Prominent militant Jewish anti-Zionist activist Sion Assidon died on 7 November 2025, following nearly three months in a coma. On 11 August, Assidon was found unconscious in his home in Mohammedia, Morocco, after missing a planned solidarity demonstration for Palestine days prior and failing to respond to calls from friends and comrades. After they forced their way into his home, they found him barely breathing with visible injuries to his upper body. He was rushed to the emergency room, where doctors identified a brain hematoma, cerebral contusions, and a pulmonary infection. Despite undergoing urgent brain surgery and being placed on life support, Assidon never regained consciousness. Calls for an independent and transparent investigation into the circumstances surrounding his injury and death have gone unanswered by the Moroccan authorities.
Assidon devoted his life to the struggle for Palestinian liberation and to confronting authoritarianism in Morocco. From a young age, he was known for his unwavering opposition to tyranny, Zionism, and imperialism. His commitment came at immense personal cost: he endured kidnapping, torture, intimidation, and 12 years of imprisonment following the 1973 trial of Moroccan Marxist-Leninist activists during the ‘Years of Lead’. After his release, he continued his political work despite persistent repression and intimidation. He went on to become a founding member of Transparency Maroc, the national coordinator of BDS Maroc and a leading figure in the Moroccan Front for the Support of Palestine and Against Normalisation.
Belonging to a generation of left-wing Moroccan Jews that included Abraham Serfaty and Simon Levy, Assidon fiercely rejected Zionism as both a colonial project in Palestine and a destructive force within Moroccan society. He denounced the mass migration of Moroccan Jews to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s as a ‘double crime’: against Jewish Arab-Amazigh Moroccans, who were sold off to the Zionist state for $50 a head, and against Palestinians, who faced new settlers. He exposed normalisation as a moral sleight of hand that sought to absolve settlers of war crimes while sanitising the Moroccan state’s collusion, particularly King Hassan II’s facilitation of Jewish emigration in exchange for financial compensation.
Assidon’s death occurred in the aftermath of the Moroccan Gen-Z Uprisings, sparked by youth unemployment, a fragile healthcare system, and entrenched corruption. While the state responded with a $15bn healthcare and education package and proposed electoral reforms, these measures reflected a familiar strategy of co-opting dissent through selective concessions.
Sion Assidon fought against such reforms and fought for revolutionary demands. Throughout his life, he remained a steadfast advocate for political freedom, education, and decolonisation, linking domestic struggles to the liberation of Palestine and Western Sahara. His passing marks the silencing of a voice that refused compromise and stands as a testament to the necessity of principled, unwavering revolutionary struggle.
Ameera Mahmoud
