Pierre Rehov
I find it difficult to understand. My father's family had lived in Algeria for at least five hundred years. It wasn't called Algeria yet, as that name was given to a conglomerate of regions around Algiers by the French conquerors. At certain times they were treated as dhimmis, second rate citizens, suffering the inhuman rules of Islam, at other times less so, but they only discovered their freedom with the Cremieux decree, which granted them French nationality towards the end of the 19th century. With the war of "independence" (a Jihad in disguise), we were forced to leave and “repatriate” to France, even though none of us had been born or lived there. The Arabs took everything from us. Houses. Businesses. Pharmacies that we hadn't stolen from anyone. So be it. We rebuilt our lives. We never asked for compensation or help from the UN. But then the Algerians started arriving in France. Hundreds, thousands, and with family reunification, they became millions. So be it. France did not invest and, with its traditional paternalistic mentality, prefers cheap labor to investment. Disaster was inevitable, but not for short-sighted visionaries. As a result, crime followed a curve sometimes linked to that of immigration, and violent anti-Semitism exploded. So be it. Unable to bear the lies spread about both the Algerian War and the Israel-Arab conflict, most often by left-wing media, I emigrated (legally) to the US before moving to the country of my most distant ancestors, Israel. Today, people tell me to go home because Israel would not be my country. It is Algerians living in France, whose parents may have stolen my parents' house, who are telling me this. What am I supposed to say to them? Perhaps, that I have the right to live where I pay my rent and taxes, or that they could go back home... after returning my parents' house in Algeria?
