Quotes About Algeria
Eric Hoffer
“The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese–and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”
― Eric Hoffer
tags: algeria, arabs, arnold-j-toynbee, arnold-joseph-toynbee, arnold-toynbee, chinese, displacement, french, greeks, israel, jews, nazis, poland, refugees, russia, turkey 89 likes Like
Christopher Hitchens
“As to the ‘Left’ I’ll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our ‘national security’ calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of ‘Left’ intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush’s legitimacy. So I don’t even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left
tags: afghanistan, al-qaeda, algeria, central-intelligence-agency, daniel-lapin, democracy, egypt, federal-bureau-of-investigation, george-w-bush, humanism, islam, islamism, jerry-falwell, jihad, leftism, national-security, pakistan, pat-robertson, saudi-arabia, secularism, september-11-attacks, taliban, terrorism, working-class
Assia Djebar
“Since they weren’t sleepy and nothing had been left unsaid, they began to read poetry to each other, taking turns like children and enjoying it. Bachir had a lovely voice, one that was already that of a man. He knew many poems by heart. He lovingly recited Victor Hugo, with warmth Rimbaud’s Le bateau ivre, and poems written by young people going into battle; he then moved on to the poets of liberty – Rimbaud again, Eluard, and Desnos.”
― Assia Djebar, Children of the New World
tags: algeria, algerian-revolution, arthur-rimbaud, paul-eluard, poetry, robert-desnos, victor-hugo 6 likes Like
Amin Maalouf
“You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn’t understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisation and then you’ll understand quite a lot.”
― Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
tags: algeria, colonialism, decolonisation, islam 4 likes Like
Mouloud Benzadi
“حبُّ الوطنِ شُعورٌ رَاسخٌ في النفسْ،
لا يشوبُهُ عكرٌ أو دنسْ،
هو شيئٌ من ذَاتي، وجزءٌ من حَياتي،
وسيظلُّ حاضِرا في كتابَتي، في غُرْبتي، حتى مَمَاتي.”
― Mouloud Benzadi
tags: algeria, algérie, الجزائر-حب_الوطن 2 likes Like
Henry Kissinger
“Bouteflika: Your position was one of principle, it was very clear. Your press—Newsweek, the New York Times—were very objective on the problem. And we find that the U.S. could have stopped the Green March. The U.S. could have stopped it, or favored it.

Kissinger: That’s not true.

Bouteflika: We think on the contrary that France played a crude role. There was no delicacy, no subtlety. Bourguiba, Senghor—they tried to use what influence remained for France. Bongo. No finesse, no research.
I don’t know if this corresponds to your situation. But there are sentiments, and we were very affected because we thought it was an anti-Algerian position.

Kissinger: We don’t have an anti-Algerian position. The only question was how much to invest. To prevent the Green March would have meant hurting our relations completely with Morocco, in effect an embargo.

Bouteflika: You could have done it. You could stop economic aid and military aid.

Kissinger: But that would have meant ruining our relations with Morocco completely.

Bouteflika: No. The King of Morocco would not have gone to the Soviets.

Kissinger: But we don’t have that much interest in the Sahara.

Bouteflika: But you have interests in Spain, and in Morocco.

Kissinger: And in Algeria.

Bouteflika: And you favored one.

[FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1969-1976, VOLUME E-9, PART 1, DOCUMENTS ON NORTH AFRICA, 1973-1976
110. Memorandum of Conversation – Paris, December 17, 1975, 8:05–9:25 a.m.]”
― Henry Kissinger
tags: algeria, bouteflika, morocco, sahara 0 likes Like
“Peace wins over wealth.”
― Algerian Proverb
tags: algeria, algerian-authors, algerian-quotes, peace, wealth 0 likes Like
Frantz Fanon
“The people come to understand that wealth is not the fruit of labour but the result of organised, protected robbery. Rich people are no longer respectable people; they are nothing more than flesh eating animals, jackals and vultures which wallow in the people’s blood.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
tags: africa, algeria, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, inequality, philosophy, politics, revolution 0 likes Like
Frantz Fanon
“Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: “In reality, who am I?” The defensive attitudes created by this violent bringing together of the colonised man and the colonial system form themselves into a structures which then reveals the colonised personality. This ‘sensitivity’ is easily understood if we simply study and are alive to the number and depth of the injuries inflicted upon a native during a single day spent amidst the colonial regime. It must in any case be remembered that a colonised people is not only simply a dominated people. Under the German occupation the French remained men; under the French occupation, the Germans remained men. In Algeria there is not simply the domination but the decision to the letter not to occupy anything more than the sum total of the land.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
tags: africa, algeria, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, politics, psychology, slavery, war 0 likes Like
Albert Camus
“You think about bathing in the sea – thick as velvet, supple and smooth as a wild animal. You think about swimming naked, and at night, with the stars, and a friend. Swim till you’re far from the world, and breathing together in the same rhythm, and free of absolutely everything.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague