This paper examines tensions and affinities between Arab and Jewish populations in the French colonial and postcolonial era. My analysis focuses on contact between these groups in Algeria in the 1930s and 1940s, at the height of French colonialism, before the beginning of the Algerian War. It examines their relations in contemporary France, which has been the scene of Arab-Jewish violence as a result of the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and war in Iraq. For a long period of time, Muslims and Jews shared living space in North Africa and even linguistic and cultural traditions, but found themselves attributed different status under the French colonial regime. Such distinctions tended to fuel animosity between them. Several episodes of conflict between Arabs and Jews arose in Algeria, including the pogroms of August 1934 in the eastern part of the country, and sporadic Muslim support of Germany during the Second World War. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 posed perhaps the most serious threat to Arab-Jewish coexistence in North Africa. I will critically explore the discourse of Muslim and Jewish elites, as well as colonial officials, some of whom feared the havoc a Jewish state might create in colonial Algerian society. Large-scale Jewish migration to Israel could potentially, they believed, be a destabilizing social factor in French Algeria (such migration never came to pass).

The end of Empire forced Algerian Jews to choose between Israel and France as a place of postcolonial exile, and the vast majority opted for France. More and more Algerians immigrated to France in the 1960s after independence, much to the chagrin of Evian mediators. Arabs and Jews negotiate a sometimes difficult coexistence in France today. Israel and Algeria continue to be highly charged subjects of interest among the sons and daughters of the colonized and colonizers in France. Anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant sentiment pose significant problems to civil society in France. I certainly cannot provide solutions to these problems, but will offer some historical precedents.