Rex Kerr
1 min readSep 1, 2024

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The Tamil Tigers were crushed (not in the most humane way). FARC essentially gave up and merged half of itself into more legitimate political opposition, with the remnants appearing especially thuggish and having little to do with any sort of emancipation. The IRA did likewise, except without stragglers. Western Sahara has been under Morocco's thumb since Spain left in 1975.

Why are you taking lessons only from Algeria?

The lesson of history is: it depends. Many things can happen.

And Algeria ended up with autocrats overthrowing each other and had a decade-long civil war during which casualty rates were almost the equal of fighting during the Algerian War, so it's not like everything was lovely for Algerians after that--which, if it had been widely known via time machine, would have deeply undercut the resistance's moral argument. Algeria is looking better now, but it still looks more dysfunctional than Kenya (for example).

It's not that there is nothing that Hamas could learn from Algeria--but to present it as a given that Hamas will survive (let alone win) is not a convincing read of history.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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