Tag: InternationalNews

{At least 13 killed and six injured after blaze tears through bar during birthday celebration in northern city of Rouen.}

A fire in a bar in the northern French city of Rouen has killed at least 13 people and injured six others, officials say.

The blaze broke out early on Saturday at the basement room of the Cuba Libre bar during a birthday celebration.

“According to an initial investigation, 13 are dead and six are injured, and more than 50 firemen attended the scene,” Bernard Cazeneuve, France’s interior minister, said in a statement.

“An inquiry is under way to establish the cause of the fire.”

The victims were aged between 18 and 25, according to local French newspapers.

One of the injured was in a critical condition, Yvan Cordier, secretary-general of the Seine-Maritime prefecture, told the AFP news agency.

Local official Laurent Labadie, who was at the scene of the fire, described the blaze as accidental.

One source close to the investigation said that candles on a birthday cake may had sparked the blaze.

{Video shows officers pursuing 18-year-old Paul O’Neal through a residential area in Chicago while shots ring out.}

Police in the US city of Chicago have released a new video showing officers chasing an African-American teenager who was fatally shot following a reported car theft, igniting fears of a new wave of protests over police using lethal force against black people.

In the video released on Friday, several officers are seen pursuing 18-year-old Paul O’Neal through a back garden and over a fence in a residential neighbourhood while several shots ring out.

Officers are then seen handcuffing O’Neal, who is face down on the ground with blood on the back of his white shirt. One police officer is overheard in the video cursing the wounded teenager, and telling him “to put your hands behind your back”.

No one is seen immediately administering first aid to the teenager. A minute after putting the suspect in handcuffs, the officers mention calling an ambulance.

It was not clear in the video if the teenager was armed, but one officer is heard saying “f**k you shoot at us”.

One of the officers is also overheard in the video asking another officer, “They [sic] shot at us too, right?”

The fatal shot is not shown in the video and police are investigating why the body camera of the officer who fired the bullet was not turned on, or if it malfunctioned.

“Please bear in mind that this video material, as shocking and disturbing as it is, is not the only evidence to be gathered and analysed,” said Sharon Fairley, an investigator of the incident.

Michael Oppenheimer, a lawyer for O’Neal’s family, described the shooting as “one of the most horrific things” he had seen, in a news conference.

He accused the police of carrying out the “execution” of a “loving son”.

The video from the July 28 was made public by the agency that investigates Chicago police misconduct.

It was the first time the city has made video of a fatal police shooting public following adoption of a new policy that calls for the police to do so within 60 days.

The new transparency is an attempt to restore public confidence in the police department after video released last year showed Laquan McDonald, a black teenager, being shot 16 times by a white officer. The killing sparked protests and led to the dismissal of the former police superintendent.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Washington DC, said that three police officers involved in the shooting of O’Neal now face the “prospect of being fired”, and have been relieved of all police powers pending an investigation of the shooting.

Fisher said the swift release of the video demonstrated that the Chicago police department is adopting a new approach to address allegations of racial bias.

“By taking this prompt action, the police is hoping obviously to show that they are doing things different now, and hoping that that will keep protesters off the streets,” he said.

{At least 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Assam state in the last three decades.}

An armed separatist group is being blamed for killing at least 13 people and wounding more than a dozen during an atttack on a busy weekly market in Kokrajhar town in India’s northeastern Assam state, officials said.

One assailant was killed during the attack on Friday and security forces were in pursuit of three or four suspects believed to be hiding in a nearby forest, Assam police chief Mukesh Sahay told reporters.

Though no group has yet claimed responsibility, Sahay blamed the attack on the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland, an armed group that has fought for decades for a separate homeland for the indigenous Bodo tribespeople in Assam.

“This attack is intended to destabilise peace in Assam,” Himanta Biswa Sarma, the state’s finance and health minister, told the Reuters news agency.

A second police official said that six attackers arrived in a motorised rickshaw and opened fire with automatic weapons and lobbed grenades into the crowded market in Balajan, just outside Kokrajhar town.

Speaking to Al Jazeera via Skype from the state’s commerical capital Guwahati, local journalist Mrinal Talukdar said: “The wounded and the dead were innocent villagers. Among the injured were two children as well.”

Three days ago, police arrested members of the Bodoland front with a cache of weapons in the same area as Friday’s attack.

The Bodos are an indigenous tribe in Assam, making up 10 percent of the state’s 33 million people.

Local reporter speaks on shooting attack in India’s Assam
Dialogue and discussion

Sanjoy Hazarika, director of the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera that the attack was a reminder that armed groups are still operating in the region.

“This is as good a time as any to remind the public that groups like this are still around”, Hazarika said, adding that such groups “cannot be controlled just by the force of arms”.

Hazarika said that “dialogue and discussion” would be required to bring such groups under control, “just as other groups have done”.

