Occupied Melilla, Occupied Palestine
Oct 24, 2023 · 5 min read
Occupied Melilla, Occupied Palestine
A Tale of Two Settler Colonies
Kevin Barrett
The president of Melilla calls for coexistence after protests against Israel: “We are all a united people”: A demonstration of several hundred people in support of Palestine includes moments of tension in front of the city's main synagogue. The Jewish community denounces several “anti-Semitic episodes” in Catalonia and Madrid
The two-hour taxi ride from Saidia, Morocco to Melilla, Spain was expensive—almost $50 US—but the driver, Si Driss, was loquacious, and educated enough to discuss history and current events in an Arabic register that I could understand. When I half-jokingly referred to Melilla al-muhtala, bihal al-Quds al-muhtala(Occupied Melilla, like Occupied Jerusalem) he laughed and shook his head. The artificial borders that humans draw on the surface of the earth, Driss told me, are ridiculous. And not just national borders: Rich people who buy up what could be the best agricultural land to build resorts and golf courses, and stake out the boundaries to keep poor farmers out, are just as bad as the heads of nation states claiming this or that patch of ground for this or that tribe.
Driss’s utopian “imagine there’s no countries” view isn’t universally shared. For Moroccans, the notion of “Occupied Melilla” is real. Spain is occupying a basically Moroccan city. Yet it doesn’t bother them nearly as much as the Zionist occupation of Palestine bothers them. (Not to mention how much it bothers the Palestinians!)
Why aren’t Moroccans forming resistance organizations to fight the occupation of Melilla, the way the Palestinian resistance fights the Zionists? After all, the two situations are not entirely dissimilar. In both cases, European settler colonists, protected by European militaries, swarmed into patches of ground on the Muslim shore of the Mediterranean. Locals resisted. Blood was shed. The settler colonists (unlike those in French Algeria, British Kenya and Tanzania and Rhodesia) refused to close up shop.
But today, Melilla and Palestine are not just at opposite ends of the Mediterranean; they are also poles apart in their relationships between European settlers and Muslim locals. Palestine is in the midst of an attempted genocide by the settlers against the natives, one that will likely backfire and lead to the destruction of the Zionist project (and possibly many of its adherents). Whereas in Melilla, a no-doubt-exaggerated convivencia (“living together”) is not just a slogan, but to some extent a reality.*
It’s worth noting that convivencia or no, Melilla is the most right-wing Catholic city in Spain. It was the last city to take down its statue of Gen. Francisco Franco, who is seen today as a historical villain not only by Moroccans due to Spanish atrocities in the Rif Wars, but also by today’s liberal majority of Spaniards.
And it gets worse. Melilla was founded in the wake of one of the worst ethnic cleansings in history: The destruction of al-Andalus, multi-confessional Muslim-ruled Spain, culminating in the fall of Grenada in 1492 and expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish captured Melilla in 1497 and used it as a base against Muslim attempts to resist the expulsions. The fortress (Melilla la Vieja) and the larger city that grew up around it have been anti-Moroccan Spanish strongholds ever since. Since what passes for Spanish identity today bases itself on the Catholics’ defeat and expulsion of the Muslims of al-Andalus, there’s plenty of historical grounds for conflict.
Based on that history, and the right-wing Catholic identity politics of many Spanish settlers in Melilla, we might expect to find a fair bit of hatred and violence here. But that isn’t the case. The only smattering of remotely “political” violence in Melilla is the occasional mistreatment of mostly sub-Saharan African migrants who try to climb the ever-more-militarized fence that separates Morocco from Spain. (The Spanish and Moroccan authorities cooperate in that mistreatment.)
So despite carrying comparable amounts of historical baggage, the difference between peaceful Melilla and blood-soaked Palestine couldn’t be more stark. What accounts for that difference?
I think the main factor is that Spain’s attitude, and Spanish Melillans’ attitude, toward their occupation is relatively reasonable and recognizes the humanity of the Other; whereas Zionists are fanatical extremists who dehumanize their victims. The Spanish basically say: “Okay, we stole Melilla, and did other unpleasant things, but that was long ago, and since we gave back most of what we stole, please work with us and we’ll come to some kind of reasonably generous arrangement. We’ll find a way to make sure that you’ll do better with us here than you would if we left.”
The Spanish have facilitated “irregular trade,” i.e. smuggling, which provides a way for Moroccans in the region to make a living. They permit residents of the neighboring Moroccan city of Nador to cross the border at will. They have granted full Spanish citizenship to the ethnically-Moroccan Muslims of Melilla. (Muslims now constitute the majority of Melilla’s population, and Islam is becoming an indigenous religion of Spain due to conversions and intermarriage.) And Spain has allowed almost a million Moroccans to live on the Peninsula legally, alongside an unknown number of illegal ones. Hardworking Moroccans in Spain send back remittances to their families, which keeps Morocco’s economy afloat.
