The anti-Jewish riots in the eastern Moroccan towns of Oujda and Jerrada in 1948 occurred in a region that still had not recovered from the devastating 1945 famine, in the context of the tense relationship with France arising after Sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Youssef's speech in Tangier (1947) calling for an end to the protectorate. Equally important were the deteriorating political situation in the Middle East, the United Nations partition for Palestine, and the clandestine Jewish emigration to the newly declared State of Israel. A steadily increasing number of Moroccan …