Moroccans Who Drowned in ’61 Are Reburied on Mount Herzl

Three decades after 22 Moroccan Jews drowned in an immigrant boat off Gibraltar, their remains were reinterred Monday in Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl cemetery.

“They have come to their final repose on this silent hill,” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said in a eulogy at the state funeral for the 22, whose Israel- bound ship, the Egoz, capsized under unexplained circumstances in 1961.

“We have no more tears,” Rabin said. “Years have passed and our tears have dried. But our hearts go out to the families, and to the glorious community of Moroccan Jewry, which has fulfilled, almost in its entirety, the duty of the return to Zion,” the prime minister said.

Also present were relatives of the 22 whose remains were washed ashore and of others whose bodies where never found after the Egoz went down.

Representing the families, Gila Azulai-Gutman said a bond now exists with the families of soldiers buried in the Mount Herzl military cemetery.

“Our paths have met in bereavement,” said Azulai-Gutman, who lost her mother and five siblings aboard the Egoz.

Among the mourners was a delegation of Jewish leaders from Morocco, led by Robert Asraf, who is also an adviser to the Royal Court.

The ceremony, conducted by the chief army chaplain, Rabbi Gad Navon, was kept relatively low key, in accordance with an express request by King Hassan of Morocco that his decision to facilitate the transfer of the bodies be seen as a humanitarian gesture, not a political act.

The Israeli government and various Moroccan immigrant organizations are planning a ceremony 30 days after the reinterment to mark the tombstone unveiling. A memorial will also be erected nearby in honor of those Egoz passengers who were lost at sea.