The Council of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate said today it would examine a charge by a group of Yemenite parents that a number of their children “disappeared” soon after the Yemenites arrived in Israel when the State was established.
The Association of Yemenite Parents, which had threatened to picket the inauguration last week of the new home of Israel’s Parliament, submitted to the Council extensive material purporting to prove that 250 children had disappeared.
The parents had charged that the children were taken as infants from the immigrant camps where the newcomers were temporarily settled on arrival. They claimed that they had been told later that the children had died in hospitals but said that no bodies were ever returned or death certificates produced. The association said that a number of the Yemenite parents had received army draft notices for long-lost children who would now be of army age. The coincidence of several such reports by Yemenite parents led to formation of the association to investigate the mystery.
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