Edited by: TJVNews.com
The Israeli cabinet on Monday approved a proposal for the state to recognize the Yemenite, Mizrachi and Balkan children affair and for the transfer of financial compensation to the families that were hurt in the early years of the state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “I have submitted for Cabinet approval a decision on financial compensation for the families that were hurt in the Yemenite, Mizrachi and Balkan children affair. This is among the most painful affairs in the history of the State of Israel. The time has come for the families whose infants were taken from them to receive recognition by the State and Government of Israel, and financial compensation as well. The compensation will not atone for the terrible suffering that the families went through and are going through. This is unbearable suffering. The families, whose suffering is too great to bear, must receive a little of the consolation that they are due. I would like to ask the Education Minister to include the Yemenite children affair in the textbooks of Israeli schoolchildren; this affair must be recognized. I thank the ministers and MKs, and former MK Nurit Koren, who were active on this issue, and Prime Minister’s Office Director General Tzachi Braverman who successfully led this issue.”
Finance Minister Yisrael Katz said: “In this decision, the Government of Israel recognizes a painful affair that has been seared into the annals of the state, the investigation of which has yet to be concluded. We will act to fully utilize the rights of the members of the grief-stricken families, who have carried this pain with them until today. Thus we will begin to heal, if only a little, the wounds of history. Alongside this, we will work to move forward on commemorating the glorious history of Yemenite Jews, which is entwined forever in the history of our people.”
In the framework of the decision that has been approved, the Government of Israel expresses regret over the events that occurred in the early days of the state and recognizes the suffering of the families whose children were part of this painful affair.
The Cabinet approved the outline for NIS 162 million in financial compensation for the families that were hurt, which will be allocated as follows: NIS 150,000 for the family members of a child that died for whom notification – including cause of death – was not delivered to the family in real time, or of a child who died and whose place of burial has not been located, or whose place of burial was located after long delay.
Compensation of up to NIS 200,000 was approved for members of the family that was hurt, in the event that the most recent commission concluded that the fate of the child was unknown.
It was also decided that family members, that were determined by one of the three commissions that dealt with the affair (the committee of inquiry on revealing the Yemenite children, the committee on clarifying the fate of the missing Yemenite children and the state commission of inquiry on the disappearance of Yemenite immigrant children from 1948-1954) that their child died or whose fate is unknown, will be able to file an application for financial compensation during June-November 2021. The decision was formulated by the Finance and Justice ministries.
The Yemenite Children Affair refers to the disappearance of an estimated 1,500 to 5,000 babies and toddlers of new immigrants to the newly founded state of Israel from 1948 to 1954. The majority of immigrants arriving in Israel during this period were from Yemen, with considerable numbers coming from Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and the Balkans, as was reported by Wikipedia.
According to low estimates, one in eight children of Yemenite families disappeared. Hundreds of documented statements made over the years by the parents of these infants allege that their children were removed from them. There have been allegations that no death certificates were issued, and that parents did not receive any information from Israeli and Jewish organizations as to what had happened to their infants, as was reported by Wikipedia. However, Yaacov Lozowick, Chief Archivist at the Israel State Archives, has documented records showing that while the fate of a small fraction of the “missing” children cannot be traced, in the overwhelming majority of cases the children died in the hospital, were buried, and the families notified, although these illnesses, deaths, and family notifications were handled with enormous insensitivity. In Lozowick’s opinion, “There was no crime, but there was a sin.”
Widespread accusations continue that the infants were given or sold to childless Holocaust survivors in a covert systematic operation, according to the Wikipedia report. Conclusions reached by three separate official commissions set up to investigate the issue unanimously found that the majority of the children were buried; having died from diseases. The last of these enquiries, the Cohen-Kedmi Commission’s report of 2001, as with its two predecessors, relied almost exclusively on documentation provided by the entities under investigation.
Where there was conflict between official documentation and witness’s oral testimonies, the Commission relied on the documentation, and the Commission failed to investigate the possibility of private interests engaged in illegal adoption, according to information on Wikipedia. “Many of the records and protocols of the three investigative Commissions, particularly those conducted behind closed doors, are not accessible to researchers or the public. The truth about the whereabouts of the children is still buried, denied and suppressed.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu described the issue as ‘an open wound that continues to bleed’ for the many families not knowing what happened to the children who disappeared.
