Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Algeria
The Algerian Jewish community, the Crémieux Decree and the 1962 exodus to France, Algeria's refusal of diplomatic relations and of normalisation, the African Union observer dispute, the 2021 break with Morocco after Israeli statements and the Moroccan–Israeli defence agreement, and Pegasus targeting of Algerian officials
Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Algeria begin with one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. Under French rule the Crémieux Decree of 1870 made most Algerian Jews French citizens, and when Algeria became independent in 1962 most of its 130,000 to 140,000 Jews left for France rather than for "Israel".[1] Algeria has no relations with "Israel" and refuses entry to holders of Israeli passports.[1] It has rejected the Abraham Accords normalisation deals,[2] led opposition to Israeli observer status at the African Union,[3] and in 2021 cut ties with Morocco, partly over Moroccan–Israeli rapprochement.[4]
Jewish community and religious life
History
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) traces Jewish life in Algeria to the first centuries of the Common Era. Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 settled in western Algeria, and in Oran they kept the Ladino dialect into the 19th century. France occupied Algeria from 1830, and colonial rule, which lasted until 1962, transformed Jewish society. In 1897 and 1898 an "Anti-Jewish Crisis" brought riots and boycotts of Jewish businesses. In 1934 anti-Jewish riots in Constantine killed 25 Jews and three Muslims.[1]
The Crémieux Decree, named after the French justice minister Adolphe Crémieux, was issued on 24 October 1870 and granted full French citizenship to Algeria's Jews. Algerian Muslims remained French subjects rather than citizens, and the decree angered them.[5] The decree did not cover the small Jewish population of the Saharan military districts. The Vichy regime abolished it in October 1940 and stripped Algerian Jews of their citizenship.[6] The decree and the citizenship of Algerian Jews were restored in 1943, after British and American forces took Algeria.[1]
During the war of independence (1954–62), both the French authorities and the Algerian nationalist movement sought the support of Algeria's Jews, but most stayed neutral. At independence in 1962, citizenship was given only to residents whose fathers or paternal grandfathers were Muslims. Without legal protection, most Jews left for France, and the WJC office and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Algeria closed that year. Synagogues were converted into mosques or abandoned, and in 1967–68 the government seized all but one of the remaining synagogues.[1] In December 1962 the French government confirmed that Algerian Jews covered by the Crémieux Decree were "automatically French citizens with full rights".[7]
The community today
The WJC says the number of Jews in Algeria is unknown and that historians put it at a handful of people practising in secret.[1] Religious leaders told the US State Department there were fewer than 200 Jews. Members said they had few day-to-day problems with the authorities, but that the community was sometimes conflated with "Israel" in the public mind, which occasionally led to antisemitic incidents. The State Department also noted that local media often used antisemitic tropes in covering the Gaza war and referred to "Israel" as the "Zionist entity".[8]
How far is it Zionist? There is no organised Jewish body in Algeria today. The Federation of Jewish Communities of Algeria affiliated with the WJC in 1948 and closed in 1962. The WJC notes that, unlike the Jewish diasporas of Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, the Algerian Jewish diaspora lives mainly in France and not in "Israel".[1]
Chabad
- Main article: Chabad-Lubavitch movement
Powerbase does not yet have a page on Chabad in Algeria, and the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States lists no rabbi there.[9]
Zionist movement and advocacy
The WJC says more than 25,000 Algerian Jews have emigrated to "Israel" since 1948.[1] No Zionist organisation operating in Algeria was found.
