Photographs taken at Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv by a representative of the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that deals with Jewish immigration, documented the arrival late Sunday of the last of the Yemeni Jews who wanted to go to Israel.
Advertisement
Israel has launched other operations to bring back the Jews of the Diaspora, including two mass airlifts of Ethiopian Jewry in 1984 and 1991, which saw the influx of 22,000 people.
Chairman of the Executive of The Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky hailed it as “a highly significant moment in the history of Israel and of Aliyah”.
“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”, he added. The Agency would not disclose details of the secret mission, which it named “Miktzeh Teiman”, a phrase taken from a passuk that translates as “from the ends of Yemen”. The local rabbi, Saliman Dahari, who also had the role of the town’s kosher slaughterer, brought 600-year-old Torah scrolls with him to Israel.
Israel has run covert operations to bring Jews to the state since its inception in 1948.
As starvation spread across Sudan in 1984, the United States and Israel negotiated a plan to secretlyairlift 250 Ethiopian Jews to Israel after busing them from a refugee camp in Sudan to an airfield in Khartoum.
The Jewish Agency said Monday that 19 Yemenite Jews arrived over the past few days. The Bnei Menashe, for example, finally returned home to Israel after 2,000 years of wandering around the far-flung corner of India.
On the cusp of a rebel takeover of Ethiopia in May 1991, Israelevacuated 14,500 Ethiopian Jews from the capital, Addis Ababa, in less than 36 hours.
The evacuation, organised by Israel’s Jewish Agency, was from Raydah, in the north-west of the country, which had a long established Jewish community. In 2012, Aharon Zindani was murdered in Sanaa and a young Jewish woman was abducted, forced to convert to Islam, and forcibly Wednesday to a Muslim man.
The Agency statement said around 50 Jews had chose to stay, including at least 40 living in a compound near the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, under Yemeni government protection.
Advertisement
According to the Jewish Agency, attacks against Jews in Yemen have risen sharply since 2008, when a Jewish teacher was murdered in Raydah.
