New residents in the Wadi
Between the years 1948-1956, 85,000 Jews immigrated to Israel from Morocco, and were scattered throughout the country. In Haifa, many Moroccan immigrants concentrated in the lower city, and lived in Wadi Salib - a neighborhood that was abandoned by its Arab residents, and whose houses were in a poor state of maintenance. In the first phase, the situation was still tolerable, and the Haifa municipality also found housing solutions outside the Wadi for most of the original immigrants.
But many immigrants, from those directed to development areas, preferred to flock to the city. The result was that the neighborhood became more and more crowded. Large families lived there in difficult conditions. The feelings of frustration and deprivation grew, and Wadi was like a barrel of gunpowder waiting for a spark to ignite it.
Haifa Municipality was aware of the situation. She tried to take several actions to ease the tension, but failed in her attempts to buy the trust of the residents. The residents simply refused to cooperate with the municipality.
The explosion
On July 8, 1959, a fight broke out in the "Roselio" cafe in Wadi Salib. The owner invited the police to restrain the sufferer Akiva Yaakov Alkrief. Alcrief was a known chronic drinker in the neighborhood, who participated in a melee that took place there. During the incident, Alkrief was shot in the legs, and a violent confrontation broke out between the residents and the police. Even that night, false rumors spread in Wadi about the death of the wounded man.
"Likud Oli North Africa", was an organization that arose shortly before. It was headed by a young man named David Ben Harosh. The day after the event at the "Roselio" cafe, Ben Harosh issued an emotional proclamation on behalf of the organization in which he wrote:
| To all the immigrants from North Africa and to all the pursuers of justice! Are we bloodless? It seems to us that you will finally understand once and for all that in order to exist in the land of our ancestors, we must be organized and only in this way may we be citizens with equal rights. Yesterday's case proved doubly the urgency to organize. In the streets of the city our blood was shed without any justifiable reason. An innocent man was shot without being armed or endangering anyone's life. Yaakov Alkrief is well known to the police and all the coffee shops in the lower city as an honest man, who earns his bread by the sweat of his hands, he is neither a thief nor a cheat, and his only crime is: drinking liquor. The aforementioned person is an alcoholic, therefore it is a disease that is treated by doctors with injections and not by police officers with guns. The injury to Yaakov Elkrif is a matter for all of us and should not be seen as an incident, but rather a continuation of the process of discrimination and hatred that exists against us. Therefore, the way in which the blood of our friend was spilled, is an ominous sign that should be seen as an alarm for all of us, if we are ready to hide or defend ourselves within the society that is hostile to us. And what worried us more and proved to us the seriousness of the situation, and opened our eyes to see in what kind of environment we live, those who we thought of as our neighbors who share in our joy and in our sorrow, rose above us as our brides, and from those windows from which they look down on our lives from above, from which they see our children barefoot and hungry for bread, from those windows that see The great suffering that our community is going through, they started shooting death bullets into a crowd full of bitterness to silence them, that there should be no rebellion even at the spilling of our blood. It has already been proven that there is no great value to the blood flowing in our veins, many of our best men fell victim for the establishment of a Hebrew state, in which there will be a place for every Jew regardless of skin color, and here we are witnessing the injustice caused to those members of our community, who happened to be alive, after returning from the battlefield. We see them at night, looking for a place to sleep in stairwells and wet basements, and during the day they hunt like wolves to get a day's worth of hard work to silence their hunger. And what else will we tell? Everything is known to all of us and also known to those who are responsible for our great suffering, and they were probably afraid that it would not accumulate and explode, therefore they stood up in time to silence with all the means at their disposal. , And it's good that they revealed their true face to us, and what a degree of disdain they disdain us. Jews of North Africa, let us engrave yesterday (Wednesday 8/7/1959) in our memory for what awaits us in the future from those neighbors who get rich at our expense, and then move to live in the homes of the generations in the splendor of the Carmel and with comfortable risks. We demand that all those responsible in the country bring to justice the policeman who pointed his weapon at a defenseless man and shot him in cold blood. Let's not be silent! Our blood will not be wasted! The meeting by Cafe Aviv! |
the riots
The next morning, hundreds of neighborhood residents demonstrated in front of the local police station.
Later the demonstrations developed into severe riots. The demonstrators went up to Hadar Carmel. They threw stones, blocked roads, set fire to cars, broke shop windows and looted shops. The protesters completely destroyed the Mapai clubs and the General Histadrut in Wadi and Hadar. 13 policemen and 2 protesters were injured, and dozens of protesters were arrested.
"Likud Oli North Africa" announced a general strike. The riots also spread to Migdal Hamek and Be'er Sheva, and the event grabbed headlines in the written press.
