The Real Battle of Algiers, Part II
by Robert J. AvrechThis is the second of a two-part commentary. You can read Part One here.
We continue exploring Alistair Horne’s, Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962. All the time, bearing in mind that the movie, The Battle of Algiers, conveniently eliminates vital facts regarding the sickening methods codified by the Algerian terrorists. For the truth would negate the film’s foundational purpose: to spread Jihadist propaganda under the guise of the always safe and fashionable anti-colonialism.
Who were these leaders of the Battle of Algiers, these men who were so willing, so anxious to spill oceans of innocent blood? This is not an academic question, for as we shall see, the cast of characters bears little relationship to the romantic images presented by Gillo Pontecorvo in The Battle of Algiers.
Our Eccentric But Lovable Cast of Characters
Mohamedi Said: Born in 1912, he had grown up with early memories of a French officer slapping his grandparents. Fanatically religious, he worked during the Second World War with the Pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin Husaini, joining the Muslim S.S. legion formed by the Mufti. In 1943 he was parachuted into Tunisia as an Abwehr agent, was captured and sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled in 1952. Whether out of nostalgia for the good ol’ days, or a whacky sense of fashion, he invariably appears in photos wearing a Wehrmacht steel helmet.
Ait Hamouda, AKA Amirouche: A tall, reed-thin montagnard with wide-set eyes and a thick moustache. He was also a deeply religious Muslim. Of remarkably quick and decisive intelligence, he assumed command of a small mobile unit, imposed iron discipline and made his men go on forced marches of seventy kilometers a day. Within six months he had over eight-hundred men under his command. Soon, he established a reign of terror in the Soummam region of Eastern Kabylia.
Ramdane Abane: Involved in a massacre that took place in 1945, he was jailed by the French. In prison, he studied Marx, Lenin and, gee what a shock—ever popular in the Arab Muslim world— Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Released in 1955, he immediately made his mark as an outstanding political intellect. Something of an Algerian Robespierre, his popular and catchy dictum was: “One corpse in a jacket [a civilian] is always worth more than twenty in uniform.” From the spring of 1955 Ramdane Abane’s philosophy was central to the Battle of Algiers, both in its external and internal operations.
Abane would tolerate no “deviationist bodies.” Translation: anybody who disagreed with his group, the FLN, died—quite horribly.
You would think that Abane and his terrorist cells would turn their attention immediately to their prime enemy, the French.
But no, Abane realized that he had to tame the Algerian population. And after the Phillipville Massacre, Abane and the other leaders realized, with great satisfaction, that terror worked.
Abane had no interest in bringing the masses to the movement through propaganda. Pressure and blackmail on the average poverty stricken fellah, peasant, worked much more effectively. The terror cadres “with the knife literally under his [the fellahs] throat, make him hand over 50,000 francs.”
They never sought to attach the rural populations to their cause by promising them a better life, a happier and freer future; no, it was through terror that they submitted them to their tyranny.
In 1956, a visitor was shocked at the silence he found in the typical Algerian villages, each one of them of which would be held by a local FLN thug who was responsible simply for collecting “taxes” and “food supplies.”
It was also a customary initiation ritual for a new recruit to be made to kill a designated “traitor”, French officer, or colonialist in the company of a “shadow” who would dispatch the recruit himself and make sure the murder took place. It was a form of terror apprenticeship.
Yes, even after Philippeville, it was fellow Muslims who bore the brunt of FLN terror. Over the first two and a half years of the Battle of Algiers 6,352 Algerians were murdered by the terrorists as opposed to 1,035 Europeans.
Losing Body Parts, The Islamic Way
The FLN announced that cigarettes and liquor were unIslamic and would no longer be tolerated. It was also a way of boycotting French products.
The punishment for any Algerian caught with liquor was having their lips severed. It was called, The Algerian Grin.
The punishment for smoking was the severing of the nose.
In the Casbah the Chardor was now mandatory on all women. The repression of women was brutal and uncompromising.
