Operation Magic Carpet (Yemen)

Yemenite Jews en route to Israel from Aden
Yemenite Jews on an aeroplane

Operation Magic Carpet is the widely known nickname for Operation On Wings of Eagles (Hebrew: כנפי נשרים Kanfe Nesharim), which was conducted by Israel between 16 December 1948 and 24 September 1950[1] to take in approximately 49,000 Yemenite Jews as part of the Jewish exodus from the Muslim world.[2] The name derives from the biblical image of Israel being carried "on eagles' wings" (Exodus 19:4 and Isaiah 40:31). With support from the United Kingdom and the United States, the majority of Jews in Yemen—as well as 500 Jews in Djibouti and Eritrea and some 2,000 Jews in Saudi Arabia—were brought to Israel. British and American transport planes (with Alaska Airlines as a major participant) made hundreds of flights from Aden Colony to facilitate the airlift.

At the time, the Kingdom of Yemen comprised what would, in the future, be known as North Yemen. The UK controlled the Crown Colony of Aden, which would later become known as South Yemen. In 1990, North and South Yemen united to create the country known today as Yemen. Thus, the "Yemen" of 1948 was only a portion of the country known today as Yemen.

Background

The Jews of Yemen were one of the oldest communities of the Jewish diaspora and have been settled in the region since antiquity.[1] They lived under Islamic rule as dhimmis and over the centuries they faced recurring persecution and legal disadvantages.[3][1]

Under the Zaydi imamate, the Orphans' Decree required that Jewish orphans be converted to Islam drawing on 18th-century Zaydi legal interpretations. It was reinforced in the 20th century and most recorded cases occurred in the 1920s under Imam Yahya (reigned 1918–1948).[4]

The community nevertheless sustained a deep religious basis for return to the Land of Israel and Yemenite Jews were among the earliest Zionist immigrants to Palestine.[1][5]: 66  From the 1880s, Yemenite Jews began emigrating to Ottoman and later Mandatory Palestine in intermittent waves, the first group arriving in 1882.[1][5]: 68  In 1911 a Zionist emissary, Shmuel Yavnieli, travelled through Yemen and urged the community to leave for Palestine.[1][5]: 66  Imam Yahya prohibited Jewish emigration, but Yemenite Jews continued to leave by way of British-ruled Aden.[1]: 212–213 

Emigration continued despite the ban. Over the course of the British Mandate more than 15,000 Yemenite Jews immigrated to Palestine[1][5]: 59  and by the outbreak of World War II some 28,000 lived among the Yishuv.[6]

The principal gateway for Yemenite Jews bound for Palestine was Aden, a British-ruled territory (formerly the Aden Settlement, then the Aden Province) that became the separate Crown Colony of Aden in 1937 and was administered apart from the Imamate of Yemen.[1] The immigration limits imposed by the British White Paper of 1939 turned Aden into a bottleneck and refugees built up in the colony with dimming prospects of continuing on to Palestine.[1] Only a handful reached Palestine in the last years of the Mandate, with 55 Yemenite Jews entering in 1946, 50 in 1947 and 54 in the first ten months of 1948.[1]: 213 

From 1946 the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) organised relief among the stranded refugees and in 1947 it set up camps for them at Sheikh Othman and Geula, near Aden town.[1] Britain, as the governing power in Aden, was anxious to be rid of the growing number of stranded Jewish refugees.[5]: 67 

The announcement of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in November 1947 was followed days later by anti-Jewish riots in Aden. More than 80 Jews were killed and Jewish property was destroyed.[7][1]

In February 1948 Imam Yahya was assassinated in a coup, and after a brief upheaval his son Ahmad established himself as ruler by March 1948.[1][8]: 150  That May the State of Israel was founded, giving the prospective emigrants both a destination and a state able to grant visas and arrange their absorption.[1] The airlift began while the 1948 Arab–Israeli War was still under way and would continue after the fighting concluded.[1]: 216 