The weekly "HaOlam Heza", led by Uri Avneri and Shalom Cohen, made the event a central issue and attacked the government, which it saw as responsible for the plight of the residents over time. The weekly "adopted" the residents of the Wadi and their leadership, and its weekly issues published for several weeks articles from the field and interviews with the leaders of the rebellion.
This event, which greatly embarrassed the ruling party, was used by the Harut movement, the opposition at the time, to build an alliance of the disadvantaged. The newspaper "Harot" hastened to send a sting to the Haifa Workers' Council, and thus wrote in its issue of July 18, 1959:
| The complacent "proletarian" conscience Received in the system the latest issue of "Haifa HaOvadat", the weekly of the Haifa Workers' Council. Haifa has "become famous" in recent weeks due to rather sad events, which are accompanied by appalling social neglect. One would have assumed that the Town Council of Haifa Workers would at least give this problem some thought, but no. In the entire issue you will not find a word and a half about the Vadi Saliv case and all that follows from it. To what extent the "proletarian" conscience is satisfied with regard to what is happening in the city's slums, the headline on page one of the weekly "Haifa HaOvedat", which brings the sensational news, will testify: "Tamar cinema opens". |
Responses
The government convened following the events for an emergency meeting. Most of the ministers treated the organizers of the demonstrations harshly and demanded that the police take a tough hand against them. Some argued that the immigration was not selective enough and the blame lies with the negative attitude of the immigrants who arrived, some accused Menachem Begin and his movement of fueling the riots, and there were also those who saw the protest as an expression of real distress.
The government decided on the establishment of a state investigative committee headed by Judge Moshe Etzioni. The committee received a mandate to check whether external factors were behind the protests, and to check the functioning of the police and the reasons for the protest. The committee was established on July 19, 1959.
The questions presented to the committee were:
- "How and under what circumstances did the police act".
- "What were the factors and circumstances that brought people from the audience to take part in the incidents."
- "Was there a deliberate hand in the riots?"
The committee's conclusions, published on August 17, were:
- Praise for the "restrained and careful" behavior of the police
- "Likud Oli North Africa" admittedly initiated the protest but did not incite the violence that broke out in the riots
The committee listed the causes of the riots:
- A sense of deprivation and discrimination among the immigrants, although the committee noted that it did not find an objective basis for this
- The difficult situation of the neighborhood in terms of housing conditions and sanitation
- A high unemployment rate and a large number of workers in emergency jobs
The government responded by trying to address the problems exposed by the riots. The neighborhood was evacuated of its residents, the old houses were demolished and the residents were given alternative, better housing. The budgets for clearing the crossings have increased. In September 1959, child allowances were introduced for the first time and were paid to families with four or more children.
The elections are on the way
The timing of the riots was about four months before the elections to the Fourth Knesset, and the events in the Wadi became a hot topic in the election campaign. With the smell of elections on the way, it was necessary to calm the spirits and demonstrate control of the situation. The Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, chose to hold an election rally in Haifa precisely near Wadi Salib. The place chosen was the "Hadar" cinema on the edge of the Wadi.
The date 31/07/1959 was a Friday. The assembly was held in a neighborhood where most of the residents are Sabbath-keepers, which teaches something about the disconnect between the government and the residents.
The assembly sparked a new wave of riots. David Ben Harosh barricaded himself in the apartment with a gun, threatened to harm the women and children who were with him, and was arrested.
Two months later, the leader of the freedom movement, Menachem Begin, also arrived in Wadi Salib. Begin spoke to an audience of thousands who came to hear him at the "Hadar" cinema plaza. It was an unprecedented rally in the size of "Freedom" in Red Haifa.
"There is one way to change the regime of our lives," said Begin, "we will do it with the voter's ballot." 18 years later it did happen. But in the elections, held on November 3, 1959, the ruling party, Mapai, won 47 seats. This was the biggest victory in its history.
What happened to the people?
Jacob (Akiva) Alkrief, was left paralyzed by the shooting. He spent many months in the hospital, since he had no relatives in Israel. The police compensated Alcrief by giving him a wheelchair. And the mayor, Abba Khushi, promised to send social assistance to Alkrief. Elkrif remained paralyzed for the rest of his life, and died bitter and penniless in the 70s.
David Ben Harosh Convicted of obstructing a police officer and possession of a gun without a license after firing one shot into the air to prevent officers from entering the apartment of one of his friends. The court sentenced him to 24 months in prison, which was reduced to 10 months on appeal. At the end of one of the hearings in the trial, Ben Harosh attacked a police officer, and for that he was sentenced to two months in prison. In total, Ben Harush served only six months in prison, and that was after President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi pardoned him.
While in prison, Ben Harosh ran in the elections to the Fourth Knesset on behalf of the Likud list of North African immigrants. The list received about 8,200 votes, and it lacked 1,200 votes to pass the blocking percentage. After his release, Ben Harosh moved to Kiryat Haim and disappeared from the political landscape. Haifa Municipality named a street after him.
