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The mysterious disappearance of Yemenite children in Israel is the focus of a new play
(New York Jewish Week) — Shortly after the State of Israel was founded, Shanit Keter-Schwartz was born on a dirt floor, in a hut made of aluminum siding outside the burgeoning town of Tel Aviv. She was the second of six children, the daughter of Yemenite Jews who had recently immigrated to the new country. They’d faced discrimination and violence in their country of origin, so when Jewish emissaries turned up in 1949 to bring 50,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel as a part of “Operation Flying Carpet,” they were all in.
Unfortunately, Keter-Schwartz’s upbringing in Israel was no magic carpet ride. “[Yemenite Jews] were seen as savages, primitive, inferior in the eyes of the Ashkenazi Jews,” Keter-Schwartz recalled in an interview with the New York Jewish Week. “They were not sophisticated or educated. It was a cultural domination, a collective trauma in Israel. They faced war, hunger, poverty, and living in very harsh conditions.”
The worst, though, wasn’t near-starvation due to rationing, or the harsh conditions of the shanty towns that these new immigrants were placed in, or the way European children wrinkled their nose at her and called her smelly. No, the worst was when the government stole her sister, Sarah, whom Keter-Schwartz never saw again.
In what has become known as the Yemenite Children Affair, more than 1,000 children of Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan descent were separated from their children during the first decade of Israel’s existence. The families and their advocates have long insisted, over denials by officials, that the children were taken from their families by the Ashkenazi government during the first decade of Israel’s existence. More often than not, parents were told their children had died when they had, in fact, been given to families of European descent for adoption, according to Amram Association, one of several organizations dedicated to documenting these abductions and advocating for victims’ families.
Now, Keter-Schwartz — a writer and performer who lives in Los Angeles, and a mother to two grown daughters — has brought to life her family’s story and her search for her missing sister in the form of a one-woman show. Premiering on Thursday at New York City Center, and running through May 15, “Daughter of the Wicked” chronicles her family’s journey from the Yemenite ma’abarot (refugee camps) to shikunim (government housing projects), where they lived in a tiny two-room apartment amid a melting pot of Jewish immigrants who were often at odds with one another.
“It is overcrowded, and the people who live here come from many different places. In their countries they were… respected by their communities,” she says in the show, which is named after one of the many Yemenite curses her mother would hurl at her when she’d done something wrong. “But here [in Israel] they are forced into stereotypes.”
“Israel had no choice but to bring the Jews from the Arab countries because the European Jews population had been greatly diminished after the Holocaust, but they didn’t want us,” Keter-Schwartz told the New York Jewish Week. “They took control of our lives, tried to assimilate us, wanted the whole country to be secular and uniform. They made all the decisions for us.”
One such “decision” made by the government, she said, was to remove her oldest brother, Yossi, from the family home to “re-educate” him at an Ashkenazi kibbutz. It worked: Yossi returned as a proud secular farmer, disdainful and ashamed of his spiritualist, religious family and their traditional ways.
The disappearance of her baby sister, Sarah, inspired Keter-Schwartz’s play, which is also informed by the kabbalistic teachings of her father. (Russ Rowland)
In the case of Keter-Schwartz’s sister, the abduction occurred directly after she was born. “When my father went to the hospital to pick up the twins, my siblings, he returned only with David. They told him that the girl, Sarah, was sick, and he should come back the following day. But when he came back, they told him that she had died,” Keter-Schwartz said. “Being naive, he didn’t question this. He didn’t ask to see a death certificate. He didn’t even know [a certificate] existed. He didn’t demand to see her body, didn’t think to bury her or give her funeral rites. He never suspected for a minute they could deceive him.”
This story, and others, is conveyed in “Daughter of the Wicked” through a series of monologues, each tied to an idea from Kabbalah,the Jewish mystical tradition. Keter-Schwartz defines each concept — like ahava (love), metsuka (hardship), busha (shame) — then tells a personal story that relates to the topic.
