Israel’s stolen babies remains the state’s darkest secret | The National
Israel’s stolen babies remains the state’s darkest secret
It is Israel’s darkest secret – or so argues one Israeli journalist –
in a country whose short history is replete with dark episodes.
Last
month Tzachi Hanegbi, minister for national security, became the first
government official to admit that hundreds of babies had been stolen
from their mothers in the years immediately following Israel’s creation
in 1948. In truth, the number is more likely to be in the thousands.
For
nearly seven decades, successive governments – and three public
inquiries – denied there had been any wrongdoing. They concluded that
almost all the missing babies had died, victims of a chaotic time when
Israel was absorbing tens of thousands of new Jewish immigrants.
But
as more and more families came forward – lately aided by social media –
to reveal their suffering, the official story sounded increasingly
implausible.
Although
many mothers were told their babies had died during or shortly after
delivery, they were never shown a body or grave, and no death
certificate was ever issued. Others had their babies snatched from their
arms by nurses who berated them for having more children than they
could properly care for.
According to campaigners, as many as
8,000 babies were seized from their families in the state’s first years
and either sold or handed over to childless Jewish couples in Israel and
abroad. To many, it sounds suspiciously like child trafficking.
A
few of the children have been reunited with their biological families,
but the vast majority are simply unaware they were ever taken. Strict
Israeli privacy laws mean it is near-impossible for them to see official
files that might reveal their clandestine adoption.
Amar, 84, an Israeli Jew of Moroccan descent, holds a picture of her
baby, who she says was abducted in 1958, at her home in the village of
Kfar Chabad, near Tel-Aviv (AFP PHOTO / MENAHEM KAHANA)