David Ben Harosh died in 1999.
The consequences of the process that the Wadi Salib riots placed at the center of public discussion are with us to this very day.
(*) All rights to Oscar Tauber's photographs are reserved to Joseph Tauber, who approved their use for this article. Do not copy or use them without permission.
My deceased father was among the victims of these rioters. My deceased father was born in Germany, blond and blue-eyed. He was beaten, his eyelids were broken, the store window of his store "Cafe Cohen" was smashed and he was mentally damaged by this incident until the day he died. He did not forget this incident.
I was born in 1948. As a child, we lived in Homiya Alley, where today the Oren building of the Government Kiryat between the monastery that still stands there today and the Abu Yosef restaurant in Paris Square, the home was a ruin. We shared an apartment with another couple without children, the chaplains. The street resembled a market in Nazareth with an open drainage channel in the center, the sewage flowed to the flea market that was there. A few more Ashkenazim lived on the street even before the arrival of the great Aliyah from Morocco. They came as holocaust survivors, got nothing, invaded the ruins of the neighborhood. due to the escape of the Arabs. Mother taught me that when you go up to the second floor where we lived, stick to the wall on the right because there is no railing. Later we wandered to all kinds of places. I didn't know what rent to buy was. Mother spoke Yiddish and Polish and French, no studio, no plaster. 1956 we lived at 38 Jaffa St. We shared a wonderful neighbor, the Elgabe family in a Thessaloniki penthouse. Senior family with special needs child amazing Greek people. The Bronstein family, Holocaust survivors with no children, with a poodle dog they had for a child. From then until you left home, he worked for Israel Railways, what he did there I don't know. We are the Kaplan family, father bought the apartment on the second floor in 1956, under the fire of Operation Kadesh, we moved to this building, we got married, first floor, an ultra-Orthodox family, the Godel family, they had a newspaper stand, they worked for a living with three little girls, there was another Turk who ran a hotel on the first floor, Istanbul, no mistake, it was the sign that didn't speak Hebrew has lived there since biblical times, I think
In 58/9 there were riots, the protesters smashed every window they could see, we had old blinds, we closed them and they were not damaged.
I was 16 years old when the Wadi Salib riots broke out, and in the summer I worked in a Soll Bona building that was close to Wadi. About 95% of the white-collar workers were Ashkenazim carrying a red notebook and the cleaning workers came from Huadi. I saw with my own eyes the disdain and condescension towards them on the part of the Ashkenazim. Obviously, they were embittered and the hatred for the establishment intensified. Begin was good at inflaming the hatred until the 77 elections in which Ghal won.
The evacuation of the neighborhood organized by the government was mainly for Camp David (Neva David), Tirat Carmel, a new neighborhood Neve Yosef, and for Kiriot. Neighborhoods were created where most of the residents are from Morocco and the polarization of the trees. The few who moved to Hadar Carmel were jealous of their neighbors where the Ashkenazi man worked in an orderly job while they were in forced labor. In Jerusalem there were the black panthers that Golda said were not nice. How did she want them to be nice if they don't have toilets inside the house and certainly not hot water.
I don't know what the conditions are for Ethiopian immigrants, but I'm sure they have toilets and hot water. On the face of it, it seems that their integration is faster than the Moroccans. Let's hope for good days and unity.
Then came Begin, launched a terrible incitement against the kibbutzim, against the founders, recruited the Mizrahonim, stole from me, took from me, since then the swindler Netanyahu learned how to make money and burn the country for the system, and once again recruited the caucus pickers from North Africa for his benefit and survival, and to this day, these idiots act like dirt at his feet, and that doesn't count them Here are some of the quotes from Netanyahu's house. They are the soldiers in the Golani. They can only be good soldiers with a white commander. The photographer of the underwear, Yoatu, said the hatred for the Ashkenazim is the fuel that moves us forward. His wife Sarah, we are gentle, we don't eat as much as they do. I don't allow Ethiopian women to go up to the second floor. And whispered in his ear, Rabbi Kaduri, the left, forgot to be Jews, said whoever eats vermin and that's his way.
Orientals, mommy??
Both an idiot, and rewriting history.
Remembers the evacuation of the residents of Wadi Saliv to the Allenby Street area in the sixties.
New learning and new human organization in a modern space.
Now is the time to remind us
In the war for the existence of the Jewish person
Who enforces what happened in the year of Harpafu, life goes on, yes, it is good to know history, but more than ever we live in a security reality that is not easy, both the Arabs and the Christians, the Jews, we are all in the same cauldron
Moroccans: 1956
Ethiopians: 2019.
Bnei Menashe 😕
? 😕
When will the stupidity of calling black and white stop at the expense of all of us and first and foremost at the expense of the ruined lives of the immigrants themselves?