Dozens of rebel groups have been fighting the Indian government and sometimes each other for years in seven states in northeast India. They are demanding greater regional autonomy or independent homelands for the indigenous groups they represent.

The separatists target communities they consider outsiders, including Adivasis, whose ancestors migrated to Assam more than 100 years ago to work on tea plantations – as well as Muslims, accusing them and the federal government of exploiting the region’s wealth while neglecting the locals.

More than 60 Muslim settlers and Adivasi tribespeople in Assam were killed in separate attacks in 2014.

In 2012 there were clashes between Bodos and mostly Bengali Muslim settlers that resulted in hundreds of deaths. Hundreds of thousands were displaced.

{US president outlines progress in fight against ISIL but cautions that the group can still inspire small-scale attacks.}

US President Barack Obama has touted gains in the campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), but cautioned that the group, also known as ISIS, can still direct and inspire damaging attacks.

Speaking after meeting with top aides at the Pentagon, Obama said on Thursday that ISIL will continue to be a threat, highlighting the group’s ability to motivate so-called “lone wolf” supporters to launch small-scale attacks that are harder to detect and prevent.

“What ISIL has figured out is that if they can convince a handful of people, or even one person, to carry out an attack on a subway, or at a parade or some other public venue, and kill scores of people as opposed to thousands of people, it still creates the kinds of fear and concern that elevates their profile,” Obama said.

ISIL has claimed responsibility for a number of recent mass killings, including a lorry attack in the French city of Nice last month that left 84 dead, and the nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, that killed 49.

While they may not have been directed by the group, the attackers were reportedly inspired by ISIL.

Obama said the US must do a better job disrupting ISIL networks and intercepting the internet messages that can get to individuals and inspire them to act.

“Those networks are more active in Europe than they are here, but we don’t know what we don’t know, and so it’s conceivable that there are some networks here that could be activated,” he said.

{{Warning on overreaction}}

Obama cautioned against overreacting to such attacks and rejected efforts to demonise Muslims as a way to make the US safer, in a criticism of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, who has called for a ban on Muslims entering the country.

“If we start making bad decisions, indiscriminately killing civilians for example in some of those areas, instituting offensive religious tests on who can enter the country, those kinds of strategies can end up backfiring,” Obama said.

The US is leading a military coalition conducting air strikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria, where the group seized broad swathes of territory in 2014.

Since then, the coalition has conducted daily plane and drone strikes – more than 14,000 so far – and worked with local forces on the ground to gradually reclaim the seized territory.

Yet, despite the massive effort, ISIL still holds Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and the Syrian city of Raqqa.

“I am pleased with the progress that we’ve made on the ground in Iraq and Syria,” Obama said, but added: “We’re far from freeing Mosul and Raqqa.”

He also criticised Russia for failing “to take the necessary steps” to try to reduce violence in Syria, saying it was time for Russia “to show that it is serious” about bringing peace.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, offering international cover, military aid and carrying out air strikes in opposition-held areas.

Obama said the US remains prepared to work with Russia, adding, however, that he was not confident Russia or Putin could be trusted.

“The depravity of the Syrian regime has rightly earned the condemnation of the world,” Obama said.

“Russia’s direct involvement in these actions over the last several weeks raises very serious questions about their commitment to pulling the situation back from the brink.”

Earlier this week, Obama also announced a new front in the war, ordering air strikes against ISIL fighters’ positions in the Libyan city of Sirte.

{Passengers and crew are feared captured by the Taliban, officials say, after aircraft goes down in Afghanistan’s Logar.}

Taliban fighters are believed to have captured all passengers and crew of a Pakistani government helicopter that crash-landed in eastern Afghanistan.

Afghan officials said the helicopter went down late on Thursday in Logar province, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, an increasingly lawless area since a two-year Pakistani military operation pushed many Taliban and allied fighters further into Afghanistan.

“The chopper was not shot but made the landing because of technical failure,” Sameem Saleh, spokesman for Logar’s governor, told Reuters news agency.

“Those detained by the Taliban are Pakistanis.”

Nafees Zakaria, a spokesman for the Pakistani foreign office, confirmed that a helicopter belonging to the Punjab provincial government had gone down in Logar, but said the fate of those on board was not yet clear.

“The Afghan authorities have assured they will investigate and learn about the whereabouts of the helicopter and the passengers,” he said.

Zakaria said that seven passengers were on board, six of them Pakistanis and one a Russian technician. The pilot was Pakistani.

The Russian-made MI-17 transport helicopter had permission to fly over Afghan airspace on its way to Uzbekistan further north, he said.

A senior Pakistani military official also said the Russian-made MI-17 transport helicopter was en route from Peshawar in northwest Pakistan to Uzbekistan for maintenance when it experienced technical failure and made an emergency landing.

