Algeria: Who Will Be the Scapegoat?
ALAN, RAY
THE TURMOIL MAY CULMINATE IN A 'JEWISH PHASE' Algeria: Who Will Be the Scapegoat? By Ray Alan Paris Nobody likes having to admit that he is wrong. And this is no less true when a whole...
...Are there the makings here of a composite Jewish scapegoat...
...The probability that anti-Jewish side-issues might one day emerge from the Algerian conflict has always been great...
...But a long-term danger remains...
...It may be necessary to find some other scapegoat...
...It is to be hoped that international agencies will uphold the right to compensation of all—Jews, Moslems and Christians—who may be forced to leave their homes during the present turmoil in Algeria...
...There are the "traitors" and "architects of abandon" like Pierre Mendès-France and Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (editor of the Paris weekly, L'Express), who have somehow converted de Gaulle to their cause...
...In 1954 the Moslem revolt broke out...
...It is as difficult, moreover, for the anti-Semite as for any other victim of narcosis to get his mind working rationally again...
...French authorities expect 50-60 per cent of Algeria's one million Europeans to stay on...
...Under the Fourth Republic and during the first year of the Fifth, official French policy was the preservation of French rule in Algeria and the defeat of the rebel National Liberation Front (FLN...
...But Jewish intellectuals had played a conspicuous part in Left-wing and liberal efforts to bridge the inter-communal gap in Algeria and win basic rights for the Moslems, and a certain méfiance lingered...
...This comment appeared in February 1958 on the front page of Carrefour, a popular Right-wing weekly closely linked with the Algérie française lobby...
...To avoid attracting the attention of the OAS, which has threatened reprisals against residents of Algeria who "abandon ship," many Jewish families have simply bought their tickets and left, without selling their homes or even moving their furniture...
...Under the Fourth Republic educated Moslems began to compete with the "poor whites" for jobs and housing...
...There are Israeli secret agents allegedly double-dealing with both the OAS and de Gaulle...
...Even when political order is restored, the turmoil in men's minds will be nowhere near ending in Algeria...
...Wave after wave of Right-wing demagogues made political capital out of this prejudice, and the fascist movements of the 1930s received greater support in Algeria than in France...
...In the last two weeks, spectacularly odious OAS outrages—in particular, the blinding and mutilation of a fouryear-old girl in Paris—have awakened millions of Frenchmen to the fascist danger on their doorsteps...
...Pétain's abrogation of the Cremieux Decree of 1870, which had granted French citizenship to Algerian Jews, was intended to please both Christians and Moslems...
...And loyalist French officials in Algeria, as well as Moslem moderates hitherto unaffected by the anti-Jewish propaganda of Cairo radio, now denounce with especial bitterness the "Jewish thugs" of the OAS...
...But, as the numbness eases, talk of treason and humiliation will be heard and the search for a scapegoat may well begin...
...By these and other means, Algerian Jews have been scared and bullied into contributing heavily to OAS funds and enrolling in OAS terrorists squads...
...This made it simpler and more agreeable to blame France's difficulties in North Africa on American and/or Communist machinations than to diagnose (and put right, while—who knows?—there was still time) the socio-economic abuses which touched off the revolt...
...Houses and apartments abandoned in this way are speedily occupied by squatters or plastiqués by the OAS...
...And the massive procession of Parisians on February 13 behind the coffins of the eight victims of police savagery gave both the Gaullist Government and the OAS a salutary shock...
...Neither the Army nor the civilian Right—now being reinforced by an influx of Europeans from Algeria— will forget or forgive the superDienbienphu de Gaulle has forced upon them...
...From this parallel the deduction is made (not very convincingly) that the ratonnades, unworthy of true Frenchmen, must surely have been inspired by the OAS's ex-Irgun advisers...
...De Gaulle is safer than either Pétain or Mendès-France could be because there is no one in sight prestigious enough to challenge him overtly...
