מַסַּע סִפְרוּתִי לִצפון אָמֵרִיקָה
הסופרת והמשוררת איריס אליה כהן

Lecture by Iris Eliya Cohen :
The Yemenite Children Affair:
Memory, Testimony, and the Question of Disappearance

The lecture examines one of the most painful and deeply contested affairs in the history of the State of Israel.

It addresses a question that has persisted for decades: were children in fact taken, where are they today, and what happens to a society when memory, testimony, and denial remain in unresolved tension.

A decade ago, the novelist and poet Iris Eliya Cohen watched a television report on the Yemenite Children Affair. The experience left a lasting impression on her.
From that encounter emerged her novel Galbi, which approaches this historical wound through literature.
The lecture itself directs attention to the broader public issue, the testimonies, the unresolved questions, and the human and social consequences of the affair.

Through this framework, we will consider how a national affair takes shape and remains open across generations. We will examine how ethnic and familial pain enters the public sphere. We will also consider the ways in which prolonged silence shapes collective consciousness and historical understanding.

Both books, Galbi and Mine HaAret, are works of fiction created by Iris Eliya Cohen. They draw on documented historical realities and on a charged collective memory, while constructing plot, character, and narrative through literary imagination rather than through factual documentation.

Galbi presents a fictional narrative set against the background of the Yemenite Children Affair. The novel draws on historical events from the period in order to construct a human drama of loss, search, and identity, while linking communities, historical moments, and personal histories.

Mine HaAret is a literary continuation of Galbi. It extends the narrative through the figure of the girl who disappeared in the first novel.

Mine HaAret follows the life of the girl after she is taken and traces her formation within a family of Holocaust survivors in the United States. The novel explores how identity is shaped within a new social and cultural environment and how the absence of memory, even when it is not consciously accessible, continues to inform relationships, emotions, and life choices.

In this way, the two novels create a bridge between parallel narratives. The reader moves from the question of disappearance to the possibility of a life that continued elsewhere. T
hrough that movement, the literary discussion expands from the historical event itself to the broader human meanings of loss, belonging, and the search for origin.