Algeria won, Palestine will win. Over the past year, this slogan has multiplied across social media posts, proliferated on posters covering the streets of Paris, and resounded at marches. Amid the despair of genocide, these words seek to give hope that something better is in store: If colonialism could be defeated after more than 130 years in Algeria, it can be defeated in Palestine. By reaching for analogies, we try not only to make sense of current events, but also, and perhaps more urgently, to imagine what is to come.

To help shape possible futures, people turn to a series of histories of decolonization: South Africa, Vietnam, Ireland. Among these, Algeria often plays the part of the radical option. The Algerian War of Independence is one of the few historical cases in which a colonized people successfully dismantled a settler colonial regime through armed struggle. A movement begun by a small but determined group of Algerian men in 1954 grew into a mass insurrection that expelled the French government. In 1962, celebrations of independence filled the streets for days. At the same time, around a million people—some 10% of Algeria’s population—fled the country. Most of those who left were from the group known variously as settlers, Europeans, or pieds-noirs, but they also included Algerians who had fought on the side of the French army, referred to as harkis, as well as more than 100,000 Algerian Jews. In the wake of this exodus, the formerly colonized built a new state for themselves alone.