​CategoriesCategoriesEnglishGENERAL, INNOVATIONAn enduring legacy: 100 years since Belgium's first flight to Congo12 February 2025 Wednesday marks 100 years since the first flight from Belgium to Congo. The journey, which took 51 days, laid the foundation for the African aviation expertise of Sabena and its successor, Brussels Airlines. On 12 February 1925, navigator and pilot Edmond Thieffry, pilot Léopold Roger and mechanic Joseph De Bruycker embarked on an ambitious 8,000km journey from Brussels to what was then the Belgian colony of Congo. Flying a Handley Page aircraft named Princesse Marie-José, they landed 51 days later in Léopoldville, now Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Belgian crew became the first to successfully fly over the Sahara, despite getting lost twice in the desert. They outperformed their French and British counterparts but faced numerous challenges along the way. The aircraft was forced to make five emergency landings, and at one point, a propeller broke off. To avoid sandstorms, they flew at altitudes of up to 2,500m, higher than their usual 2,000m. © PHOTO BELGA HANDOUTSabena only established a regular flight connection to Congo in the mid-1930s The airline’s African network remained a key part of its operations until its bankruptcy in 2001 Thieffry attempted two more flights to Congo with a sports plane he pursued plans to develop a domestic air service within the colony Brussels Airlines continues the legacy of Belgian-African aviation it operates 56 flights a week from Brussels to Africa including a daily direct flight to Kinshasa “Brussels Airlines still uses the same route to fly to Kinshasa as my grandfather did 100 years ago,” says Bernard Hanin-Thieffry To commemorate the centenary of the historic flight a special postage stamp was recently issued Each sheet of five stamps features the route of the first Congo flight alongside an image of the Princesse Marie-José and its crew Edmond Thieffry’s legacy also lives on in Brussels where a metro station in Etterbeek bears his name Copy linkGet updates in your mailboxYour email addressSubscribeBy clicking "Subscribe" I confirm I have read and agree to the Privacy Policy rapid and high-quality information 24 hours a day from Belgium and abroad to all Belgian media not to mention entertainment and lifestyle our journalists and press photographers produce hundreds of photos and news stories Since the end of March 2022 English has been added as a language businesses and various organisations that need reliable information Belga News Agency also offers a comprehensive range of corporate services to meet all their communication needs www.belganewsagency.eu The ultimately self-defeating impact of brutal counterinsurgency is well-known in history. Why won’t Israel and its US partners learn? A brutal attack by militants “mercilessly slaughtering” civilians in their homes occurred simultaneously with attacks against military targets of an occupying power These attacks resulted in an overwhelming military retaliation that killed so many people While this sounds like coverage of October 7 and the current Gaza War these are descriptions of the 1955 “Philippeville massacre” in Algeria That event marked a major turning point in the Algerian War of Independence against 125 years of French occupation It led to seven more years of brutality that killed 300,000 to one million Algerians and threatened a civil war in France It also sowed seeds for future violence in Algeria and around the world It is important to recognize the bigger picture and historical context in which events occur such as the Philippeville massacre or Hamas’s 7 October attacks with the overall goals of an insurgency risks mistaking means for ends resulting in a fundamental misunderstanding of the overall situation Algerian nationalists struggled for over a century against French rule Emir Abd al-Qadir resisted French occupation for over a decade in the 1830s and other major revolts occurred in the 1860s-70s and amelioration of social and economic concerns Unanswered petitions escalated to demands for autonomy and eventually support for new armed resistance Yet the French refused to seriously consider addressing these longer-term political grievances viewing resistance solely from a military perspective Some fixated on FLN (National Liberation Front) terror tactics “Let us swear before these coffins to do everything…to revenge those who have been taken away from us.” Another French military official viewed the Algerian revolt as part of a larger “march of Communism.” Other French perspectives claimed: “We have not come here to defend colonialism We are the defenders of liberty and of a new order.” Others including much of the French public and settlers in Algeria staunchly defended French colonialism and viewed Algeria as an indissoluble part of France refusing to entertain Algerian desires for independence While 35% of respondents stated that the most important reason was the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories 24% stated that it was Israel’s targeting of Al-Aqsa Mosque 8% said it was the ongoing siege on the Gaza Strip and 6% attributed it to the continuation of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories approved by referendum of the Palestinian people It also ignores the potential to negotiate any alternative resolution than that espoused by the rhetoric of key Hamas leaders This also assumes that Hamas’s original and maximalist position is the only option for an acceptable resolution among Palestinians This assumption ignores historical precedent