"It was as if, by denouncing their rulers, I had insulted the people, which was exactly the opposite of my intent. For by illuminating these lapses, I believe, rather, that I have helped to demystify the situation. Therefore, I devoted exactly four pages to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The subject is inexhaustible and convenient. I pointed out the deplorable situation of the Palestinians and urged the creation of a Palestinian state—something I have done for thirty years, even when no one else was willing to do so, including the Arab states (see my Juifs et Arabes [Jews and Arabs], Gallimard, 1967). But I wondered why there had been such emphasis on the conflict, with its four thousand dead—deplorable like all deaths but hardly comparable to the millions of deaths in Africa, for example. As I write this afterword, a massacre in Darfur has left thirty thousand dead and displaced close to a million people. I have suggested that such chaos has been one of the most effective pretexts for tyrants to excuse their hold on power and the state of catalepsy in which they maintain their populations."
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Academics from FranceEssayists from FranceNovelists from FranceJews from FranceNovelists from Tunisia
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Albert Memmi
Albert Memmi (Arabic: ألبرت ميمي‎; born 15 December 1920, in Tunis, died 22 May 2020 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) was a Tunisian Jewish writer and essayist who migrated to France. His most famous work is The Colonizer and the Colonized.
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