had begun to leave Yemen in the 1880s, when some 2,500 had made
their way to Jerusalem and Jaffa. But it was after World War I,
when Yemen became independent, that anti-Jewish feeling in that
country made emigration imperative. Anti-Semitic laws, which had
lain dormant for years were revived (e.g. Jews were not permitted
to walk on pavements or to ride horses). In court, a Jews
evidence was not accepted against that of a Moslem.
1922, the government of Yemen reintroduced an ancient Islamic
law requiring that Jewish orphans under age 12 be forcibly converted
to Islam. When a Jew decided to emigrate, he had to leave all
his property. In spite of this, between 1923 and 1945 a total
of 17,000 Yemenite Jews left and immigrated to Palestine.
the Second World War, thousands of more Yemenite Jews wanted to
come to Palestine, but the British Mandates White Paper
was still in force and those who left Yemen ended up in crowded
slums in Aden, where serious riots broke out in 1947 after the
United Nations decided on partition. Many Jews were killed, and
the Jewish quarter was burned to the ground. It was not until
September 1948 that the British authorities in Aden allowed the
refugees to proceed to Israel.
1947, after the partition vote, Muslim rioters engaged in a bloody
pogrom in Aden that killed 82 Jews and destroyed hundreds of Jewish
homes. The Jewish community of Aden, numbering 8,000 in 1948,
was forced to flee. By 1959 over 3,000 arrived in Israel. Many
fled to the U.S.A. and England. Today there are no Jews left in
the time of Israels founding, Yemens Jewish community
was economically paralysed, as most of the Jewish stores and businesses
were destroyed. This increasingly perilous situation led to the
emigration of virtually the entire Yemenite Jewish community -
almost 50,000 - between June 1949 and September 1950 in Operation
Magic Carpet. A smaller, continuous migration was
allowed to continue into 1962, when a civil war put an abrupt
halt to any further Jewish exodus.
is another example of the displacement of an entire Jewish community
from its ancient roots in the Arab countries. It is estimated,
there are about 1,000 Jews in Yemen today. They are held as hostages,
and are kept in dire conditions and not allowed to leave.
Prof. Ada Aharoni, International Forum for Peace and Culture website.
Karen Hayesod Head Office Jerusalem. The Exodus from Yemen. Goldberg
Press Ltd.: Jerusalem, 1950.and Patai, Raphael. The Vanished Worlds
of Jewry. Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc.: New York, 1980.