the ‘Palestinian cause,’ ‘Arab identity,’ or the ‘Arab Maghreb,’ causing them to lose all capacity for identity, ideological, or doctrinal autonomy, much like that spellbound and ‘stupefied’ husband” (see the article: “Stupefication in the Criminalization of Normalization” in the book Qadaya Maghribiya). One can translate tadbî’ into French by the word abêtissement, itself forged on the root bête (beast), which refers to the animal while evoking foolishness and stupidity when used as an adjective. Just as tadbî’ reduces its victim to a sort of hyena deprived of the thought and discernment proper to a rational human being, the notion of abêtissement in French dictionaries refers to rendering someone stupid and foolish like an animal. Stupefication thus constitutes a form of toukal (a popular expression for food containing a magical substance) and an occult practice aimed at deceiving the victim and stripping them of their will to submit them to the designs of the sorcerer or the ‘stupefier.’ This is precisely what happened to a segment of the Moroccan population, now convinced that the Palestinian cause is a national cause, if not even more important, and that anyone who normalizes with Israel is a traitor, a Zionist agent, and a dissenter from the ‘national consensus.’ It was this fear that caused the ruling authorities to hesitate and prevented them from risking official, open normalization with Israel, forcing them instead to settle for a clandestine, secret form of normalization. It thus remained subject to pernicious blackmail (see the article: “No to the Blackmail Exerted on the Monarchy in the Name of Palestine” in the book: On the Amazigh Identity of Morocco) exerted by Pan-Arabists, whether Islamists or nationalists: either the government boycotted Israel and declared open hostility toward it, or it was accused of treason and collusion with Zionism. Moreover, these blackmailers could leverage the mechanisms of “stultification” to mobilize and fanatize the public against any attempt at conciliation. This is what long deterred the Moroccan regime from taking the step toward normalization with the Jewish state, even to the detriment of the fundamental interests of the Moroccan state.

Thus, while the royal decision to establish normal, official diplomatic and commercial relations with Israel—accompanied by the major gain of U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over its Saharan provinces—represents a major historical milestone, its significance extends far beyond that. It constitutes a true historical revolution by breaking the cycle of blackmail that prevented Morocco from making decisions in full sovereignty and independence, to the detriment of its national interests. Much like criminal blackmail, where every concession by the victim invites fresh demands, the blackmailers, empowered by the culture of “stultification,” continually imposed new demands on the Moroccan state as soon as it yielded to earlier ones. By submitting to this blackmail, the state had reached a point where it portrayed itself as more Arab than the Arabs themselves, more Palestinian than actual Palestinians, and more protective of the sacred status of the Arabic language than native speakers, all while excluding its own Amazigh language to an extent unprecedented in history. Morocco was thus denying its Amazigh heritage to claim an Arab identity, abandoning the dignity of its true identity and engaging in an unnatural distortion of its national identity, contrary to its moral and spiritual values. Just as the only effective way to end criminal blackmail is to break one of its links to stop the cycle, Morocco acted decisively by normalizing relations with Israel. In doing so, it achieved a resounding victory over this culture of stultification and the accompanying blackmail, destroying the very mechanism underpinning a manipulation fueled by the opium of “stultification.”

Dismantling this machinery of blackmail—which held Morocco captive for decades, sacrificing its Amazigh identity and its own interests to satisfy the demands of blackmailers who threatened it with the weapon of “stupefaction,” through which they had subjugated the minds and consciences of many Moroccans—represents a genuine liberation for the country. It frees the nation from a captivity that constrained its sovereign decision-making by forcing it to align its choices with the wishes of these blackmailers. It was this very blackmail that led the nation to act as a pan-Arab state in response to pressure from Moroccan Arab nationalists, to propagate Wahhabism to satisfy the demands of Islamists, and to pursue an Amazighophobic policy of Arabization to appease proponents of an Arabization hostile to their own Amazigh heritage. However, destroying the machinery of this blackmail, which besieged Morocco and impeded its sovereignty, is not enough on its own; the fuel that powered this mechanism must also be destroyed. This fuel is none other than the culture of “stupefaction” with which Moroccans have been spoon-fed through schools, the media, trade unions, political parties, Friday sermons, and religious preaching sessions. Thus, liberating Morocco from blackmail exerted in the name of foreign Arab causes must serve as the starting point for freeing Moroccans from this culture of stupefaction, weaponized by its ideologues and its victims alike to pressure the state. To cut off this fuel of stupefaction, Morocco need only return to its local, authentically Moroccan roots—that is, its Amazigh and African identity—allowing Moroccans to be fully themselves, in harmony with their Amazigh and African heritage. This reclaiming of identity will liberate them from stupefaction and grant them an independent identity, enabling them to devote themselves to their own national interests and causes. It will restore the dignity that stupefaction had stolen from them by reducing them to beggars of foreign identities that do not recognize their belonging in the slightest. Normalization with Israel thus serves as an indispensable prelude to Moroccans normalizing relations with themselves—that is, with their collective Amazigh identity.

