It Began as a Rumor: Stages in the Affair of the Missing Yemenite Children

The case of the `Missing Yemenite Children` refers to hundreds of infants and children of Yemenite immigrants who immigrated to Israel with the Mass-immigration during the first years after the establishment of the State. The parents were told that their children had passed away in the absorption camps or in hospitals to which they were transferred for medical treatment. However, in many cases the parents, who had not attended the funerals or received death certificates, were suspicious and doubted whether the children had really died. Already in the 19 fifties circulated rumors that the children were alive, and had been adopted by families of European origin. In the sixties many of the families received recruitment orders from the army for the children who had been officially reported as dead. This formed the basis for conspiracy theories claiming that the children had been kidnapped, smuggled out of the country and sold to Jewish families in U.S.A.

The lecture will analyze the issue from a historic perspective beginning with the absorption-process in the early days of the State Israel and proceeding to the four stages of the conspiracy-theory namely: Rumor, myth, narrative and finally psychosis. The last stage indicates the current situation in which activists claim that thousands of children have been kidnaped within the framework of criminal acts starting already during the period of the British mandate. In addition it is said that medical experiments were carried out on the missing children including children of Sefardic and even European-Ashenazic origin.