The Zionists, for their part, have no interest in being generous or even reasonable. They are going to keep right on stealing and killing and expelling—“if I don’t steal it someone else gonna steal it” goes the Israeli proverb—and they are going to keep treating the locals as fourth-class-citizens at best, animals at worst.
I got a taste of the generosity of Melillans yesterday, literally, as I wandered around trying to find my AirBnb. I don’t use a cell phone, and the cafés with wireless were closed for siesta, so my only recourse was to accost real live human beings in half-broken Spanish lapsing into mixtures of French and Moroccan Arabic and ask them for help finding Commandante Royo Street. As it turned out nobody had ever heard of such a street, but several took the time to put up with my linguistic inadequacies, look it up on their cell phones, and point me in this or that direction. After three or four pointers and still no luck, I was getting desperate, when some folks barbecuing shish kebobs on the sidewalk—they appeared to include people of both Spanish and Moroccan ethnicity—insisted that I join the party. Fortified by shish kebobs, orange soda, and conversation with friendly people who put up with my bad Spanish, I hit the streets again and found the place I was looking for.
*A staple of Melilla’s convivencia rhetoric is the reference to “four cultures.” The odd thing is that two of those four cultures—the Muslims and the Catholics—together comprise about 98% of the population, while the Jews and Hindus together are only 2%.
Oct 24, 2023 · 5 min read
Occupied Melilla, Occupied Palestine
A Tale of Two Settler Colonies
Kevin Barrett
The president of Melilla calls for coexistence after protests against Israel: “We are all a united people”: A demonstration of several hundred people in support of Palestine includes moments of tension in front of the city's main synagogue. The Jewish community denounces several “anti-Semitic episodes” in Catalonia and Madrid
The two-hour taxi ride from Saidia, Morocco to Melilla, Spain was expensive—almost $50 US—but the driver, Si Driss, was loquacious, and educated enough to discuss history and current events in an Arabic register that I could understand. When I half-jokingly referred to Melilla al-muhtala, bihal al-Quds al-muhtala(Occupied Melilla, like Occupied Jerusalem) he laughed and shook his head. The artificial borders that humans draw on the surface of the earth, Driss told me, are ridiculous. And not just national borders: Rich people who buy up what could be the best agricultural land to build resorts and golf courses, and stake out the boundaries to keep poor farmers out, are just as bad as the heads of nation states claiming this or that patch of ground for this or that tribe.
Driss’s utopian “imagine there’s no countries” view isn’t universally shared. For Moroccans, the notion of “Occupied Melilla” is real. Spain is occupying a basically Moroccan city. Yet it doesn’t bother them nearly as much as the Zionist occupation of Palestine bothers them. (Not to mention how much it bothers the Palestinians!)
Why aren’t Moroccans forming resistance organizations to fight the occupation of Melilla, the way the Palestinian resistance fights the Zionists? After all, the two situations are not entirely dissimilar. In both cases, European settler colonists, protected by European militaries, swarmed into patches of ground on the Muslim shore of the Mediterranean. Locals resisted. Blood was shed. The settler colonists (unlike those in French Algeria, British Kenya and Tanzania and Rhodesia) refused to close up shop.
But today, Melilla and Palestine are not just at opposite ends of the Mediterranean; they are also poles apart in their relationships between European settlers and Muslim locals. Palestine is in the midst of an attempted genocide by the settlers against the natives, one that will likely backfire and lead to the destruction of the Zionist project (and possibly many of its adherents). Whereas in Melilla, a no-doubt-exaggerated convivencia (“living together”) is not just a slogan, but to some extent a reality.*
It’s worth noting that convivencia or no, Melilla is the most right-wing Catholic city in Spain. It was the last city to take down its statue of Gen. Francisco Franco, who is seen today as a historical villain not only by Moroccans due to Spanish atrocities in the Rif Wars, but also by today’s liberal majority of Spaniards.
And it gets worse. Melilla was founded in the wake of one of the worst ethnic cleansings in history: The destruction of al-Andalus, multi-confessional Muslim-ruled Spain, culminating in the fall of Grenada in 1492 and expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish captured Melilla in 1497 and used it as a base against Muslim attempts to resist the expulsions. The fortress (Melilla la Vieja) and the larger city that grew up around it have been anti-Moroccan Spanish strongholds ever since. Since what passes for Spanish identity today bases itself on the Catholics’ defeat and expulsion of the Muslims of al-Andalus, there’s plenty of historical grounds for conflict.
