The Yemenite Children Affair: A Moral Call

Abstract

The immigration to Israel of most of Yemenite Jewry in 1948–1950, titled “Operation Magic Carpet” is symbolic of a miraculous leap in space and time from distant Yemen to the modern Jewish state. The Yemenite Jews’ utopian ethos, however, was far from able to foresee the trauma that awaited them in the transit camps where they were placed after their arrival in Israel: the kidnapping of thousands of infants in what became known as the “missing Yemenite-Jewish children affair.”