A dozen police, including the district chief inspector, were injured last night when rioting broke out in Migdal Haemek, a village near Nazareth. The injured police required hospital treatment.
The rioting broke out when news was received of the arrest in Haifa of 15 residents of the village for disturbing the peace in the Haifa office of the Jewish Agency. The 15 had gone to the Agency headquarters to complain about what they considered low pay for work done in the Galilee forests.
When news of the arrests arrived in the village, a group of women and children, their ranks swelled by some more excitable residents, began to demonstrate toward nightfall and marched toward the Labor Exchange office and the office of the local Council. A police detachment was unable to halt the march and retreated under a shower of stones from the crowd which had swelled to several hundred marchers.
During the hour before steel-helmeted police reinforcements were able to arrive, the marchers destroyed both offices and threw stones at passing vehicles. The police reinforcements dispersed the crowd after threatening to use force. It was nearly midnight before the streets were emptied. Towards morning, police patrolling the streets permitted local leaders to calm down the excited population which is made up mainly of North African immigrants and some Polish and Rumanian Jews.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