Based on that history, and the right-wing Catholic identity politics of many Spanish settlers in Melilla, we might expect to find a fair bit of hatred and violence here. But that isn’t the case. The only smattering of remotely “political” violence in Melilla is the occasional mistreatment of mostly sub-Saharan African migrants who try to climb the ever-more-militarized fence that separates Morocco from Spain. (The Spanish and Moroccan authorities cooperate in that mistreatment.)
So despite carrying comparable amounts of historical baggage, the difference between peaceful Melilla and blood-soaked Palestine couldn’t be more stark. What accounts for that difference?
I think the main factor is that Spain’s attitude, and Spanish Melillans’ attitude, toward their occupation is relatively reasonable and recognizes the humanity of the Other; whereas Zionists are fanatical extremists who dehumanize their victims. The Spanish basically say: “Okay, we stole Melilla, and did other unpleasant things, but that was long ago, and since we gave back most of what we stole, please work with us and we’ll come to some kind of reasonably generous arrangement. We’ll find a way to make sure that you’ll do better with us here than you would if we left.”
The Spanish have facilitated “irregular trade,” i.e. smuggling, which provides a way for Moroccans in the region to make a living. They permit residents of the neighboring Moroccan city of Nador to cross the border at will. They have granted full Spanish citizenship to the ethnically-Moroccan Muslims of Melilla. (Muslims now constitute the majority of Melilla’s population, and Islam is becoming an indigenous religion of Spain due to conversions and intermarriage.) And Spain has allowed almost a million Moroccans to live on the Peninsula legally, alongside an unknown number of illegal ones. Hardworking Moroccans in Spain send back remittances to their families, which keeps Morocco’s economy afloat.
The Zionists, for their part, have no interest in being generous or even reasonable. They are going to keep right on stealing and killing and expelling—“if I don’t steal it someone else gonna steal it” goes the Israeli proverb—and they are going to keep treating the locals as fourth-class-citizens at best, animals at worst.
I got a taste of the generosity of Melillans yesterday, literally, as I wandered around trying to find my AirBnb. I don’t use a cell phone, and the cafés with wireless were closed for siesta, so my only recourse was to accost real live human beings in half-broken Spanish lapsing into mixtures of French and Moroccan Arabic and ask them for help finding Commandante Royo Street. As it turned out nobody had ever heard of such a street, but several took the time to put up with my linguistic inadequacies, look it up on their cell phones, and point me in this or that direction. After three or four pointers and still no luck, I was getting desperate, when some folks barbecuing shish kebobs on the sidewalk—they appeared to include people of both Spanish and Moroccan ethnicity—insisted that I join the party. Fortified by shish kebobs, orange soda, and conversation with friendly people who put up with my bad Spanish, I hit the streets again and found the place I was looking for.
*A staple of Melilla’s convivencia rhetoric is the reference to “four cultures.” The odd thing is that two of those four cultures—the Muslims and the Catholics—together comprise about 98% of the population, while the Jews and Hindus together are only 2%.
Occupied Melilla, Occupied Palestine
Oct 24, 2023 · 5 min read
Occupied Melilla, Occupied Palestine
A Tale of Two Settler Colonies
Kevin Barrett
The president of Melilla calls for coexistence after protests against Israel: “We are all a united people”: A demonstration of several hundred people in support of Palestine includes moments of tension in front of the city's main synagogue. The Jewish community denounces several “anti-Semitic episodes” in Catalonia and Madrid
The two-hour taxi ride from Saidia, Morocco to Melilla, Spain was expensive—almost $50 US—but the driver, Si Driss, was loquacious, and educated enough to discuss history and current events in an Arabic register that I could understand. When I half-jokingly referred to Melilla al-muhtala, bihal al-Quds al-muhtala(Occupied Melilla, like Occupied Jerusalem) he laughed and shook his head. The artificial borders that humans draw on the surface of the earth, Driss told me, are ridiculous. And not just national borders: Rich people who buy up what could be the best agricultural land to build resorts and golf courses, and stake out the boundaries to keep poor farmers out, are just as bad as the heads of nation states claiming this or that patch of ground for this or that tribe.
Driss’s utopian “imagine there’s no countries” view isn’t universally shared. For Moroccans, the notion of “Occupied Melilla” is real. Spain is occupying a basically Moroccan city. Yet it doesn’t bother them nearly as much as the Zionist occupation of Palestine bothers them. (Not to mention how much it bothers the Palestinians!)
