Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair [Hardcover]

Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0230613462 | ISBN-13: 978-0230613461 | Publication Date: July 21, 2009

This book examines bias within the state of Israel and the media at large, through the lens of the news coverage of the Yemenite Babies Affair. The Yemenite Babies Affair is the emotionally laden, yet still unresolved, story of the alleged kidnapping of hundreds of Yemenite babies upon their arrival to Israel during the 1950s.  In analyzing fifty years of public narratives, Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber argues that the media played a major role in the concurrent framing and silencing of this story. This eye-opening study exposes the clash between the European Zionist ideology of unity and the reality of Israel’s diverse society, where at least half of the Jewish population is of Arab descent. 

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Few books today raise more profoundly disturbing questions about identity, internal orientalism, modes of unofficial censorship, and the government of Israel than this brave and important book.”—Steven C. Caton, Professor of Contemporary Arab Society and Director, Center for Middle East Studies, Harvard University

“This brilliantly written and meticulously researched book explores one of the darkest chapters of those oppressive relations…This book belongs on your bookshelf in the small but ever-growing library of Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jewish) independent and alternative writing on the history of the Jews in modern times”—Sami Shalom Chetrit, Israeli poet and scholar, Queens College, CUNY

"Madmoni-Gerber tells a shocking story nobody wants to hear…Simultaneously critical and compassionate, Madmoni-Gerber explores the painful border between the personal and the political, between Israel's national story and her family's immigrant experience."—James E. Young, Professor and Chair, Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst

“Madmoni-Gerber’s lucid book on the Kidnapped Yemeni Babies’ Affair is the fruit of scrupulous long-term research and eloquent writing. It is the first full scale book in English on the subject that transgresses the Hebrew-language translation blockade on the Affair. Her analysis of the state of Israel’s kidnapping and selling for adoption Yemeni-Jewish babies serve as a major case study to illustrate the intra-Jewish racism characterizing state ideologies, policies and practices as well as daily life in the state that has declared itself to be homeland for all Jews. Through interviews and archival research, Madmoni-Gerber illuminates the bureaucratic and legal red tapes the state has wrapped around the Jews from the Muslim World and the Middle East who tried to resist this racism by demanding their inalienable rights to parent their children and around the activists who sought to unearth the state’s role in the affair. Israelis loyally call their printed and electronic media “the tribal fire,” and often ignore its embeddeddness in the regime. Contextualizing the tools of Critical Cultural Studies Madmoni-Gerber examines the modes in which this media acted in tandem with the regime to conceal and contain the Affair fearing that unearthing its truth would lead to the undoing of the State as a Jewish refuge where all Jews are to be equal. In so doing, Madmoni-Gerber provides the first ever study of Israel’s media through the optics of the venerable Subaltern Studies school. This book is a must read for those wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the racial formations of the Palestine/Israel conflict and its inextricable links to Israel’s internal racism against non-European Jews of darker hues.”--Smadar Lavie, author of The Poetics of Military Occupation and co-editor of Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity

"In treating this subject, Madoni-Gerber provides an intriguing case study for what has befallen other isolated minorities worldwide when thrust into modern societies." --CHOICE

About the Author

Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media at Suffolk University. She was born and raised in Israel to parents of Yemenite descent. She has worked as a freelance journalist in Israel for several newspapers and her article “Orientalism Reconsidered: Israeli Media and the Articulation of Internal Resistance” was published in Cultural Studies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (July 21, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230613462
• ISBN-13: 978-0230613461
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,805,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars finally, a book on it, August 27, 2010

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This review is from: Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair (Hardcover)

I have been waiting years, no decades for a full length book on Yemenite Jews. It is a pity is had to be published in US rather than in Israel. Among the things I learned were a) the Yemenite Baby Affair was really a Mizrahi baby affair, as one third of the kidnaped babies were non Yemenite b) many Yemenite artefacts were stolen in Israel, such as ancient hand written Bibles and jewelry c) the Israeli press coverage has been complicit in an ongoing coverup that prevents admission and closure of what really happened fifty years ago.

The Israeli investigative bodies either did not have or use the right of subpoena. The investigations were stonewalled by individuals who include Shimon Peres and Aharon Barak, among others. Yehuda Hiss, the state pathologist, falsified a genetic test in 1997 contradicting a Hadassah Hospital test showing a 99.9 % certainty of maternity involving an LA woman and her Yemenite mother from whom she was kidnaped almost 60 years ago. Hence the coverup continues.

The basic journalist questions of who, when, where, what, why and how, that I learned in ninth grade, never ever appear in the Israeli press accounts of what happened. There remains no admission of obvious fact, no apology, and continued stonewalling. The many contradictory defenses of potential parties to the crimes (which have never been called such) more or less amount to a confession.