Alwaght- Hundreds of the Jewry have been living in Yemen for thousands of years. They are majorly concentrated in Rida district in the city of Amran and also in Al-Salem district in Sa’dah province. Before that, they had a full district belonging to them in the heart of Sana’a, the capital, called the “Jewish Neighborhood.” The name comes from the Jewish residents of it who were famous for trade and craftsmanship.
Lately, and in mid-2016 to be precise, a number of Jewish families of Yemen immigrated secretly to the occupied Palestinian territories, carrying with them some of rare versions of Torah deemed by some Yemeni activists as cultural legacy belonging to Yemen. This came while some others said the copies really belonged to the Jewish citizens and so they reserved the right to do with them the way they wished. The interesting point here is their secret way of travelling to the Israeli regime and the care they were offered during the journey until they arrived in Tel Aviv, where they were received by a top delegation on the behalf of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yusef Yahya, a man from the Jewish sect of Yemen who still lives in Sana’a, has told Alwaght that the Jews of Yemen were invited by the Israeli regime to leave their country. “But we cannot live out of our country Yemen,” Yusef added. “We were born here and we grew up here, we cannot leave it in exchange for some money,” he continued.
He said: “it is right that some of us left Yemen to Israel due to the Saudi war and hostility against our country, but they are like those who jump from the frying pan to the fire.”
Asked by Alwaght about his stance on the Saudi aggression against his country, Yusef answered: “we reject the Saudi-led coalition’s hostility against Yemen. We Yemenis as a nation have seen damages from this inhuman aggression that destroyed everything in beautiful Yemen. The Saudi Arabian crimes are not less heinous than those committed by the occupant Zionist regime against the Palestinian nation.”
He maintained: “we strongly denounce the actions of the Zionist regime which by no means represents the Jewish religion which never authorizes killing and raping. We may sometimes be subjected to some strains but are not damaged. We cannot sell Yemen and we will raise next generation based on this principle.”
Ahmed al-Makesh, a journalist and expert in the affairs of Yemen’s Jewish sect, has emphasized that this is the first time news of transfer of a number of the Jewish families to the Israeli regime is publishing. He noted that the Israeli intelligence along with the US counterpart worked with big brokers in the Yemeni government to send Yemen’s Jewry to the Israeli regime. “The Yemeni officials took $50,000 for every Jew transported from Yemen. At the same time, Tel Aviv gives $70,000 to anyone agrees to leave Yemen to the Israeli regime”, said the Yemeni journalist.
Al-Makesh said the Israeli intelligence services spend a lot on transfer of the Jews of Yemen to the Israeli regime. He continued that some officials in the former government of Yemen established contacts with the Israelis as well as Yemen’s Jewry, and that the transfer operation was carried out through a complicated intelligence mission shared by Washington and Tel Aviv.
Al-Makesh noted that during the Saudi invasion of the country, the Arab coalition’s officials coordinated with the Israelis and the Americans. Then, several numbers of the families were sent to Djibouti through sea. They were hosted by authorities from the Israeli and American spying agencies, as well as the leaders from the Arab military bloc that, as al-Makesh put it, contributed to devastation of the Yemenis' civilization.
Abd Al-Qader Salam, the head of Yemen's Hizb ut-Tahrir party and secretary general of Democratic Nasserist Party, has said: “the Jewish sect in Yemen was the first faith in the country before the Yemenis' conversion to Islam. The Zionists struggled to inflame tensions between Jews and Muslims in the country but failed. So they resorted to the middlemen to transfer the Jews to Israel. Unfortunately, the Jews of Yemen are being transported to Israel in the front of eyes of the Yemeni government. The Jewry must be incorporated and respected in any upcoming political initiative.”
