Summary
The 1959 riots of North-African Jews, sparked by an incident in Haifa’s Wadi Salib neighborhood, which spread all over the country and lasted four weeks; in Lev Grinberg’s account they culminate a decade of ethnic discrimination and are the mo(ve)ment of resistance that uncovers the construction of political-economic domination in the new state (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.91).
Details
- The riots took place at the end of a large period of unemployment, precisely when the industrialization policy sponsored by the developing state succeeded in creating full employment (Halevi and Klinov-Malul 1968) (PDF p.91).
- They are usually considered to have had no significant impact, although they are related to a much more influential wave of ethnic riots in 1971-1973; Grinberg argues instead that the strong linkage between class and ethnicity became one of the most salient features of Israeli political parties since 1959, that the ethnic aspect of the riots and their repression shaped the parliamentary elections of November 1959, and that in the longer term they created a pattern of ethnic misrepresentation and tribal channeling of ethnic fears into the political arena (PDF p.91-92).
- Their background, as Grinberg gives it in Chapter 3’s opening sections, is the first decade’s construction of three segregated ethno-classes — veteran Ashkenazi elites, Arab second-class citizens under martial law, and Mizrahi immigrants positioned in-between, in segregated peripheral settlements and development towns (PDF p.92-107).
Related pages
Moments of Resistance, Mizrahim, Histadrut, Mapai, Movements of Resistance, Political Space
- Chapter 3, Sections VI-VIII (PDF p.112-121): Wadi Salib, an Arab Haifa neighbourhood emptied in 1948 and inhabited by North African immigrants (~15,000), rose after police shot a local drunk; demonstrators marched on Hadar, and riots spread for a month to Acco, Tel Hanan, Beer Sheba, Kiriat Shmona and Migdal Haemek, burning Mapai/Histadrut offices. The government recognised the claims but not the claimers: the Etziony Committee was confined to Wadi Salib, and Mapai mobilized police and the Histadrut’s Worker Troops. Ben Gurion and Dayan distinguished their personal popularity from the party apparatus, Dayan legitimizing the bitterness in development towns, and suppression plus Ashkenazi middle-class support gave Mapai its greatest electoral victory ever. The North African Immigrants Union’s leaders were jailed; David Ben Harush was sentenced to two years, and the party won 8,200 votes (0.8%), below the 1% threshold.
- The counter-mo(ve)ment: all pre-1948 Ashkenazi parties cooperated, not necessarily intentionally, to close political space to independent Mizrahi representation, delegitimizing collective claims as “the ethnic demon”; the long-term result was Tribal Channeling — ethnic misrepresentation that made Mapai the “political protector” of Ashkenazi voters (PDF p.116-119).