for negotiated settlements including missed opportunities for negotiated peace in Algeria A second lesson from the French experience in Algeria is also a warning: excessive French violence against Algerians including explicit orders to implement “collective responsibility,” ultimately increased support for armed resistance One French administrator observed: “To send in tank units to destroy villages…it is using a sledgehammer to kill fleas it is to encourage the young – and sometimes the less young – to go into the maquis.” An Algerian leader similarly noted: “The French ratissages operations were ‘our best recruiting agent.’” A later FLN statement declared “to colonialism’s policy of collective repression we must reply with collective reprisals against the Europeans who are all united behind the crimes committed upon our people This also convinced moderate Algerians to support hardline resistance reducing avenues and interlocutors for political compromise is to stand aside for the chiefs of the armed resistance,” declared one moderate leader "The methods that I have upheld for the last fifteen years — co-operation persuasion — have shown themselves to be ineffective” Another devastating French policy that achieved some short-term military success but ultimately proved counterproductive was forced displacement which was aimed at “isolating communities from the FLN and thus denying it refuge and supplies.” This forced over one million civilians from their homes into spaces where they were “crammed together in unbroken wretchedness” and where “children [died] from hunger” and cold Likewise, these actions are counterproductive as they increase support for armed Palestinian resistance, as indicated in an Arab Barometer survey The current Gaza War mirrors the French experience of repeated resistance as demonstrated by armed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah which emerged largely as a result of Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon after its 1982 war against the PLO in that country This demonstrates that even if Hamas is militarily defeated if Palestinian political demands and underlying grievances are not addressed another armed resistance group will emerge Americans must learn from these lessons by understanding the full context of the current war in Gaza and recognize the ultimately self-defeating impact of Israel’s pursuit of an overwhelmingly brutal military “total victory,” facilitated by unconditional U.S Soldiers of the National Liberation Army during the Algerian War of Independence In President Donald Trump’s first 100 days his administration has arrested and detained visa holders and other non-citizens in the U.S for speaking out against Israel’s military actions in Gaza That’s not how the administration frames it but that is the connective tissue in each of the cases “We’re either a free society governed by the Constitution Paul was specifically addressing the Antisemitism Awareness Act which would codify a Trump-era executive order declaring that antisemitism is a prohibited form of discrimination in schools and universities and would use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism in assessing cases of antisemitic discrimination through the Department of Education Critics say that it would allow the government to conflate criticism of Zionism and the Israeli government with antisemitism and serve as a dangerous tool to shut down free speech Paul wondered aloud if campus police would be used in enforcing new speech rules As The Jewish Chronicle reported after the vote was postponed Paul was part of “a testy hearing on Wednesday that covered objections to the bill ranging from whether a Christian would be barred from saying that Jews killed Jesus to the acceptability of making contemporary political allusions to Nazi Germany and even the comedy of Jerry Seinfeld and Joan Rivers.” Paul cited the landmark 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio case in which Ku Klux Klan member Clarence Brandenburg was convicted under two Ohio laws of allegedly inciting violence against Jews and African-Americans with his speech Brandenburg claimed that his punishment violated the First Amendment “Brandenburg was a Nazi and an antisemite and he said horrible things,” Paul said the Supreme Court ruled that you can say terrible things.” The senator compared the American concept of free speech with Europe’s recent crackdowns on speech “That’s unique about our country,” Paul said. “In Europe if you call a boy who thinks he’s a girl a boy If you say something about the Holocaust in Europe Do we want to replicate Europe’s speech laws in the U.S. “We’re codifying what Europe did to speech The Congressional debate is taking place as non-citizen students have been snatched away ostensibly for what they said or wrote about Israel the former co-president of Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union of using “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” against Jewish students during a protest on campus in 2024 A 34-year-old permanent resident of the U.S who was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank before moving to the U.S Mahdawi was detained by ICE agents while at his naturalization hearing in Vermont on April 14 He was never formally charged with a crime We don't know if the other non-citizen students detained by immigration authorities in the last month have actually been involved in threats or intimidation because the administration has been deliberately vague about its reasons for detaining them Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the