Families of Israel’s missing Yemeni babies continue search for truth
The families of Yemeni babies and toddlers who disappeared 70 years ago are still fighting for justice.
JERUSALEM — The demand for closure continues to fester 70 years later concerning the disappearance of hundreds, perhaps more than 1,000 Jewish children whose families immigrated to Israel between 1948 and 1954.
In the latest chapter in this painful saga, two groups recently filed a Freedom of Information request demanding that the Health Ministry publish a 2021 investigation into the case of the missing babies and toddlers whose families immigrated from Yemen to Israel in the early years of the state.
That report concluded that medical teams influenced by racist ideas about the newly arrived families from underdeveloped countries separated parents from their children and put children up for adoption without authorization. However, the report was never made public, leaving family members and activists clamoring for the truth and demanding that the state take responsibility for the institutionalized racism of that time.
In May, Health Minister Moshe Arbel appointed a committee to examine the involvement of the medical community in the affair, saying the 2021 investigation had been flawed.
