A strange tale about the Yemeni Jews as told by the Electronic Intifada

In one of my earlier postings on the Israel/Palestine Mission Network and their publication Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace, I pointed out that the authors had suggested the news outlet Electronic Intifada as an alternative to mainline news. They did this because they believe that the news in the United States is too influenced or controlled by Jewish groups in the United States.

Just recently, August 13, 2009, the Electronic Intifada posted an article “JNF [Jewish National Fund] presence in S. America perpetuates Palestine injustice.” The article is intended to be a protest that purports that JNF has over many years gathered funds to build recreational areas and forests to cover over Palestinian villages that Israel razed. It is also a protest that JNF have, at these sites, built monuments to various South American patriots.

Besides my thought that perhaps JNF is simply creating recreational areas and forests for the welfare of others,[1] there are several other peculiar features in the article that I found objectionable, but this paragraph caught my attention immediately:

“Moshav (the Zionist term for village) Eshtaol, built on the ruins of Ishwa, is a village of immigrants from Yemen, who were transferred by the Zionist movement to Palestine right after the 1948 ethnic cleansing. In the transfer camp in Sana, Yemen's capital, the Zionist Agency looted more then [sic] 50 tons of the Yemeni Jewish community's ancient sacred books and manuscripts and many tons of goldsmithing, a craft in which they specialized. In the transfer camp, children were kidnapped and were delivered to European Jewish families for adoption. Once in Moshav Eshtaol, and in the neighboring Moshav, Yishi, which has an identical story, the community succeeded in restoring a part of life as it was in Yemen.”

To even begin to unravel this paragraph is a major job. Of course the first thought is that the reference to ethnic cleansing is totally false. This is about the 1948 war when many Arab nations attacked the new State of Israel.

Also the camp from which the Yemeni Jews were airlifted was Hashed, and was in a remote area. It was not Sana. Sana is the place the last of the contemporary Yemeni Jews have been moved to since the latest atrocities have been committed against the small community. They are preparing to leave Yemen.

There are some references to a mystery that might entail kidnapped children, but in Israel not in any transfer camp. And the speculation on this has nothing to do with Israel as a nation. The idea that Israelis stole the Yemeni Jewish “community's ancient sacred books and manuscripts and many tons of goldsmithing,” has no reference at all.

The truth of the matter is that the main reason the Yemeni Jews left Yemen was because of physical attacks against the Jewish Community in Yemen after Israel became a nation.

Another interesting part of this article is the interconnection between the new Socialist countries in South America, some of who are pushing anti-Semitism and Socialist movements connected to the Palestinian radicals. This appeal to South America on behalf of the Palestinians is, with the emphasis on both the monuments to South American patriots and the focus on a people who might be considered a small tribal group in opposition to the whole of Israel, a farce.

The Electronic Intifada is not a good source of news about the Middle East. It is a propaganda tool, and that is too bad. Perhaps if the article had been about the tribulations the small remaining community in Yemen is experiencing because of militant Islam and how the Yemeni Jews might be helped that would have real meaning.

As a conclusion I am placing one of the video’s I recently placed on my site about the Jewish people exiled from all of the Arab countries after 1948. I am placing the one that just slightly into the film shows the rescue of the Yemeni Jews. It uses old film clips which makes it very interesting. (The first two people speaking are an exiled Iraqi Jew and one from Egypt.)



1. [1] It should be noted that monuments of South American heroes are there because it was South American countries who gave the funds for the forests. For instance see, Latin America
Latin America by Benno Weiser at Welcome to AJC Archives