"The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back": The 1996 Blood Affair and the Navon Commission

This article analyzes the role and functions of Israeli commissions of inquiry (COI) and specifically, the Navon Commission of 1996 which investigated a newly revealed Israeli policy calling for all Ethiopian-Israeli blood donations to be surreptitiously thrown out for fear of contamination from AIDS. The revelation of the affair led to a 10,000-person protest convened by the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) and an official commission was formed to investigate the scandal (known as the "Blood Affair"), headed by former president of Israel Yitzhak Navon. Engaging with historical and theoretical literature that presents disparate "typologies" of Israeli commissions of inquiry and discusses their functions and socio-political significance, this article probes the reasons both the Ethiopian-Israelis and the state favored the formation of a commission of inquiry to investigate the Blood Affair. The study then asks how and why the Blood Affair narrative in the final report of the Navon Commission differed from the various narratives advanced by Beta Israel. The article contends that the Navon Commission and Beta Israel viewed the Blood Affair from different angles, the former as a public commission and the latter through the experience of Ethiopian-Israelis as immigrants and their process of integration.