Violence also recurred within Yemen itself, where in 1948 the Jewish quarter of the town of Dhamar was looted after rumours that Jews had killed two girls.[9][1] Recurring harassment and violence influenced Jews across Yemen to emigrate in larger and more frequent waves.[10] In 1949, Ahmad reversed the long-standing ban on emigration and allowed the Jews of Yemen to leave.[1]: 219 [8]: 152 

On the eve of Operation Magic Carpet an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 Jews remained in Yemen itself,[11][1][8] while the neighbouring Aden Colony, which would serve as the airlift's staging point, had its own long-established Jewish community, concentrated in the Crater quarter of Aden town.[1][12] By late 1948 thousands of Yemenite refugees had gathered in the JDC-run Hashed transit camp near Aden, setting the stage for the airlift that followed.[1][8]: 152 

Motives and preparation

The Jewish Agency's emissary, Rabbi Yaakov Shraibom, was sent in 1949 to Yemen and discovered that there were around 50,000 Jews living in Yemen, which was unknown at the time to Israel. He sent multiple letters[13] to convey the community's strong religious and messianic desire to come to Israel. David Ben-Gurion was reluctant at first, but he came around eventually.[13]

Esther Meir-Glitzenstein[14] showed evidence how the community's sentiment for aliyah played a part in the exodus, the extent of which surprised even the Jewish state and the agency in charge of the operation, who were not prepared for the mass of Jews who were fleeing Yemen. Once he realized that, Shraibom tried to prevent the coming crisis and urged the community to stay in Yemen, but the sentiment of the community for aliyah was stronger and they came nonetheless.

Meir-Glitzenstein also claims that collusion between Israel and the Imam of Yemen who "profited hugely from confiscatory taxes levied on the Jewish community" led to a botched operation in which the Jewish community suffered terribly.[15] Reuven Ahroni[16] and Tudor Parfitt[17] argue that economic motivations also had a role in the massive emigration of Yemeni Jews, which began prior to 1948.

Tudor Parfitt described the reasons for the exodus as multi-faceted, some aspects due to Zionism and others more historically based:

economic straits as their traditional role was whittled away, famine, disease, growing political persecution, and increased public hostility, the state of anarchy after the murder of Yahya, often a desire to be reunited with family members, incitement and encouragement to leave from those who played on their religious sensibilities, promises that their passage would be paid to Israel and that their material difficulties would be cared for by the Jewish state, a sense that the Land of Israel was a veritable Eldorado, a sense of history being fulfilled, a fear of missing the boat, a sense that living wretchedly as dhimmis in an Islamic state was no longer God-ordained, a sense that as a people, they had been flayed by history long enough: All these played a role. ... Purely religious, messianic sentiment, too, had its part, but by and large, this has been over-emphasised.[18]

Operation

"Magic Carpet" was the first of a series of Israeli operations to aid Jewish emigration from Muslim lands.[19] The airlift was directed by James Wooten, president of Alaska Airlines, whose aircraft flew the charter flights from Aden, some of which Wooten piloted himself.[20][21]

Thousands of Yemenite refugees had gathered in the Hashed transit camp in Aden with support from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. With sea passage through the Suez Canal closed to Israel-bound ships, the Joint Distribution Committee took over the task of moving them out of Aden by air, and the Israeli government made 3,500 immigration visas available.[1]

The airlift used chartered American aircraft that Alaska Airlines, a civilian carrier, had acquired as war-surplus military transports: Douglas DC-4s (the civilian designation of the wartime C-54 Skymaster) and Curtiss C-46 Commandos.[22] On a 1,760 miles (2,830 km) non-stop flight of about eight hours, the planes crossed Yemen but skirted Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Transjordan, and they were fired on from the ground seven times, one aircraft being hit in the tail. A refueling station had to be set up at Asmara in Eritrea, about 500 miles (800 km) from Aden.[1] In August 1949, after the United States government acted against Alaska Airlines, Wooten and the pilot Robert Maguire formed a new carrier, Near East Air Transport, to keep the flights going. Its aircraft, refitted with wooden benches in place of upholstered seats, carried between 125 and 145 of the underweight refugees per flight in place of the usual 56.[1]