administration has the right to deport non-citizens when their "presence and activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S He is invoking a little-used clause in the Immigration and Nationality Act which stipulates that the Secretary of State can determine what kind of activity rises to the level of having “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the country Others are still in detention awaiting hearings Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil claims he was arrested on March 8 for a speech he gave during campus protests, though he too was never charged with anything. A judge has said the administration’s attempt to deport him will be decided in court He has been accused by Department of Homeland Security officials of spreading Hamas propaganda something his family and supporters vehemently deny the detainees’ support for the Palestinians’ plight and criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza appear to be the primary reasons behind their arrests But if America did ignore the First Amendment and allowed rigid UK-style speech laws instead Do the purveyors of the new antisemitism speech legislation on Capitol Hill know that this could boomerang on them when their ideological opponents someday get back into power As journalist Glenn Greenwald observed about the antisemitism legislation “this is not a hate speech code applying to foreign nationals It's a hate speech code that applies to American citizens where people can be punished for the expression of ideas on college campuses cheered for by the right wing faction that has long claimed there's nothing worse than hate speech codes and other forms of suppression of ideas on college campuses.” Carving out one country in the world and making it forbidden to criticize its government is the complete antithesis of the Constitution’s protections and a betrayal of the American tradition The First Amendment allows anyone on American soil to critique the U.S but now condemning a foreign government could land you in jail or deported to another country One would think that putting America first might include putting its First Amendment first The U.S.-Ukraine minerals agreement is not a diplomatic breakthrough and will not end the war but it is a significant success for Ukraine both in the short term and — if it is ever in fact implemented — in the longer term It reportedly does not get Ukraine the security “guarantees” that Kyiv has been asking for. It does not commit the U.S. to fight for Ukraine, or to back up a European “reassurance force” for Ukraine. And NATO membership remains off the table. Given its basic positions, there is no chance of the Trump administration shifting on these points But since the Ukraine peace process appeared to run out of steam and Trump threatened to “walk away” from the talks Kyiv and Moscow have been engaged in an elaborate diplomatic dance of semi-proposals and hints to try to ensure that if Trump does walk away he will blame the other side for the talks’ failure This agreement makes it far more likely that he will blame Russia, and therefore that he will continue military and intelligence aid to Ukraine. He may also, as threatened, try to impose additional sanctions on Russia — though given the resistance of most of the world to these sanctions, and tensions over tariffs between the U.S. and Europe it is not at all clear how effective new sanctions would be military and intelligence aid will not win the war for Ukraine nor allow it to drive the Russians from occupied territory It will however help the Ukrainian army to slow down Russia’s advance on the ground and impose heavy casualties on the Russian army This should not be taken by the Ukrainians or their European supporters as an excuse to maintain impossible conditions for peace that will make a settlement impossible; because the military and economic odds are still strongly against Ukraine and a collapse of Ukraine’s exhausted troops is a real possibility it will make it more likely that Russia will abandon or heavily qualify its impossible demands for example for Ukrainian disarmament and withdrawal from additional territory it is clearly far more favorable for Ukraine than Trump’s original — and grotesque — proposal that Ukraine should essentially hand its entire reserves of minerals to the U.S the profits of mineral extraction will be equally shared As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: “This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free … President Trump envisioned this partnership between the American people and the Ukrainian people to show both sides’ commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.” money go to develop mineral extraction in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine keep a lot of bad actors out of the country or certainly out of the area where we’re doing the digging." absolute Western security guarantees for Ukraine after a peace settlement have never really been on offer because the Biden administration and almost every other NATO government stated repeatedly that they would not fight to defend Ukraine will however ensure a strong continued U.S It greatly reduces the risk that in the event of future Russian aggression would simply look away and not respond as it has in this war with military supplies and extreme sanctions But the deal won’t be implemented until the war comes to an end. Thereafter, it will depend on the willingness of U.S private companies to invest in this sector — and that will depend on their assessment of both the risks and the profits involved