Rabat - Egypt’s famous actress, Ilham Chahin, made a weird statement on Friday, when she claimed that over 20 percent of Moroccans are Jews.
Hosted in a live reality show aired on Abu Dhabi TV, Ilham Chahin was trying to explain the difference between Judaism and Zionism. She said Jews are not “our enemies,” adding that we should not hate people based on their religion.
As she was trying to give an example of an Arab country where Muslims coexist with Jews, the Egyptian actor made what can be considered a big oversight.
Addressing the anchor Maissa Maghrebi, who is a Moroccan national, Chahin said: “20 percent of your people [Moroccans] are Jews. Should we take a stance against them? This is unacceptable.”
Although the Moroccan anchor tried to correct the number, Ilham Chahin insisted that she “heard that the percentage of Jews in Morocco is 20 percent.
The number of the Jews living in Morocco barely exceeds 2, 000. A recent report by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) revealed that 2,400 Jews live in Morocco as of 2015.
The number of inhabitants in Morocco, on the other hand, has reached 33,848,242 as of September 2014, according to the Sixth General Census of Population and Housing (RGPH 2014).
Such statement show that an important number of Egyptians actors have poor knowledge about Morocco. Last year, another Egyptian actor, Youssef Chaaban claimed that 8 people out of every Moroccans are Jews.
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