The crash came a few hours after a van carrying 12 tourists from the UK, US and Germany was attacked in the Chesht-e-Sharif district of Herat province in western Afghanistan.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which wounded at least seven people. In a statement, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, Taliban spokesman, said the foreigners were killed – a claim Afghan officials denied.

Pentagon decision

In a separate development, the US has withheld $300m in military assistance to Pakistan after the Pentagon concluded that the country was not taking adequate action against the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based armed group aligned with the Taliban.

Relations between US and Pakistan have been frayed over the past decade, with officials in the US frustrated by what they term Pakistan’s unwillingness to act against armed groups groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network.

Pakistan rejects harbouring fighters but says there are limits to how much it can do as it is already fighting multiple armed groups and is wary of a “blowback” in the form of more attacks on its soil.

The $300m was not released because Ashton Carter, the US secretary of defence, decided against making a certification “that Pakistan has taken sufficient action against the Haqqani network”, Adam Stump, Pentagon spokesperson, said on Wednesday.

Pakistan is the largest recipient of the Coalition Support Fund (CSF), a US government programme to reimburse allies that have incurred costs in supporting operations against armed groups.

According to Pentagon data, about $14bn has already been paid to Pakistan under the CSF since 2002.

{New information has come to light about thousands of mostly Yemeni children believed to have been abducted in the 1950s.}

Tel Aviv – For nearly 40 years, everything about Gil Grunbaum’s life was a lie, including his name.

He was not, as he had always assumed, the only son of wealthy Holocaust survivors who owned a baby garments factory near Tel Aviv. Grunbaum had been stolen from his mother by doctors at a hospital in northern Israel in 1956, moments after she gave birth.

His biological parents – recent immigrants to Israel from Tunisia – were told their child had died during delivery. They were sent home without a death certificate and denied the chance to see their baby’s body or a grave.

Despite his darker looks, it never occurred to Grunbaum that the parents who raised him were not biologically related to him. Now aged 60, he says the discovery was “the most shocking moment imaginable. Everyone I loved – my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins – had been deceiving me for decades.”

And so had government officials.

“Even when I discovered by chance that I was adopted, the welfare services did everything they could to try to stop me finding my biological family,” Grunbaum told Al Jazeera. “No one wanted me to know the truth.”

After a three-year search in the late 1990s, he finally learned his family’s name – Maimon – and tracked down his birth mother to the suburbs of Haifa in northern Israel. Some 41 years after they were separated, the two met for the first time, in an emotional reunion.

Grunbaum’s story would be deeply disturbing if it was unique. But growing evidence suggests that there could be thousands of other children who were abducted in Israel’s first decade.

Last weekend, Tzachi Hanegbi, a government minister tasked with studying the disappearances, conceded that at least “hundreds” of children had been taken without their parents’ consent. It is the first time a government official has ever made such a public admission.

After weeks of re-examining evidence presented to a commission of inquiry in the late 1990s, Hanegbi told Israeli TV: “They took the children and gave them away. I don’t know where.”

The Kedmi inquiry, which had issued its findings in 2001, found that as many as 5,000 children may have disappeared in the state’s first six years alone, although it examined only 1,000 of those cases. Jacob Kedmi, a former Supreme Court judge who died last month, concluded that in most cases, the children had died and been hurriedly buried.

Hanegbi’s admission appears to confirm allegations long made by the families – and supported by scholars and journalists – that the inquiry was little more than a whitewash by the Israeli establishment. Kedmi placed the hundreds of thousands of documents relating to testimonies and evidence under lock for 70 years. They will not be made publicly available until 2071.

The first consequence is likely to be mounting pressure on the government to open the state’s adoption files so that the true extent of the disappearances can be gauged and families reunited.

But Hanegbi’s otherwise evasive comments will do little to end suspicions that officials are still actively trying to avoid confronting the most contentious questions: Why were the infants taken from their families? Did hospitals and welfare organisations traffic children in Israel’s early years? And were state bodies complicit in the mass abductions?

When asked by Israeli TV programme Meet the Press whether government officials were involved, Hanegbi would say only: “We may never know.”

His reluctance to be more forthcoming may be understandable. Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, an Israel academic who has written a book on the disappearances titled Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair, noted that the “forcible transfer” of children from one ethnic group to another satisfied the United Nations definition of “genocide”. The 1951 convention includes the crime of “complicity”.

“Ultimately, I don’t think it matters whether government officials actively planned what happened or they simply looked the other way while others carried out the kidnappings,” she told Al Jazeera. “Either way, this was a crime perpetrated against thousands of parents who still don’t know the truth about their children’s fate.”

Almost all of the missing children were from Jewish families that had arrived from Arab countries shortly after Israel’s creation during the Nakba of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

The mystery has been dubbed the Yemenite Children Affair, because most of the children who disappeared were from Yemen. But there were also significant numbers from Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia and the Balkans.