For it is vital to note that this agreement does not commit the U.S government to invest in Ukraine; and to judge by the present profitability of minerals extraction in the world it is not certain that private investors will see major benefits from doing so China has developed its rare-earth sector on such a scale mainly through huge state-directed investment; and no-one has so far done a thorough analysis of the actual profitability and scale of most of these Ukrainian resources only a tactical success for Ukraine and one over which there hang many questions; but nonetheless one that hopefully will lead Moscow to respond with some serious and acceptable peace proposals of its own The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission would love to see larger production rates.” referring to the Air Force’s piddling 100-bomber buy “Which is something that we and the government decided was important for the optionality to support the scenarios that they have been looking at to increase the current build rate.” “Some defense analysts believe that the Air Force should plan to purchase at least 200 B-21s.” Gotta wonder how much of a bonus the PR whiz pocketed who added “at least 200.” While the bomber may have some ability to elude enemy radar It rarely works and only serves to delay the program (And for all those years you thought the “F” in F-16s meaning a supercharged F-35 would cost $150 million.) Why should it take losing a contract to compel a contractor to build something nearly as good for half the price No doubt there’s some Lockheed hyperbole there But it’s no more hyperbolic than the hypersonic frenzy used to justify the F-47 Here’s an inside tip: Foreign foes are never as threatening as those with an (in)vested interest in fighting them claim weapons are never as good when they roll off the assembly line as they are at conception “Generative AI is not just a tactical threat; it is a strategic disruptor that challenges the foundations of belief AI could generate a fake living bad guy to declare: “You missed.” → Shield of dreams Declaring you’re going to build a “Golden Dome” missile shield and building it are two very different things → Walking the plank James Holmes of the Naval War College autopsies the 1989 blast aboard the USS Iowa that killed 47 sailors and details how and why the Navy compounded the tragedy with its disgraceful investigation → War game examines a 1967 magazine article that argued that war is “the essential economic stabilizer of modern societies.” It was a crafty hoax Thanks for infecting The Bunker with your attention this week. Consider forwarding it to friends so they can subscribe here. About UsPrivacy PolicyPitchRS@quincyinst.org©2025 Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft ©2025 Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters One of the remarkable things about western support for settler-colonialism in Palestine is its insistence that the Zionist act of colonisation is legitimate and does not constitute aggression against the indigenous Palestinians it views the resistance that the Palestinians mount against settler-colonialism as illegitimate This is why the massive repression that Jewish colonists visit upon the Palestinian natives is invariably identified by Israel and the obsequious western press as "retaliations" or "reprisals" Such descriptions have been used by settler colonies more generally for their massacres but are never used to denote the indigenous peoples' resistance to settler colonialism the initial violence in settler colonies is always that of indigenous resistance which is why the colonists' war against the natives is always an act of "retaliation" This is not confined to the recent genocidal war that Israel waged against Gaza since 7 October, which it and western media identify as "retaliation" That term is never applied to the Palestinian resistance operation on the same day but is used to describe all of Israel's major massacres since its establishment in 1948 In 1982, Israel described its barbaric invasion of Lebanon, in which it killed 18,000 people and displaced more than half a million, as "retaliatory" against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) It cited the assassination attempt on Israel's London ambassador Settler-colonies have used this rhetoric systematically. When, in 1976, the settler colony of Rhodesia massacred 310 Black guerrillas and civilians fighting to end settler colonialism and white supremacy, the Rhodesian white supremacists called their attack a "retaliation", as did "political analysts" cited by The New York Times The New York Times referred to the white Rhodesians' killing of 1,600 Africans in Zambian refugee camps in 1978 as 'retaliatory raids' Similarly, The Times referred to the white Rhodesians' killing of 1,600 Africans in Zambian refugee camps in 1978 as "retaliatory raids" Yet it did not use this term to describe guerrilla attacks on the white supremacist settler colony In South Africa, the apartheid regime's military campaign to defeat the Namibian freedom fighters of the South West Africa People's Organisation (Swapo) continued to be labelled "retaliation" by the UN and The Times as late as 1989 on the eve of Namibian independence in 1990 In the white supremacist settler colony of Mozambique, the Portuguese military and the colonists' attacks on the African population and the guerrillas struggling to end Portuguese rule in the 1970s were also deemed a "retaliation". So, too, were Portuguese attacks in the white supremacist settler colony of Angola which targeted Angola's African population