The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-09-07

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Why Jews Were Attacked
Between Anvil and Hammer
WHEN a number of Jews
W were killed in violent
outbreaks in Algeria, a
French colony, some weeks
ago, the American capitalist
press, as well as the Jewish
Socialist press, was strangely
silent on the fundamental reasons
for this bloodshed. Now that the
news from Paris indicates that Bit
ter feeling is rising and new rioting
is anticipated at any moment it
would be well to go into the basis
for what now and then suddenly
appears in the American capital-
ist press as Algerians running amok,
seemingly without reason.
The Jewish population of 10000
out of total population of 5000 900
in Algeria has ben made the toll
and butt of the policy of French.
imperialism. The Algerians are
mainly poor peasants, bitterly ex-
plotted by the French imperialists
and the owners Of huge estates.
Hundreds Of thousands of them are
without land and without means of
a livelihood, reduced to the worst
stage of beggary and restitution.
JUST before the Franco Prussian
) war in 1870, the French Minister
oliver granted the Jews of Algeria,
who had inhabited that land for
generations, and who had been OPP
pressed under Arab rule, French
naturalization and a political status
above the rest of the native popu-
lation.
Since the French and other Eu-
ropean population today numbers
only $4,000, the policy of French
imperialism has been to utilize the
Jewish population, with its special
political status above the native
Algerians, as spearhead of i'm
perialist oppression. The economic
position of the leading strata of the
Jews lent itself readily to the
French imperialist policy. For the
most part the Jews control the
money-lending market, the usurious
operations against the poverty
stricken peasantry. The great ma
GRITTY of the Jews in Algeria are
themselves poor merchants, or pow
erty-stricken handicraft workers
suffering under the proddings Of
the French reactionary anti-semitic
organizations, and in their plight
as the French imperialist buffet
against the Algerian masses. Their
economic position is not much bet
ter than the exploited masses Of
Algerian peasants and workers.
At Constantine, for example,
where the worst anti-Jewish at
tacks took place, number of the
Jews are the bourgeoisie, the gov
eminent agents, grain dealers, usur-
ers, big merchants and intermediate
les or compradores of all sorts.
TIE hatred of the Algerian masses
4 against this compradore class is
perfectly understandable. French
imperialism has cunningly directed
the hatred Of the Algerian masses
against its auxiliary force, it's adiu-
tants in the system of oppression
and exploitation, the Jewish COM
pradore and money-lending class.
In attacking the Jews, the Algerian
population did not distinguish in its
bitter hatred of French imperialism
between the great mass of the Jews
(who themselves are not much bet
ter off than their attackers) and
the real agents of French imperial
ism, the Jewish compradores.
Egged on by French imperial
lists, Jewish rOwdies provoked AL
gerians at the Sidi Lakdar mosque,
with the result that an anti-im-
perialist fury was unleashed
against those whom the Algerians
looked upon as the agents of
French imperialism. Twenty-seven
Jews were killed and 200 were
wounded.
THE fundamental anti-imperialist
1 nature of the attack was shown
by the fact that in many other CEN
tiers the rioting was directed not
alone against the Jews but as well
against the French imperialists as
in LIE Hama, Blot, Kroubs. etc. The
whole movement, in reality, was
spontaneous uprising of hatred
against French imperialism and all
its tools. 1t is noteworthy that in
Constantine the bitterest attacks, as
admitted in the French capitalist
press paris Midi, August y were
made against those known as
money-lenders and big business
men"
French imperialism is now at
tempting to utilize the attack on the
Jews as a means of discrediting the
anti-imperialist movement of the
Algerian masses, and justifying its
murderous retaliations against the
masses as ''in defense of liberty"
THE Communist Party of France,
struggling against fascism and
chauvinism, points out that the
main significance of the Algerian
mass movements is it's anti-im-
perialist character. 1t further points
out that the victory of the Algerian