Rivlin turns his attention to missing Yemenite children
Israel is planning a birthday bash like never before.
In April, Israelis will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Jewish state, as marked by the Hebrew calendar.
To help gear up, Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev detailed the state’s plans for “70 Hours of Israeli Celebrations” at a ceremony at the Yad Lashiryon memorial in Latrun on Monday.
“These will be 70 hours of celebrations in Israeli society that connect us all,” Regev said. “The events are tailored for both young and veteran audiences, for entire families, and also for Jews around the world. We are going to host the mosttalked-about and moving events in Israeli society, full of energy, positivity and joy. It will be exciting, distinguished and touching, just as this country that we love so dearly deserves.”
Israel’s Independence Day will begin with a torch-lighting ceremony the evening of Wednesday, April 18, and continue through Shabbat.
Events over the three days will include: “Israel and the world sing together,” in which Israelis and Diaspora Jews will sing simultaneously; a fireworks show; a “70km. party” that will rave across the country from Tiberias to Eilat; and a “Parade of Lights” planned for Thursday night, illustrating Israel’s success and innovation.
A pre-Shabbat “70th Hora” will be held at 4pm on Friday, with Israelis folk-dancing in group circles. The closing ceremony on Saturday night will be a “soundtrack event for Israeli society,” honoring dignitaries both living and dead.
The overall theme for Israel’s 70th is “Heritage of Innovation,” drawing upon Israel’s successes as the Start-Up Nation and the cutting-edge technology developed locally.
Israeli society is “creative, looks to the future, thinks outside the box, and is a trailblazer in research, medicine and agriculture, thereby providing a vital contribution to all of humanity,” Regev said.
The 70th anniversary official logo features the number 70; a Star of David in modern design, drawing a historical continuum from King David’s days and modern Israeli sovereignty; and “Israel” as written by a scribe in a Torah scroll, expressing “the unbreakable bond between the modern State of Israel and ancient nationalism, between 2018 and biblical times, between heavenly Jerusalem and earthly Jerusalem,” according to a statement from the culture ministry.
Decades after the disappearance of scores of Yemenite children in the earliest years of the state, the truth of how and why they disappeared has not been fully clarified.
On Monday President Reuven Rivlin met with Yael Nagar, Yael Tzaddok and Rachamim Eden, representatives of Achim Vekayamim (Brothers and Living), an NGO dedicated to full disclosure of what happened to the children – whose parents continued to grieve for them for years and never believed stories told to them in hospitals healthy children had suddenly died.
“The truth must be revealed,” declared Rivlin. “We are sufficiently strong today to cope with the truth. This is an episode that leaves a wound in the heart of the nation and we must not ignore it.”
He was confident that in the near future, a way would be found at the state level to intensify the investigation and to learn what still needs to be known.
A special Knesset committee set up to investigate available evidence reached the conclusion that in a number of cases, children were abducted and given to Jewish families in the United States for adoption. The committee even knows the identity of the chief liaison in this affair.
That fact, however, has not given closure to Israel’s Yemenite community.
Before taking their leave, Nagar, Tzaddok and Eden reminded Rivlin about their visit with him a year ago, before material on the Yemenite children was declassified, and what devastating information had been gleaned from documents retrieved from the State Archives.
Now they are embarking on the next stage of their campaign. What they want now, they said, is for the government to acknowledge that the children were abducted, take responsibility and conduct a full-scale investigation so as to arrive at the absolute truth of what happened and who was involved.
While not denigrating the aforementioned parliamentary committee headed by Likud MK Nurit Koren, which has been investigating the matter and has interviewed families whose children disappeared, the trio said this was not enough and that the committee was working too slowly. They said they valued what it was doing, but as far as they were concerned, this stained chapter in Israel’s history has to be investigated at a higher level.