and the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) guerrillas Indeed, even Human Rights Watch identified apartheid South Africa's invasion of Angola between 1981 and 1993 as a "retaliation" for the MPLA's support for Swapo itself not seen as a "retaliation" against settler-colonialism Algeria is perhaps an exemplary case of colonial savagery that very much resembles the Palestinian case France colonised it in 1830 and dispatched hundreds of thousands of settlers who took over the land of the indigenous Algerians The French colonial army and the settlers set up an apartheid system and brutally and genocidally suppressed the persistent anti-colonial revolts until World War Two.    insistent Algerian demands for independence from their French colonisers culminated in demonstrations that erupted in May 1945 where landlessness and poverty were increasing 8,000 demonstrators waving Algerian flags were confronted by the French police who shot and killed a young Algerian The violence spread immediately to the Constantine region Algerians attacked and killed 102 more colonists and mutilated their bodies in acts of revenge - often against their employers on the colonial farms where they worked the Free French government declared a state of emergency in Algeria and unleashed 10,000 troops to quell the rebellion They burned down homes and carried out summary executions backed by the French navy and air force which shelled the coast and bombed entire villages Thousands of Algerians were forced to kneel before the French flag and chant "We are dogs" while soldiers made rings out of mutilated fingers from dead Algerians as war trophies Colonist militias attacked Algerians in Guelma on the Tunisian border where the local French colonial leader armed the 4,000 colonists in anticipation of the 8 May demonstrations that the police attacked Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war More cruel violence was meted out as the settlers went on a rampage targeting the 16,500 Algerians living in Guelma a quarter of the Algerian adult population aged 25-45 They buried the bodies in mass graves and then disinterred and burned them to prevent any investigation De Gaulle buried the whole massacre and suspended a commission of inquiry that was supposed to investigate the horrors perpetrated by Free France on the colonised Algerians another uprising in August 1955 saw Algerians attack the colonists of Philippeville a French colony established in 1838 in the ancient town of Skikda on the coast near Constantine police and the colonists killed thousands of Algerians and hundreds more were herded into the Philippeville football stadium and executed During the funeral of the colonists, eight Muslims were lynched by the European mourners. The Algerian National Liberation Front claimed that the French killed 12,000 people, while the French claimed they killed a tenth of that number. However, a French official told a US diplomat that the French killed 20,000 people within a month of the attack in Philippeville A study by the Rand Corporation, the influential American think tank that has worked closely with the US government since the Second World War describes the bloodbath as "retaliation" for the Algerian revolutionaries' "massacre of civilians" Yet, as far as the Rand researchers are concerned, the Algerian attack on the colonists was clearly not in retaliation - despite the genocide they were facing at the hands of their French colonisers. The French genocide of Algerians had already killed a third of the population by 1871 alone If all of this is reminiscent of the ongoing western rhetorical war against the Palestinian people it is because it follows the same colonial playbook It is hardly a surprise that the word 'retaliatory' or 'retaliation' is omnipresent in western descriptions of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza During Israel's assault on Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009, in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed, The New York Times, echoing Israel, western governments, and the mainstream press, claimed it was launched "in retaliation" for Palestinian rocket fire on Israel is never carried out in retaliation for Israeli colonial violence Israeli attacks that killed 180 Palestinians were also described as "retaliation" The New York Times also informed us that Israel's bombing of Israeli-besieged Gaza in June 2014 which would lead to an all-out attack in July and August In 2021, The Times, among other western outlets It is therefore hardly a surprise that the word "retaliatory" or "retaliation" is omnipresent in western descriptions of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza The Israelis seem to have realised that their military defeat on 7 October was not sufficient by itself to justify the "retaliatory" genocide against the Palestinian people They began fabricating gruesome stories of baby burning, disembowelment of pregnant women, and systematic rape - as well as their later campaign of lies that Unrwa employees are members of Hamas The baby burning stories and disembowelment were quickly exposed as Israeli fictional accounts that never happened As for the rape stories, in the absence of any forensic evidence or testimonies from rape victims or survivors, the allegations remain unproven, including in the very offices of The New York Times But the report never reveals what they are and even finds some of the sensational Israeli claims "unfounded" As Ali Abunimah and Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada demonstrated in a thorough assessment of