With this framework, Keter-Schwartz pays homage to her father, a spiritualist rabbi who spent his days poring over holy texts and divining the true meaning of the universe. She reads from his writings — which were collected and published towards the end of his life as a book, “Nachash HaNechoshet” — detailing her complex relationship to a man who was both an inspiration and, at times, inscrutable to all around him.
“The play is set in a hotel room, while I’m waiting for my sister to show up,” Keter-Schwartz explains. “As I wait, I tell my life. Behind me, on three screens, there’s archival footage from the 1950s that I got from Steven Spielberg’s archive. That footage tells the story, too, and so does the music.” The accompanying music, which transitions the audience from segment to segment, was written by Israeli composer Lilo Fedida, using traditional Yemenite melodies and instruments.
“We lived with this [tragedy] all my childhood, and I’ve been wondering all these years about my missing sister,” said Keter-Schwartz. “If I see her on the street, will I recognize her? Where does she live? Is she happy? I felt guilty that I never really tried to find her, I was so busy with my own life. But now I need to know.”
As a young woman, Keter-Schwartz said she went to great lengths to distance herself from her family’s tragedies. She lived in Amsterdam, London and New York, finally finding her footing in Los Angeles. She changed her name — from Shoshana to Shanit — and declared herself a new person in a new land. It was only when she lost all but one of her siblings, as well as both parents, that she felt an urge to revisit the past. When her last surviving sibling got so ill he almost died, she swore to search for Sarah. Initially, the idea was just to hire a private investigator to try to locate her. During her search, though, she began to feel an urge to share her story.
“I’d never written a play, so it took me two years [working] with coaches,” says Keter-Schwartz. “I’ve been an actress all my life, I’ve edited other people’s scripts, I produced movies, but to actually write — ha! I had amazing coaches. I’m especially grateful to Yigal Chatzor, the Israeli playwright. He brought the Israeli spice and the humor, which is wonderful now because now the play is balanced. It’s heart-wrenching and it’s hysterical. It’s everything, you know.”
The Yemenite Children Affair has never been formally confirmed by the state of Israel, which maintains the position that most of the babies died of malaria or malnutrition and were not, as some have proposed, sold to Ashkenazi families in exchange for donations to the young country. Several government-led commissions have claimed that there was no official wrongdoing, but testimonies continue to emerge that suggest otherwise. According to a 2016 article in Yediot Ahronot, a prominent Israeli news source, the government has sealed the official records of these disappearances until 2071, despite ongoing demonstrations and demands for actions.
In 2021, the Israeli government authorized tens of millions of dollars in reparations to families whose children disappeared while in government care. Nonetheless, no official admission of guilt or apology has been issued, a fact which caused many affected families to reject the plan, calling it “hush money.” Only a fraction of the affected families are eligible for these payments and, according to recent reporting, very few have claimed the money. Less than 1% of the allocated funds have been distributed thus far.
For Keter-Schwartz, no amount of money could compensate for the loss of her sister. She’s more interested in creating connections with others who lost family members and bringing awareness to this chapter in Israeli history. “Going back to my roots, revisiting the past, is an act of forgiveness,” Keter-Schwartz said in a statement. “By writing this play, I was able to forgive and accept the past. I hope that when audiences see my play they come to terms with their own history, and that they feel a sense of what it means to be free, and the challenges that confront us in maintaining that freedom.”
That is a major throughline of “Daughter of the Wicked”: Keter-Schwartz does not forsake the country that gave her her identity and childhood; rather, she insists on loving it while demanding recognition of past wrongs. Towards the end of her show, Keter Ashkenazi raises both arms to the sky and screams at those who wronged her: “My country! I blame you, shame on you for forsaking us, shame on you!”
But then, she lowers her arms and says, voice cracking with heartbreak: “I love you, I blame you, I love you. My country, I love you.”
—
The post The mysterious disappearance of Yemenite children in Israel is the focus of a new play appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Holocaust Denial Is Best Predicted by Belief in Other Conspiracy Theories, New Research Shows
White supremacist Nick Fuentes with a crowd of supporters after speaking at the America First Political Action Conference 4 outside of Huntington Place in in Detroit, Michigan, on June 15, 2024, after he and his supporters were ejected from the Turning Point USA ”People’s Convention.” Photo: Dominic Gwinn/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
The best predictor of Holocaust denial is belief in other conspiracy theories, which is driven by low trust in institutions, according to newly published research.
