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The Yemenite Children Affair: a Moral Call* The Yemenite Children Affair: A Moral Call* The Yemenite Children Affair: A Moral Call* Tova Gamliel, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel Abstract The immigration to Israel of most of Yemenite Jewry in 1948–1950, titled “Operation Magic Carpet” is symbolic of a miraculous leap in space and time from distant Yemen to the modern Jewish state. The Yemenite Jews’ utopian ethos, however, was far from able to foresee the trauma that awaited them in the transit camps where they were placed after their arrival in Israel: the Kidnapping of thousands of infants in what became known as the “missing Yemenite-Jewish children affair.” Introduction1 The immigration to Israel of most of Yemenite Jewry in 1948–1950, titled “Operation Magic Carpet” by Israel, is symbolic of a miraculous leap in space and time from distant Yemen to the modern Jewish state. The Yemenite Jews’ utopian ethos, however, was far from able to foresee the trauma that awaited them in the transit camps where they were placed after their arrival in Israel: the kidnapping of thousands of infants in what became known as the “missing Yemenite-Jewish children affair.” Parents’ testimonies about the abductions reveal a similar pattern of deception: they were asked to surrender their children to “infants’ hostels” or medical facilities on the pretext that the youngsters needed better care than the parents could provide in the shacks where they had been housed. Some babies were forcibly seized by care workers, loaded into ambulances, and whisked away to clinics or hospitals. Several days later, the parents were told that their offspring had died. The parents were never shown the children’s bodies and, of course, had no opportunity to bury them. Few received death certificates and the isolated exceptions were tardy and after-the-fact. Several dozen children were returned to their parents after raucous protestations; the fate of most of the others remains unknown. Repeated overtures to law authorities, government offices, and sundry * I am immensely grateful to Dr. Yigal Ben-Shalom, President of the Association for the Cultivation of Society, Culture, Documentation, and Research, for his welcome activity in promoting research into the culture of Yemenite Jewry, for generously funding the collection and the translation of this article, and for his extraordinary involvement at all stages of this endeavor. 1 This article is an abridged and revised version of the introductory chapter to Children of the Heart: New Aspects of Research on the Yemenite Children Affair. Edited by Tova Gamliel and Nathan Shifriss. Tel Aviv: Resling, [2019] (Hebrew). 1 Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal Volume 17 Number 2 (2020) ISSN 1209-9392 © 2021 Women in Judaism, Inc. All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. The Yemenite Children Affair: A Moral Call* officials turned up nothing. The children were not traced and no proof of their death was given. Some were found years later in the custody of other families. Is the Affair worthy of Israeli intellectuals’ attention? Does it offer room for intellectualization? And, to paraphrase Gayatri SpivaK’s famous question, can the subaltern win over the intellectuals in their aspiration to reveal the truth? The answer that Israeli academia has invented for these questions, although complex, sheds precious light onto this book, a collection of articles that is largely the outcome of an academic conference held at Bar- Ilan University in the winter of 2013. The sociopolitical value of this collection rests on two contrasting fundaments. One is the increasingly solid status of the Affair in the Israeli public mind, a process recently allowing the question of the victims’ entitlement to recognition of their narrative and, in turn, of their struggle to uncover the truth, to rise to the surface. The other is the nature and tendencies of the Israeli field of knowledge-creation, which leaves the Affair outside its boundaries and, by so doing, strengthens its being labeled “aberrant.” In my eyes, the Affair is analogous to the Dreyfus affair: it carries a narrative of injustice that fragments the intellectual discourse in Israel and demands self-contemplation and soul- searching. My self-contemplation is years long. From the time the kidnapped children became a distant memory until the parents found it necessary to talk about them once again, they had children ,( ﺐﻠﻘﻟا ﺪﻟو ) become the world’s orphans. Their parents spoke of them as walad al-kalb of the heart (the title of this collection), an expression that reflects both parents’ love, and natural ownership, of their children. For years, alongside social activists, I tried to arrange their “adoption” by academia and the arts—but my efforts fell short. Academia and the arts proved to be not only arenas of expression but also arenas of power. The “children of the heart” were crowded out by silence and letters of rejection by the editors of publishing houses and journals, professors, artists, and film directors—evoking Rabbi Shalom Shabazi’s words: “The doors of the generous were locked.” My efforts at advocacy made demands of me and were powerfully manifested in the emotional-ethical work I performed as I edited this collection up to the last moments of proofing. As an editor, I undertake a dual demarche: to invite the readers to an unbiased discussion, as far as possible, of this fraught Affair, and to note—reveal—the inner impetus, the motive force that prompted my decision ab initio to enlist in a discussion of this kind and 2 Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal Volume 17 Number 2 (2020) ISSN 1209-9392 © 2021 Women in Judaism, Inc. All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. The Yemenite Children Affair: A Moral Call* to pledge the best of my ability to it. I intend this be an engagement in the discovery of knowledge, one vested with nothing apart from the discovery itself, the reflection. The remarks that follow are prefaced by comments about the status of the truth as seen by me and by many among the second and third generations—the offspring of parents who reached Israel in the great immigration wave that immediately followed the founding of the country. For us, the story given over and accepted in the family transmission is personal and, as such, known in its full experiential sense. Even as it retains the label of capital-I injustice, it continues to hemorrhage, although compressed in our memories of the failures of that immigration wave. The Injustice, no longer repressible, is seen among us as a traumatic truth of truths, an axiom that by definition needs no confirmation and, insulted, refuses to bestir itself in defense of its credibility. From my childhood days to this moment, the forlorn sight and voice of my paternal grandmother Sa’ada, now deceased, became part of my psyche; repeatedly they cry out to me, imploring me to do whatever I could to remember and not to forget. My Uncle Haim, the son of her old age, was three years old or so and amazingly healthy in 1949, when she was ordered to deliver him to the crèche at the Rosh Ha’Ayin immigrant camp. Although she did not understand the reason for this, it took little prodding for her to obey the directive of the nurses in their white uniforms. My grandmother related that she had been placed under immense psychological pressure that left her no choice. Like other women in the camp, she convinced herself that the nurses knew what they were demanding; after all, they were in charge. They were good Jews like Jews everywhere, dedicated to bringing over the members of my grandmother’s family and community to the Holy Land. After surrendering her son to the infants’ home, she visited him there every day for a few days, until the morning he disappeared. That morning, she arrived as usual and asked to see him. Not as usual, however, the nurses approached her and told her flatly that the boy had died. “Died?” she cried, stunned. “How? Yesterday he was cheery and looked fine!” The nurses offered no answer that might assuage her dismay, and she never saw her son again. For much time to come, she repeatedly told me about that bitter day and the days of dismay that followed. In midday she would erupt in sudden and unexplained weeping, wailing out her inner anguish. So, it went until the day of her death. In the tableau of my memory, I imagine her back then, stunned to hear of Haim’s death, pounding her palms, sobbing piteously, rushing to and fro, banging on the windows of the infants’ home, throwing herself against the door. If her son is dead, if it is really so, then would 3 Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal Volume 17 Number 2 (2020) ISSN 1209-9392 © 2021 Women in Judaism, Inc. All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. The Yemenite Children Affair: A Moral Call* they just do her the kindness of letting her say goodbye? she cries.
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