The airlift unfolded in three stages. In the first, from December 1948 to March–April 1949, roughly 7,000 Yemenite and Adeni Jews were flown to Israel.[8]: 151  The first flight carried fifty orphans out of Aden aboard a Douglas DC-3 on 16 December 1948. Thereafter groups of 70 to 117 people were trucked almost daily to the Aden airport under armed guard, and by the end of February 1949 some 4,500 refugees had been flown out.[1][23] Although The Palestine Post reported the airlift in detail that month under the headline "Magic Carpet", the first phase drew little public attention, and the operation's name made little impact until it was publicly announced later in the year.[8]: 160 

The main wave came in the second stage, from July to November 1949, when some 30,000 Yemenites were flown to Israel.[8]: 151  This far larger movement had not been made public, thanks to cooperation between the Israeli censor and the Israeli and foreign press, out of concern for the welfare of the refugees gathered in Aden. A few reports had appeared in the foreign press, but they were toned down and not widely picked up. The airlift reached its peak in September, and it was disclosed only on 7 November 1949, when leaders of the Joint Distribution Committee announced it to the media, a decision the JDC attributed to a forthcoming New York Herald Tribune report by the journalist Ruth Gruber.[8]: 154  The Palestine Post then reported on its front page that the entire Yemenite Jewish community was being transferred to Israel.[24]

A third and final stage continued through 1950.[8]: 151  The operation ended on 24 September 1950, when the last two aircraft reached Lydda Airport with 177 passengers. In all it comprised some 430 flights covering more than 1.3 million miles at a transport cost exceeding US$4 million, and a monument was raised at the Jewish cemetery in Aden to about 700 refugees who had died there.[1]

The operation continues to be widely celebrated among Israelis. Kanfei Nesharim Street in Jerusalem is named for it, as well as a street in Herzliya, one in Ramat Gan, and another in Kerem HaTeimanim, which is a neighbourhood of Tel Aviv that was established by Yemenite Jews in 1906.

Criticism

Esther Meir-Glitzenstein criticized the execution of the operation. She especially criticized the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Israel, which, according to her, abandoned thousands of Jews in the deserts on the border between North Yemen and Aden. Mismanagement or corruption by the British authorities and the Jewish Agency also played a role. Some 850 Yemenite Jews died en route to their departure points, and in the community which reached Israel, infant mortality rates were high, albeit lower than in Yemen.[25][26]

According to Ben-Gurion's diary, the Yemeni children in the Israeli ma'abarot or tent transit camps were dying like flies. Children were often separated from their parents for hygienic reasons, or taken away to hospitals for treatment, but often, parents only received notification, often by loudspeaker, they had died. According to some testimony, there was a suspicion that the state kidnapped healthy Yemeni children, for adoption, and then informed the parents they had died.

As a result, some decades later, the Yemenite Children Affair exploded, in which it was rumoured that something of the order of 1,000 children had gone missing.[27] In a 2019 article in Tablet magazine, Yaacov Lozowick, the former Israel State Archivist, explained the cases of the missing Yemenite babies. There was a very high death rate, and disturbed medical professionals, he said, autopsied some of the bodies to try to find out why. Traditionally, autopsies were forbidden under Jewish law, so this was hidden from the parents. Lozowick wrote that the files contained no evidence of any kidnappings.[28] However, in February 2019, The New York Times published an article in which some of the missing children were found by DNA test by their living relatives. They were given for adoption to Ashkenazi Jewish families.[29]

Aftermath

In 1959, another 3,000 Jews from Aden fled to Israel, while many more left as refugees to the United States and the United Kingdom. The emigration of Yemeni Jews continued as a trickle, but stopped in 1962 when a civil war broke out in North Yemen, which put an abrupt halt to further emigration. In 2013, a total sum of 250 Jews still lived in Yemen.[30][31]

