Israel declassifies 400,000 documents on 1950s baby kidnapping scandal

Authorities hope to finally bring closure to families of missing children allegedly kidnapped from hospitals and given for adoption; families want government to take responsibility

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu inaugurated an online database on Wednesday that gives the public full access to some 400,000 pages of declassified documents that the state hopes will help bring closure to the decades-long controversy known as the “Yemenite Children Affair.”

“Today we right a historic wrong,” Netanyahu said at a ceremony launching the database. “For close to 60 years people did not know the fate of their children, in a few minutes any person can access the pages containing all the information that the government of Israel has.”

This is “a brave and important act,” said Minister for Regional Cooperation Tzachi Hanegbi, who was tasked by the prime minister with overseeing an investigation into the affair and who gave the go-ahead for the declassification of the documents.

Since the 1950s, over 1,000 families — mostly immigrants from Yemen, but also dozens from the Balkans, North Africa and other Middle Eastern countries — have alleged their children were systematically kidnapped from Israeli hospitals and put up for adoption, sometimes abroad.

The claims were generally dismissed by authorities.

Over the past several decades, the government has appointed three investigative committees to probe the case, with all concluding the majority of children died in the hospital and were simply buried without the families’ being informed or involved. The last panel to probe the affair in 2001 reached similar conclusions, but sealed various testimonies from the probe in the state archive for 70 years.

Now they are being released.

But family members say there has been so much misinformation over the years and current confusion, it is doubtful families will get the closure they crave.

www.timesofisrael.com...

I read about the Yemenite Children Affair for the first time about 2 months ago. Sad stories. Other sites are reporting they declassified 200,000 not 400,000. The discrepancy might be because they are in the process of releasing more documents.

Everyone of these people that is still alive that was involved with this should be rounded up and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. How sick and twisted does a person have to be to do something like steal a child.

How sick and twisted does a person have to be to do something like steal a child.

Irradiating several thousand children (but not those of the European immigrants) was another nasty little episode in their dark history.
Mengele would have been proud.

a reply to: gmoneystunt

For a country who's claim to fame is coming from oppression.... It doesn't seem like anyone has learned anything.

Wonder where all the pro-Israel crowd is on this one?


Probably need an updated Hasbara playbook to comment.



This still goes on to this day.
400,000 pages for 1000 families???

What a load of bulllsh*t.
It's in the tens of thousands.

a reply to: Hazardous1408

Kind of hard to justify kidnapping and displacing whole groups of people.

Or at least that was the lesson we were taught from WWII.

a reply to: gmoneystunt

Not just Israel! This was happening everywhere! And, it was happening under the cloak of religious moral superiority.

Over the past five decades, as many as 300,000 newborn Spanish babies were stolen from their parents and sold to families that General Francisco Franco and the Catholic Church considered to be more devout. The original parents were told that their child had died, according to a recent BBC 2 TV documentary entitled “Spain’s Stolen Babies.”
www.newsytype.com...

Baby Scoop Era

From 1945 to 1973, it is estimated that up to 4 million mothers in the United States had children placed for adoption, with 2 million during the 1960s alone.[2] Annual numbers for non-relative adoptions increased from an estimated 33,800 in 1951 to a peak of 89,200 in 1970, then quickly declined to an estimated 47,700 in 1975.
..........
Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s, illegitimacy began to be defined in terms of psychological deficits on the part of the mother.[6] At the same time, a liberalization of sexual mores combined with restrictions on access to birth control led to an increase in premarital pregnancies.
The dominant psychological and social work view was that the large majority of unmarried mothers were better off being separated by adoption from their newborn babies.

I'm willing to bet a lot of these kids ended up in places you wouldn't send your worst enemy too and only acessed by the elites who see us as their undeserving underclass. The amount of evil it takes to take a child from their parents has to come right from the depths of he'll itself.

So it WASN'T a Dingo?

Parents unfit? According to cultural standards?