Interpolation #1: Hamas is the Proud Stepchild of Algerian Terror
In Gaza we see the exact same pattern play itself out. Hamas is no charitable organization. Do not fool yourself. It is a ruthless terrorist group that gleefully sends out homicide bombers to slaughter Jewish civilians. They do not bother setting up sanitation services. They do not organize effective medical services. They do not build power grids. They have no idea how to build an infrastructure, for this is an organization whose roots are solidly embedded in clan and tribal rivalries. They have no interest in building a state, only in destroying the Jewish State.
Hamas collects “taxes,” they “eliminate traitors,” repress women, torture and murder homosexuals, and steal every penny—we’re talking billions—of international aid that comes their way. Oh, and they kill Jews. Here, read the Hamas Covenant, it overflows with Jew-hatred and is frankly genocidal, vowing to eliminate Israel and kill all Jews everywhere. And for extra added fun: parts of the covenant are based on that notorious Tzarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document Hamas considers a reliable source. Yes, Hamas are completely insane.
End Interpolation #1
If we look at Iraq and Afghanistan through the lens of the real battle of Algiers, this all makes perfect sense. The grim parade of homicide bombers against civilians is how the terrorists exert control over a local population.
Islamic terrorists cannot offer a better life. They cannot offer medical services, freedom of speech, nor decent education. They cannot build a society where banks and stock markets function properly, where contracts are honored, a society where you are are safe to walk the streets, a society where women are not treated like cattle.
No, all the Muslim terrorists offer is mutilation and death. And they count on this to frighten the home front, and ultimately intimidate western civilization into submission.
Interpolation #2: Totally UnPC Musings on the Good Ol’ Days of Colonialism That’s Going to Get Yours Truly in Serious Trouble
It is interesting to note that almost every single country that has thrown off its colonial shackles is now in far worse condition than it was when the colonials were in charge. Congo, Mozambique, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Angola, Togo, Chad…
Sheesh, I’m getting tired, can’t type all the countries that are on my list. My fingers are getting numb. But look, most every country in Africa that is now “free” is an economic and social basket case. Even South Africa, the last hope of Africa, is hanging on by its fingernails, drowning in AIDS, murder and rape. Algeria has just emerged from a twenty year civil war where over a hundred thousand men, women and children had their throats slit. The French colonials were pussies compared to the Islamist throat-slitters.
The lesson? Violent Third World Revolutions invariably bring even worse governments and even more terrible repression to their people.
End Interpolation #2
Algerian Synagogue
Y’Allah, Let’s Get Rid of the Jews and Call it National Liberation!
Finally, we turn our gaze to the Jews of Algeria for they were truly stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Needless to say, director Gillo Pontecorvo—born Jewish but his real religion was Communism—cleanses The Battle of Algiers of all references to the Jews of Algeria and their treatment at the hands of the FLN. Indeed, Pontecorvo created a Judenrein film, much like the Algerian terrorists ultimately created yet another—of twenty-two—Judenrein Arab Muslim states.
The Jews in Algeria comprised about one fifth of the non Muslim population. Tragically, they were squeezed between the European colonists and the native Muslim people.
Many Jews could trace their ancestry back to the expulsions from 16th century Spain; some even claimed to pre-date the invaders who surged out of the Arabian peninsula in the 11th Century. Many Algerian Jews believe that their ancestors fled to Algeria from Israel after the destruction of the Second Temple, 70 ACE. No matter the exact dates, the Jews of Algeria were an old and established community with deep roots and an abiding love of the land.
By the 1830’s the Jews of Algeria had become an underprivileged community, fallen into poverty, and it was with the advent of the French colonists that their opportunity arose to improve their status. By the 1870’s more prosperous Jews from outside Algeria began to arrive and the quality of the lives of the native Algerian Jews improved considerably.
In the Second World War, Petain’s anti-Semitic regime repealed articles of Jewish Rights, The Cremieux Decrees, and Jewish teachers and school children were expelled from all European schools in Algeria.
The whole community was threatened with mass deportation to Nazi death camps—which thank G-d, never took place.
By the 1950’s the Algerian Jews were tugged in several directions. The poorest tended to identify with the Muslims rather than the French colonials, and many were members of the Communist Party. The wealthiest Jews identified strongly with the Parisian life style and scorned the local Muslims.
