Description

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

Chapter 1
Policy, Medicine, and Health Challenges during the Great Immigration to Israel in the 1950s
Dorit Weiss and Shifra Shvarts

Chapter 2
A Continuous Tragedy: From “Operation Magic Carpet” to the “Yemenite Children Affair”
Esther Meir-Glitzenstein

Chapter 3
The Absorption Circumstances of the Yemenite Jewry in Israel and the Historical Association to the “Missing Yemenite Children Affair”
Dov Levitan

Chapter 4
The Missing Children's Epidemiological Database: The Lights and Shadows of Interlocking Historical Sources and Perspectives
Adiya Shubi and Yechiel Michael Barilan

Chapter 5
The Archive and the Public Discourse
Roy Peled

Chapter 6
The Documents Don't Matter: The Affair of the Yemenite Children and the Archives
Yaacov Lozowick

Chapter 7
Testimonies at the Committees of Inquiry over the Years into the Yemenite Children Affair and Insights for Oral History
Avi Picard

Chapter 8
The Invention of the Conspiracy Theory of the Yemenite Children Affair: From Ultra-Orthodoxy, Meir Kahane, and Israel's Radical Left
Sariel Birnbaum

Chapter 9
Uzi Meshulam and the Yemenite Children Affair: Messianic Expectations, Anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodoxy, and Israel's Radical Right
Motti Inbari

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
Nirit Ben Ari

Product details

Published Dec 15 2024
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 320
ISBN 9781666940701
Imprint Lexington Books
Illustrations 7 BW Photos, 8 Tables
Dimensions 229 x 152 mm
Series Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Jewish History, Historiography, and Memory
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Motti Inbari

Contributor

Dorit Weiss

Contributor

Shifra Shvarts

Contributor

Dov Levitan

Contributor

Adiya Shubi

Contributor

Roy Peled

Contributor

Yaacov Lozowick

Contributor

Avi Picard

Contributor

Motti Inbari

Contributor

Nirit Ben Ari

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Environment: Staging