Partners against Anti-Semitism: Muslims and Jews respond to Nazism in French North African colonies, 1936–1940

Abstract

In the late 1920s, Bernard Lecache founded the International League Against Anti-Semitism (LICA) in Paris to raise public awareness in France and other European countries about hatred of Jews and to mobilise Jews and non-Jews to take action against racial and ethnic discrimination. The rise of anti-Semitic discourse in the French Algerian press and other North African circles which culminated in the riots of Constantine in August 1934 led the European leadership of the LICA to establish branches in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Based on the correspondence between the headquarters of LICA in Paris and its North African chapters between 1936 and 1940, this article discusses the membership and activities of LICA in North Africa prior to the rise of Vichy. I argue that despite the efforts of LICA to encourage strong relations between Muslims and Jews, the anti-Semitic environment among French settlers, the German propaganda machine in North Africa and the situation in Palestine...