By 1954 a majority of the Jewish intellectuals and professionals sided with the Algerian insurgents. In August 1956 a group of Constantine Jews wrote a public letter declaring that:
“One of the most pernicious maneuvers of colonialism in Algeria was, and remains, the division between Jews and Muslims… the Jew has been in Algeria for over 2,000 years; they are thus an integral part of the Algerian people.”
Frantz Fanon wrote:
“The Jews were to provide invaluable services as the eyes and ears of the revolution, often acting as double agents against the French.”
This was not enough for the FLN. By 1960, they tightened the screws on the Jewish population, demanding that the Jews en masse, declare itself publicly for the FLN.
Algerian Jews in traditional garb.
By now, the Jews were “uncommitted.” There was never such a thing as a united front among the Jews of Algeria. Besides, there had been too much indiscriminate terror, too much throat slitting, too much rape; the Jews were not fools, they knew that such revolutions eat their young.
The Jews of Algeria found themselves subjected to the cruel logic of terrorism. Typical was this letter to a Jewish shopkeeper:
“Sir, if on Wednesday you do not hand us a sum of two million francs, your daughter will be abducted and will serve as a mattress for the army of liberation… If you do not follow our instructions, your shop will be blown up and we shall have your skins, yours and your wife’s.”
In the spring of 1960, a terrorist grenade was tossed in the Jewish ghetto. In March the following year Jacob Chekroun, the Rabbi of Medea, was murdered on the steps of his synagogue. The following month an FLN boycott—some things never change—was imposed on Jewish businesses.
Whole families were riven by conflicting loyalties. The Levy family of Algiers is a particularly poignant and tragic tale. The father would be assassinated by the French as an FLN sympathizer while his son was murdered by the FLN on suspicion of being a French agent.
The end of the Algerian Jewish community finally came with France’s withdrawal from Algeria and her independence in 1962. And as always, when the day of reckoning came, all Jews—rich, poor, pro-FLN, anti-FLN —were lumped together into the same boat—a boat that would sail away from Algeria, never to return.
Over 100,000 Algerian Jews, most of them poor, backward, and disease ridden, fled their homes, and poured into France.
The ethnic cleansing of the Jews of Algeria by the Muslims was complete.
But in a sense they were more fortunate than the loyal Muslims who fought for France and who were now abandoned to their fate to be massacred in the thousands by the vengeful FLN.
The Jews of Algeria were the historic canary in the coal mine. To judge the decency of any society, look at how the Jews are treated. The French treated the Jews wretchedly and so did the Muslims.
Now, the children and grandchildren of these Algerian Jews are once again witness to their homeland being devoured by Muslim terrorists. The French will do nothing; they know not what to defend for they believe in nothing.
In ten years, I guarantee, the last of the Algerian Jewish community will be forced to leave the shores of France — for Israel, and America.
Thus will end The Battle of Algiers — for the Jews.
As for Pontecorvo’s film, so popular on college campuses, revered as an important work of cinema, as I’ve said, it’s a skillful film, a riveting film, a convincing film, but like all totalitarian propaganda—consider the films of Nazi Leni Riefenstahl and Bolshveik Sergei Eisenstein—it’s a lie. Slickly produced lies unreeling at 24 frames per second — and spreading poison on my beloved silver screen.
Copyright © Robert J. Avrech
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38 Comments
Did the US ever really throw off Britain? Oh, we kicked out the red coats and declared ourselves no longer answerable to the King, but we remained pretty British. The American revolution started as a fight for “the rights of Englishman,” and most of the rights found in the Bill of Rights had their roots in various treaties from dear old England: the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, etc. Whereas most of the former colonies seem to have gone the other way: they keep Queen Elizabeth as head of state, but junk all that stuff about the representative government and the rule of law.
