Bloodthirsty Liberal

The rest have left

Many have been murdered by their neighbors and others have fled. There are seven Jewish families left in the country.

The Jews of Sana’a from Jewish Forward on Vimeo.

- Aggie

Jews cannot survive in Yemen any longer

History will record that 2,500 years of Jewish life in Yemen is now over. As The Wall Street Journal reported October 31, the US State Department has completed a clandestine operation which brought 60 of the country’s remaining Jews to America. The newspaper quoted Yeshiva University’s Hayim Tawil, a Yemeni Jewry expert, as issuing the certificate of death: “This is the end of the Jewish Diaspora of Yemen. That’s it.”

As Israelis and Jews we earnestly appreciate the efforts of the Obama administration on behalf of our Yemeni brethren.

THE RESCUE illuminates an often overlooked aspect of the 60-year-plus Arab-Israel conflict. Whereas the Arab world has purposefully maintained the 700,000 or so Palestinian Arabs made homeless in the course of the 1948 war and their descendants as permanent refugees and political pawns, the State of Israel and world Jewry have worked hard to resettle a roughly equal number of Jewish refugees forced to flee Arab lands.

The behavior of Arab leaders toward their Jewish subjects after the creation of Israel was (with notable exceptions) characterized by scapegoating and marginalization culminating in mass exodus. In 1947, Arab rioters in Aden killed dozens of Jews to protest a two-state solution in Palestine. In 1949 and 1950 the bulk of Yemen’s Jews, some 49,000 souls, were airlifted here in “Operation Magic Carpet.” The broad Arab refusal to accept the legitimacy of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state is partly attributable to Arab attitudes toward their Jewish minorities.

Somehow I don’t expect to read much of this in the NY Times. And I doubt if our resident Israel haters will have much to say. Thank g-d for Israel.

Do you want to learn more about Jewish life in a world without Israel?

Coexistence was possible - so long as Jews knew their place.

JEWISH life under Muslim rule was historically neither the utopia Arab propagandists claim nor the purgatory Jewish polemicists assert. As the doyen of Middle East studies Bernard Lewis wrote in The Jews of Islam, the actual state of affairs varied depending on the era, locale, political and economic conditions, the stability of the ruling Islamic regime, and on developments within the Jewish community.

Jews were granted Dhimmi or tolerated status. They paid a special jizya tax to underscore their subordinate position in society. If they missed the point, Islamic tradition allowed for the local Muslim authority to deliver a ceremonial slap on the neck to the Jew upon payment of the levy. Jews were required to wear distinguishing clothes; they were expected to deport themselves deferentially in the presence of Muslims. And unlike everyone else, Jews were not permitted to carry weapons.

On the other hand, Lewis wrote, Jews were not required to convert to Islam, and could enjoy a high degree of acculturation. (They were certainly better off than their coreligionists living under medieval Christendom.)

Some historical periods were better than others, but in very few cases were Jews allowed to simply live like free human beings or to enjoy the rights of the dominant culture. Now we have a country and it simply drives the haters nuts, doesn’t it? I guess that is something else to celebrate.

- Aggie

These lads found a bomb

How would the average American parents react to the information that Johnny has been goofing around with bombs at school?

Two Yemeni Students Die While Playing With Bomb

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

SAN’A, Yemen — A Yemeni police official says two boys died when a bomb they found in their village school yard went off.

The official says Monday’s blast occurred when the students passed the device around during recess in the school in al-Shayem, a village near the capital, San’a.

The official says a 17-year-old and a 7-year-old were killed, and five other students were wounded.

The official spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

It’s unclear how the bomb got into the school yard. Yemen is flooded with guns, and armed conflicts between government forces and tribesmen are widespread.

Two young sons of a Guantanamo detainee were killed in April, when a grenade they were playing with at home exploded.

I thought that all the Guantanamo detainees were innocent boy scouts? Where did these kids find hand grenades? I am confused.

