Le jour de barbarie du colonialisme français

The barbaric day of French colonialism

May 8, 1945

The Zionist aggression against the Palestinian population in Gaza confirms the barbaric nature of colonialism and reminds Algerians of the similar crimes committed by French colonialism in Algeria. The resistance in occupied Palestine also has similarities with the victorious fight of the Algerian people to drive out the French colonial occupier. Algerian teachers and researchers were unanimous in affirming these similarities, during a conference entitled “Massacres of May 8, 1945 and their repercussions on liberation movements in the world… the Palestinian cause as a model”, held Thursday at the Palais de la Culture “Moufdi Zakaria” (Algiers).
Striking example: a Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor report published Monday March 4, 2024 revealed that Zionist soldiers killed Palestinian civilians in Gaza by crushing them with tanks and armored vehicles; In 1957, in a mechta, near Blida, a mujahid had testified, French soldiers crushed fellahs alive, tied up beforehand and lying on the ground, under the tracks of their tanks.
In Ghaza, eyewitnesses told Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor that one of the Palestinians killed on February 29, 2024, had his hands tied, had been stripped naked and was alive when he was crushed by a tank on the asphalt.
What is the difference between the crimes of the Zionists and those of the French colonialists or with the crimes of other Western countries (United States, Germany, Great Britain, etc.) in their colonies or the countries they occupied? None ! The atrocities perpetrated by French colonialism in Algeria resemble the massacres of the Zionist occupation against the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip, in an attempt to exterminate the Algerian and Palestinian people.
In this regard, the teacher of philosophy of history, Ahmed Benyaghzer, mentioned in his intervention the link between the massacres of May 8, 1945 and what is happening today in Gaza, in terms of brutality, barbarity and of genocide. For their part, the academician and researcher in history, Said Maouel, and the historian Meziane Saidi, were unanimous in affirming that there is a total and close link between the questions
Algerian and Palestinian. Said Maouel underlined the similarities between the extermination operations carried out by the French colonizer at the time against the Algerian people and those carried out by the Zionist occupation against the Palestinian people through its continuous barbaric aggression against the Gaza Strip, since last October 7.
The speaker also recalled that the number of Algerians who paid taxes in 1832 was six million Algerians without counting family members, or nearly 10 million people.
After Algeria’s independence in 1962, there were also 10 million inhabitants, which proves that “France worked to stop, during its presence in Algeria, demographic growth, and this is the same policy that the Zionist entity strives to adopt today in Palestine.
For his part, Meziane Saidi recalled the attempts of the French colonizer to wipe off the map the State that existed, in this case “the Algeria of the Beni Mezghana”.
This is what the Zionist occupation is currently doing by trying to erase the state of Palestine that existed, he said. As a reminder, the commemoration of the massacres of May 8, 1945, which left no less than 45,000 martyrs, now symbolizes, as National Day of Memory, the long struggle of the Algerian people against colonial occupation. The resistance of the Algerians has not stopped at any time since the first day of the invasion of Algeria by French troops.
On May 8, 1945, the Algerian people came out peacefully to demand national independence. In the parade, the dominant slogan was el istiqlal, independence. In Sétif, young Saâl Bouzid was killed because he refused to let go of the Algerian flag he was holding in his hand.
The French army, aided by settler militias, organized a savage repression. Henri Alleg (The Algerian War, volume 1) reports a moving testimony: “The legionnaires took the infants by the feet, spun them around and threw them against the stone walls where their flesh was scattered on the rocks.”
The bodies of Algerian prisoners executed in rows, behind their backs, were thrown from the top of a cliff.
Lakhdar A.