Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40342143

Between 1948 and 1954, up to 5,000 Yemenite Jewish babies disappeared in Israel. This is known as the Yemenite Children Affair. Parents were told their children died in hospitals. But most never received bodies, burial sites, or clear answers. They were often told the news after the funerals had already taken place.

For decades, the Israeli state covered this up. Four official committees investigated. The state kept hundreds of thousands of documents classified. These documents will not be available to the public until 2071.

In 2016, Israeli Minister Tzachi Hanegbi finally admitted in an interview: "They took the children and gave them away. I don't know where." He claimed at least hundreds were taken without consent.

In 2021, Haaretz exposed a suppressed Health Ministry report. The report admitted that doctors, nurses, and caregivers took the children. They acted as middlemen for adoptions. Sometimes they did it for money. They justified this with racist views of "backward immigrants" from Middle Eastern countries.

The testimonies in the Knesset were horrifying. Undernourished babies died after being given experimental protein injections. Hearts were removed from children and sent to US doctors for research. Children were buried in mass graves without their parents.

The Israeli government approved compensation and an "expression of sorrow" in 2021. But it never fully admitted the systemic kidnapping. This is a very dark face of the Israeli state.