Government unseals documents on Yemenite children affair

The government on Sunday voted to allow the opening of the sealed documents relating to the commissions of inquiry on the alleged disappearance of more than 1,000 Yemenite Jewish children in Israel from 1948 to 1954.

"The families whose children disappeared, as well as the public, deserve to know what the various inquiry commissions discovered," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Likud Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, who was appointed to reopen and examine the files to decide whether the lifting of their confidentiality was possible, said: "This decision [to declassify the documents] will not make the pain and anguish of thousands of immigrants -- brothers, sisters and families -- disappear.

"However, this decision has two important aspects. The first is that it will truly allow the families and the public to go online and see the full extent of this sad and bleak picture, as well as get closer to understanding what really happened there."

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said: "There is a great public interest to expose the affair and as much information as possible. The era of concealment ended long ago."

Among others, the decision will enable the release of confidential records from a 2001 investigative commission on the conduct of the welfare authorities at the time. The commission also investigated the claim that the state was involved in the abductions of the children, as well as examined individual cases brought before it.

The state says it will not release personal information of families who do not want their stories exposed. Medical, welfare and other sensitive information that may violate their privacy will be available to the relevant families only and will not be made public. Cases of missing or deceased persons will be released unless the family requests otherwise. Families will not be permitted to open adoption files, unless the adopted individuals approve. If a family requests the opening of an adoption file, the state will approach the adopted individual to request their approval.

Despite the decision, Rabbi Dr. Aharon Ben David, who has pushed to unseal the documents, told Israel Hayom he was not pleased.

"This is not a day of celebration. With all the best intentions of Tzachi Hanegbi, the prime minister and the government in general, they will not permit documents that disgrace the state to be revealed," Ben David said.

"We have had high hopes in the past, but they too were shattered, causing us a great deal of disappointment, just like today. I have no doubt that documents and information have been destroyed or left out from the archives. The system had literally decades to destroy problematic documents. I doubt whether those who lost their children will ever find them. This is a tragedy for generations to come."

Amram, an NGO dedicated to researching the disappearance of the Jewish children from Yemen, the Balkans and Arab countries, clarified that the release of the documents must come with a public statement that these documents constitute a limited part of the material and that various archives on the issue were destroyed throughout the years, some of them during state commission investigations.

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