...As recently as November 1960, François Mauriac, General de Gaulle's leading apologist in "intellectual" circles, celebrated President Kennedy's election by stressing the cynical, self-centered materialism of "the Americans" and recalling that in 1944 the Americans "coldly pulverized our villages and churches although they could have avoided doing so...
...After drawing attention to the powerful teeth and jaws and generally "carnivorous" appearance of America's new President, Mauriac wrote: "Make no mistake, the day he considered it necessary to strike [against French interests] he would strike...
...A parallel is seen between OAS ratonnades in Oran and other coastal cities—the aim of which is to persuade the Moslem nationalists to quit the principal zone of European settlement so as to facilitate de facto partition—and the methods by which the Irgun put to flight the Arab populations of Jaffa and Deir Yassin...
...Today Algeria is in turmoil, the FLN governs vast sectors of the countryside and even controls important urban areas at night, and the "strong" Gaullist Government, elected to keep Algeria French, has been forced to concede Algerian independence...
...This group will constitute an influential social and political community for some time if it behaves sensibly, and an independent Algerian government eager to acquire a favorable international reputation will obviously need to treat it considerately...
...The Liberal-Catholic review Esprit warned more than a year ago that the end of the Algerian war would be followed "inexorably" by an upsurge of antiSemitism in France...
...The Canard Enchaîné, on the other hand, reported recently that the Israeli secret service has helped de Gaulle fight the OAS...
...But that will not happen so long as two stars shine on the uniform of Charles de Gaulle...
...In a regime powered primarily by the heartbeats of one elderly man, order, legality and political rationalism can never be secure for long...
...And this is no less true when a whole nation, after blundering for years and squandering lives and resources to no purpose, is forced at last to watch its leaders eat their words and apply a solution they once denounced as treason...
...The OAS asked Israel for assistance, the paper said, and Israel duly sent two agents who spent several weeks going the rounds of OAS cells in Algeria...
...Since the Israeli government is thought to have a vested interest in prolonging the Algerian imbroglio, anti-Jewish rumor mills seek also to implicate its agents...
...Anti-Jewish sentiment has been widespread among the Europeans of Algeria for generations...
...Certain of these groups are even alleged to have collected funds for the Secret Army Organization (OAS), and to have enlisted the aid of well-intentioned but ill-informed American Jewish publicists in spreading the myth that the FLN is basically "racist," even neo-Nazi, and dedicated to the destruction of NorthAfrican Jewry...
...And the Communists, Socialists, Liberals and Moderates who marched side by side on February 13 are already going their separate ways...
...Some Christian agitators, such as the notorious Max Régis, even incited Moslem hotheads to attack the Jews...
...Jacques Soustelle, the Right-wing politician who probably did more than any other individual to bring General de Gaulle to power, was then closely associated with Carrefour...
...Pétain was interned and stripped of all his old honors...
...A curious exception was the Canard Enchaîné, which campaigned hard to lay the blame on Anglo-American petroleum companies (though the outbreak of the FLN revolt preceded the major Saharan mineral discoveries...
...Esprit added: "The Jews are the only people who are not expecting it...
...In France, just possibly—but only if the political pendulum swings further to the Right...
...Thus there are Jews in the woodpile to suit all tastes...
...It is also to be hoped that Zionist and other organizations will stand ready to aid at short notice those Jews who decide to remain...
...The agents then returned to Israel to write a detailed report, the story continued, and their superiors promptly passed it on to the French authorities...
...Menachem Begin and other Israeli ex-activists were to be seen at many Right-wing receptions and meetings in France in the late '50s, and some French Gaullists now allege that veterans of Begin's Irgun Zvai Leumi helped train and advise the OAS in terror-tactics...
...Even the State of Israel is being tarred with the OAS brush and accused by both OAS opponents and sympathizers of playing with fire in Algeria...
...Anti-Semitism is, after all, the narcotic of the mediocre, and it was a natural product of the religious and social prejudices and economic fears of the ill-educated petits blancs ("poor whites") of Algeria who found intelligent "native Jews" competing with them for semi-skilled and white-collar jobs...
...The need to "stand up to the Americans" over North Africa was for years a staple of Gaullist propaganda...
