The story began in the 1950s, when grandparents Izar and Sarah Tsarom immigrated from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, to the Atlit migrant camp in the Palestinian city of Haifa, accompanied by their two sons.
There, the grandmother gave birth to her daughter, “Ziona,” but the joy did not last long, as the infant was admitted to the hospital, and after a few days the medical administration informed the mother that her child had died and had been buried. The grandparents quickly complied with the story without doubt or request to see the body, and they lived for decades with this consolation, until their other son, “Zion,” grew up without knowing that he had a sister.
Everything changed in the late 1960s, when a relative of the family who works in the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics revealed a shocking surprise while reviewing official data. It turned out that Ziona was alive and not dead, but had been separated and adopted by a wealthy and well-known family in Haifa, with close relationships with senior government officials.
The secrets of sudden closure
This hidden tragedy of the “Tsarom” family is only one story among thousands of stories of families – most of whom are Yemenis, Tunisians, Libyans, and from the Balkan countries – who lived through a similar tragedy documented in the archives of the “Amram” Association, which reveals the extent of the systematic kidnapping system. However, in the face of this huge archive of victims and testimonies, the reality today proves that the policy of sweeping away facts and closing files is still continuing forcefully to prevent this file from going public.
At a time when those affected commemorate the International Day of Remembrance of the Disappearance of Yemeni Children, yesterday, Monday, a recent investigation conducted by Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper revealed a new shock, as the committee affiliated with the Ministry of Health, charged with investigating the involvement of medical officials in the case, was closed without reaching results or informing public opinion.
This government committee was formed by Health Minister Moshe Arbel in May 2023 to examine the medical sector’s involvement in the issue of Yemeni, Mizrahi and Balkan children, with the aim of officially investigating the health system’s role in the disappearance of thousands of infants in the first years of Israel’s life.
This step came primarily as a response to sharp protests that followed an implicit rejection of a draft internal report issued in 2021, prepared by Professor Itamar Grotto and Dr. Shlomit Avni, which proved, in an unprecedented manner, the health system’s actual involvement in racist practices.
That document, which was frozen, caused shock in Israel when it revealed, with overwhelming evidence, the conduct of medical experiments and autopsies on children without the consent of their families, and the adoption of a system of separating healthy children in migrant centers for the purpose of adoption while issuing false death notices. The recommendation decisively called for an official and historic apology to the families.
“They are trying to cover it up,” said Professor Itamar Grotto, one of the authors of the report that concluded that the system was run in a racist manner.
Grotto stressed that despite the change of ministers and executive directors in the Ministry of Health, the handling of this issue is still characterized by cover-up and lack of transparency, adding: “The main problem is that the health system showed racist behavior in the end… People do not like to face this fact. Racism has not disappeared from the world, and continuing to try to eliminate it is the very mistake.”
On the other hand, the Ministry of Health justified the closure of the committee in its statement, saying: “After studying the issue, the committee saw that it does not have the appropriate tools to conduct a comprehensive historical study on it, which is doubtful about the possibility of conducting it at the present time, and that it is unable to go beyond the conclusions of previous official studies on the subject, including the various investigation committees that examined this issue in depth.”
The paralysis did not stop only with the work of the committee, but also extended to obstruct the process of opening the graves, as the Forensic Medicine Institute did not complete the process of deciphering four of the five graves that were opened.
Lawyer Rami Tasbari, who accompanies the families, said: “We were in the middle of the procedures to open the graves, and then the war broke out, a bloody war. A match was found in the first grave, and we did not receive a response regarding the other four graves, and there are ten other graves that the court confirmed that the families are waiting to open.”
In the face of this reality, Tom Mahager, CEO of the Amram Association – which seeks recognition from the Israeli authorities in the case of the disappearance and death of thousands of Yemeni children – emphasizes the root of the crisis, saying: “This dangerous issue began with the kidnapping of children from their parents, and continued under cover-up for 75 years. We will continue to work with the families, publish their testimonies, hold awareness days, and publish relevant materials. We will not rest and we will not be silent until justice is achieved.”
Stealing in the dark
The chapters of these families’ stories began in 1949, when the Jewish Agency deported about 50,000 Yemeni Jews, in an operation called “the Carpet of the Wind,” to include them in the components of Jewish society during the founding of Israel. However, approximately 2,000 of their children disappeared successively under the pretext of death, and their fate remains unknown until this moment.
Al Jazeera tracked the file in a special investigation by the Al-Muttahiri program in 2023, as it turned out that the operations to extract children from their families were “systematic and organized” for the benefit of parties that supervised their availability for adoption by other Jewish families, and that the operations were taking place in one format across multiple stages that began before the arrival of these children and their families to Israel.
Upon tracing the documents and Israeli archives, it became clear that there are many circumstances that support what researchers and the families of some of these children have said, that they are still alive and that they were kidnapped for undeclared goals. The investigation revealed that the families were not allowed to take the bodies of their children or even know their burial places. They were not given death certificates or even allowed to hold a funeral for them, which confirmed that the claim of their death was incorrect.
Many documents were hidden in the Israeli archives, which could have been of utmost importance to the work of the investigation committees. They were destroyed or declared lost before the committees’ sessions, or the names of the children were deleted after they were copied.
Confession without apology
Upon returning to the file archive, we find that Israel followed several paths in dealing with the file. In addition to opening a committee to investigate the file, the Israeli government approved in February 2021 a compensation plan worth 162 million shekels (about 50 million dollars) for the families of immigrants who came to Israel in the first years.
Analysts believe that this means implicit Israeli recognition of the file, and several attempts to obscure it, as Mahager confirms when he says: “Before forming the committee, we met with members of the Shas party who assured us of the seriousness of its work, but it turned out that it was closed and did not accomplish anything significant, which confirms the complete cover-up of the issue.”
Although Israel – at the time – expressed its regret and understanding for the suffering inflicted on the families, no official apology was issued for what represented one of the most controversial and sensitive issues in Israeli society, and the absence of an official apology to date has sparked criticism from those who help the affected families, and criticism has also been directed at the terms of the plan that exclude many of those who were part of this tragedy.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in a statement at the time that he would pay families 200,000 shekels (about 61,000 dollars) for each child whose fate remains unknown. Receiving compensation is conditional on a written commitment not to file any further lawsuits regarding this matter, and to waive any existing legal action and close it, which confirms the ongoing cover-up attempts over the years.
This compensation plan came after several lawsuits filed by families, and although Israel declared these cases invalid under the statute of limitations, the Supreme Court did not rule on the matter at the time.