The report, released by The Center for Heterodox Social Science and written by Canadian professor Eric Kaufman, is titled, “Recreational Racists and Performative Antisemites? A Profile of Right-Wing Audiences from Fuentes to Carlson.”
In the report, Kaufman explores the audiences of far-right podcasters, including Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Candace Owens. He also extensively goes through a recent Manhattan Institute report that included findings on antisemitism and other forms of hate.
“Fuentes and others are infotainers, with very little impact on public opinion,” the professor states. “First, Fuentes’ audience is no larger than Alex Jones. My new survey shows that just 2-3 percent of US adults and 7 percent of [US President Donald] Trump voters under 35 tune in regularly.”
And while Kaufman found in the data that the audiences of Carlson and Owens are larger, “There are few white nationalists among Fuentes or Tucker Carlson’s followers. Only 10-20 percent of Fuentes & Carlson’s regular viewers back zero immigration or say you have to be white to be a ‘true American.’”
In his article on the report for Compact Magazine, the researcher argued, “It’s time to press pause on the panic about antisemitic and racist influencers taking over young conservatism. We should worry more about how a collapse in trust is fueling nihilistic conspiracy theories.”
He goes on to explain that the audiences of many of these podcasters are not particularly ideologically or consistently hateful. For example, “Holocaust denial is linked to other conspiracy theories but not as clearly to attitudes toward Jews, with only 22 percent of Holocaust deniers saying that Jews are given too much support and favorable treatment in American society.”
Instead, “Their racism is superficial, transgressive, and performative,” and it is driven by a form of nihilism that expresses itself in conspiracy theories.”
“Researchers find that an important predictor of belief in conspiracy theories is low trust,” Kaufman writes. “After all, conspiratorial thinking is predicated on a lack of trust in powerful elites and institutions, notably mainstream media, and a suspicion that one’s fellow citizens have had the wool pulled down over their eyes.”
On that note, he notes in a summary of his findings on social media that “the strongest predictor of Holocaust denial is believing in other conspiracy theories (i.e. moon landings, 9/11 an inside job). This is even more predictive than identifying as an antisemite!”
12/ The strongest predictor of Holocaust denial is believing in other conspiracy theories (i.e. moon landings, 9/11 an inside job). This is even more predictive than identifying as an antisemite!
The strongest predictor of Jewish conspiracism is general conspiracism. pic.twitter.com/4ANbApk9sw
— Eric Kaufmann (@epkaufm) January 20, 2026
He continues, “Similar pattern for beliefs about ‘Israel’s supporters’ controlling the media. The more conspiratorial accounts (Jones, Fuentes, Tucker, Owens, Bannon) are twice as likely to believe this.”
“The strongest predictor of Jewish conspiracism is general conspiracism,” he writes.
The consequences of his findings, Kaufman explains, is that “the right-wing cultural ecosystem faces a dilemma. A degree of populist disruption, mistrust, and skepticism is necessary to reform established institutions and challenge the power of special interests, entryism, and ideological capture.”
However, “the challenge,” Kaufman argues, “is to permit all theories to be advanced in the public square, but have commentators dismantle those which are ungrounded in systematic evidence.”
He sees this as a dilemma that needs to be solved to prevent his concern over “the emergence of a floating ‘conspiracy vote,’ leaning young and nonwhite, which could shape the political and cultural direction of today’s unprecedentedly low-trust America.”
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UN Rights Body Censures Iran’s ‘Brutal Repression’ of Protests; Tehran Threatens US Investments in Region
Members of the UN Security Council meet on Iran at the request of the United States at UN headquarters in New York City, US, Jan. 15, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
The UN rights body condemned Iran on Friday for rights abuses and mandated an investigation into a recent crackdown on anti-government protests that killed thousands of people.
