A native of the city of Meknes in Morocco, Joseph (Jo) Ohana (1914–1995) was a wealthy Casablanca businessman and political activist. In 1955 he founded the Mouvement National Marocain, a small Jewish group connected to the nationalist Istiqlal Party, whose objective was to mobilize Jewish support for the Moroccan nationalist cause and demonstrate the loyalty of Moroccan Jewry to Sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Youssef, the future King Mohammed V. Following Moroccan independence in 1956, Mohammed V appointed Ohana as one of the five Jews among the seventy-six members of the first National Co…