Alan Newman
Perusing dusty newspaper archives, you stumble onto an article that at first glance seems like it could describe the massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The reporter writes about a “scene of utter desolation and horror,” and then goes on to describe “greybearded Jews stabbed to death, little Jewish children with numerous knife wounds, and whole families locked in their homes and burned to death by the rioters.”
The reporter states, “It will take days before the world will obtain a true picture of all the atrocities committed by the Arabs during the pogrom.”
However, this piece wasn’t about the Hamas-led invasion and massacre of Jewish communities near the Gaza Strip. It was an article from the Aug. 8, 1934, edition of the Jewish Daily Bulletin — a daily newspaper that was sold for just 3 cents and whose slogan was “All the News Concerning Jews” — chronicling Arab riots in Constantine, Algeria, 91 years ago this month. At the time, Algeria was a part of France.
(They weren’t the first such riots there; those in 1898 rocked the city.)
The news reporter likened the Algeria pogrom to the 1929 Hebron riots by Arabs against Jews, writing, “Just as in Palestine in 1929, the lists of the dead and injured run into the hundreds with no official estimates available. The hospitals are filled with Jewish victims and the doors of the hospitals are besieged with half-crazed wives and mothers seeking to ascertain whether their loved ones are among the dead or injured, or whether they succeeded in escaping the pogrom bands.”
An article in the 2012 edition of The Journal of North African Studies explained the backstory of the pogrom, noting that the antisemitic French settler population attempted to instill “antisemitic sentiments in the Muslim Algerian population and induce altercations between Constantine’s Muslims and Jews.”
Racing forward nearly a century, France recently announced its intention to recognize Palestinian statehood. It chose to take this action during Israel’s battle to destroy the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered more than 1,200 people, many of them Israelis, in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Hamas, the Palestinians and the “Arab street” will see this action as a reward for its monstrous behavior.
French backstabbing of Israel today can rightfully be added to the country’s Jew-hating history, which includes the Alfred Dreyfus affair, accusing a Jewish military officer of treason (the 1898 riots in Algeria were related to the tension of his situation); Nazi-era capitulation, collaboration and deportations during the Holocaust; and now, pandering to a contentious Muslim immigrant population.
Just a month before the Algerian attack, the Jewish Daily Bulletin reported on the death of the “Hebrew national poet” Hayim Nahum Bialik, who had interviewed survivors of the 1903 pogrom in Kishinev, Moldova, which prompted him to write the powerful Yiddish poem “In the City of Slaughter.”
Bialik’s harsh condemnation of the Jews’ passivity in the face of the murder and rape sparked a transformation in how subsequent generations of Jews would think of themselves. Russian-born Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement, translated it into Russian, and it influenced future leaders like Menachem Begin, who would eventually become the prime minister of Israel, and Jewish self-defense forces like the Haganah. It was one of the turning points in modern Jewish and Israeli history.
Today, Israel is a thriving, sovereign country and is defended by its powerful army. Victimizations of the past are relevant lessons that inform Israel’s leaders, who know they must be prepared to stand alone. Israel itself must decide what is moral and the truth. Bialik would be proud of young Israelis’ steely resolve, who do not show any of the passivity that disappointed him in Kishinev.
The shameful actions of France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia to declare recognition of Palestinian statehood only confirm the time-proven reality of Israel’s need for self-reliance. It is Divine good fortune that there is cooperation between the two consequential leaders of our time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump.
Under Trump, the United States has been a steadfast and forceful ally of Israel. His record of fighting antisemitism in America and partnering with Israel on the Abraham Accords, recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel, the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and the cooperation to defeat Iran are virtuous achievements. Netanyahu, the longest-serving and arguably most visionary Israeli prime minister, weathers frivolous legal complaints and the realities of parliamentary coalition governance.
Throughout its 77-year history, Israel has faced agonizing choices. For the most part, its decisions have been brave and correct. It continues to face a volatile mix of objectives that include saving the hostages and eliminating the Hamas threat as the public relations war to win international opinion grinds ahead.
The lack of support for Israel among American liberals and progressives, coupled with their role in fostering campus unrest and riots, has made Israel’s challenges even more difficult. At the heart of the progressives’ dysfunction is insufficient knowledge. It’s a good guess that many in the agitated crowd don’t know which “river” and “sea” they are proclaiming about with their pro-Palestinian chants. It’s another good guess that the anti-Israel progressives in Congress and the chattering media will not dig deeply enough into the complex history of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish people.
The ubiquitous, false anti-Zionist narratives — loaded with acidic blood libels and illogical inversions of genocide, famine, apartheid, Holocaust and colonialization — are the lexicon and rationale of the aggressive and ill-informed haters. It is an old story. For those who care, it’s a historic perspective that should inform any long-term solution. It’s a story worth a hell of a lot more than the three cents that was once upon a time needed to buy a copy of the Jewish Daily Bulletin.
Alan Newman is an author and a pro-Israel advocate who holds leadership positions at AIPAC, StandWithUs and other organizations.
