Palestine Tet – 64 – Sétif (Algeria) 1945; Gaza (Palestine) 2023 – Part One

Tuareg Women in the Algerian Sahara

1.

It was the end of May in 1967, a week prior to the outbreak of the June, 1967 Middle East War. The region of the Middle East and North Africa was fraught with high tension in the days just before it would explode into open conflict. Having a break in our teaching schedule, fellow U.S. Peace Corps Tunisia volunteer Tom Carabas and myself, unwisely, decided to use the time to visit neighboring Algeria despite the rising tensions.

It was during that trip, of which there were many adventures to be described later in detail, that, in a bus, we passed through the Algerian city of Sétif. The bus passed a sizeable memorial of some kind. From what I could catch as the bus passed by it commemorated some kind of massacre that occurred in the late spring and early summer of 1945. I made a note to myself to look up the incident our our return to Tunis.

This I did, only to learn about a hidden part of history not taught in schools in the United States at the time or now. I was shaken by what I soon learned.

On May 7, 1945, at Germany Dwight D. Eisenhower’s headquarters, the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in Reims, France, Nazi General Alfred Johl, Chief of State of the German Army signed an unconditional surrender agreement with the Allies. The next day, on May 8, all over their country Algerians demonstrated for independence from France. On several occasions, but most dramatically in the Congo at 1940 start of the hostilities, French General Charles De Gaulle had promised French African colonies independence in exchange for Allied support against Nazi German and Fascist Italy in the war.

Approximately 145,000 Algerians had fought with the Allies against the Nazis; 18,000 Algerians died in that effort. A powerful movie about how France refused promised veterans and medical benefits to its Algerian (and other African) volunteers, “Days of Glory” (Indigènes in French) directed by Rachid Bouchareb, illustrates French opportunism in using its colonized manpower as cannon fodder only to deny them benefits after the war’s end.

By their May 8 demonstrations, the Algerian people in its entirety made a clear statement that they expected this promise of an end to French colonial rule to be fulfilled in full. In Sétif, where 5,000 Algerians, referred only as “Muslims” by the French, marched in solidarity; the demonstration turned into a riot after colonial police forces intervened to stop it seizing independence banners and eventually opening fire resulting in the deaths of demonstrators.

The riot quickly spread to the region around Sétif and Bougie (which was renamed Bejaia after independence) in which resulted in the deaths of 102 French settlers.

Rural areas where Algerian nationalists had their base of operations in the neighborhoods of Sétif and Guelma were bombed by the French Air Force. which dropped 41 tons of bombs in a two week period on in surgent villages in the North-Constantine region. There were also pro-independence riots in Kabylie at the same time, ruthlessly suppressed as well.

What followed parallels Israel’s murderous march into Gaza.

Paris instructed two generals, Henry Martin and Raymond Duval to put down the rebellion, which France understood to be a direct challenge to colonial power. Four colonial regiments made up Moroccan and Senegalese soldiers employed by the French military were mobilized into action. Over the course of a few weeks the French Air Force dropped 41 tons of bombs on insurgent villages. On ten occasions, French cruiser Duguay-Trouin fired ten rounds of bombs, 858 in all.

In the weeks that followed, the French military along with settlers engaged in a blood bath massacring as many as 45,000 Algerians.

In what was nothing other than revenge murders, settlers spent weeks hunting down and lynching “the savages.” To justify their 130 years of colonial rule in Algeria, French colonists dehumanized the indigenous population, viewing them as little more than “animal” – again in a manner similar to how the Zionists are referring to Palestinians.

These military operations, like those if Israel in Gaza at present went far beyond that of ordinary repression. As in the West Bank today, then there was total coordination between the French occupying army and French settlers who were given weapons and a free hand to shed as much Algerian Arab blood as possible. This repressive wave continued continued long after violence against French settlers had ceased. On the surface, the French crushing of Algerian nationalist aspirations appeared to have struck a blow to Algerian independence aspirations. But as usual, surface impressions were deceiving. The Sétif massacres radicalized the entire Algerian nation. “It ultimately solidified the Algerian perseverance for freedom.”

The lesson Algerian nationalist drew from the Sétif massacres was not to abandon their anti-colonial struggle but to chose different means for achieving independence. Specifically, the means changed dramatically from peaceful, non-violent efforts to win their rights through parliamentary means to armed struggle. Radicalized and with the experience of the victory of the Chinese Revolution of 1949 as a broad-based tactical guide, from the summer of 1945 onward, Algerian revolutionaries spent the next nine years preparing their revolution.

On November 1, 1954, the Algerian armed struggle for independence from French Colonial rule was launched. Eight years later Algeria won its independence after what British historian, Alistair Horne referred to as a “a savage war of peace” – the title of his still very readable history. The cost was heavy. Some 1.5 million Algerians lost their lives. That was a full 20% of what was at the time Algeria’s Muslim-Arab population.

While living in North Africa those years, I took two trips into Algeria shortly after the country had gained independence, both with fellow Peace Corps volunteers in Tunisia at the time. The first, as mentioned above, was with fellow volunteer, Tom Carabas of Greek extraction hailing from Montana. It took place from the last days of May, 1967 to exactly June 6, 1967. We returned to Tunis by bus after what was a memorable journey – perhaps the most harrowing trip of my life – to a nationwide uprising in support of the Palestinian and Arab cause on the first day of “The Six Day War”.

The second trip was with another Peace Corps Tunisia colleague, Gerry Auel, nine months later, in late February-early March of 1968. During that trip then U.S. President Lyndon Johnson announced to the world, that given the quagmire in Vietnam, he would not seek running for the presidency again. At the time of Johnson’s announcement, Gerry and I were hitchhiking in the back of an open truck with a group of Algerian miners from the Algerian oil fields of Hassi Messaoud to the Tunisian town of Gafsa, center then and now, of Tunisia’s phosphate mining industry.

The truck driver must have heard about Johnson’s announcement. He interpreted the news as an announcement that the war in Vietnam was over; he stopped the truck in the middle of the Algerian Sahara Desert, we got out for 45 minutes, had tea and the Algerians among us sang and danced in celebration. For these Algerian miners, Algeria and Vietnam was the same struggle, just different fronts.(1)

But what sticks most in my mind from those long-ago Algerian journeys were the people, many of whom I met were about my age, in their early, mid 20s. The years 1967, 1968 were only 5, 6 years after Algeria’s independence war ended. Every one, either they themselves or those close to them, had experienced the horrors of war. My age, yes, but how we had grown up in different worlds; even as youngsters they had fought, or been imprisoned, many had been tortured, lost a limb, a family member living the kind of life I really could not even imagine, while those same years my main concerns centered around improving my basketball skills, if there was a Saturday night party to go to.

2.

What’s happening in Gaza shares resemblances to what happened in Algeria, the parallels of which are striking.

To be continued …

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End Notes.

1. I asked Gerry Auel, with whom I remain in touch and good friends, if she remembered that incident. She didn’t. But I do and vividly. I was amazed – stunned at the time – that Algerians so far away from Vietnam would celebrate what they thought to be the end of the Vietnam War even if it took another seven years.