That institution obviously no longer exists. This unforgivable university administration that has targeted students and staff, and has restricted the freedoms of all students including Jewish ones. I trust those people that taught me more than my degree - they can have it back.

So Columbia at the time was a rare place for the young Jewish man that I was to learn a language that my ancestors had stopped speaking. I was taught by the best Palestinian scholars in a way that could only happen in New York City. It was an environment that was both safe and exciting 3/

Columbia was also where I had the first opportunity to take classes in Middle East Studies. In a class on Islamic Law, the most essential participant was a lawyer who had a deep knowledge of Jewish Halakhic law and kept comparing the two systems 2/

Thank you this was a great read :)

The Fr government spent a vast amount of money compensating settlers for their property, which they then invested in France. No reparations have been paid to Algerians. So this exodus in 1962 cannot be separated from the status of people in an unequal society before + after

And finally on seizure of property: the most significant consequence of this was land redistribution. For those who lost property, this was obviously terrible but interestingly they sought redress from the French government - not the Algerian one, and that’s who compensated them -

It is a remarkable achievement of colonialism to not only dispossess people but then give them lessons on how they are meant to end this. If Palestinians had been listened to rather than told they need to come up with betters plans we would not be here in the first place

Do I wish things had happened differently? Sure. Do I find the FLN’s lack of an articulation of what an Algeria for different people might mean frustrating? Absolutely. Does that mean that I attribute the events to that and think that it was a failure? Absolutely not

This mainstream view, which is also that of the French government, has no historical understanding of colonialism, and of their state’s responsibility in generating that situation in the first place. The settlers were encouraged by the state and supported by its army

The mainstream view in France is that Algerian independence was a disaster. It goes from the center (or even center left) to far right, with different nuances. The argument is that 1962 was terrible and could have been avoided and that the FLN is dreadful

Ok, for me, the best way to explain this is to describe who the people are who make the argument you are making when it comes to Algeria, and why I disagree with them:

Yair, I truly do not see how you can read my essay and believe that I think it was ‘less bad’ or that lives were not destroyed. I don’t know what you’re implying by positionality but that can cut several ways.

The whole point is that it is easy to look back and say ‘well they were always going to choose to leave’. No. There is nothing fundamentally different about them compared to Australians or Israelis. And Algeria is no more or less paradigmatic a case than either. They all have something to teach us

I would warmly encourage you to read more about the different kinds of people who left Algeria: where they came from, their relationship to that land, and to France. What you’re writing glosses over a huge amount of pain and human experience to prove a point about categorization /

I am well aware of the similarities you’re describing and in fact that’s why I wrote them into the article bc I thought it would make it more powerful. But I think we fundamentally disagree about what colonialism is and how it operates