Why aren’t Moroccans forming resistance organizations to fight the occupation of Melilla, the way the Palestinian resistance fights the Zionists? After all, the two situations are not entirely dissimilar. In both cases, European settler colonists, protected by European militaries, swarmed into patches of ground on the Muslim shore of the Mediterranean. Locals resisted. Blood was shed. The settler colonists (unlike those in French Algeria, British Kenya and Tanzania and Rhodesia) refused to close up shop.
But today, Melilla and Palestine are not just at opposite ends of the Mediterranean; they are also poles apart in their relationships between European settlers and Muslim locals. Palestine is in the midst of an attempted genocide by the settlers against the natives, one that will likely backfire and lead to the destruction of the Zionist project (and possibly many of its adherents). Whereas in Melilla, a no-doubt-exaggerated convivencia (“living together”) is not just a slogan, but to some extent a reality.*
It’s worth noting that convivencia or no, Melilla is the most right-wing Catholic city in Spain. It was the last city to take down its statue of Gen. Francisco Franco, who is seen today as a historical villain not only by Moroccans due to Spanish atrocities in the Rif Wars, but also by today’s liberal majority of Spaniards.
And it gets worse. Melilla was founded in the wake of one of the worst ethnic cleansings in history: The destruction of al-Andalus, multi-confessional Muslim-ruled Spain, culminating in the fall of Grenada in 1492 and expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish captured Melilla in 1497 and used it as a base against Muslim attempts to resist the expulsions. The fortress (Melilla la Vieja) and the larger city that grew up around it have been anti-Moroccan Spanish strongholds ever since. Since what passes for Spanish identity today bases itself on the Catholics’ defeat and expulsion of the Muslims of al-Andalus, there’s plenty of historical grounds for conflict.
Based on that history, and the right-wing Catholic identity politics of many Spanish settlers in Melilla, we might expect to find a fair bit of hatred and violence here. But that isn’t the case. The only smattering of remotely “political” violence in Melilla is the occasional mistreatment of mostly sub-Saharan African migrants who try to climb the ever-more-militarized fence that separates Morocco from Spain. (The Spanish and Moroccan authorities cooperate in that mistreatment.)
So despite carrying comparable amounts of historical baggage, the difference between peaceful Melilla and blood-soaked Palestine couldn’t be more stark. What accounts for that difference?
I think the main factor is that Spain’s attitude, and Spanish Melillans’ attitude, toward their occupation is relatively reasonable and recognizes the humanity of the Other; whereas Zionists are fanatical extremists who dehumanize their victims. The Spanish basically say: “Okay, we stole Melilla, and did other unpleasant things, but that was long ago, and since we gave back most of what we stole, please work with us and we’ll come to some kind of reasonably generous arrangement. We’ll find a way to make sure that you’ll do better with us here than you would if we left.”
The Spanish have facilitated “irregular trade,” i.e. smuggling, which provides a way for Moroccans in the region to make a living. They permit residents of the neighboring Moroccan city of Nador to cross the border at will. They have granted full Spanish citizenship to the ethnically-Moroccan Muslims of Melilla. (Muslims now constitute the majority of Melilla’s population, and Islam is becoming an indigenous religion of Spain due to conversions and intermarriage.) And Spain has allowed almost a million Moroccans to live on the Peninsula legally, alongside an unknown number of illegal ones. Hardworking Moroccans in Spain send back remittances to their families, which keeps Morocco’s economy afloat.
The Zionists, for their part, have no interest in being generous or even reasonable. They are going to keep right on stealing and killing and expelling—“if I don’t steal it someone else gonna steal it” goes the Israeli proverb—and they are going to keep treating the locals as fourth-class-citizens at best, animals at worst.
I got a taste of the generosity of Melillans yesterday, literally, as I wandered around trying to find my AirBnb. I don’t use a cell phone, and the cafés with wireless were closed for siesta, so my only recourse was to accost real live human beings in half-broken Spanish lapsing into mixtures of French and Moroccan Arabic and ask them for help finding Commandante Royo Street. As it turned out nobody had ever heard of such a street, but several took the time to put up with my linguistic inadequacies, look it up on their cell phones, and point me in this or that direction. After three or four pointers and still no luck, I was getting desperate, when some folks barbecuing shish kebobs on the sidewalk—they appeared to include people of both Spanish and Moroccan ethnicity—insisted that I join the party. Fortified by shish kebobs, orange soda, and conversation with friendly people who put up with my bad Spanish, I hit the streets again and found the place I was looking for.
*A staple of Melilla’s convivencia rhetoric is the reference to “four cultures.” The odd thing is that two of those four cultures—the Muslims and the Catholics—together comprise about 98% of the population, while the Jews and Hindus together are only 2%.
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