Andre Azoulay 'fights for Palestinians'

Andre Azoulay considers himself a member of a very elite club of Jewish advisers to Muslim rulers. But is he a spineless 'court Jew', or a bridge for peace between Arabs and Jews? Report from the Jerusalem Post.

The only problem, he said, "is that I am the only club member."

"My position is not as usual as it could be," the counselor to King Muhammad VI of Morocco said in an interview Monday. "It is very frustrating to be in the only Arab and Muslim country where a Jew can be in my position."

On Tuesday, Azoulay, 64, received an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev "as a Jew whose roots lie in Morocco, who has devoted his time and energy to a life-long quest for coexistence between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East and Northern Africa."

Azoulay described himself to The Jerusalem Post as a "militant" in a "fight for peace" between Palestinians and Israelis.

"As far as I can remember," he said, "I was always fighting to find a way out which will give a chance to the Palestinians to recover their freedom, dignity, their identity [and] their state, and give by that a chance to make Israel more secure, more safe, more peaceful, and stronger."

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Haaretz has this by Daniel Ben Simon (scroll down):

"He has never made a secret of his Jewishness and tends to identify himself as a proud Jewish Arab. In his speech, he said he sees himself as an emissary of Morocco, of the Moroccan Jews still living in the kingdom and of the Moroccan Jews living in Israel. At the same time, he also considers himself to be an Arab.

"I'm an Arab because I was born in an Arab country, and I'm an Arab because I absorb Arab culture, and I'm an Arab because I live in an Arab environment," Azoulay said before the ceremony began in Be'er Sheva. "If I could only make peace between Jews and Muslims, I would feel that I had fulfilled my life's ambition."