Grunbaum learned of his own place in this scandalous affair in 1994, the year before the Kedmi inquiry was launched. His wife had become suspicious that there were no photos of his birth or a birth certificate, and that he was much darker than his parents.

When she phoned state childcare services, a clerk broke Israel’s strict privacy laws by mistakenly revealing to her that Grunbaum had indeed been adopted. The couple was then hastily called to a meeting at the Tel Aviv office, where they were briefly allowed to view two pages from his file. No details of his biological family were provided.

{{}}”Even in my confused state, I could see there was something fishy. There was no signature on the adoption papers, either from my biological mother or from a judge,” Grunbaum said.

“I was in a state of shock for a long time afterwards. I stared at the TV all day long for four months, running my life through my head, looking for the clues I should have seen. I resigned from my job. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.”

Although childcare services had details of his biological family, they refused to help. It took three years of intensive searching – initiated by the recollections of neighbours of his parents at the time of his adoption – before he was sure he had identified the family.

“I went straight to the head of child services and told her their surname. I asked her if I was right – I didn’t need a reply,” Grunbaum said, noting the colour drained from the woman’s face as she realised he had found his biological family.

Grunbaum’s biological father had died a few years earlier, but he met his biological mother in a supervised visit in Haifa. It had taken her a month to recover sufficiently from hearing the news that her son was alive to agree to a meeting.

“She hugged me and we cried. I gave her an album of photos of my three children. She said with surprise, ‘I have a blond grandson!’”

Grunbaum then started a double life, visiting his biological mother and his five siblings while hiding the truth from his adoptive parents until their deaths a few years later. “I was afraid to confront them. They were elderly and in poor health. I think it would have destroyed them to realise I knew the truth.”

The irregularities in the adoption papers indicate that his parents were likely to have known their adopted child was procured without the biological mother’s consent. Grunbaum admits he was filled with confusion and anger at his parents for a long time. Shortly after he found out about the circumstances of his adoption, his parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

‘No one wanted me to know the truth,’ said Gil Grunbaum, pictured in the late 1950s with his adoptive parents [Courtesy of Gil Grunbaum] ‘No one wanted me to know the truth,’ said Gil Grunbaum, pictured in the late 1950s with his adoptive parents [Courtesy of Gil Grunbaum]
Tel Aviv – For nearly 40 years, everything about Gil Grunbaum’s life was a lie, including his name.

He was not, as he had always assumed, the only son of wealthy Holocaust survivors who owned a baby garments factory near Tel Aviv. Grunbaum had been stolen from his mother by doctors at a hospital in northern Israel in 1956, moments after she gave birth.

His biological parents – recent immigrants to Israel from Tunisia – were told their child had died during delivery. They were sent home without a death certificate and denied the chance to see their baby’s body or a grave.

Despite his darker looks, it never occurred to Grunbaum that the parents who raised him were not biologically related to him. Now aged 60, he says the discovery was “the most shocking moment imaginable. Everyone I loved – my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins – had been deceiving me for decades.”

And so had government officials.

AL JAZEERA WORLD: Israel’s Great Divide

“Even when I discovered by chance that I was adopted, the welfare services did everything they could to try to stop me finding my biological family,” Grunbaum told Al Jazeera. “No one wanted me to know the truth.”

After a three-year search in the late 1990s, he finally learned his family’s name – Maimon – and tracked down his birth mother to the suburbs of Haifa in northern Israel. Some 41 years after they were separated, the two met for the first time, in an emotional reunion.

Grunbaum’s story would be deeply disturbing if it was unique. But growing evidence suggests that there could be thousands of other children who were abducted in Israel’s first decade.

Last weekend, Tzachi Hanegbi, a government minister tasked with studying the disappearances, conceded that at least “hundreds” of children had been taken without their parents’ consent. It is the first time a government official has ever made such a public admission.

After weeks of re-examining evidence presented to a commission of inquiry in the late 1990s, Hanegbi told Israeli TV: “They took the children and gave them away. I don’t know where.”

The Kedmi inquiry, which had issued its findings in 2001, found that as many as 5,000 children may have disappeared in the state’s first six years alone, although it examined only 1,000 of those cases. Jacob Kedmi, a former Supreme Court judge who died last month, concluded that in most cases, the children had died and been hurriedly buried.

Hanegbi’s admission appears to confirm allegations long made by the families – and supported by scholars and journalists – that the inquiry was little more than a whitewash by the Israeli establishment. Kedmi placed the hundreds of thousands of documents relating to testimonies and evidence under lock for 70 years. They will not be made publicly available until 2071.

This was a crime perpetrated against thousands of parents, who still don’t know the truth about their children’s fate.

Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, author of Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair
The first consequence is likely to be mounting pressure on the government to open the state’s adoption files so that the true extent of the disappearances can be gauged and families reunited.

But Hanegbi’s otherwise evasive comments will do little to end suspicions that officials are still actively trying to avoid confronting the most contentious questions: Why were the infants taken from their families? Did hospitals and welfare organisations traffic children in Israel’s early years? And were state bodies complicit in the mass abductions?

When asked by Israeli TV programme Meet the Press whether government officials were involved, Hanegbi would say only: “We may never know.”

His reluctance to be more forthcoming may be understandable. Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, an Israel academic who has written a book on the disappearances titled Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair, noted that the “forcible transfer” of children from one ethnic group to another satisfied the United Nations definition of “genocide”. The 1951 convention includes the crime of “complicity”.

“Ultimately, I don’t think it matters whether government officials actively planned what happened or they simply looked the other way while others carried out the kidnappings,” she told Al Jazeera. “Either way, this was a crime perpetrated against thousands of parents who still don’t know the truth about their children’s fate.”

Almost all of the missing children were from Jewish families that had arrived from Arab countries shortly after Israel’s creation during the Nakba of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

IN PICTURES: Nakba – ‘Palestinians will return to their stolen lands’

The mystery has been dubbed the Yemenite Children Affair, because most of the children who disappeared were from Yemen. But there were also significant numbers from Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia and the Balkans.

Grunbaum learned of his own place in this scandalous affair in 1994, the year before the Kedmi inquiry was launched. His wife had become suspicious that there were no photos of his birth or a birth certificate, and that he was much darker than his parents.

When she phoned state childcare services, a clerk broke Israel’s strict privacy laws by mistakenly revealing to her that Grunbaum had indeed been adopted. The couple was then hastily called to a meeting at the Tel Aviv office, where they were briefly allowed to view two pages from his file. No details of his biological family were provided.

Grunbaum said his wife became suspicious that there were no photos of his birth or a birth certificate [Courtesy of Gil Grunbaum]
“Even in my confused state, I could see there was something fishy. There was no signature on the adoption papers, either from my biological mother or from a judge,” Grunbaum said.

“I was in a state of shock for a long time afterwards. I stared at the TV all day long for four months, running my life through my head, looking for the clues I should have seen. I resigned from my job. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.”

Although childcare services had details of his biological family, they refused to help. It took three years of intensive searching – initiated by the recollections of neighbours of his parents at the time of his adoption – before he was sure he had identified the family.

“I went straight to the head of child services and told her their surname. I asked her if I was right – I didn’t need a reply,” Grunbaum said, noting the colour drained from the woman’s face as she realised he had found his biological family.

Grunbaum’s biological father had died a few years earlier, but he met his biological mother in a supervised visit in Haifa. It had taken her a month to recover sufficiently from hearing the news that her son was alive to agree to a meeting.

“She hugged me and we cried. I gave her an album of photos of my three children. She said with surprise, ‘I have a blond grandson!’”

Grunbaum then started a double life, visiting his biological mother and his five siblings while hiding the truth from his adoptive parents until their deaths a few years later. “I was afraid to confront them. They were elderly and in poor health. I think it would have destroyed them to realise I knew the truth.”

The irregularities in the adoption papers indicate that his parents were likely to have known their adopted child was procured without the biological mother’s consent. Grunbaum admits he was filled with confusion and anger at his parents for a long time. Shortly after he found out about the circumstances of his adoption, his parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

Grunbaum found himself living a double life, visiting his biological mother and his five siblings while hiding the truth from his adoptive parents [Oren Ziv/Al Jazeera]
“They asked me to make a speech at the party, but I couldn’t. I was too frightened of what might come out of my mouth,” he said.

Pressure on the Israeli government to provide answers in cases like Grunbaum’s has intensified in recent years, as social media has helped the affected families to understand how widespread the disappearances were.

In late June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by announcing a fresh examination of the evidence. In a video posted to his Facebook page, he promised to get to the bottom of the affair: “The subject of the Yemenite children is an open wound that continues to bleed for many families who don’t know what happened to the infants, to the children who disappeared.”

He appointed Hanegbi to re-examine the documents from three previous inquiries.

Yael Tzadok, an Israeli journalist who has spent 20 years investigating cases of children who disappeared, told Al Jazeera: “This is Israel’s darkest secret. Jews kidnapped other Jews, Jews who were coming to a state that had been created as a refuge in the immediate wake of the Holocaust. Bringing the truth into the daylight risks causing an earthquake.”

The families and their supporters believe the majority of the children are still alive, but only a minuscule number, like Grunbaum, know that they were stolen from their parents.

Even among those few, said Madmoni-Gerber, most are reluctant to go public, fearing that the truth will tear apart their families, who may have conspired in their abduction.

