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Some of the last Jews of Yemen brought to Israel in secret mission

Flankerl

Flankerl

Well-Known Member
Some of the last Jews living in Yemen were brought to Israel in a secret mission in recent days, the Jewish Agency announced.

Clandestine activity of the Jewish Agency culminated in the aliya of the 19 Jews, fourteen from the town of Raydah and a family of five from the capital Sanaa.

According to Channel 2, the US State Department was involved in the mission and helped coordinate the complex transfer of the Jews after the group faced persecution on its way to Israel.

Among the new immigrants was Rabbi Saliman Dahari who arrived with his parents and his wife and met his children upon arrival at the absorption center in Israel. The rabbi brought with him a torah scroll that is 500-600-years-old.

The father of one of the new arrivals on Monday was Aharon Zindani, who was murdered in an anti-Semitic attack in 2012. Also in 2012, a young Jewish woman was abducted, forced to convert to Islam, and forcibly wed to a Muslim man. The Jewish Agency said that as Yemen has descended into civil war and the humanitarian situation in the country has worsened, the Jewish community has found itself increasingly imperiled.

More than 51,000 Yemenite Jews have immigrated to Israel since the country’s establishment in 1948. In 1949, Israel organized their mass transfer to the newly-established state in Operation Magic Carpet.

The Jewish Agency noted that some fifty Jews remain in Yemen, including approximately forty in Sanaa, where they live in a closed compound adjacent to the US embassy and enjoy the protection of Yemeni authorities. These last Jews have chosen to remain in the country without Jewish communal or organizational infrastructure, the Jewish Agency said.

Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky said hailed the mission as a "significant moment in the history of Israel and of aliya."

"From Operation Magic Carpet in 1949 until the present day, The Jewish Agency has helped bring Yemenite Jewry home to Israel. Today we bring that historic mission to a close. This chapter in the history of one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities is coming to an end, but Yemenite Jewry’s unique, 2,000-year-old contribution to the Jewish people will continue in the State of Israel,” Sharansky said.

source: http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Re...en-brought-to-Israel-in-secret-mission-448639
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Pastek

Pastek

Sunni muslim
Tumah said:
Its perhaps not nice. But I don't see what's strange about it.
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It's strange to not include people who practice a religion in a country who says it's a democracy and who also proclames to be a "jewish state".
I just find it contradictory.

In the same time it remember me Tunisia for exemple, who some years ago during the reign of Ben Ali didn't like religious people and may arrest some of them who pray too much or ask women to not wear the hijab or men to not have a beard.
 
Tumah

Tumah

Veteran Member
Pastek said:
It's strange to not include people who practice a religion in a country who says it's a democracy and who also proclames to be a "jewish state".
I just find it contradictory.

In the same time it remember me Tunisia for exemple, who some years ago during the reign of Ben Ali didn't like religious people and may arrest some of them who pray too much or ask women to not wear the hijab or men to not have a beard.
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This is going back to the beginning of the inception of the state (literally like a year or two after independence), not something recent. The overwhelming majority of the people were secular. The Zionists were still working out the character of the state at the time. They wanted it to be secular and saw Judaism as something that was on its way out the door anyway. They were willing to save the Jews of Yemen, but they also wanted to integrate them into the new secular culture. Their methods were underhanded and disgusting and almost an entire generation of Yemenis today are secular because of it.

But now its over 60 years later, and at least some of those wrinkles were ironed out. Although, they do try to pass laws or move funding in a way that would make religion a little rougher once in a while, rule of the majority is just one of the negative things of being a minority in a democracy. And religious Jews are still a minority. So you band together with other minority parties, try to increase your political clout and do your best to get what you need. But you can't compare how it is now to how it used to be. The mindset of the people, their character and ideology is much different today then it was in their parents' generation.

Since its creation, the Jewish character of the state is not meant to be about religion as much as culture. Religion was (and to some extent is still) something they were trying to move past. This is something that I see a lot of Muslims have difficulty understanding.
 
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