The Yemenite Children Affair: A Moral Call

2021

Between 1948 and 1956, an estimated thousands of babies and young children were kidnapped through the state medical system, in the newly established State of Israel. They were offered for adoption to barren parents (often Holocaust survivors), sold to international adoptive families (often in the United States), and in the most disturbing cases used in medical experiments. Parents were often told that their children had died during routine medical care, but were provided with neither death certificate nor body. The majority of the victims of these kidnappings were Mizrahi - Jewish immigrant families from Arab and Muslim countries. Most families were of Yemenite origin. Despite the large scale of this affair, it has gone unrecognized by state systems, the legal system, the media, and Israeli society at large. Thousands of families affected by this affair have to date received no state recognition of this crime nor any closure as to where their loved ones might be. The purpose of this...

Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 2019

This article introduces and explores a neglected historical source dealing with the Yemenite children affair: The book Uri tsafon uvo'i teman (“Awake, O north wind, and come thou south” [Song of Songs, 4,16]), published in Israel in 1963. The novel revolves around the adoption of a Yemenite baby girl by an Israeli woman and is openly based on the author's biography. Although the Yemenite children affair has caused a public uproar that has been unsettling Israeli society, the book has left no mark, and remains marginal or is completely missing from the research literature dealing with the Yemenite children affair. This article reveals the importance of this book for the affair's investigation, and shows that it reflects the early view of the establishment on this matter, according to which the established Israeli public rescued the babies and redeemed them, while being aware that this was clearly an immoral act that would never fade away and perhaps would never be forgiven.

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2001

Jews were among the many immigrants from Arab countries who were flown to Israel after its establishment in 1948. Following many complaints regarding the disappearance of Yemenite children from hospitals and schools in the transit camps where the new immigrants were kept in the 1950s, a governmental investigation committee was established in 1995. This article provides a preliminary description, from an anthropological perspective, of what is called in Israel the "Yemenite children affair. " My analysis focuses on interviews with Yemenite Jews, describing how the bodies of new immigrants were medicalized and cornmodified and how immigrants and their families have come to resist these processes. I then focus on the role of the Israeli medical profession in promoting national goals and maintaining collective identity.

Many different stories have survived in the traditions of the establishment of the Jewish community in southern Arabia in antiquity. Their influence was well illustrated by the fact that a Jewish kingdom also existed in the area in the 5th century AD. After the emergence and rise of Islam, they became dhimmis or mu'ahids, but despite their protection, their rights were restricted by a number of decrees in later centuries. Because of all this, and especially of the unfavourable economic and commercial conditions of the mid-19th century, their emigration to Palestinian territory began in the 1880s, which peaked during Operation “On Eagles’ Wing” between 1948 and 1950. Nearly 50,000 people left Yemen for the Promised Land in the final phase, virtually eliminating one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities. The aim of the study is to review the origins of the formation of the Jewish community in Yemen and their relationship with the majority Muslim society following the spread of Islam. In addition, it intends to address the reasons for emigration from the mid-19th century and to detail the stages of the process of mass exodus up to 1950.

Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal, 2021

This essay offers a review of ongoing media analysis of the kidnapped Yemenite Babies Affair in light of recent changes in public awareness since the emergence of social media and the more recent formal governmental recognition. It argues that the government’s efforts to silence this affair over decades would not have been possible without the media’s full cooperation. Moreover, the public denial of this affair contributes to the ongoing intra-Jewish rift and racism in Israeli society today. Questions regarding the reconciliation and remembrance of this affair in the public sphere will strongly influence the identity formation of Yemenite and Mizrahi children of future generations.

Chapter 5: Challenging the Zionist Enterprise and Ethos Soon after their immigration, Yemeni Jews recognized that in order to integrate into the Jewish settlement in Palestine they would need to cooperate with the Zionist movement, the Yishuv's leading power. This move required several essential transformations, such as departing from reliance on their traditional rabbinical leadership and creating modern organization and leadership, becoming politically active within the Zionist movement, and adopting the Zionist rhetoric and ethos. While considering the first two measures of transformation, our analysis will focus primarily on the embracing of the Zionist ethos. According to Homi K. Bhabha, the formation of the nation and of its culture runs parallel with-and is related to the development of the national narrative as a literary creation. In addition, the definition of the boundaries of national culture is a hybrid process, in the course of which new groups are incorporated into the political entity. 1 The present chapter will discuss the efforts of Yemeni Jews in Palestine to become part of the national-Zionist meta-narrative, by reshaping their own historical narrative and adapting it – as Bhabha's approach would suggest – to the Zionist one. In the minds of the Yemeni immigrants, the blurring of the boundary between the Zionist narrative and the particular narrative of the Jews of Yemen had the potential to effect their inclusion within the national Zionist group that enjoyed greater privileges in the Jewish Yishuv. Our discussion will focus chiefly on the rural Jews of northern Yemen who immigrated to Palestine during the period of the "Second Aliyah" (1904-1914), and settled in agricultural settlements. The lives of the Jews of northern Yemen are described as peaceful and quiet, a life of economic prosperity (in the terms of that time and place), freedom and personal security. Like the Jews in other regions of Yemen, their livelihoods were based on a variety of crafts and petty trade. They carried weapons and most of the discriminatory ordinances were not enforced in their environment, just as they were not enforced in other rural-tribal regions. 2 In 1913, the Jews of Yemen reported the following about themselves: "We came from the town Sa'ada and Haydan Asham (al-Sham), where neither the yoke of kingdom nor of exile was upon us"; 3 In the same spirit Tabib Ben-Avraham wrote, also in 1913: "Indeed, our entire immigration to the Land of Israel was not by force of a royal decree, nor for of lack of a livelihood, nor motivated by any other reason that causes a person to

2021

On 10 May 1994, a month-long stand-off in the Israeli town of Yehud ended when a police sniper shot and killed an armed man and the police stormed the barricaded compound. This was not the first time that Israeli security forces faced an armed group in a stand-off. However, this was the first time that the group was Jewish. However, the besieged compound was less of a garrison than it was a site of protest. It was the private home of Rabbi Uzi Meshulam, where he and several dozens of his followers barricaded themselves and refused to come out. The gates were adorned with posters and artful displays made for onlookers and for the media, which reported on the happenings daily. Provisions were brought inside

Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, 2022

This essay analyses the racial constructs and discursive webs that justified the separation of babies from their families, with reference to the Kidnapped Babies Affair in Israel. The discourse of hygiene and the view of Yemenite Jews as 'Others,' as articulated by David Ben-Gurion and other Ashkenazi Zionist leaders of Israel, are especially highlighted. The article contrasts mainstream-media framing practices with the dominance of new digital narratives. While the emergence of social media grants agency to previously silenced victims, I argue that the attitude of the Israeli state remains a major force in the ongoing Israeli official rejection of this story. Despite a breakthrough in the public perception of this narrative, the road to full transparency and justice remains elusive.

Holy Land Studies, 2011

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother When the sky weeps for her mother. And I weep to make myself known To a returning cloud. I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood So that I could break the rule.' Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish, 'I Come From There' Prologue 'The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting' (Kundera 1999: 4) Bell Hooks wrote about the ways by which black women have been indoctrinated, from elementary schools to higher education, to accept, admire and further 'perpetuate both consciously and unconsciously the very evils that oppressed [them]' (Hooks 1981: 120), thus, implementing in their 'psyches a seed of the racial imperialism that would keep [them] forever in bondage' (Hooks 1981: 121). How can, then, she eloquently asks, 'one overthrow, change, or even challenge a system that you have