“I call on the Iranian authorities to reconsider, to pull back, and to end their brutal repression,” High Commissioner Volker Turk told an emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, voicing concerns for detainees.
The council passed a motion extending a previous inquiry set up in 2022 so UN investigators could also document the latest unrest “for potential future legal proceedings.”
Rights groups say bystanders were among those killed during the biggest crackdown since Shi’ite Muslim clerics took power in the 1979 revolution. Tehran has blamed “terrorists and rioters” backed by exiled opponents and foreign foes the US and Israel.
Iran‘s mission decried the rights council’s “politicized” resolution and rejected external interference, saying in a statement it had its own independent and robust accountability mechanisms to investigate “the root causes of recent events.”
Twenty-five states including France, Mexico, and South Korea voted in favor, while seven including China and India voted against and 14 abstained.
“This is the worst mass murder in the contemporary history of Iran,” Payam Akhavan, a former UN prosecutor of Iranian-Canadian nationality, told the meeting. He called for a “Nuremberg moment,” referring to the international criminal trials of Nazi leaders following World War II.
Iran‘s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, told the Council its emergency session was invalid and gave Tehran’s tally of some 3,000 people killed in the unrest.
One Iranian official, however, has told Reuters that at least 5,000 people, including 500 members of the security forces, had been killed.
The US-based HRANA rights group said it has so far verified 4,519 unrest-linked deaths and had 9,049 additional deaths under review.
China, Pakistan, Cuba, and Ethiopia also questioned the utility of the rights session, with Beijing’s ambassador Jia Guide calling the unrest in Iran “a matter of internal affairs.”
It was unclear who would cover the costs of the extended UN inquiry amid a funding crisis that has stalled other probes.
Meanwhile, an influential Iranian cleric warned on Friday that Iran may target US-linked investments in the region in retaliation for any US attack on the Islamic Republic, Iranian news agencies reported.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States had an “armada” heading toward Iran but hoped he would not have to use it, as he renewed warnings to Tehran against killing protesters or restarting its nuclear program.
“The one trillion dollars you have invested in the region is under the watch of our missiles,” said Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari, a leader of prayers that are held on Fridays in Tehran before a large gathering. He did not specify which investments he was referring to.
Separately, Iran‘s top prosecutor Mohammad Movahedi denied that Iran had called off 800 executions of people arrested in recent nationwide protests, as Trump has said.
“This claim is completely false. No such number exists, nor has the judiciary made any such decision,” Movahedi was quoted as saying by the judiciary’s news agency Mizan.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told Fox News last week “There is no plan for hanging at all” by Iran, when asked about the anti-government protests.
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US Threatens to Starve Iraq of Its Oil Dollars Over Iranian Influence, Sources Say
A general view shows al-Firdous Square in Baghdad, Iraq, July 27, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Saad
Washington has threatened senior Iraqi politicians with sanctions targeting the Iraqi state – including potentially its critical oil revenues – should armed groups backed by Iran be included in the next government, four sources told Reuters.
The warning is the starkest example yet of US President Donald Trump’s campaign to curb Iran-linked groups’ influence in Iraq, which has long walked a tightrope between its two closest allies, Washington and Tehran.
The US warning was delivered repeatedly over the past two months by the US Charge d’Affaires in Baghdad, Joshua Harris, in conversations with Iraqi officials and influential Shi’ite leaders, according to three Iraqi officials and one source familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters for this story. The message was delivered to some heads of Iran-linked groups via intermediaries, they said.
Harris and the embassy did not respond to requests for comment. The sources requested anonymity to discuss private discussions.
Since taking office a year ago, Trump has acted to weaken the Iranian government, including via its neighbor Iraq.
Iran views Iraq as vital for keeping its economy afloat amidst sanctions and long used Baghdad’s banking system to skirt the restrictions, US and Iraqi officials have said. Successive US administrations have sought to choke that dollar stream, placing sanctions on more than a dozen Iraqi banks in recent years in an effort to do so.