Israeli state and commercial ties
No relations and rejection of normalisation
"Israel" and Algeria have no diplomatic relations, and Algeria denies entry to anyone holding an Israeli passport or an Israeli visa.[1] In September 2020, after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed agreements with "Israel", President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said Algeria would not normalise relations with "Israel" and would "not bless those who signed a peace agreement with Tel Aviv".[2]
The African Union observer dispute
In July 2021 the chair of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, accepted Israeli accreditation as an observer to the African Union, which provoked protests from member states. At the February 2022 summit the AU suspended a debate on withdrawing the accreditation and set up a committee that included Algeria and South Africa, which opposed the decision, and Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which supported it. The Israeli foreign ministry said the AU had "rejected attempts by Algeria and South Africa to revoke" its status.[3] In February 2023 the AU said Israeli observer status was suspended while the committee deliberated, after an Israeli diplomat was removed from its summit. An Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson accused the AU of being taken hostage by a "small number of extremist states like Algeria and South Africa, which are driven by hatred and controlled by Iran".[10]
The 2021 break with Morocco
During a visit to Morocco in August 2021, the Israeli foreign minister, Yair Lapid, said he and his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, shared "worries about the role played by Algeria in the region", citing Algeria "getting close to Iran". On 24 August 2021 Algeria cut diplomatic ties with Morocco. The foreign minister, Ramtane Lamamra, said that "Morocco has become a secondary base for the planification of a series of dangerous aggressions against Algeria" and accused Bourita of being the "instigator" of Lapid's comments. A diplomatic source told Middle East Eye that the Moroccans had "touched on the two biggest taboos of Algeria: national unity and the politics vis-a-vis Israel". The dispute also involved Western Sahara, Kabylia and the Pegasus revelations (see below).[4] Al-Monitor wrote that Algerian anger at the Moroccan–Israeli rapprochement was fuelled above all by the US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, since Algeria has backed the Polisario Front for decades.[11]
When the Israeli defence minister, Benny Gantz, signed a security agreement in Morocco in November 2021, the president of the Algerian Senate, Salah Goudjil, said Algeria was "targeted" by the visit. He said: "Today, things become clear when we see the Minister of Defense of the Zionist entity visiting a neighboring country, after the one carried out by Minister of Foreign Affairs of this entity, from where he threatened Algeria." The Algerian daily L'Expression wrote that the agreement "opens the way for the Israeli Mossad to put both feet on the western border of Algeria".[12]
Pegasus
In July 2021 Le Monde, using data shared by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, reported that Morocco was "one of the biggest users" of the Pegasus spyware sold by the Israeli firm NSO Group, "to the detriment of the Algerian authorities". Le Monde said more than 6,000 Algerian telephone numbers had been targeted, many of them in 2019, the year of the Hirak protest movement. Middle East Eye reported that the list included the late army chief Ahmed Gaid Salah, Said Bouteflika, the brother of the former president, and the former foreign ministers Ramtane Lamamra and Abdelkader Messahel.[13] In 2018 Citizen Lab had recorded suspected Pegasus infections in Algeria linked to an operator, ATLAS, that appeared to focus on Morocco.[14]
Trade
Algeria does not appear in the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics' table of trade by country.[15]
Migration and aliyah
The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics records Algerian-born immigrants to "Israel" as 3,810 in 1948–51, 3,433 in 1952–60, 12,857 in 1961–71, 2,137 in 1972–79, 1,830 in 1980–89, 1,443 in 1990–99 and 5,153 in 2000–2020, then 375 in 2021, 172 in 2022 and 60 in 2023.[16] The much larger emigration of 1962 went mainly to France.[1]
Political interference
The Pegasus revelations showed the Moroccan client of an Israeli spyware firm targeting thousands of Algerian political, military and civil society figures.[13] Algeria treated Lapid's remarks in Morocco and the Moroccan–Israeli defence agreement as hostile acts aimed at it.[4][12]
No credible sourced link between Jeffrey Epstein and Algeria was found, so this page has no Epstein section.
See also
- Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States
- Zionist movement
- Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Morocco
- Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Tunisia
- Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Libya
External links
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 World Jewish Congress, Community in Algeria World Jewish Congress, accessed 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Shafaq News, Algeria: neither to normalize with Israel no to bless the Arabs steps to do so Shafaq News, 20 September 2020.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Al Jazeera, African Union postpones debate on Israel's observer status Al Jazeera, 7 February 2022.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Middle East Eye, Algeria severs diplomatic ties with Morocco over 'hostile manoeuvres' Middle East Eye, 24 August 2021.
- ↑ Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, Crémieux Decree Encyclopedia.com, accessed 21 October 2026.
- ↑ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Anti-Jewish Legislation in North Africa Holocaust Encyclopedia, accessed 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Paris Decree Reaffirms French Citizenship for Algerian Jews JTA, 14 December 1962.
- ↑ US Department of State, 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: Algeria US Department of State, 2024.
- ↑ Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, The Rabbis rabbisalliance.org, accessed 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Al Jazeera, African Union says Israel's observer status suspended Al Jazeera, 20 February 2023.
- ↑ Al-Monitor, Algeria partly blames Israel in decision to cut ties with Morocco Al-Monitor, 25 August 2021.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Asharq Al-Awsat, Algeria 'Targeted' in Gantz's Visit to Morocco Asharq Al-Awsat, 26 November 2021.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Malek Bachir, Pegasus: From its own king to Algeria, the infinite reach of Morocco's intelligence services Middle East Eye, 21 July 2021.
- ↑ Citizen Lab, Hide and Seek: Tracking NSO Group's Pegasus Spyware to Operations in 45 Countries The Citizen Lab, 18 September 2018.
- ↑ Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Foreign Trade Statistics Monthly, Table D1: Trade Countries – Imports and Exports CBS, December 2025 issue (library copy).
- ↑ Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Statistical Abstract of Israel 2024, Table 2.55: Immigrants, by period of immigration, country of birth and last country of residence CBS, 2024.