Yemen's last Jews are leaving
Yemen's last Jews are leaving the country - they will likely end up in the United States or in Israel.The village may soon be no more. The last hundred or so Yemeni Jews are set to leave after more than two millennia in the country. A century ago some 50,000 of them lived more or less peacefully alongside the Muslim majority, now numbering 23m. Life became harder for them after the creation of Israel in 1948, with outbreaks of violence against Jews. Most were spirited out over the next few years in Operation Magic Carpet on American aircraft. A second, much smaller wave of around 1,200 of them were resettled in the early 1990s. A few hundred stayed on, largely in the northern province of Saada. After Houthi rebels eroded the government’s grip there in recent fighting, they were evacuated to a compound in Sana’a. As the perceived threat to them grows, Jewish-American and Israeli groups and American diplomats are trying to establish refugee status for them and then pay for their resettlement in the United States or Israel.And a generation from now, no one will remember that they were ever refugees. Unlike certain other 'refugees' who continue to perpetuate that status four generations later.....
Their departure will be a milestone. Yemen’s Jews, who speak Arabic, hark back to a time when it was possible to have a shared Jewish and Arab identity. Elsewhere in the Arab world most Jewish communities have shrivelled. In Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad (where Jews were once the largest single community) numbers have shrunk to a handful of old folk keeping a nervously low profile. Yemen’s few hundred Jews were some of the last who preserved their synagogues and continued to conduct ceremonies in them. Zion Ozeri, a Jewish photographer of Yemeni descent who has documented the last of Yemen’s Jews, says that, for those who settle in Israel, there are “negative undertones” attached to being an Arab Jew. “In Israel or the diaspora, hardly any Jew considers himself of Arab culture.”
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:56 AM
3 Comments:
Our best friends in Israel are a couple with the mom's parents from Yemen and the dad's parents from Morocco. Their kids are friends with our kids. They are the kindest, most high-tech savvy, most fun people I know anywhere. They get along just fine in Israel and in the U.S. I'd move into their neighborhood just to enjoy their company more if we could figure out how to make a living there. Israel will benefit from the new immigrants from Yemen.
And thusly Mohamed's command to clear the Arabian Peninsula of Jews will be fulfilled.
"I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim" (Sahih Muslim 19.4366).
http://www.chayas.com/stolen.htm
Let's prey the secular atheist bolsheviks do not harm our Temani brethren like they have been wronged in the past [stolen children].
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