...When this line palled, it switched to blaming "the British" for supporting the Algérie française movement and plotting to put General de Gaulle in power...
...There are the "Jewish thugs" of the OAS and their mischievous Israeli mentors...
...Left-wing papers were generally more willing to recognize Moslem grievances...
...But many—a majority, I am informed, in the Constantine region—have already left for France or Israel, and most others are determined to leave at the first opportunity...
...Invariably, it looks around for a scapegoat...
...A similar fear has been expressed recently by other liberal voices, and the London Jewish Observer and the Paris Observateur have noted that on the psychological level the Algerian problem is now, for some French publicists, entering a Jewish phase...
...Right-wing fury and frustration, forced underground today, may erupt with increased violence tomorrow...
...Israel's successful stand against Arab aggression led the settlers' leaders to consider the Jews potential allies...
...When he last visited the United States, shortly after parting company with de Gaulle over Algeria, he is alleged by French Liberal journalists to have made financial and administrative arrangements for the establishment of a small number of "groupuscules" entrusted with the promotion of the ultras' cause around the fringes of the American Right...
...Three years ago he was being assured by de Gaulle's ministers and spokesmen that the Algerian war was won, that the Algerians' deepest desire was for integration with France, and that the French Army was in Algeria to stay...
...But the OAS has, with surprising celerity, reproduced and circulated among Algerian Jews alarmist letters and articles from the American press...
...The ancestors of many of Algeria's Jews settled in the territory before either the Arabs or the Europeans arrived...
...Benumbed by war and crisis, the public will applaud de Gaulle, as it applauded Marshal Pétain for making peace with Germany and Pierre Mendès-France for bringing strife to an end in Indochina and Tunisia...
...MendèsFrance was pilloried as a traitor...
...In Algeria, the danger is more immediate...
...Such allegations may well be exaggerated...
...They will include a high percentage of the present extremists who have no ties in France, no jobs or businesses to go to outside Algeria, and neither affection nor esteem now for a métropole which they feel has betrayed them...
...On this aspect of the problem, writes Maurice Carr in the Jewish Observer, "Gaullists and anti-Gaullists alike are putting out similar propaganda, albeit for different reasons...
...If before February 13 the extreme Right had hopes of dominating France, it must now surely have shed them...
...Even after the brief Anglo-French-Israeli alliance against Egypt's Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, comments like the following one bubbled up from the Right-wing unconscious: "It is, of course, part of the ancestral vocation of [the Jew] Mendès-France to bestow the kiss of Judas...
...A cartoon published by the Conservative weekly Aux Ecoutes summed up Right-wing opinion in this period: It showed a ravenous Uncle Sam eating the Gallic cock, symbol of France, while holding a choice leg labelled "French North Africa" in his hand...
...Nourished for years on witless nonsense like this, the average Frenchman is nowhere near comprehending the turn of events in Algeria...
...it began playing up the possibility that anti-Jewish measures might be taken by the Algerian nationalists if ever the French withdrew...
...At the moment, provided de Gaulle can stay alive, I think this unlikely...
...Ray Alan, a regular New Leader correspondent, often reports on North Africa and the Middle East...
...Some of these rumors have made the columns of such respected papers as the Catholic-Conservative Figaro...
...Paris Match and other papers have drawn attention to the leading role played by Jewish youths in the atrocious ratonnades ("rathunts"), the indiscriminate lynchings of Moslems that have disgraced Oran in recent weeks...
...even his own townsfolk and constituents turned against him in the 1958 elections...
...It will be more than content if the Moslem leaders—some of whom have already toyed with the idea of setting up a "war-crimes commission" to establish responsibility for organized anti-Moslem terrorism—put a heavy share of the blame for OAS excesses on the shoulders of "the Jews...
...Their title to full Algerian citizenship is beyond dispute...
...Subsequently, as the situation in Algeria worsened, Carrefour thought up the gimmick of harnessing Jewish fears of Moslem nationalism to its cause...
Vol. 45 • March 1962 • No. 5