This is why the Amazigh movement has always been a trailblazer in calling for the normalization of relations with Israel, driven by a desire to serve the national interest. This stance provided a golden opportunity for proponents of Arabization, Islamists, and Pan-Arabists to demonize the movement, accusing it of Zionization, high treason, and allegiance to Israel. At the entrance of the University of Meknes, far-left students—paralyzed by an ideological stupor that rendered them incapable of moving forward—went so far as to draw the Amazigh flag next to the Israeli flag, joined by an equals sign, so that passersby would trample them. Today, what will these “stupefiers” and the “stupefied” say and do upon seeing the Israeli flag fly proudly alongside the Moroccan flag? Will they burn the national flag as they used to burn the Israeli flag? Will they claim that the Amazigh movement has infiltrated the Moroccan state, or that Morocco has become a Zionized state in the image of this movement? Will they brand Moroccan officials as traitors and foreign agents, echoing the accusations their masters, Palestinian leaders, uttered at Polisario congresses in Algiers? Or will they call for legislation criminalizing normalization, as a group of parliamentarians attempted to do in 2013—exposing themselves to utter ridicule, becoming the laughingstock of political observers in Morocco, and proving that a culture of ideological stupor yields nothing but political defeat and psychological ruin?

Morocco has long endured the denial and perfidy of certain Palestinian officials, acting much like a masochistic victim savoring the suffering inflicted by its executioner. Even the late King Hassan II, in a fit of intense anger, delivered an emergency address to the Moroccan people urging them to sever all ties with the Palestinians. This decision followed a declaration by a representative of the Fatah movement at a Polisario congress in Algeria during the 1980s, who asserted that the Sahrawi people suffered under occupation just as the Palestinian people did. Yet, the monarch reversed his decision and resumed support for the Palestinians, who continued to repay Morocco’s goodwill with ingratitude. Normalizing relations with Israel breaks this cycle of blackmail and burns away the ideological stupor that fueled it, offering a unique opportunity to break free once and for all from the pressure exerted in the name of Palestine. This liberation will only be complete when the real traitor is no longer seen as the person advocating normalization with Israel—as the culture of ideological dumbing-down claimed—but rather anyone who opposes this normalization in the name of the Palestinian cause, or places that cause above or on par with national issues. Such an attitude falls under Article 195 of the Moroccan Penal Code, which punishes anyone who places themselves in the service of a foreign power by amplifying its accusations of treason against the Moroccan state. Furthermore, the legal provisions penalizing disrespect toward the person of the King, particularly Article 179, should be enforced against these genuine traitors, given that the normalization they label as treason stems from a royal decision of the highest order.

What we Moroccans urgently need today is not to liberate Palestine, but to liberate ourselves from it. It now occupies us more than Israel occupies Palestine itself, seizing control of our minds and consciences. Within them, it has built settlements larger and more permanent than those constructed by Israel—equipped with all the infrastructure required for a lasting presence, yet devoid of any sanitation system, allowing the waste of this “stultification” to accumulate and embed itself deeply and effectively in our thoughts and consciences (see the chapter “Liberating Palestine or Liberating Ourselves from Palestine?” in the book De l’identité amazighe du Maroc). To successfully carry out the eradication of this mindset of “stultification” and put a definitive end to the blackmail it generates, we must stop pretending that the Palestinian cause deserves support and solidarity—not for ethnic, nationalist, or religious reasons, as nationalists and Islamists do, but because it is allegedly a humanitarian cause, as Amazigh movement activists repeatedly claim. These activists fail to realize that they are flirting with this culture of “stultification” and blackmail merely to avoid offending those steeped in it. After all, if humanitarian concern were truly the driving force behind this solidarity with the Palestinian cause, why would it be the only one deemed worthy of such backing, to the exclusion of dozens of other just and humanitarian causes, such as those of the Rohingya, the Kurds, Darfur, or Chechnya?

Furthermore, breaking free from the blackmail wielded in the name of Palestine represents a liberation for Palestine itself. Ever since the creation of Israel, the Palestinian cause has been instrumentalized by Arabs—both nationalists and Islamists—to serve their own ideologies and political agendas. This has deprived the Palestinians of numerous equitable solutions that were within their reach as early as 1948. Instead, these nationalists and Islamists urged them to reject compromise and pursue “resistance,” “refusal,” and “steadfastness” until total “victory.” Whether one views the Palestinian cause as just, humanitarian, or otherwise, it belongs first and foremost to the Palestinians themselves. Had the Arab states not meddled in the issue, a resolution would likely have been reached long ago. Many signs point to this, foremost among them the fact that the states that treated this issue as their own national cause declared their hostility toward Israel. This, in turn, led Israel to view its conflict with the Palestinians as a legitimate war against its Arab adversaries, who were fighting it by exploiting the Palestinian cause.

When I argue that we must free ourselves from Palestine in order to break free from the blackmail carried out in its name, this in no way reflects hostility toward true Arabs. We hold respect and esteem for them, and we take pride in our friendship and cooperation with them—as genuine Arab states have indeed demonstrated by opening consulates in our southern provinces. Our issue lies instead with the “fake Arabs”—those born of a culture of “dumbing down,” those guilty of identity usurpation. Under the anesthetic effect of this “dumbing down,” they have chosen to be barbarians estranged from their own Amazigh identity—in the original Greek sense of the word “barbarian”—living in alienation, falsehood, and a state of national and identity transsexuality. Indeed, true Arabs are the first to reject these converted barbarians and to refuse to recognize their usurped, artificial Arab identity.

Arabic version | French version