Noa Cohen, the young Israeli actress who plays Jesus’ mother in the Netflix film ”Mary,” said she received multiple death threats while she was filming the film in Morocco. His statements, heard Tuesday evening on a very popular television program, were picked up by the Jerusalem Post.
Moroccan newspapers pick up the news, raising the controversy and relaunching “Morocco’s widely documented commitment to the protection of Jews and interreligious harmony”. Without insisting too much, by the way, on the normalization of diplomatic relations between Rabat and Tel Aviv, which the Moroccans seem to make an important marker of their foreign policy.
In any case, the normalization of relations between States does not mean that it is accepted by their respective peoples and we can imagine that there are many Moroccans who do not agree on this subject with his majesty King Mohammed VI.
To return to our Israeli actress, she claimed that Moroccan profiles on social networks had threatened her while she was on set from January to March 2024. “I received messages from Moroccan profiles, via the networks social media, saying they knew what hotel I was staying in,” she explained. And to add, a bit philosophical: “You’re going to film in what is, after all, a Muslim country, Morocco… and you need a special visa to get in, and you have to have security watching you the whole time.”
Despite the so-called threats, the filming of the film, which had a budget of $70 million, went off without a hitch. Cohen, who had previously starred in Israeli shows for teens and children, admits she received a “star treatment” and that she was thrilled to work with Sir Anthony Hopkins, the two-time Oscar winner who plays Herod in the film.
The actress cited social media comments on the film’s trailer as “evidence of widespread hostility”with attacks like “Zionist” et “Israeli” passing through “harsh personal and anti-Semitic insults”.
I. B.
