Moroccan activists protest The Spy

It is almost par for the course for Sacha Baron Cohen, but the comic is at the centre of another possible diplomatic row.

The Who Is America? star is currently filming his new Netflix drama, The Spy, in Morocco, portraying  in which he plays real-life  Mossad spy Eli Cohen.

But activists in the Arabic African nation are protesting the film as ‘Zionist propaganda’ and say authorities should never have given permission to shoot there.  

The agent lived undercover in Damascus in the 1960s and managed to embed himself into Syrian high society, where he rose through the political ranks. He became chief adviser to the Minister of Defence, but was unmasked in 1965 and sentenced to death. 

Intelligence he gathered before his arrest is said to have been an important factor in Israel's success in the Six Day War, and Netflix says ‘his actions, connections and immense sacrifice have had lasting consequences, shaping the Middle East of today’.

The six-part series is being filmed across several Moroccan cities until mid-August, including Rabat, Salé, Quneitra and Fez.

But the Moroccan Observatory Against Normalization, which seeks to challenge what it sees as Morocco’s soft stance towards Israel, condemned authorities for allowing filming.  

Its general director Aziz Hanawi told the country’s Hespress that granting such permission a ‘crime’ that promoted the ‘marketing and propaganda of Zionist espionage’

Human rights activist Khadija Ryadi also had denounced the filming of The Spy, saying that it meant Morocco was ‘protecting the Zionist entity and opening doors for it’.

Although the Moroccan state is pro-Palestine, it is not so vehemently anti-israel as most other Arab nations. A quarter of a million Jews once lived in Morocco, but when Israel was founded in 1948, most were persuaded to leave. Today, only 2000 remain.

Published: 4 Aug 2018