Israel’s disproportionate response

11Jan09

Robert J. Avrech, fisking the “disproportionate response” lie:

The Palestinians are a lucky people.

Because their enemies are Jews.

Any other foe, especially other Arabs, would have wiped them off the face of the earth a long time ago.

What?

Philippeville was a small mining center of about 130 Europeans and about 2,000 Muslims, who for years had coexisted amicably. Apparently, labor relations were extremely good with a rare degree of equality between Muslim and European.

It appears that the whole Muslim community was aware of what was about to happen on August 20, 1955. A number of Muslim families even left town.

But no one warned the Europeans.

[...]

Shortly before noon, four groups of fifteen to twenty Muslim men attacked the village, taking it completely by surprise. They were led by Muslim mineworkers who knew each house and their neighbors. Intimately.

Telegraph lines were cut, the emergency radio transmitter was found to be “out of order” and the village constable who was equipped with warning rockets had “disappeared.”

The Muslim attackers went from house to house, slaughtering all the European occupants: men, women, children, and infants. All the time egged on by Muslim women with their eerie ululations. From the Mosque came exhortations to slit the throats of women and nurses in the cause of jihad.

It was not until two o’clock in the afternoon that a French Para unit managed to reach the town. An appalling sight greeted them. In houses literally washed with blood, European mothers were discovered with their throats slit and their bellies slashed open by billhooks. Children had suffered the same fate, and infants in arms had had their brains dashed against the wall. A mother disemboweled, her five-day old baby slashed to death and replaced in her open womb.

Four entire families had been wiped out to the last member; only six who had barricaded themselves in a house in the center of the village and had held out with sporting rifles and revolvers had survived.

Men returning from the mines had been ambushed in their cars and hacked to pieces. Altogether thirty-seven Europeans had died, including ten children under fifteen, and another thirteen had been left for dead.

Not surprisingly, Pontecorvo did not include the Philippeville massacre in his film. Dramatically, it would have shredded his carefully constructed thesis.

The reaction of the French army was immediate. Out in the streets they found:

“…bodies literally strewed the town. The Arab children, wild with enthusiasm—to them it was a great holiday—rushed about yelling among the grown-ups. They finished off the dying. In one alley we found two of them kicking in an old woman’s head. We had to kill them on the spot: they were crazed…”

[...]

The reprisals were severe. The Algerians claim that as many as 12,000 were killed by the French. The French claim, 1,273. We will never know the truth.

But the Philippeville Massacre had its intended impact. The polarizing effect that Marighela spoke of immediately took place. The Battle of Algiers went on for eight long bloody years, and the brutality on both sides was unspeakable—for there was a burning river of blood between the French and the Algerians after Philippeville.

Again:

[O]nly six who had barricaded themselves in a house in the center of the village and had held out with sporting rifles and revolvers had survived.

You have been so advised.

Be guided accordingly.

Filed under: Islam, Judaism   |  4 Comments
Tags: Algiers, France, Gaza, Hamas, Islam, Israel, Jews, jihad, muslim, palestine, palestinian arab