There are colonies that made it after independence: the US, India, a few places in Central and South America. They are greatly outnumbered, however, by the ones that didn’t. The colonialists in charge were not saints, obviously, and some form of getting them out and putting the locals in charge was probably necessary. But the author is right that most of these revolutions resulted in something far worse than anything Britain or France would have ever come up with.
anti-colonialism is bad when all one has to offer is terror & dictatorship. US didnt shake off UK, it was the American Indians who didn’t shake off Europeans. France & UK were not being colonized by Germany, they were being invaded. Colonialism is coming into a region of tribes or fiefdoms with less in technology, education, political maturity. Your examples were not colonizing.
Right Wing Death Squads in El Salvador… what the hell does that mean? That communist were peaceful Jesus hippies? COME ON!!!
Ever since I became a conservative I’ve understood & appreciate Jewish history & people. I applaud that you said they took the wrongside, I think Jews in Spain as well, as Liberals, tend to side with the scariest side not realizing their own demise. Jews were expelled from Spain because the Spainish Reconquesta realized the Jews were trying to avoid both sides, though fearing Moors more than Catholics, abetted them. And thusly were expelled as Muslim conspirators. And rightfully so. Though sadly so. My view: Jews today should start becoming Conservatives & Republicans… it seems to me, Jews are repeating history by being overwhelmingly Democrat & Liberal. They are appeasing the scariest side, thinking the “Christian” side is not with them. Yet we are.
Any occupied people are going to react to being dominated in their own land by a foreign invader.
If that were only true. The Mexican colonies in Southern California, for example continue to be welcomed with open arms, even though they’re dominating California politics while sending huge amounts of wealth back to Mexico.
Obviously the US is the foreign invader in your argument Mr. Lee. What you fail to either comprehend or intentionally leave out are the other “players” in each of those conflicts. With Viet Nam (I’m inferring that from “Agent Orange”), Communist China and Communist Russia both supplied and encouraged Ho Minh to force out the French so that it Viet Nam would fall under the Communist umbrella of countries. Iran very much parallels the issues in the Middle East today: Muslim fundamentalists against western influence. In El Salvador, the US stepped in due to Communist Cuba supplying the rebels. Can’t reply to etc., but your argument that people are going to react to being dominated in their own land by a foreign invader is better suited towards your latter of the United States independence from England’s rule. And that war started out not as rebellion but as an attempt to get King George to adress what the colonists believe to be undue taxation.
Your vagaries, France/Germany, UK/Germany, Europe/Rome, are simply non addressable and I question their applicability to your 1st post. You’re statement of blowback being realized in Viet Nam is hogwash unless you meant it in reference towards the Fundamentalist Muslim vs the western world.
We learned that in Vietnam we are learning that in Iraq.
You seriously think the insurgents represent the best interests of the Iraqi people?
I’m glad that people take the time to correct the historical mistakes of movies. But it’s still a great movie.
Hamas could just as easily be the stepchild of Israeli terrorism. After all, if the Irgun can be rewarded for blowing up the King David Hotel, why not the Palestinians. Also, Israel funded Hamas.
To clarify:
1. The pose of fashionable anti-colonialism is one which the film, The Battle of Algiers, presents. It views the battle of Algiers as a purely anti-colonial war. This is false. The Battle of Algiers was also a jihadist war, and a war against the Jews of Algeria.
2. The Irgun made three phone calls to the Kind David Hotel warning of the bombing, but the British chose to ignore these warnings. If you can’t see the difference between a proudly genocidal organization like Hamas and the Irgun, well, I’ll let our readers judge this moral gulf.
3. Hamas is funded, trained and a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran. Israel funnels money into PA territories on a regular basis because the PA are a bunch of welfare witches who are unwilling to build a proper infrastructure, unless it’s a terrorist infrastructure. The money is then stolen by various warring clans and competing terrorist cells. There has never been any economic transparency in the PA. That’s why when Arafat died they discovered close to a billion dollars in his Swiss banking accounts. This libel, that Israel funded Hamas, is just another brick in the ever popular conspiracy theories that grip the Arab world. The PA have yet to take responsibility for their own actions and subsequent fates. Somehow, it always comes back to the Jews. It’s quite sad when a people’s only national definition is based on hatred of Jews.
