‘Jewish Algeria’ book reading canceled amid criticism over ‘Zionist’ links
Algiers bookshop calls off event without explanation after Islamist lawmaker decries ‘cultural normalization with Zionists’; author says book about history, not politics
ALGIERS, Algeria — A reading event for a book titled “Jewish Algeria” was canceled on Saturday, the organizers told AFP, after critics said it was untimely amid the war in Gaza.
L’Arbre a dire, a bookshop in the capital Algiers that was set to hold the event discussing Algeria’s Jewish heritage, said it had to call it off without providing further details.
Its cancellation came days after an Islamist lawmaker, Zouhir Fares, said in a statement that the culture ministry was banning the reading following a formal plea.
There have been no official statements from the Algerian authorities on the book or reading events. The bookstore said the book was no longer available in its collection but said authorities have not ordered its removal.
Fares also posted the letter in which he had called on authorities to take action, calling the book a form of “cultural normalization with Zionists.”
In the letter, he said the book’s foreword was written by “a citizen of the Zionist entity who had served in its army not long ago,” referring to French author Valerie Zenatti.
An earlier book reading on Thursday in Tizi Ouzou, some 60 miles east of Algiers, was also called off, Librairie Cheikh, the organizing bookstore, said on Facebook.
In an interview with Algerian newspaper Le Soir last February, the book’s author Hedia Bensahli said “Jewish Algeria” was a book about Algeria, and not about “what’s happening in other parts of the world.”
She said the book, spanning a history of over 2,000 years, had already been on sale at the time of Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last year, sparking the ongoing war in Gaza.
“Like everyone else, I could not have foreseen the Hamas attacks on October 7, nor the bloody response of the Israeli army,” she said.
Jews lived in Algeria for thousands of years, and was home to over 100,000 Jews as late as the 1940, but the vast majority of them left after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and during the country’s bloody war of independence against France.
The number of Jews living currently living in Algeria is not known, according to the Jeune Afrique magazine, but historians estimate the country’s Jewish population is made up of a handful of people who practice their faith in secret for fear of being targeted by extremists.