There is no clean corners

Mass abductions on the rise
We have observed in the past years that mass abductions of civilians, including children, have become an increasingly prevalent feature of conflict in many situations on the agenda of the Special Representative.

Armed groups abduct children in greater numbers and increasingly use abductions as a tactic to terrorize or target particular ethnic groups or religious communities.

For example, the 2014 annual report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict details how, in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic, over one thousand girls and boys were abducted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In one incident in the Syrian Arab Republic, ISIL abducted approximately 150 young boys on their way home after school exams in Aleppo. They were released from captivity after a few months, during which they were physically abused, indoctrinated and made to observe violent practices. At the end of 2014, ISIL issued a document justifying the sexual slavery of Yezidi girls abducted in Iraq.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram abducted hundreds of women and girls in major attacks in Chibok and across the country’s north-eastern region. Video statements released by Boko Haram indicated that the abductions were in retaliation against the Government for the detention of relatives and served as punishment for schoolchildren attending Western-style schools.

United Nations

Joseph Kony kidnapped 591 children in past three years, UN report reveals
The Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony has kidnapped nearly 600 children in the past three years, forcing boys to take "magical potions" and turning girls into sex slaves, the UN has found.

Some of the under-age recruits were used as fighters, human shields or spies for Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), according to a report presented to the UN security council.

Guardian

Up to 400 abducted Yazidi children are reportedly being trained as potential suicide bombers by Isis.

Kurdish authorities told CNN they had evidence 600 children were kidnapped from Iraq's Sinjar province and the surrounding Yazidi villages, but that 200 had managed to escape.

Independent

Children, however, are trafficked to countries of the MiddleEast to serve as camel jockeys, and often placed into situations of compulsory or forced labor in slave-like conditions, which are frequently accompanied by physical abuse. Reports indicate that children as young as three are either sold by their parents in exchange for as little as US$500, or kidnapped, and taken to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf States, where camel racing is a popular sport among the wealthy.

and much more in
Fordham International law Journal

Bangladesh
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated in 2004 that there were 10,000 underage girls used in commercial sexual exploitation in the country, but other estimates placed the figure as high as 29,000. Trafficking of women internally and internationally remained a problem...

As many as 10,000 children were used in brothels for commercial sexual exploitation, and procurers of minors were rarely prosecuted.

Iraq
Children are trafficked within the country and abroad for commercial sexual exploitation.

Albania

The country was a source country for trafficking of women and children for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor, although there has been a slow but steady decline in the number of persons trafficked each year. Greece is the main country of destination for trafficked women. Italy, Macedonia, and Kosovo were also destinations, with many victims trafficked onward to Western Europe. Traffickers largely used overland routes or falsified documents to transport their victims by airplane or ferry.

Lithuania

The law prohibits forced or compulsory labor, including by children; however, there were reports that women and children were trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation

Prostitution procon org

And all these are just a tip of the iceberg. World is so sick it makes you vomit !

a reply to: dollukka

By camel racing... Do u mean extra cheese and hotdog???? Saudi and usa are dogs....isreal too....I hate everyone now sorry....what a sick world.

originally posted by: shaneR
a reply to: dollukka

By camel racing... Do u mean extra cheese and hotdog???? Saudi and usa are dogs....isreal too....I hate everyone now sorry....what a sick world.

Well we tried to fix the world but we couldn't get enough people to vote giant meteor 2016.

originally posted by: buster2010

originally posted by: shaneR
a reply to: dollukka

By camel racing... Do u mean extra cheese and hotdog???? Saudi and usa are dogs....isreal too....I hate everyone now sorry....what a sick world.

Well we tried to fix the world but we couldn't get enough people to vote giant meteor 2016.

All nations have done this so its not just Israels past leaders. All past leaderships should be prosecuted as having a hand in this world wide.

The amount of evil it takes to take a child from their parents has to come right from the depths of he'll itself

That's what conservatisim gives you- hell.

Oh, and I heard that the Catholic church was doing this too, I believe in Canada but probably other places as well.