Guys:
I was always under the impression that the Algerian FLN leadership gravitated towards that nationalist/socialist/secularist claptrap that Nasser, The Ba’athists & various Palestinian groups espoused–after all MANY of them where French Indochina Vets & got their heads ‘turned’ when they were fighting (and in MANY cases, taken prisoner by the Vietminh)…in the end they proved to be as incompetent & crooked as any of them…frankly their statist stupidities & corruptions are WHY Algeria has been fighting an on-going fundamentalist terrorist movement for the last 16++ years; As for the Jews in Algeria, from reading Horne’s ‘Savage War of Peace’ I got the distinct impression that MANY of Algeria’s Jews were sympathetic to Algerian Independence but in the end, The FLN chose ‘Arab Solidarity’ over being thankful to the many Jews who supported them.
The problem when considering colonialism is that Western culture is both different, and BETTER than other cultures.
Western Culture is self-evidently BETTER, because it produces both freedom for women and male cooperation. Western culture prevents too much “Big Man” ism and gives most every man (or did, until recently) a fair shot at getting a woman to be his wife.
Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and almost every other place instead suffer from “Big Man” disease with the Big Men hoarding all the women and resources, in tribal ways, promoting violent upheavals and conquering other peoples as a way of life. It’s stable, in that these nomadic-tribal societies can go on unchanged for thousands of years, but it’s pretty violent, and poverty stricken in that modern science and technology cannot be produced there, since that requires male cooperation which in turn means relative freedom for women and preventing too many Big Men.
It’s interesting to note that Coastal China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore being the most successful post-Colonial states have largely shut down the Big Men and more or less offered “most” men a shot at women and thus being cooperative rather than ruthless rivals.
Osama bin Laden, for example, is known to have assassinated his mentor, Azzam, and his sons in Pakistan, even though his mentor had co-founded Hamas, and was a central figure in Palestinian terrorism. No wonder, Osama was one of 57 children produced by his father, who in turn had 22 wives. Such a system ALWAYS produces that sort of people.
Colonialism, in the British form, and to a lesser extent the French, tended to subdue the Big Men and prevent widespread polygamy. It produced more male cooperation than had ever been seen in such societies. It’s true that German, and particularly Belgian colonialism in Africa was as brutal as that of the Japanese in Asia. Or the Russians in the “near abroad.” The Spaniards were mostly absentee colonialists, and had little impact on their societies, particularly in the Philippines, in the same way the Dutch did not change the society of Java.
BUT … to the extent that Caribbean or other societies ruled formerly by the British work at ALL, it is because Big Men have been suppressed and with it polygamy. Look at Haiti — a disaster because the French did not suppress but rather enhanced Big Men. Even the Dominican Republic, with much the same people, have fewer Big Men.
It is perfectly possible for Third World people to conduct themselves rationally and responsibly, and European History before the Middle Ages is replete with European “Big Men” who would make Idi Amin blush: Eric Bloodaxe, Harold Bluetooth, Strongbow, Alexander, and Caligula come to mind.
Lesson: Culture matters and what matters most is how men compete over women, and how women have freedom or not in a society.
[...] Submitted By: Joshuapundit – Robert Avrech/Big Hollywood – The Real Battle Of Algiers, Part 2 [...]
Chris Lee, the ONLY NATIONS you would want to live in and typpy tap your naysaying comments are Christian Nations or colonialized christian off shoots. There is NO OTHER NATION you could WHINE in and hate, bite the hand that feeds you, then Christian ones. NO OTHER NATIONS OR SOCIETIES IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND.
I must have misread this; are you saying colonialism in Algeria was a good thing because it helped improve the economic station of Algerian Jews by giving them the opportunity to sell out their fellow Algerians to the French? Look again, let’s face some basic facts…You know very little about Algerian history as shown by your previous post. You should stop attempting to make deductions based upon that said limited knowledge. Colonialism in Algeria was bad, really bad. Algeria had a working civilization before the French, they did not have one after the French.
