The Ashkenazi Revolution

186expressed in that neighborhood. In this spirit, the other speakers spokeduring arguments that developed after the speech. I requested permissionto speak and I said that had the people of Wadi Salib demonstrated againstthe police or city hall, in order to express their displeasure, nobody wouldhave a problem with that. But the people of the neighborhood beat upAshkenazim just because they were Ashkenazim, and they damagedAshkenazi businesses, and this can only be called “rioting”. My wordswere interrupted with shouts and calls such as, “but they oppress them!” (Inother words, the Ashkenazim, as a whole, are the ones who oppress thepeople of Wadi Salib). Only with a firm hand was the chairman able tostop the shouting and return order to the conference. In those days, thenewspapers wrote about immigrants from Romania, who were requestingpermission to leave their country at any cost, and to take some of theirbelongings with them. On my return from the conference, I thought tomyself that if matters continue to be handled, in the State of Israel, as theywere handled at Wadi Salib, it is likely there will come a day when theAshkenazim also ask to leave it, and their only request from the Iraqiimmigrants is that they give them permission to leave and to take a few oftheir belongings with them.6Avraham Abaas was, without doubt, the best of the ethnic leaders. It isdifficult to reconcile this with the fact that he not only counted himselfamong the gang of Sephardic leaders, but that he was one of the mostextremist within it. This Syrian Jew reached Zionism, and the settlement,by means of the United Kibbutz, and he saw up close the wonderful socialwork done by Ashkenaz for the Sephardo-Mizrahi people, that reached itsapex in the kibbutz. It could have been hoped, therefore, that AvrahamAbaas would end up a friend and supporter of Ashkenaz, but the resultswere entirely different. In the totality of relations between Ashkenaz andSepharad, Abaas saw, first and foremost, not the amazing amount of aidthat Ashkenaz rendered to Sepharad, or the great sacrifices that Ashkenazsuffered in the course of this abnormal partnership, but the impartial horrorthat took shape in the confrontation between the Sephardo-Mizrahi peoples,