The Ashkenazi Revolution

217Here are some instructive details about the Sephardic family:An “ordinary” Sephardic family includes, on average, between five and tensouls crammed into two rooms. Anybody who happens upon such anapartment knows how they all “get by”: All rain is taken advantage of andcaptured by beds (I am speaking here of immigrant apartments withminimal comforts or sanitary services). The situation in the hovels of WadiSalib, and the neighborhoods of Salma and Musrara, are far from such“luxury”.The degenerate poverty brings about the desire to bring more children intothe world:The uneducated father, who is not successful either economically ormaterially, gets a little drunk, dwells in a poor neighborhood, and findscomfort for himself in the birth of as many children as he can sire; as theysay: He has nothing to lose, and of course the children also fail to get anadequate education either at home or at school, and they usually share thesame fate as their father. Their future is open to crime and rebellionagainst a society that, in their eyes, is to blame for their predicament.Whether this is justified or not all depends upon the view of the onlooker.Mr. Savion has harsh words about the fatalistic policies engendered byBen-Gurion:If the Prime Minister, Mr. Ben-Gurion, wants so much for us to have aYemeni, or Moroccan, general, he should stop giving “gifts” of 100 Lirasto the mothers of ten or more children. I believe that the odds of thishappening will increase necessarily with a decrease in the number ofchildren among these ethnic groups.The root of the tragedy is in the Islamic fatalism that ruled over theseSephardo-Mizrahi peoples, and squeezed the Jewish fighting spirit out ofthem. In our schools we, unfortunately, do not do enough prodding to