- Aggie

US government aiding in the rescue of Yemeni Jews

Yemeni Jewish boys reading the Torah at a Hebrew school in the Yemeni town of Raida last month

U.S. to aid in rescue of persecuted Yemen Jews

The United States government is taking part in efforts to extricate Jews in Yemen who have been the subject of physical harassment from their Muslim neighbors.

The rescue efforts focus on 300 Jews from the Yemenite town of Rada, north of the capital Sanaa.

The State Department has maintained a weeks-long dialog with Yemenite authorities over the fate of the country’s Jewish community. The issue took on more urgency following the murder this past December of a prominent activist in the Jewish community, Moshe Yaish Nahari.

It is unclear if the U.S. involvement in helping facilitate the Jews’ exit from Yemen is the result of an initiative by Washington or an appeal from Israel. The operation is the brainchild of the umbrella group United Jewish Communities, which is being aided by other organizations specializing in absorbing and resettling refugees.

Perhaps I am looking through rose colored glasses, but I see a pattern here. The language of the Durban II documents has reportedly been altered to remove the slams against Israel after the Obama administration pulled out. The EU also threatened to boycott the conference and Italy and Canada both pulled out. There is a lot of fear around what the Obama administration will do in the peace process, but so far, I have not heard of anything concrete that differs from what Bush has done. Chas Freeman was a nightmare, but he is gone.

I think that criticizing him on the economy, health care, etc. makes all the sense in the world. But so far, I haven’t seen the pullback from our relationship with Israel. I’ve seen a lot of fear and felt it myself, but haven’t seen the actual reality. When I do, I will be screaming louder than anyone, I’m sure. Until then, maybe we should wait and see.

- Aggie

and the Israeli response

Jewish Agency brings Yemeni Jews to Israel in secret
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service
Tags: Yemen, anti-Semitism

A Jewish family of 10 is set to immigrate to Israel from Yemen on Thursday in a covert operation carried out by the Jewish Agency.

The Ben Yisrael family was extricated from the city of Raida, after suffering from anti-Semitic attacks and repeated death threats.

A few weeks ago, a grenade was thrown into the courtyard of the family’s home in Raida, possibly by al Qaida-affiliated extremists.

Said Ben Yisrael, who heads the Raida Jewish community, and his family are due to take up Israeli citizenship upon their arrival. They will be taken to Beit Shemesh, accompanied by a Jewish Agency team.

There are approximately 280 Jews left today In Yemen, 230 of whom live in Raida in the Omran province, and another 50 Jews living in the capital city of Sana’a.

Yemenite Jews have the special protection of the President of Yemen Ali Abdallah Salah. In recent years, however, anti-Semitic attacks against Jews have spiralled out of control.

The tension reached a boiling point last December, when Moshe Yaish Nahari, father of 9, was murdered by a Muslim extremist.

I wonder what the Left would say about this if they ever bothered to let themselves know? Roughly half the population of Israel is comprised of Jews who have fled Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East. That doesn’t quit fit the “white, colonial, oppressor” paradigm, does it?

- Aggie

They are supposedly bringing him to trial

A Yemini court has ordered a man accused of murdering a Jew to go for a medical check-up to determine if he is competent to stand trial.

At the start of the trial Monday, lawyers of Abdel Aziz Yehia Hamoud al-Abdi appealed that he was mentally unfit and asked for a medical examination.

Judge Abdel Bari Oqba adjourned the trial until a report about al-Abdi’s

Al-Abdi was charged with killing Moshe Yaish Nahari, a teacher at the yeshiva in Raidah village December 11.

Nahari was one of the roughly 400 remaining Jews still living in Yemen, mostly in Raidah, a small town north of the capital San’a.

That’s interesting, where did all of the Jews go?

