Arab Jews of Algeria – Identity Theft and Changed Public Space (Book review)

Arab Jews of Algeria – Identity Theft and Changed Public Space

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay

https://justpaste.it/br-aja

Summary of the essay “Arab Jews of Algeria – Identity Theft and Changed Public Space” by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, presented as an open letter to historian Benjamin Stora in response to his report on France’s colonial history in Algeria.

🧭 Summary:
Colonial Erasure, Manufactured Identity, and the Exile of Algerian Jews

📌 Core Argument

Azoulay critiques Stora’s report for erasing France’s colonial crimes against Arab Jews in Algeria, particularly the fabrication of a settler colonial Jewish identity that disconnected them from their shared Arab-Muslim world. She frames this as a fourth exile — the erasure of Arab Jews from the narrative of colonization.

🔍 Key Points

Colonial Engineering of Identity:
- The 1870 Crémieux Decree made Algerian Jews French citizens — separating them legally and culturally from their Arab Muslim neighbors.
- This was not liberation but a colonial technique of deracination (uprooting), forcing Jews to see Arabs as “others.”
Three Historical Exiles (per Stora's own earlier work):
- 1870: Citizenship used to split Jews from Algerians.
- 1940: Vichy revoked that citizenship, exposing Jews to racial laws.
- 1962: Mass Jewish exodus post-Algerian independence.
The Fourth Exile:
- The erasure of this entire history from official French memory.
- The Stora Report barely acknowledges Jewish presence in Algeria and omits the colonial strategies that reshaped them.
Link to Israeli Colonialism:
- The Zionist project continued the imperial model, turning Arab Jews into “Israeli Jews” stripped of their Maghrebi roots.
- Azoulay sees both French and Israeli colonialism as complicit in identity theft — replacing ancestral worlds with nation-state scripts.
Public Space and Memory:
- Colonization destroyed shared public worlds — plural, Arab-Jewish ways of living and remembering.
- By aligning Jews with Europe and whitening their memory, both France and Israel contributed to a cultural death.
Azoulay’s Refusal:
- She rejects the “bargains” of citizenship and erasure.
- Calls for history to be written by victims, not by states or neutral historians.
- Proposes a radical unlearning of imperialism as an act of reparation and truth.

Admin

🧩 Relevance to "Public Space Permaculture Rank" Project

Rank and Public Erasure: Explores how forced elevation in civic rank (via French citizenship) was actually a social exile, illustrating how rank and belonging can be inversely related in colonial contexts.
Changed Public Space: Shows how colonial transformation of civic identity reshaped who belonged in public, and who was erased from it.
Counter-narratives & Civic Repair: Azoulay’s insistence on victims’ history-making resonates with sociocratic and permacultural values of narrative plurality and participatory voice.

---

Book & Media Reviews - Index https://justpaste.it/b-i