The Jewish communities in Raydah were shocked by the killing of Moshe Ya'ish al-Nahari in 2008. His wife and nine children emigrated to Israel.[32] Other members of the Jewish community received hate letters and threats by phone. Amnesty International wrote to the Yemeni government, urging the country to protect its Jewish citizens. The human rights organization stated that it is "deeply concerned for the safety of members of the Jewish community in northwestern Yemen following the killing of one member of the community and anonymous serious threats to others to leave Yemen or face death".[33]

It was forbidden for native-born Yemeni Jews who had left the country to re-enter, rendering communication with these communities difficult. Muslims were therefore hired as shelihim (emissaries) to locate the remaining Jews, pay their debts, and transport them to Aden. Little came of this.[34] In August 2020, of an estimated 100 or so remaining Yemen Jews, 42 have migrated to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the rest would also leave.[35][36][37]

On November 10, 2020, the U.S. State Department called for the immediate and unconditional release of Levi Salem Musa Marhabi, who had been imprisoned for helping smuggle a Torah scroll out of Yemen. A press statement said Marhabi has been wrongfully detained by the Houthi militia for four years, despite a court ordering his release in September 2019.[38]

On 28 March 2021, 13 Jews were forced by the Houthis to leave Yemen, leaving the last four elderly Jews in Yemen.[39][40][41] At the time, it was reported that there were six Jews left in Yemen: one woman; her brother; three others, and Levi Salem Marhabi.[42] In March 2022, the United Nations reported that only one Jew remained in Yemen.[43]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Schechtman, Joseph B. (July 1952). "The Repatriation of Yemenite Jewry". Jewish Social Studies. 14 (3): 209–224.
  2. ↑ Ministry of immigrant absorption, Israel: "On Eagles' Wings" – Aliyah from Yemen (1949). Retrieved 23 June 2012.
  3. ↑ Minority Rights Group (October 16, 2023). "Jews in Yemen". Minorityrights.org. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  4. ↑ Eraqi-Klorman, Bat-Zion (February 2001). "The Forced Conversion of Jewish Orphans in Yemen". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 33 (1): 23–47. doi:10.1017/s0020743801001027. ISSN 0020-7438.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Halamish, Aviva (2006). "A New Look at Immigration of Jews from Yemen to Mandatory Palestine". Israel Studies. 11 (1): 59–78. doi:10.2979/ISR.2006.11.1.59. JSTOR 30245779. S2CID 144740066.
  6. ↑ "Yemen". Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.). Gale. 2007 – via Jewish Virtual Library.
  7. ↑ Ahroni, R. The Jews of the British Crown Colony of Aden: History, Culture, and Ethnic Relations. Brill, 1994: P210-11.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Meir-Glitzenstein, Esther (2011). "Operation Magic Carpet: Constructing the Myth of the Magical Immigration of Yemenite Jews to Israel". Israel Studies. 16 (3): 149–173.
  9. ↑ Parfitt, Tudor (1996), The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen 1900-1950, Brill's Series in Jewish Studies vol. XVII, pp. 85–124, ISBN 9789004105447
  10. ↑ Reuben Ahroni, Jewish Emigration from the Yemen, 1951-98: Carpet Without Magic, pp.xi-xii, p. 1.
  11. ↑ Parfitt, Tudor (1996), The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen 1900-1950, Brill's Series in Jewish Studies vol. XVII, p. 33, ISBN 9789004105447
  12. ↑ Ahroni, Reuben (1994). The Jews of the British Crown Colony of Aden: History, Culture, and Ethnic Relations. Brill.
  13. 1 2 פרקש, טלי (March 3, 2016). "Meir-Glitzenstein on Yaakov Shraibom efforts in Yemen, and the failure of Operation Magic Carpet". Ynet.
  14. ↑ Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, The Exodus of the Yemenite Jews − A Failed Operation and a Formative Myth, Resling, Tel Aviv 2012.
