Morocco's King Snubs Israeli President

The King of Morocco and the Israeli President

Of all of America's clients in the Mideast region, Morocco (albeit not in the Mideast) is one of the most subservient. Certainly in North Africa. And even more than Egypt.

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Moroccos has always been hospitable toward the United States. For most of history that has been a good. Morocco was the second nation (after the Netherlands) to recognize an independent United States. President Obama, it should be noted, said in his Cairo address last year that Morocco was the first nation to recognize the United States. This is both true and false. The Netherlands holds the honor according to most historians because Dutch ships saluted America and, as such, such a salute was a recognition of the United States. But Morocco offered the first more formal, if you will, recognition. So it is all a matter of perspective.

And the nation welcomed U.S. troops during WW2 and was the home to the Roosevelt-Churchill Casablanca conference. And was the locale for the best Hollywood film ever.

That was all good. But Morocco has since become a client state which servers American empire in the region. The nation joined the U.S.-led coalition in the first Gulf War. That was justifiable. But what was not was the agreement to join Bush's "coalition of the willing" in the second Iraq war. Just an act was unimaginable given Arab public opinion. Not even Kuwait agreed to join and even Saudi Arabia had to lie about U.S. fighter jets using its air space to bomb Iraq. But Morocco sent a folk of monkeys.

And this client status has naturally meant being nice to the Zionist entity. Morocco has unofficial relations with Israel and allows Israeli citizens to visit the nation on their Israeli passports. It is the only Arab nation to grant Israel this favor, expect Egypt and Jordan, of course, who have peace agreements with Israel.

But the King may be coming under pressure to distance himself from any seeming relations with Israel and to show more solidarity with the Palestinians:

The king of Morocco has rejected a request to meet with Israel's president because of the impasse in Mideast peacemaking, an aide to the Israeli statesman said yesterday in a new diplomatic fallout from the deadlocked peace talks.

President Shimon Peres had asked to meet with King Mohammed VI on the sidelines of an upcoming international conference in Marrakech. But the monarch - citing the stalled talks said the timing wasn't right, the aide said.

It would still be a shame if any Israeli official were allowed to attend.