Algerian culture went from your average Pre-Colonial ‘nothing to write home about’ to being a broken factory of wannabe french prostitutes and thugs. Let’s face it Algeria was no China or Persia, but it did have it’s own culture and was a part of a global community. After the centuries of French colonialism they were just scraps and discard. Their culture had sublimated into a crash version of lower class French life. Their role models; the violent instruments of colonialism itself. If you want to see the role model for the FLN you don’t have to look much further than French colonial authorities; men who had not a generation before sold out their honour and loyalty to the Adolf Hitler in return for the opportunity to maintain their position as overseers. Another tidbit of Algerian history you seem to be blissfully ignorant about.
Ultimately, Whether colonialism is wrong or good can be answered by a simple thought experiment; would you tolerate it if you were the oppressed?
I remember seeing “The Battle of Algiers” when it reached this country and being dismayed by the whitewash of a very violent situation (I was a Middle East Studies major and knew a thing or two). What dismayed me even more was that the movie seemed designed to imply a specious parallel between the Algerians and African-Americans. That was certainly the message a lot of African-Americans in the audience took from it. This was highly irresponsible, I thought; not least because African-Americans were a minority and could not possibly take over a country.
I’ve read “A Savage War of Peace” several times. It’s a great book and Horne is a magnificent author. Mr. Avrach is right when he says that it is the best book by far on the Algerian War. Horne notes that France, under General Maurice Challe, had all but won the war militarily when De Gaulle pulled the rug out from under the French Army. That was what provoked the near coup.
I’ve also watched “The Battle of Algiers” several times. I agree with the commenter who said he did not see any bias for either side in the film. My thinking after watching it the first time and knowing Pontecorvo’s background, was to wonder how he could have presented such a favorable depiction of the French.
Horne notes that Algeria was to France what Texas is to the United States. The French were right to use hard-nosed tactics and if they had persevered Algeria would still be French. De Gaulle’s reasoning for abandoning the war still baffles me and Horne never fully explains it, giving opinions on every possibility from Chinese Communist intervention to a Muslim demographic swamping of France. Whatever the reason, it was a truly cruel betrayal. Google “Oran Massacre” sometime and read about something that will turn your stomach. Horne estimates that almost 150,000 harkis (Muslims who fought for France) were killed in the aftermath of the French departure. He also notes that there were never as many Muslims fighting in the field against France as there were fighting for her.
Paul Aussaresses was right when he argued that the only way to break the Algerians was to be more dangerous than they were. He realized he was fighting an enemy that relied on terror as its major weapon and that enemy could not be beaten in any other way. He didn’t want terrorists in jail, he wanted them dead and he was seeing the issue with a clear-sightedness that few Frenchmen, and even fewer of their political class, ever mustered.
Today? The bottom line is that Algeria, like most of Africa, plays less of a role in world economics now than it did prior to independence. Even Algeria’s sea of oil and gas hasn’t been able to make it prosperousIt’s a given that the people are worse off. It is nothing but the honest truth to state that economically the Algerian people, like the rest of Africa, would have been better served by independence coming forty years later, if indeed it came at all. If you don’t believe that statement, take a look at the standards of living in 1955 in colonial Africa, noting their steep rise in the first post-WWII decade, and compare that with the past decade when the West has been booming. However, as John Stuart Mill noted, history is replete with examples where people have chosen to be badly ruled by themselves rather than well-ruled by others. The moral of the story is to be careful what you wish for: you might get it. Zimbabwe is a saliently cautionary tale in this regard.
[...] winning non-Council post was Big Hollywood’s post, “The Real Battle Of Algiers, Part 2”. Second place honors went to Armed and [...]
[...] can read both parts of his essay here and here, and then check out the movie tomorrow. Anyplace else would charge you tuition for all these [...]
Yes, I guess agree that no primitive people of color should have the right to self government. It’s always better that way. So let’s all go back to our countries of origin, or let the british take over the US, maybe let france have the Louisiana Purchase, and Spain the SW.
And how do the Jews of Israel fit, our they self determined, colonists, conquerors, or just a bunch of warring tribes that can come together to fight and kill their opponents yet fail to govern effectively.
Yes I know that technology and agriculture, and weaponry are all thriving, but would Israel be willing to get off of the teat that is US foreign aid?
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