the UN report the surprising aspect of the report is that it makes no mention of any evidence it uncovered of sexual violence but solely of "clear and convincing information" which it admits was "in large part sourced from Israeli national institutions" The UN report states that its team saw "no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence" in their own "open source" investigation despite reviewing "extensive digital material." Given the centrality of the rape allegations in justifying Israel's "retaliatory" genocide such absence of evidence has confirmed the doubts that many have expressed about Israeli accusations Yet the allegations of sexual crimes the UN report finds credible are those committed by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinian women and men in the West Bank It urged the Israeli military to open inquiries into the allegations The report leaves out the fact that Israeli female soldiers have been subjected to sexual assault and rape by Israeli male soldiers for decades. But then again, that was not part of its charge. In 2020 alone, the Israeli military released figures of sexual assault that included 1,542 complaints and 92 cases of distributing photos and videos the Israeli military filed no more than 31 indictments.   It is unclear if Israeli sexual assaults on Israeli and Palestinian women are also in retaliation What is often absent from western discussions of Israel's "retaliation" is the real and true defeat of the Israeli military by Palestinian resistance groups for which there exists ample evidence The Palestinian take-over of several Israeli military bases, and checkpoints besieging the Gaza Strip, and the scenes of humiliated Israeli soldiers asleep during the attack, is in fact the real reason for Israel's rageful genocidal war, as it found it incomprehensible that colonised "human animals," as Israeli officials refer to Palestinians, could defeat the colonising Israeli military. The problem with the western narrative is that it insists that Israeli and Zionist colonialism that initiated violence against the indigenous Palestinians since the 1880s is a legitimate right of conquest and is not a form of aggression that could be legitimately resisted. In this narrative, it is the Palestinians who have initiated violence by daring to resist this racist and colonial European Zionist violence, which is why their resistance can never be called "retaliation". The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. Copyright © 2014 - 2025. Middle East Eye. All rights reserved. Only England and Wales jurisdiction apply in all legal matters. Middle East Eye          ISSN 2634-2456                      ‘You cannot just put people into prison, deprive them of their fundamental rights, and then see nothing in response,’ Hasaneen replied. ‘You cannot dehumanise people and expect nothing … I am not Hamas, and I was never a big fan of Hamas … But what’s happening here is not about Hamas at all.’ Tavernise (sheepishly): ‘What’s it about?’ Hasaneen: ‘It’s about ethnically cleansing Palestinian people, it’s about 2.3 million Palestinian people. That’s why Israel, the first thing that it did was cutting off water and cutting off electricity and cutting off food. So this is not, never about Hamas. It’s about our mistake to be born Palestinians.’ But Fanon also wrote hauntingly of the effects of war trauma – including the trauma suffered by anti-colonial rebels who killed civilians. And in a passage that few of his latter-day admirers have cited, he warned that ‘What fills me with dread,’ the Palestinian historian Yezid Sayigh told me in an email, More by this contributorWash out your ears: Messiaen’s EcstasiesAdam Shatz20 February 2025 Find out more about the London Review of Books app Newsletter Preferences This site requires the use of Javascript to provide the best possible experience Please change your browser settings to allow Javascript content to run This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page The situation was impossibly precarious and a solution seemed practically impossible one composed of indigenous Arabs and the other of mostly European immigrants laid claim to the same swathe of arid hinterland and Mediterranean coastline Fragile coexistence had given way to fratricidal conflict; one side mobilized technological advantages and the other employed terrorist tactics were equally tragic: the indiscriminate killing of civilians on both sides Albert Camus faced this very situation as he prepared to give a public address in his native and war-torn Algeria the growing demands for independence from France made by the country’s Arabs and Berbers led to what is known as “la guerre sans nom” — the war without a name fought between the Algerian fellagha and the French military when Algerian fighters and French soldiers murdered and mutilated hundreds of civilians on both sides Horrified by the gyre of violence taking civilian as well as military lives this son of impoverished pieds noirs — the name given to French colonists in Algeria — had become one of Europe’s most powerful voices on behalf of repressed and dispossessed peoples everywhere As he declared in his Nobel Prize speech one year later “the writer cannot put himself today in the service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it.” suffering in French Algeria was an equal-opportunity affliction In the months leading to his visit to Algiers he published a series of editorials decrying the murderous tit for tat playing out in Algeria “We know nothing of the human heart,” he wrote “if we imagine the French