Suspended Affair: Current Policy on the Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan Children Affair
This article examines current government policy regarding recognition of the affair of the Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan children. The article focuses on the analysis of two measures by Israeli policymakers: the release of archival documents from the national commission of inquiry as well as additional accompanying documents, which occurred in 2016, and the activity of the special parliamentary committee on the disappearance of Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan children, headed by Knesset member Nurit Koren (2017-2019). The article looks at how the political and parliamentary arena responds to the social demand for official recognition of the affair of the abducted and missing children and analyzes the practices and discourses surrounding the affair. It finds that while the state takes political measures to promote recognition of the affair, it also uses practices that suspend the decision about its official status. State power is exercised directly and indirectly through postponing decisions, interrupting them and withholding them. I argue that the existing policy avoids official recognition of the affair and leaves it in a liminal status, in a kind of suspended time between the past and the future, while using rhetoric that emphasizes the need to expose the truth. That rhetorical method aims to turn the research work to uncover the truth from a concrete action into a declaration – a statement of the need to investigate the affair without ordering its actual execution – and to suspend the state and government recognition of the affair.