Israeli Jews who originate from Arab countries are known in Israel as Mizrahim, in contrast to those of European heritage, who are called Ashkenazim. Tzadok said the evidence suggested that most of the missing children – from Mizrahi families – were taken by hospital staff and sold or given away to European Jews, both in Israel and abroad.

“The evidence from that time, the 1950s, clearly shows government officials, judges, lawmakers and hospital staff speaking openly about the fact that the children were being abducted. The public may not have known, but the authorities certainly did,” Tzadok said.

Tzadok, who is active with Achim Vekayamim, a forum for the families of missing children, said deep prejudices among European Jews against the Mizrahim – and especially the Yemenites – had made the kidnappings possible.

“Mizrahi parents were seen as bad, primitive people who were a lost cause. The dominant view then was that, by placing the children with Ashkenazi families, they could be saved – unlike their parents. They would be re-educated and made into suitable material for the new Zionist state,” Tzadok said.

“The hospital staff and officials probably didn’t think they were doing something wrong. They thought it was their patriotic duty.”

Racism among European Jews towards Jews from Arab countries reached the very top of the government. Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, described the Mizrahim as “rabble” and a “generation of the desert”, concluding that they lacked “a trace of Jewish or human education”.

In the early 1950s, he warned: “We do not want the Israelis to become Arabs. It is incumbent upon us to struggle against the spirit of the Levant, which corrupts individuals and societies.”

Recently unearthed documents also show vigorous debates within the Israeli army in the early 1950s about whether Mizrahi conscripts were mentally retarded, making them a hopeless cause, or simply primitive, a condition that could be changed.

In his book The Idea of Israel, historian Ilan Pappe observed that Israel’s Ashkenazi elite worked strenuously at “de-Arabising … Jews upon arrival” in Israel.

The establishment’s open disdain for the Mizrahim eventually led to political backlash, noted Pappe. In the late 1970s, after decades in opposition, the right-wing Likud party won power from Ben Gurion’s Labour party. Today, Likud is led by Netanyahu.

Grunbaum said Israel’s European elite were also sympathetic to the plight of Holocaust survivors, like his adoptive parents, who had lost most or all of their family and struggled to have children of their own.

“My father had been in Auschwitz and my mother in Dachau. The survivors suffered from psychological and physical traumas that meant it was difficult or impossible for them to have children,” he said. “The view at that time was that the Yemenites had large families and could afford to lose one or two.”

The Kedmi inquiry heard such views expressed by medical staff who worked in hospitals suspected of abducting children. Sonia Milshtein, a former senior nurse, testified that Yemenite parents “were not interested in their children” and that they should have been happy that their “child got a good education”.

Sarah Pearl, head nurse at the Women’s International Zionist Organisation (WIZO), a charity that ran care homes from which children are alleged to have disappeared, told Israeli media that when she asked why the children’s parents never visited, she was told by the head administrator that they “have lots of kids, and lots of problems, so they don’t want their children”.

Like many of those who have been campaigning for greater transparency, Madmoni-Gerber, an Israeli professor of communications now based in the United States, said her own family had been scarred by the Yemenite Children Affair.

Her father and aunt were among 50,000 Yemenite Jews airlifted to Israel in 1949 and 1950 in a series of secret US and British flights known as Operation Magic Carpet. Like many other Mizrahim, they were temporarily sheltered in one of dozens of “absorption camps” across Israel.

Madmoni-Gerber’s aunt gave birth in an Israeli hospital in 1949. “When it was time to go home, staff on the delivery ward asked her to leave her baby behind with them. She refused. When she arrived back at the camp, the child was snatched [by staff] out of her hands. She never saw her baby again.”

Hanegbi’s admission is certain to rock an Ashkenazi establishment that has long been in denial about the Yemenite Children Affair.

For instance, Yaron London, one of Israel’s best-known commentators, has called suggestions of kidnappings a “conspiracy theory”.

And Dov Levitan, a professor at Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv, who is a leading expert on Yemenite immigration to Israel, recently stated: “I can’t put even one finger on a case in which I can say that there was an act of abduction or a criminal act.”

Shlomi Hatuka, a 38-year-old Yemenite poet and teacher who three years ago helped found Amram, an organisation campaigning on behalf of the families, said that continuing racism towards the Mizrahim had made possible a “conspiracy of silence” lasting more than six decades.

His activism began after his grandmother revealed to him 22 years ago that she had been asked by a nurse in the early 1950s to give up for adoption one of the twins she had just given birth to.

“The nurse said, ‘You have lots of children, why not let us take one of them?’” Hatuka told Al Jazeera. “My grandmother refused. A couple of days later, the nurse told her her baby girl had died. She did not receive a death certificate and was not shown a grave.

“My mother told me my grandmother talked about her kidnapped child until the day she died,” he added. “She never got over it. At the time, none of us could really grasp what had happened to [the baby]. It was just too strange. It was impossible to believe.”