But Washington has never curtailed the flow of dollars from the oil revenues of Iraq, a top OPEC producer, sent via the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to the Central Bank of Iraq. The US has had de facto control over Iraq’s oil revenue since it invaded the country in 2003.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s office, the Central Bank of Iraq, and Iran‘s mission at the United Nations did not respond to requests for comment.
“The United States supports Iraqi sovereignty, and the sovereignty of every country in the region. That leaves absolutely no role for Iran-backed militias that pursue malign interests, cause sectarian division, and spread terrorism across the region,” a US State Department spokesperson told Reuters, in response to a request for comment.
The spokesperson did not answer Reuters questions about the sanction threats.
Trump, who bombed Iran‘s nuclear facilities in June, threatened to again intervene militarily in the country during protests last week.
NO ARMED GROUPS IN NEW GOVERNMENT
Among the senior politicians to whom Harris’ message was passed were Prime Minister Sudani, Shi’ite politicians Ammar Hakim and Hadi Al Ameri, and Kurdish leader Masrour Barzani, three of the sources said.
The conversations with Harris started after Iraq held elections in November in which Sudani’s political bloc won the single-largest bloc of seats but in which Iran-backed militias also made gains, the sources said.
The message centered on 58 members of parliament views by the US views as linked to Iran, all the sources said.
“The American line was basically that they would suspend engagement with the new government should any of those 58 MPs be represented in cabinet,” one of the Iraqi officials said. The formation of a new cabinet could still be months away due to wrangling to build a majority.
When asked to elaborate “they said it meant they wouldn’t deal with that government and would suspend dollar transfers,” the official said.
The US has had de facto control over oil revenue dollars from Iraq, a top OPEC producer, since it invaded the country in 2003.
Iran has long supported an array of armed factions in Iraq. In recent years, several have entered the political arena, standing for election and winning seats as they seek a slice of Iraq’s oil wealth.
Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative at London’s Chatham House think tank, said armed groups were increasingly benefiting from positions in Iraq’s massive bureaucracy and so took the threat of cutting dollar flows seriously.
“The US has significant leverage,” he said. “The threat of the loss of access to US dollars, which is how Iraq’s economy functions through the sale of oil, has made it very concerning.”
WASHINGTON OPPOSES FIRST DEPUTY SPEAKER
One of the people Washington objects to is Adnan Faihan, a member of the powerful, Iran-backed political and armed group Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), who was elected first deputy speaker of parliament in late December, the Iraqi official and the source with knowledge of the matter said.
They said the US opposed Faihan’s appointment to the post.
In a sign the pressure campaign was working, AAH leader Qais al-Khazali communicated a willingness to the Americans to remove Faihan as deputy speaker, the Iraqi official said. Faihan currently remains in his position.
The AAH media office and Faihan did not immediately respond to a request for comment and neither did Faihan.
In the last government, AAH held the education ministry, and Iraqi officials say it is seeking to participate in the next government too.
AAH was a key group in a sophisticated oil smuggling network generating at least a $1 billion a year for Iran and its proxies in Iraq, sources previously told Reuters.
Khazali was sanctioned by Washington in 2019 for AAH’s alleged role in serious human rights abuses, related to the killing of protesters in Iraq that year and other violence, including a 2007 attack that killed five US soldiers. At the time, he dismissed the sanctions as unserious.
DOLLAR CONTROL
Iraq holds the bulk of proceeds from its oil export sales at a Central Bank of Iraq account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Though it is a sovereign account of the Iraqi state, the arrangement gives the US practical control over a critical choke point of Iraqi state revenues, making Baghdad reliant on Washington’s goodwill.
“US efforts to achieve stability in the region are focused on ensuring states retain their sovereignty and can achieve security through mutual economic prosperity,” the State Department spokesperson said in their reply to Reuters questions.
The move to pressure Baghdad with a possible suspension of dollars takes place as the US begins marketing Venezuelan oil, which followed the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in Caracas by US forces and his transfer to New York to be put on trial in relation to drug charges.
The US Department of Energy has said all proceeds from Venezuelan oil sales would be initially settled in US-controlled accounts at globally recognized banks.