Algeria shuts down entire publishing house for printing a book on Jewish Algeria ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Algeria shuts down entire publishing house for printing a book on Jewish Algeria

In a new antisemitic move, the Algerian regime ordered the closure of a publishing house named after Franz Fanon in Boumerdes, after it published a book on Jews in Algeria.

Authorities gave the pretext of “threats to security and public order, attacks on national identity, and hate speech” for its censorship.

The book in question, dubbed “Jewish Algeria” by Heda Bensahli, delves into the two-thousand-year presence of Jews in Algeria, highlighting their cultural and historical contributions despite the challenges they faced, especially after the colonial period.

The Algerian regime has embraced a version of Arab authoritarian nationalism that occulted cultural, political, linguistic, and religious diversity. Jews, in particular, were forced to leave the country after independence and their belongings and real-estate were confiscated. Many cannot return to the country of their forefathers, as the Algerian regime surfs on antisemitism and populist discourse.

The closure of the publishing house is part of a larger crackdown on free speech. The Algerian regime has closed critical media outlets and imprisoned writers such as French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, who has been in jail in retaliation for challenging the state’s rhetoric on colonial borders.

What, exactly, do Algerian rulers find so threatening about the book?

In October, an Islamist Algerian lawmaker, Zouhir Fares, canceled a planned reading of the book claiming the book a form of “cultural normalization with Zionists.” The forward was written by Valerie Zenatti, a prominent author and translator, whose family moved to Israel from France when she was 13.

But that appears to be a pretext. The problem is the supposed "attack on national identity."

The blurb on Amazon says:

The Jewish presence in Algeria has often been minimized, even denied in the speeches of all the victors.... In postcolonial Algeria, the jubilation of independence and the ideological stakes (also) end up making these natives an anecdotal reality. However, two thousand years of history and a most fertile cultural heritage are there to testify to a historical trajectory that places Jewishness at the heart of Algerian intimacy. Jewish Algeria is not an Algeria next to, or against other Algerias, but it is one of the most authentic nuances of a multicultural and multiethnic melting pot several thousand years old.

Bensahli argues that Jews are an integral part of Algerian history. That is apparently what bothers the Algerian Islamists so much, to think that their history and culture owe anything to the hated Jews.