Amram

A forensic team from Israel's Health Ministry opens Yosef Melamed's grave in order to take a DNA sample, Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery, Tel Aviv, July 27, 2022. Melamed's family, who immigrated from Yemen, believe he was kidnapped along with hundreds of children from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 1940’s and 1950’s. (Oren Ziv)

Why is Israel digging up the graves of Mizrahi children?

After years of pressure, Israel is taking measures to uncover the fate of children, mostly Yemenite, who disappeared in the 1950s. +972 spoke with two activists about the families’ long road to justice.

By Ben Reiff August 24, 2022

Protesters demand recognition and reparations for the state's abduction of Yemenite, Mizrahi, and Balkan children between the late 1940s and the 1960s. June 21, 2018. (Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

Hundreds demand recognition, reparations for Israel’s practice of family separation

Hundreds of protesters chant outside Netanyahu’s residence and block major thoroughfares in Jerusalem demanding recognition, reparations, and accountability for the abduction of Yemenite, Balkan, and Mizrahi children by state authorities between the late 1940s and the 1960s. Roughly 350 people demonstrated outside of the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem on Thursday, calling on the government to officially…

By Haggai Matar June 22, 2018

A demonstrator delivers a speech during a protest to recognize the Yemenite Children's Affair, Tel Aviv, September 25, 2017. (Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

Hundreds protest to recognize the disappearance of Yemenite children

Hundreds block central Tel Aviv street while calling on the government to recognize one of the most harrowing chapters in Israeli history. Over 500 people demonstrated Monday evening in central Tel Aviv, calling on the state to recognize its responsibility for the Yemenite children’s affair, which took place in the years after the country was…

By Haggai Matar September 26, 2017

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Israelis protest over the Yemenite children affair, Jerusalem, June 21, 2017. (Activestills.org)

PHOTOS: Thousands protest in J’lm over disappeared Yemenite children

Thousands of Israelis took to Jerusalem’s streets on Wednesday evening to demand answers over the disappearance of Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan babies in the early years of the state. By Yali (Yael) Marom, Eli Bitan and Haggai Matar Thousands of people gathered in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening in order to protest the kidnapping of Yemenite,…

By Haggai Matar and Yali (Yael) Marom June 21, 2017

Photo of Yemenite children who were taken from their parents and disappeared.

Israel’s national wound that cannot heal

A group of dedicated activists have been working tirelessly over the past several years to force the state to come clean about the disappearance of hundreds of Yemenite children in the early days of the state. They might just succeed. One of the aspects that is easiest to forget about the Yemenite children affair is that…

By Haggai Matar June 18, 2017

Photo of Yemenite children who were taken from their parents and disappeared.

Israel opens files on disappeared Yemenite children. But is it enough?

The declassification of hundreds of thousands of documents on one of the most chilling and tragic chapters in Israeli history is a victory for Mizrahi activists. But many files, including on alleged kidnappings of Yemenite children, are still out of reach for the public. Israel’s State Archives last week released over 200,000 previously classified documents on to the…

By Haokets January 2, 2017

Photo of Yemenite children who were taken from their parents and disappeared.

The state must come clean about the fate of the Yemenite children

Between 1948 and 1952, thousands of Yemenite babies, children of immigrants to the newly-founded State of Israel were reportedly taken from their parents by Israel’s nascent medical establishment and disappeared. Now it is time for the state to come clean about what really happened. By Tom Mehager In all our innocence we believed that if…

By Haokets June 26, 2016