Mouood Mouood English Edition
We will not list all his outrageous comments here but must bear in mind the succession of anti-Arab and Islamophobic utterances he has made since taking office.
Why the French president has gone on the offensive against his country’s former colony
By Abdel Bari Atwan
Who does Macron think he is to propose re-writing Algeria’s history and publishing this revised version in Arabic and Tamazight? What facts does he seek to uncover? Does he want to erase Algeria’s proud record of resistance to his country’s colonization, or the memory of the millions of martyrs who fell fighting it? Or is his intention to adopt Zionist fabrications to Algeria by casting it as a ‘land without a people’ that lacked any Islamic identity or heritage before the French occupation?
France and Macron’s problem, and that of other racist neo-colonialist Western leaders, is with the existence of capable Arab armies. That is why the Iraqi army was disbanded, the Syrian army was subjected to an exhausting war of attrition for more than ten years, and the Libyan army was destroyed – and why the Egyptian army is being lured into a war with Ethiopia via the trap of the Renaissance Dam.
Macron, incited by Israel, does not want a strong Algerian army or an empowered state in that vast country that has massive hydrocarbons and mineral reserves and a resourceful and patriotic people who maintain a strong sense of national, Arab, and Islamic identity and passionately support the Palestinian cause.
That is the real reason for his ‘offensive’ against Algeria, which is bound to be joined by the Israeli occupier state and its Arab friends (regimes, not peoples) old and new.
Macron announced the halving of the number of visas available to Algerians to put pressure on the government and force it to take back hundreds of thousands of its citizens who he wants to be expelled from France. He is targeting both the state and the people of Algeria. He wants to bring them to their knees, driven by racism against them as Arabs and Muslims.
In his book, a ‘good’ Algerian is either a ‘Harki’ collaborator who fought for the French colonial army against the liberation movement or a separatist scheming to have the country broken up. Hence the warm reception he accorded these people and their descendants at the Elysée Palace with the aim of refurbishing their reputation.
Algeria will not submit to such schemes nor take these insults lying down. It has withdrawn its ambassador from Paris, closed its airspace to French military aircraft operating in the African Sahel, and abrogated an earlier agreement allowing such overflights. That is only the start. More are sure to follow, and we may be in for some startling surprises in the days to come.
The Algerian people, with their formidable record of resistance against French colonialism, will stand united and support their state and army against these schemes. They defeated France once and sent its occupation packing, and will foil it for a second time.