Hatuka said the official re-examination of the files had been prompted by growing pressure from the Mizrahi community: “We are the third generation, and we are better able to organise. We have used social media and new technology to help bring more attention to the kidnappings.”

Amram is demanding that the Israeli authorities open up adoption papers so that the children who were abducted can try to find their parents. “If Netanyahu really wants to help clarify what happened, this would be the easiest and quickest way to do it,” Hatuka said.

Currently, a 1960 Adoption Law makes it a criminal offence for an adopted child or their adoptive parents to publicly reveal that an adoption took place. Officials have claimed the restriction is needed to protect privacy, but there is mounting pressure to scrap it.

Amram has also established a database of missing children on its website. Hundreds more families have come forward with information of children who disappeared, including cases that have never been investigated. Hatuka believes that the total number of children who are missing could be as high as 8,000.

Even based on the official figures, one in eight Yemenite infants under the age of four may have disappeared in the state’s first six years. Boaz Sangero, a law professor at a college near Tel Aviv, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper this month that the figure was “astonishing”, and demanded an urgent re-examination of the evidence.

The extent of the problem was further underscored last month when four legislators in the 120-seat Israeli parliament came forward to reveal that their own relatives had disappeared in the 1950s. Two were from Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Nurit Koren, whose cousin went missing, told The Jerusalem Post newspaper: “Everybody is coming and telling me it happened in their families too. The phone doesn’t stop ringing.”

Nava Boker said that her sister and brother were taken. “I am afraid that the same people who planned and executed these crimes of ripping babies away from their mothers’ arms ensured their own safety and hid the documents.” Boker and other activists have been infuriated by the Kedmi inquiry’s decision to place under lock hundreds of thousands of documents relating to its investigations until 2071.

There has also been widespread criticism of the way the inquiry was conducted. Tzadok called the panel’s report “shameful”, and accused it of ignoring the evidence of wrongdoing it unearthed.

Sangero noted that the commission employed only two investigators to look into the case files of some 1,000 missing children. In 69 cases, it said it could not determine the children’s fate.

The panel avoided using its subpoena powers, thereby allowing officials to refuse to testify, or agreed to let them give evidence behind closed doors. The inquiry also did not carry out DNA tests.

On many occasions, birth and burial records requested by the Kedmi inquiry either disappeared or were reported to have been destroyed by fires or floods. The inquiry, Sangero observed, did not investigate how so many files could have been lost.

The panel was equally trusting of a 1960 census that listed many of the supposedly dead children as having “left the country”. In addition, the inquiry failed to examine why many of the biological parents received military draft notices for their children on what would have been their 18th birthdays.

Tzadok noted that, in one of the most disturbing oversights, the inquiry failed to probe the disappearance of 40 infants after they were supposedly sent from an absorption camp to Jerusalem for immunisations.

On its website, Amram has compiled damning testimonies presented to the three inquiries that suggest abductions of Mizrahi children were widespread and systematic, and might have amounted to trafficking. Such evidence appears to have swayed Hanegbi too. He told Meet the Press: “I’m reading testimony of nurses, social workers and people who admitted the children to hospitals and a variety of people, each of whom saw a small piece of the puzzle.”

Ahuva Goldfarb, national supervisor of social services at that time, admitted to the Kedmi inquiry that children had been “unregistered” when sent out of the absorption camps, away from their parents.

He added: “It was systematic as could be.” The parents were told their child was “no longer alive”.

In a letter dated April 1950, a senior health ministry official, Dr M Lichtig, expressed concern to state hospitals that children were not being returned to their parents.

“There have been instances in which children were released from hospital and did not return to their parents. Apparently, they were found by people seeking to adopt,” he wrote in the letter. “The bereaved parents searched for their children … We must make every effort to ensure that such incidents do not repeat themselves.”

Hanna Gibori, head of adoption services in the country’s north at that time, testified: “Hospital physicians handed over babies for adoption straight out of the hospital, without the official adoption agencies being involved.”

As late as 1959, a Knesset member, Ben-Zion Harel, said a significant number of children were being placed for adoption at Israeli hospitals in “unacceptable ways”, bordering on “trafficking”.

All of this appears to have occurred with minimal or non-existent judicial oversight. In 1955, a high court judge, Shneur Cheshin, wrote in a decision: “To our embarrassment, fictitious adoption orders and custodial orders are issued weekly, indeed daily.”

Hospitals and government officials were able to take advantage of the absence throughout the 1950s of any adoption laws. Oversight was only tightened up in 1960, with the passage of the Adoption Law.

A nurse who had once worked at the Batar hospital in Haifa, where Grunbaum was born in 1956, admitted on an Israeli TV show that prospective parents would “place an order” for children with the hospital. Batar closed in 1976, but requests by the Kedmi inquiry to see its archives were met with claims that the documents were either lost or destroyed by fire.

