Algerian hatred towards Morocco and everything that is Moroccan is encrusted in the collective memory of Algerians, since the independence of this former French department, under the leadership of the dictator Boumediene, who presented Algeria, to wrong, as a progressive and socialist country, which defends all the so-called causes “righteous”except that of the Algerian people themselves and their aspiration for freedom and democracy.
Moroccans must under no circumstances appear on Algerian television, whether in an international football match or in any other context. We remember well that during the last World Cup in Qatar, when Morocco beat Spain, Algerian television reported Spain’s defeat, without however declining its opponent, Morocco being banned from the media lexicon and removed illustrative infographics. The commodity “Morocco” is prohibited from quoting in this country “revolutionary, progressive and popular etc.”
The only context where the quotation from Morocco is tolerated, or even encouraged, is when Morocco is the subject of defamation and insults, from the media and pseudo experts who take turns on television sets. Unlike Morocco, which broadcast on its television channel Arriyadia the first leg of the women’s selections of Morocco and Algeria, played in Berkane, Algiers had imposed a blockade on the return match.
Morocco has no complexes towards Algeria. Besides, there is no reason to be self-conscious about Algeria! Is it with regard to the long lines of citizens stretching several hundred meters to stock up on semolina, edible oil, milk or lentils! Moreover, in the language of Algerians it is not a question of “Moroccans”but of “Marroquis”, from the Makhzen. This is how we are referred to pejoratively in Algeria, while Makhzen historically refers to a form of ancestral state in Morocco, which never existed in Algeria until 1962, although this Algerian state is in decline. since his birth, incapable of feeding the Algerian people with dignity.
The Makhzen would, however, have existed in the former territories of the Moroccan Empires in southwest Algeria, according to Algerian historians. The “Mecca of revolutionaries” invested all its hydrocarbon revenues on this illusion, only to find itself today unable to provide fresh milk to the Algerian people. Curious that Algerians claim that we Moroccans are dying of jealousy towards Algeria. What, frankly, would make us jealous of this country?
Frequent shortages of food products? The lack of water in the taps, including in the capital? Routine power outages? medieval tourist services? The uniformism into which the media plunge? The propaganda inherited from the Stalinist regimes on the war of liberation and the heroism of the Algerians after 500 years of Turkish and French occupation?
Since it was the Algerians who founded Cairo and Al Azhar University, let them provide us with the name of a single Algerian president, for several centuries, before independence in 1962!
*journalist and writer
