The Yemenite Children Affair

Ethnic Tensions, Immigration, and Public Records in Israel

Motti Inbari

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978774858
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Políticas de Oriente Medio

This edited collection brings together leading scholars in their field to discuss the Yemenite Children Affair including the health crisis, the public demand for an investigation, and the public discourse surrounding it. The Yemenite Children Affair was a tragic health crisis in which about 1,000 babies and toddlers died between 1949 and 1954. In most cases, the parents did not witness the death of their children and did not attend their funerals. Over the years, rumors spread that the babies had not died but were kidnapped by the Israeli authorities and sold to childless Ashkenazi or Holocaust survivors in Israel and the United States.

These rumors eventually created a public demand for an investigation. The contributors to this book analyze the policy and health challenges surrounding immigration to Israel in the 1950s, Operation Magic Carpet, the archives on the Yemenite Children Affair and public discourse surrounding it, testimonies at commissions, among other topics. Scholars of Jewish studies, Israel studies, Middle Eastern studies, public health, and political science will find this book of particular interest.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Policy, Medicine, and Health Challenges during the Great Immigration to Israel in the 1950s
• Chapter 2: A Continuous Tragedy: From “Operation Magic Carpet” to the “Yemenite Children Affair”
• Chapter 3: The Absorption Circumstances of the Yemenite Jewry in Israel and the Historical Association to the “Missing Yemenite Children Affair”
• Chapter 4: The Missing Children’s Epidemiological Database: The Lights and Shadows of Interlocking Historical Sources and Perspectives
• Chapter 5: The Archive and the Public Discourse
• Chapter 6: The Documents Don’t Matter: The Affair of the Yemenite Children and the Archives
• Chapter 7: Testimonies at the Committees of Inquiry over the Years into the Yemenite Children Affair and Insights for Oral History
• Chapter 8: The Invention of the Conspiracy Theory of the Yemenite Children Affair: From Ultra-Orthodoxy, Meir Kahane, and Israel’s Radical Left
• Chapter 9: Uzi Meshulam and the Yemenite Children Affair: Messianic Expectations, Anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodoxy, and Israel’s Radical Right
• Chapter 10: The Israeli Left and the Yemenite Children Affair: How a Post-Colonial Narrative Became an “Alternative Truth” in Radical Left Circles in Israel
• Appendix
• Index
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors