Deadly Ties by Aaron Ben-Shahar

Author:Aaron Ben-Shahar [Ben-Shahar, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Bonnie, or “Minister Pladot”, as the prime minister’s secretaries called him, though they also snickered that ‘his excellency the minister’ was younger than some of them, felt encouraged as he left the prime minister. ‘At least the powers that be now know that Avram Fiddlemann was not my real father and that I put those details in that questionnaire upon taking office quite innocently,’ he thought to himself as he left.

Minister Pladot informed the government secretary he was leaving on a three-month leave and proceeded to the formal apartment issued him by the government and took a few necessary items. Then, he was driven to his own house, where he told his chauffeur that he might leave, and he would call him if and when he would have need of him.

‘What shall I do next?’

Bonnie sat in his comfy chair on the veranda, overlooking the Gilboa Mountains and tried to figure out his next move. ‘Well, one option is for sure out of the question. I will not be left hanging. I cannot abide the doubts and lingering questions. That’s not even an option. Besides, that’s not what mother’s will was all about,’ he told himself. ‘Had she wanted me to keep living a lie, she would not have written me that letter. No doubt about it, she wanted me to have the freedom to decide for myself.’

He then thought to himself, ‘even when I was four, when my mother Estée showed me that triangle in our respective eyes, she planned on writing that letter. Even then, she wanted me to know the full truth and to be sure this concerned my biological father, and that I would not doubt she was my biological mother. How do I begin my search?’

The first name that popped up in his mind was Ofer Ben Ari. They were friends since elementary school. He recently had made headlines as the attorney who had devoted himself to the much debated affair from the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, when, allegedly, babies and very young children of Yemenite descent were forcibly, sometimes secretly, taken by the authorities and given to families of European descent, without the biological parents’ knowledge or consent.

Prior to what has come to be known as ‘the Yemenite Children Affair,’ in 1949, the government of Israel decided to have as many Jews as possible brought over from Yemen. Israel had just been founded in May 1948. Thanks to a truly heroic feat, some fifty thousand Yemenite Jews immigrated to the newly formed state. Prior to their immigration, they were concentrated in transit camps from which they were flown over to Israel; sometimes, over one thousand were flown in one night.

Among the immigrants were numerous sickly babies and children. They were admitted to hospital on arrival, where some did die without any proper documentation. Years later, a great deal of effort went into locating records and the surviving children, who in the meantime had grown up and disappeared without a trace. Many individuals and organizations made it their mission to get to the bottom of what happened to the children.

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