Al Qaeda is a worldwide Judeofascist O.A.S.
Sharon's Algerian shadow
Andrew Mack
Head of the Human Security Centre at the Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues
The Globe and Mail, May 7, 2002
Ariel Sharon's recent bedtime reading has included a magisterial study of Algeria's war for independence against France. His choice is not surprising (and may inform his talks today with George W. Bush about a Middle East settlement). But if the war's history is instructive for both Israelis and the Palestinians, the lessons each draws from it are very different.
For Palestinians, Algeria's savage but successful liberation struggle shows how the weak can defeat the powerful politically -- even after being crushed militarily. It offers hope to a nationalist movement that, like Algeria's FLN, is hopelessly outgunned by a determined and clever adversary. Israelis, not surprisingly, reject the parallel.
The armed struggle against the French in Algeria started in 1954. Eight years later, the Algerians had won their independence, and the French -- including more than a million embittered French settlers -- had slunk back to France.
The war was fought with unremitting ferocity on both sides. Like the Palestinians, the Algerians mounted a terror-bombing campaign against civilians, sometimes employing women bomb-deliverers. There were more than 42,000 terrorist attacks during the independence struggle, according to the French -- though many of these were perpetrated by French settler extremists.
Like the Israelis, the French were determined to destroy the infrastructure that underpinned their adversaries' terror campaign. To a large extent, they succeeded. About 400,000 troops mounted a pitiless but effective campaign that included mass executions and the most barbarous forms of physical torture. The FLN was crushed militarily -- at horrific human cost. The French estimate that about 350,000 Algerians were killed during the eight years of war. The postindependence Algerian government claimed that the number was closer to 1.5 million. The French death toll was around 18,000.
But reactions in France and overseas to the sickening tactics that the "paras" and the Foreign Legion had used to win their victory, and to the violence perpetrated by the settlers, enabled the Algerian nationalists to snatch a political victory from the jaws of military defeat.
Within France there was a growing realization that the political price of what was almost certainly a temporary military victory was simply too high. Internationally isolated, the French could not sustain their self-image as a liberal and democratic state while at the same time brutally repressing a people who were seeking the very liberté that the French themselves had long championed.
The huge influence that the intransigent settlers had exercised over French policy on Algeria waned rapidly as they resorted increasingly to terror and it became clear to Paris that continued occupation would mean huge political and economic costs -- as well as more French deaths. In 1962, the FLN, defeated militarily but triumphant politically, won independence from France in a referendum.
That Palestinians find this parallel intriguing is not surprising. But Israelis are quick to point out that Palestinian violence can no more defeat Israel than Algerian violence could have ousted the French from France. This the FLN could never have done.
But the goal of the Palestinian mainstream is to force the Israelis from the occupied territories -- not from Israel. Here, the Algeria parallel is, indeed, relevant. Israel has no real answer to the suicide-bombing campaign, because the most important element of the "terrorist infrastructure" that Mr. Sharon seeks to destroy is not bomb-making workshops, but the rage in Palestinian hearts and minds. The more ruthlessly Israel seeks to crush terrorism, the greater the international pressure and the Palestinian rage.
The Palestinians can never defeat Israel by resorting to terror. But Israel will never stop the suicide bombing as long as large numbers of young Palestinians remain willing to kill themselves in order to slaughter Israelis. While the last intifada had little direct impact on Israel proper, the current campaign has brought terror to the very heart of the Jewish state.
The Palestinian suicide bombers have killed the Israeli peace movement, boosted Mr. Sharon's popularity and precipitated an Israeli campaign that has wrought death and destruction throughout the occupied West Bank. But these acts of rage and desperation -- on both sides -- may also have created the "hurting stalemate" that in other conflicts has reluctantly impelled equally embittered enemies down the thorny path of political settlement.
The current crisis has already led the Arab states to advance a peace plan that would give Israel the full recognition that it has long sought. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has announced an international conference to address the issue, and the re-engaged Bush administration is promoting the idea of a Palestinian state in a way unthinkable just a few years ago.
The book Mr. Sharon has been reading is A Savage War of Peace, Alastair Horne's definitive history of the Algerian war. Its key message is that when the imposition of a lasting military solution is politically impossible and maintaining the status quo is hugely costly for both sides, then visionary leaders can sue successfully for peace.
In president Charles de Gaulle, France had a leader willing to take on the intransigent settlers, one who recognized that for France to remain a liberal democracy and avoid being an international pariah it must cease being an occupying power. Israel's tragedy is that Ariel Sharon is no Charles de Gaulle.
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Indeed, Sharon is no Charles de Gaulle! He's rather the latest avatar of de Gaulle's Nemesis at the time, namely, General Salan... If anything, US President G.W. Bush is a new "General de Gaulle". For that matter, Bush's UN address was tantamount to de Gaulle's landmark "Je vous ai compris"... Bush's pledge for a Palestinian state was the Mideast version of "Je vous ai compris":
Contest heats up over the Palestine linkage
US President Bush has declared support for the creation of a Palestinian state. But opposition has dogged his every step, writes Mohamed Hakki, in Washington.
ahram.org.eg
Likewise, the Judeofascist OAS will likely plot its own Petit-Clamart on George W. Bush (*):
(*) dawn.com
Histoire secrète de L’OAS
Georges Fleury
Essay
1500 pages
The Author
Georges Fleury’s works are many and varied, alternating accounts of wars and stories about animals. A novelist and historian, he wrote the highly successful Tuez De Gaulle! (Grasset, 1999). Enrolled when still very young in the marine commandos, he fought in Algeria and for the ‘French Algeria’ cause. This much awaited history of the O.A.S. (Organisation de l’Armée secrète, an illegal military organization supporting French rule of Algeria) is also his own story.
The Book
L’ Organisation de l’Armée secrète was born in Madrid on February 11, 1961. It’s founders, Pierre Lagaillarde and Jean-Jacques Susini, soon asked General Salan to accept the leadership of the military group that was born in the fear and anger provoked by the looming independence of Algeria. After the failed putsch of Algiers in 1961, the O.A.S. welcomed deserters from the army, former secret agents, monarchists, French colons who refused to leave Algeria. Until its disappearance, the O.A.S. remained a violent and impenetrable nebula.
When the Generals Salan and Jouhaud were in command of the O.A.S. in Algeria, the organisation launched a terrorist campaign on the French mainland. The aim was to make De Gaulle change his mind on his project of auto-determination for the Algerian population. But the effect was the contrary; they succeeded in representing the O.A.S. as a repulsive group. Yet, politicians – whose names are revealed here, followed these actions from the shadows, right up to the failed attack on the life of Malraux, on February 7, 1962, that disfigured a little girl and earned national disgust for the perpetrators.
From then on the O.A.S. continued their hopeless and brutal combat. They “held” Oran for two months in spite of the efforts of General Katz, whose henchmen, the deltas, carried out executions in the streets of Algeria, even destroying the barbouzes recruited by the Elysée… Until Jean-Jacques Susini decided to make a deal with the F.L.N., the Algerian independence fighters. But it was too late, the majority of French people, sick of the hatred and bombs, had been reconciled to the fact that French Algeria was a thing of the past.
A superb account, providing a fascinating and convincing portrait gallery of politicians in a desperate situation, men and women in clandestinity, war dogs and maniacs… The official history is artfully blended with its shady secrets, lies and symbols, revealing much previously unknown information about the organization, its ideology and networks. No really thorough book has been written on the subject until now.
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