“Maybe We Did Them a Favor”: Reading the Yemenite Babies Affair Through an Intersectional Feminist Lens

Abstract This article employs an intersectional feminist lens to examine the Yemenite Mizrahi and Balkan Babies Affair, the abduction of hundreds of babies from immigrant families in Israel between 1948 and the early 1950s. It situates the affair within broader settler-colonial practices, drawing parallels to the forced transfer of children in other cases such as Australia and Canada. The author argues that racialized Western constructs of modernity and hygiene enabled the Israeli state to legitimize the separation of babies from their mothers. Through textual analysis of testimonies presented to official commissions and the media, this article reveals how the racialization of Mizrahim coupled with the dominance of the Zionist master narrative, contributed to the long-term silencing of the affair by government institutions, the media, and civil organizations. Despite extensive documentation by commissions, researchers, and activists, the affair remains publicly contested and officially unacknowledged by the Israeli state, in contrast to reconciliation processes elsewhere.