Morocco Grapples with Israeli Date Sales During Ramadan Amid Boycott Calls

According to Maghreb Intelligence, Israeli dates are still being sold on the Moroccan market, but with a taste of the forbidden. For merchants and consumers, they are a luxury product that is difficult to access and especially to market.

In the chic neighborhoods of Casablanca, Israeli dates display prices out of reach of most consumers (between 180 and 200 dirhams per kilo), but are still secretly sold by merchants, who remain convinced of their superior quality. "The packaging and quality are a big part of it," says a local merchant.

Last year, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement took the field to call on Moroccans to boycott Israeli dates. "No normalization. No exchanges with the Zionist state. No normalizers in our country. No Israeli dates. They are sold in Morocco despite all the complaints we have made," said Saâdia Elouallous of the BDS movement. "Don’t put your money in the pockets of the Zionists."

For his part, the Moroccan anti-Zionist Sion Assidon congratulated himself a few weeks later on the success of this boycott call. He was able to convince several dozen retailers in Casablanca, Rabat, Salé or Mohammedia. "After three visits to the wholesale market, we were assured that the demand from retailers had stopped following our campaign," he explained to the Telquel website.