Morocco sentenced a Palestinian solidarity activist to prison just for protesting. But the trail of his persecution runs from Israel across the Atlantic to New Jersey and Texas.
On November 16, 2024, a 34-year-old Moroccan agricultural engineer appeared at a police station in Casablanca in response to a summons by local authorities. He was taken into custody, and two days later he was charged with “incitement to commit various crimes.” In previous months, Ismail Lghazaoui worked with his local Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) group to protest corporate and state complicity in Israel’s war of extermination against the Palestinians in Gaza. For his efforts, the Moroccan police had earlier in October stopped him on the street as he headed to the United States consulate to protest American support for Israel, although he was later released without charge.
However, after his November arrest, prosecutors cited Lghazaoui’s speeches calling for popular mobilization around the American consulate, which were circulated on Arabic-language social media, as the basis for his charges. In addition, they attached to his case file statements he made calling on port workers and protesters block ships bound for Israel after local and international investigations revealed that the Moroccan port of Tangier Med was used to ship military cargo to Israel.
A month later, in jail after his lawyers denied a request for parole, Lghazaoui received the maximum sentence for his charge: one year imprisonment and a $500 fine. Throughout his trial and current incarceration, Lghazaoui has been held in solitary confinement with limited access to hygiene products, sunlight and family visits.
At first glance, Lghazaoui’s case appears to be a simple story of repression against Palestinian supporters by an Arab government that has long since normalized relations with Israel. However, the complex sequence of events that led to his arrest goes from Haifa and Ashdod, across the Strait of Gibraltar and across the Atlantic Ocean to trading ports in New Jersey and Texas. Each site represents an important node in the invisible engine of the Gaza genocide: the global supply chain that funnels US-made weapons and military cargo to Israel.
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In early November of last year, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), in collaboration with Progressive International, published a study the report analysis of 2,000 shipments of military cargo sent to Israel’s Ministry of Defense since the beginning of the genocide on vessels used by the Danish logistics giant Maersk. The report shows that the shipments, which included armored personnel carriers, military tactical vehicles, armored plates, aircraft parts, analysis bombs and rods, were usually shipped from the US from ports in New Jersey and Texas before transiting through Port Algeciras, Spain en route to Israel.
Most importantly, the report found that Maersk knowingly flouted Spanish law, which has been in effect since May 2024 and prohibits the transit of military equipment destined for Israel through Spanish ports. Pressure from PYM forced Maersk to publicly admit for the first time that it supplied weapons to Israel on behalf of US foreign military sales. In response to these revelations, the Spanish government began denying recording by the Maersk vessels, which are suspected of transporting goods for the Israeli Ministry of Defense. After access to one of its key transshipment hubs was disrupted, Maersk was forced to start diverting its vessels to a terminal across the Strait of Gibraltar: the Tanger Med port on the Moroccan coast.
While Morocco has long maintained commercial trade relations with Israel, revelations that the kingdom directly facilitated the transfer of military supplies to Israeli forces in Gaza caused widespread outrage. indignation in Moroccan civil society. In particular, the city of Tangier, home to the port of Tanger Med, has witnessed a large scale protests since November due to the government’s open support for the ongoing genocide. Lghazaoui participated in these popular mobilizations and called for an end to military supplies at the port, along with groups such as BDS Morocco and the Moroccan Front for Palestine and Against Normalization.
The harshness of the prosecution of Lghazaoui was likely due to the authorities’ desire to make an example of a prominent figure in the protest movement after port workers responded to calls for action from civil society. Several Tanger Med port workers refused to handle military cargo and were later disciplined or fired, while others quit their jobs in protest. After the photos leaked out displaying tactical military vehicles parked in the open container bays at the Maersk terminal, port authorities have begun restricting access to video surveillance and docking of ships at night. The mobilization of dock workers has reached a fever pitch with unions calling on the International Trade Federation for support, but Maersk canceled the initial attempt in a letter sent to dock workers.
The ongoing crisis over Morocco’s role in Israel’s genocide has exacerbated long-standing tensions between public policy and public sentiment. In Muslim-majority states, such as Morocco, where popular support for the Palestinian cause is very high (since the beginning of the genocide, support for diplomatic relations with Israel has increased fell sharply from 31 percent to 13 percent), government officials vacillate anxiously between lip service in Gaza and the delight of their American, Israeli and European patrons.
The willingness of the Moroccan government to allow arms shipments to Israel to pass through its ports, despite the Spanish government’s own refusal to do so, is a logical consequence normalization The deal between Israel and Morocco was brokered by the previous Trump administration. Morocco’s participation in the 2020 Abraham Accords, which formalized the history of previously reserved diplomatic relations with Israel, bore fruit in the form of intelligence cooperationjoint military exercises, arms purchases, and US recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara. In July 2024, the Moroccan military entered a 1 billion dollars contract with Israel Aerospace Industries to purchase Ofek 13 spy satellites, which Israel used to observation Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Lebanon.
While street protests are a sort of pressure relief valve for governments that have normalized relations with Israel to prevent civil society mobilization from escalating into a larger crisis of legitimacy, public displays of solidarity should be limited to general support for Palestinians facing Israel’s apocalyptic military campaign . A more confrontational political organization targeting Morocco’s complicity in perpetuating the genocide is another matter entirely.
Just last year, two Moroccan nationals, Said Bukioud and Abderrahman Azenkad, were sentenced to five years in prison. suggestions for denouncing the Moroccan normalization of relations with Israel on social media. Their cases, like Lghazaui’s, were aimed at suppressing nationwide opposition, making an example of public defenders. Across the region, in countries such as JordanIn Egypt and the Gulf states, authorities have adopted flexible legal definitions of “incitement,” “cybercrime,” and “terrorism” to prosecute organizers, journalists, and students for speaking out against their governments’ role in facilitating the Israeli crackdown. .
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Lgazaoui’s imprisonment imposes a duty on honest people around the world, a duty that goes beyond sympathy and slogans. His status as a political prisoner is linked to a complex global web of collusion with Israel’s genocidal ambitions, riveted multinational corporations and collaborationist governments. The popular arms embargo movement, in defiance of the sclerical complicity of Western powers and their compradores, must recognize this interconnected reality and work to develop and strengthen bottom-up institutions of working-class power that can demand and hold corporations truly accountable. and statesmen wherever they may be.
In a letter from prison, written on December 30, 2024, Lghazaoui congratulates “the free people who supported me without even really knowing me” and with whom he shares “a common bond and ultimate goal: to amplify the voice of the Moroccan people who reject injustice and stand in solidarity with the steadfast Palestinian people.” We must dare to count ourselves among those who participate in this struggle for justice — for Gaza and Gaza.
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