Communism allowed Moroccan Jews to participate in the national liberation struggle and express their patriotism in an idealistically internationalist, cosmopolitan framework. Studying Jewish radical political and social organization in Morocco reveals the porous, transnational and vexed colonial relationships of Maghrebi Jews to nationalist independence movements and the purportedly internationalist Comintern while shedding light on larger questions of Jewish visions of radical citizenship and national identity. The life of Moroccan author and former Communist activist Edmond Amran El Maleh (1917-2010) and his works of both fiction and non-fiction reflect a radical “road not taken” in Morocco’s political history of the 1940s -1960s. This paper focuses on the life and works of El Maleh in order to discuss the motivations for Jewish participation in the Moroccan Communist Party as well the party’s trajectory mapped against Jewish migration of the 1940s-1960s. To do this, I use El Maleh’s published works and interviews in addition to contextual archival and newspaper sources. Vichy rule in North Africa (1940-1942) brought anti-Semitic legislation, inspiring many Jews to reject France’s vision of republican assimilation. Betrayed by French republicanism and unconvinced by Zionism, many Maghrebi Jews expressed their patriotism through Communism. With the conclusion of the WWII, the Moroccan Communist Party (PCM), though chafing under pseudo-colonial yoke of the French Communist Party (PCF), accelerated its activism for national independence from France, achieved in 1956. Jews, including El Maleh, frequently led Communist newspapers and propaganda distribution, in addition to organizing meetings. The 1950s and 1960s represented the height of Moroccan Jewish Communist engagement during which a leftist social universe was constructed, focused on radical activism. El Maleh represents this social universe, and the ultimate betrayal of the Communist vision for Morocco, in a minor, jaded key in his 1980 novel "Parcours immobile." El Maleh’s life and works, contextualized by archival work, expose a previously unexplored Jewish engagement in Morocco’s nationalist politics.