Algerians can forget the massacres at Philippeville.” “It is another form of madness,” Camus added “to imagine that repression can make the Arabs feel confidence in France.” Neither the French nor Arab communities can eliminate the fact of one another’s existence the two peoples were “condemned to live together.” How In a series of editorials he published in the L’Express — a weekly magazine opposed to French colonialism — Camus made a powerful case for a civilian truce Proposing a conference at which the opposing sides would sit and face one another would “give meaning to the fighting—and perhaps render it pointless.” Given the mounting body count of French and Algerian civilians Camus lambasted each side’s habit of holding the other responsible “Soon only the dead will be innocent,” he exploded it will allow us to “sauver les corps” — save lives Camus surveyed the expectant gathering of Arab and French Algerians who came to the auditorium at the Muslim Cercle de Progrès to hear him speak Camus initially set a low bar: this meeting would show that “an exchange of views is still possible.” With such an exchange both sides might then acknowledge each side’s “right to security and dignity on our common soil.” Looking at the crowd of faces the existential thinker who coined the philosophical concept of absurdity now employed it in a more immediate sense: How absurd that he was now pleading for what seemed so obvious: “that a handful of innocent victims be spared.” a mob of pieds noirs had massed outside the meeting hall Chanting “Hang Camus,” they began to throw stones through the windows while pressing forward against the cordon of police affirming that both sides must refuse to practice and submit to terror he was hustled out to safety by a scrum of childhood friends Terror became the rule while those supposedly condemned to live together instead seemed condemned to slaughter one another two years after Camus died in a car crash in southern France and six years (and hundreds of thousands of other deaths) after his public appeal for a truce a France teetering on civil war and an Algeria tasting independence signed a peace treaty at the French spa town of Évian It was not because each side had done what Camus asked them to do — namely “make the honest effort to think over his adversary’s motives.” Instead they came to terms because both had suffered too long from the consequences that Camus had predicted if they failed to heed his advice: that extremists and violent would carry the day Accompanying the signing of the Évian Accords was the first and last cease fire declared during the war As the world breathes a sigh of relief with yesterday’s declaration of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas it knows that it was not the first and will not be the last No doubt Camus would have warned that the parallels go only so far between the guerre sans nom between France and Algeria and the war without a name between Israel and Gaza that the parallels go far enough to remind all parties that dignity and security can only come on common soil inhabited by two independent peoples Robert Zaretsky teaches at the University of Houston His latest book is “The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas.” Robert Zaretsky is also a culture columnist at the Forward I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward American Jews need independent news they can trust At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S rising antisemitism and polarized discourse This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs Copyright © 2025 The Forward Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site. ​CategoriesCategoriesEnglishGENERALDemolition of Marc Dutroux house in Marcinelle has started7 June 2022 In the Avenue de Philippeville in Marcinelle the demolition of the house of convicted serial killer and paedophile Marc Dutroux has begun Tuesday morning The cellars of the house will be preserved The building itself will make way for a garden of remembrance The redevelopment work is expected to take months Sabine and Laetitia were detained in the house of horror the building still marked the city like a deep scar in consultation with the parents of the victims the city of Charleroi has received the necessary permits for the demolition A few curious neighbours came to watch the work from close by Marc Dutroux was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004 for kidnapping molesting and imprisoning six girls and murdering four of them in a case that shocked the world and forced Belgium to overhaul its criminal justice system Work has got under way to demolish a house used by the killer and paedophile Marc Dutroux The house on the Avenue de Philippeville in the Charleroi district of Marcinelle was the scene of some of Dutroux’s most heinous crimes While most of the house will be demolished the cellar of the building that was used by Dutroux to keep his victims in captivity will be preserved Above ground the house will make way for a memorial garden to remember Marc Dutroux's victims The work is expected to take serveral months The building has been empty since Marc Dutroux’s arrest more than 25 years ago Since then it has been a scare on the face of Charleroi and as such the city authorities have long wanted to get rid of it The memorial garden project has come about in consultation with the parents of Marc Dutroux’s victims During the past few months the city authorities in Charleroi have received the necessary permits allowing them to demolish the building and on Tuesday morning work finally got under way