  15. ↑ 'Operation Magic Carpet: Constructing the Myth of the Magical Immigration of Yemenite Jews to Israel,' in Israel Studies, vol.16, No.3 (Fall) 2011 pp. 149-173.
  16. ↑ Reuben Ahroni, Jewish Emigration from the Yemen, 1951-98: Carpet Without Magic, pp.xi-xii, p.20.
  17. ↑ Parfitt, Tudor. The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen, 1900-1950. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996).
  18. ↑ Tudor Parfitt (1996). The Road to Redemption – The Jews of the Yemen 1900-1950. Brill. p. 285.
  19. ↑ Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis. 1998, pp. 182–185.
  20. ↑ "James A. Wooten, Director of '49 Airlift of Yemeni Jews". The New York Times. June 3, 1985. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 17, 2026.
  21. ↑ "James Wooten's Home Movies". JDC Archives. Retrieved June 17, 2026.
  22. ↑ "From the archives: How Alaska Airlines evacuated 49,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel 'on the wings of eagles'". Alaska Airlines News. Retrieved July 2, 2026.
  23. ↑ "Magic Carpet". The Palestine Post. February 28, 1949. p. 3.
  24. ↑ "Entire Yemen Jewish Community Being Transferred to Israel". The Palestine Post. November 8, 1949. p. 1.
  25. ↑ Vered Lee 'The frayed truth of Operation Magic Carpet', at Haaretz, 28 May 2012
  26. ↑ Tudor Parfitt, The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen, 1900-1950, BRILL, 1996, p. 239ff.
  27. ↑ Meira Weiss, 'The Immigrating Body and the Body Politic: The 'Yemenite Children Affair' and Body Commodification in Israel', in Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Loïc Wacquant (eds.), Commodifying Bodies, Sage Publications, 2002 pp. 93-110, pp. 93ff.
  28. ↑ Yaacov Lozowick, "The Myth of the Kidnapped Yemenite Children, and the Sin it Conceals," Tablet Magazine, March 14, 2019 https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/278261/myth-of-kidnapped-yemenite-children
  29. ↑ Malin Fezehai, "The Disappeared Children of Israel" New York Times, 20. February 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/world/middleeast/israel-yemenite-children-affair.html
  30. ↑ The Jews of Yemen by Mitchell Bard], Jewish Virtual Library
  31. ↑ Fact Sheet: Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries, Jewish Virtual Library, September 2012
  32. ↑ Efraim, Omri (June 20, 1995). "Wife, children of gunned down Yemenite teacher make aliyah - Israel News, Ynetnews". Ynetnews. Ynetnews.com. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  33. ↑ Amnesty Int'l urges Yemen to protect its Jew Archived February 12, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, JTA, 24-12-2008.
  34. ↑ Reuven Ahloni, Jewish Emigration from the Yemen, 1951-98, pp. 11ff.
  35. ↑ "Report: Yemen's Remaining Jews to Move to UAE Following Israel Treaty". August 16, 2020. Archived from the original on September 20, 2020. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  36. ↑ "Emirate Prince and Russia's Chief Rabbi Bring a Yemenite Couple to Safety". chabad.org. August 24, 2020. Retrieved March 30, 2021.
  37. ↑ "The Last Jews of Yemen". September 5, 2020.
  38. ↑ "Wrongful Detention by the Houthis of Levi Salem Musa Marhabi," Press Statement, U.S. State Department, (November 10, 2020).
  39. ↑ "Houthis deport some of Yemen's last remaining Jews - Al-Monitor: The Pulse of the Middle East". www.al-monitor.com. March 29, 2021.
  40. ↑ Joffre, Tzvi (March 29, 2021). "Almost all remaining Jews in Yemen deported - Saudi media". Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on October 24, 2021.
  41. ↑ staff, T. O. I. "Some of Yemen's last remaining Jews said expelled by Iran-backed Houthis". The Times of Israel. ISSN 0040-7909.
  42. ↑ Boxerman, Aaron. "As 13 Yemeni Jews leave the pro-Iran region for Cairo, community of 50,000 down to 6". The Times of Israel. ISSN 0040-7909.
  43. ↑ Deutch, Gabby (March 14, 2022). "Only one Jew remains in Yemen, U.N. says". Jewish Insider.
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