Grunbaum’s story, though rare, is not unique. Investigations over the past two decades have unearthed a handful of similar cases.

After Amram launched its website, a friend of the family revealed to Hatuka that she had been in an institution where she believed Yemenite children like herself were trafficked.

Hatuka has been able to piece together the early life of the woman, who agreed to be identified by the pseudonym Shoshana. She and her twin brother were taken from their mother at birth and placed in a care home in Jerusalem run by WIZO.

WIZO, which still runs childcare services in Israel, is mentioned in several cases of missing children who were later found. In a statement to Al Jazeera, WIZO said that the process of admitting and releasing children from the institutions it ran was managed by authorised government authorities, noting: “WIZO’s sole responsibility was to care for the health and wellbeing of the children. Throughout the years, WIZO has provided authorities, upon request, with all of the records and materials relevant to the children in its institutions. WIZO fully supports any investigation that could shed light on issues subject to public debate.”

At seven, Shoshana and her brother were moved to an ultra-Orthodox institution for parentless Yemenite children called Gur Aryeh, in Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv. Shoshana told Hatuka that intermittently they would be gathered in a room and visitors, called “American aunts”, would inspect them. Children would regularly disappear.

During her stay in Gur Aryeh, Shoshana was told that her biological mother had died five years after giving birth to her.

In the late 1990s, when the Kedmi inquiry was under way, a few Israeli journalists intensified their search for such children.

In the most famous case, widely reported in 1997, Tzila Levine was reunited with her biological mother after a 20-year search. DNA testing confirmed her blood ties to Margalit Umaysi, an immigrant from Yemen.

A doctor in Haifa had taken Levine from Umaysi shortly after her birth in 1949 and handed her to adoptive parents using forged papers. The adoption was approved by Moshe Landau, a judge who went on to serve in Israel’s Supreme Court.

”I feel that I’ve won a war – a lifelong war,” Levine told reporters at the time.

The case of Tziona Heiman was exposed five years later by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. After she confronted her Ashkenazi parents with suspicions that she was adopted, they admitted that she had been selected from a Jerusalem hospital.

Their neighbour, Yigal Allon, a famous Israeli general, had – in their words – given them the girl as a “birthday present”. Heiman later found her biological parents.

Madmoni-Gerber also located an abducted child in 1994, when she was an Israeli journalist. Moshe Becher was taken from his Yemenite family in 1953 and placed in the care of WIZO. A Turkish couple were issued a forged birth certificate for him in 1956.

Like most, Becher was never shown his adoption file, and was unable to track down his biological parents. A letter from the welfare services stated simply: “We have no clue as to your mother’s identity or whereabouts.”

Hatuka said Amram was now working to create a private DNA database abroad. It would allow both those who suspected they were kidnapped – including those now living in Europe or the US – and the parents of missing children to submit their DNA to see if matches could be made.

Grunbaum said the families’ campaign was not a quest for revenge against those behind the kidnappings.

“It is time for the country to be more open about its past,” he said. “We need to drag these issues into the sunlight and see what really happened.”

{At least seven wounded after group of UK, US and German nationals are ambushed in Herat province.}

Foreign tourists being escorted by an army convoy in western Afghanistan have been ambushed by gunmen in an attack that left at least seven people wounded, Afghan officials say.

Twelve tourists from the UK, the US and Germany were attacked in the Chesht-e-Sharif district of Herat on Thursday while on their way to the province from Bamiyan and Ghor.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement. Qari Yousef Ahmadi, Taliban spokesman, said the foreigners were killed – a claim the governor’s office denied.

“A group of Taliban fighters conducted the attack on the tourists, injuring at least six,” Jalani Farhad, spokesman for the Herat governor, told Al Jazeera. “However, no one is dead.”

The Afghan driver was also injured, he said.

Al Jazeera’s Qais Azimy, reporting from the capital Kabul, said the tourists’ vehicle had been hit by an RPG.

He described the convoy’s route as a “dangerous one”, adding that “even Afghans would avoid travelling on that road.

“This journey is three days long by road, and most of it is controlled by warlords, thieves and, of course, the Taliban,” our correspondent said.

“All these things are raising lots of questions; why did these foreigners, in the first place, decide to travel on that road,” he said, adding that “no embassy, in no country, would recommend to their citizens to take that road. Everyone knows about the risk.”

Several foreign tourism companies advertise adventure tours to Afghanistan online, including one British firm which had a trip scheduled to the area in Herat this week.

Western embassies typically warn their citizens against all travel in Afghanistan, citing threats of attacks and kidnapping.

Both Bamiyan and Herat host several archaeological sites in the country.

The world’s largest Buddha statue in Bamiyan was destroyed by the Taliban in early 2001.