Why they all fled Yemen in the late 40’s, early 50’s

What’s that all about? Well, for starters we find this:

With the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the political status of Jews underwent a radical change for the worse. They were relegated to the status of second class citizens. As Ahl al-Kitab, protected Peoples of the Scriptures, the Jews were assured freedom of religion only in exchange for the jizya, payment of a poll tax imposed on all non-Muslims. Active Muslim persecution of the Jews did not gain full force until the Shiite-Zaydi clan seized power early in the 10th century.[9]

As the only visible “outsiders” (though their presence in Yemen predated the introduction and mass conversion of the population to Islam) the Jews of Yemen were treated as pariahs, second-class citizens who needed to be perennially reminded of their submission or conversion to the ruling Islamic faith. The Zaydi enforced a statute known as the Orphan’s Decree, anchored in their own 18th century legal interpretations and enforced at the end of that century. It obligated the Zaydi state to take under its protection and to educate in Islamic ways any dhimmi (i.e. non-Muslim) child whose parents had died when he or she was a minor. The Orphan’s Decree was ignored during the Ottoman rule (1872-1918), but was renewed during the period of Imam Yahya (1918-1948).[10]

Under the Zaydi rule, the Jews were considered to be impure, and therefore forbidden to touch a Muslim or a Muslim’s food. They were obligated to humble themselves before a Muslim, to walk to the left side, and greet him first. They could not build houses higher than a Muslim’s or ride a camel or horse, and when riding on a mule or a donkey, they had to sit sideways. Upon entering the Muslim quarter a Jew had to take off his foot-gear and walk barefoot. If attacked with stones or fists by Islamic youth, a Jew was not allowed to defend himself. In such situations he had the option of fleeing or seeking intervention by a merciful Muslim passerby.[11]

That about covers Jewish life in Yemen through 1948. Most of them got out of there as soon as Israel declared independence:

Virtually the entire Jewish population emigrated from Yemen between June 1949 and September 1950 in what was deemed Operation Magic Carpet. Most now live in Israel, with some others in the United States, and fewer elsewhere. Only a handful remain in Yemen, mostly elderly.

I’ll bet a nickel that the guy is not tried for the murder, or, if tried, is let off with a slap on the wrist. I don’t base this on anything particular in the Yemini legal system, but rather in the history of their treatment of Jews and in the way that Jews fled Yemen.

PS: They’re threatening the remaining Jews

Muslim extremists in this northern Yemeni town are still harassing the small Jewish community after one of its members was gunned down
last week, a local rabbi said on Sunday.

Rabbi Yahia Yaish bin Yahia said he felt alienated in his own village after a Jewish teacher was gunned down Thursday by a suspected Muslim extremist.

“Raydah is no longer like the old days,” he told reporters outside his home in the village some 50 miles north of the capital San’a.

“Raydah today is full of monsters.”

- Aggie

They threaten to kill them and expel them from their homes

Not unlike Germans or Austrians or Poles or Russians or Iraqis or Afghans…

Yemenite Jews flee their homes following threats by extremists
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent

Some 45 Jews of Sa’ada county in Yemen left their homes after being threatened by radical Muslims, the Saudi daily Al Wattan reported on Monday.

According to the report, the extremists told the Jews to leave their homes within ten days, after which time they will be exposed to abductions and looting.

The Jews moved into a hotel in the town of Sa’ada, north of the Yemenite capital Sana. A formal complaint was submitted to the Yemenite President Abdullah Salah, the report said.
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The threat message - attributed to disciples of Shiite-inclined religious leader Hossein Bader a-Din al-Khouty - said that the Jews are acting in a manner that “primarily serves global Zionism, which is acting persistently to disseminate decay amongst the people and to cut them off from their principles, values, their morals and religion.”

The message also said that the threats are based on surveillance conducted on the Jews, and that “Islam calls upon us to fight against the disseminators of decay.”

Israel Radio on Monday interviewed a recently-arrived immigrant from Yemen, who identified himself only as Masoud, who managed to contact one of the women forced out of their homes.

The man was told that the Jewish community received letters last Friday, saying “whoever remains at his home, will be killed or his children will be taken away.”

Some people do not understand why we need Israel.

- Aggie