The Wadi Salib riots were a series of street demonstrations

Demonstration (people)

A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.Actions such as...

 and acts of vandalism

Vandalism

Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...

 in the Wadi Salib

Wadi Salib

Wadi Salib is a neighbourhood located in the heart of Downtown Haifa, Israel, on the lower northeastern slope of Mount Carmel, between the Hadar HaCarmel and the city's historic center and CBD.-History:...

 neighborhood of Haifa

Haifa

Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...

, Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, in 1959, sparked by charges of ethnic discrimination against Mizrahi Jews

Mizrahi Jews

Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahiyim, , also referred to as Adot HaMizrach are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus...

.

History

On July 9, 1959, police confronted a Wadi Salib resident, Yaakov Elkarif, who was drunk and disturbing the peace. When he began behaving wildly and hurling empty bottles at the policemen sent to arrest him, he was shot and seriously wounded. Residents surrounded the police vehicle and dragged an officer out of it. He was released only after shots were fired in the air.

The next morning, several hundred Wadi Salib residents marched to Hadar HaCarmel

Hadar HaCarmel

Hadar Hacarmel is a neighborhood of Haifa, Israel. Located on the northern slope of Mount Carmel between the upper and lower city, overlooking the Port of Haifa and Haifa Bay, it was once the commercial center of Haifa.-History:...

, smashing shopwindows and setting cars on fire. Back in Wadi Salib, the anger targeted the clubhouses of Mapai and the Histadrut

Histadrut

HaHistadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B'Eretz Yisrael , known as the Histadrut, is Israel's organization of trade unions. Established in December 1920 during the British Mandate for Palestine, it became one of the most powerful institutions of the State of Israel.-History:The Histadrut was founded in...

(the Israeli congress of trade union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

s). The police tried to disperse the demonstrators by force, leaving 13 policemen and 2 demonstrators wounded. 34 demonstrators were arrested.

On July 11, riots broke out in other places in Israel, particularly in large communities of North African immigrants

Aliyah

Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...

, like Tiberias, Beersheba

Beersheba

Beersheba is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the seventh-largest city in Israel with a population of 194,300....

 and Migdal HaEmek. It was claimed the riots were not completely spontaneous, and that a local movement, Likud Yotsei Tsfon-Africa (Union of North-African Immigrants) was involved in planning some of them. David Ben-Haroush, one of the movement's founders, was sent to prison. Ben-Haroush participated in the following elections

Israeli legislative election, 1959

Elections for the fourth Knesset were held in Israel on 3 November 1959. Voter turnout was 81.5%.-Results:¹ The General Zionists and the Progressive Party merged to form the Liberal Party....

 while in jail, running on the Union's list, though it failed to cross the electoral threshold

Election threshold

In party-list proportional representation systems, an election threshold is a clause that stipulates that a party must receive a minimum percentage of votes, either nationally or within a particular district, to obtain any seats in the parliament...

. The riots were reported internationally, prompting the King of Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

 to express concern for the plight of Israel's North African immigrants.

The Wadi Salib riots still resonate in Israeli society as a symptom of the social malaise in the early years of the state that led to clashes between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews.

In 1979, Amos Gitai

Amos Gitai

Amos Gitai , born 11 October 1950 in Haifa, Israel, is an Israeli filmmaker and director. He is mainly known for making documentaries and experimental / minimalist feature films...

produced a film on the subject - Me'oraot Wadi Salib. . The Wadi Salib riots have been discussed in many scholarly articles