Operation Magic Carpet: Constructing the Myth of the Magical Immigration of Yemenite

Jews to Israel
Author(s): Esther Meir-Glitzenstein
Source: Israel Studies , Vol. 16, No. 3 (Fall 2011), pp. 149-173
Published by: Indiana University Press
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 Esther Meir-Glitzenstein

Operation Magic Carpet:

Constructing the Myth of the
Magical Immigration of
Yemenite Jews to Israel
ABSTR ACT

In 1949 the majority of Yemenite Jewry—more than 40,000 persons—

arrived in Israel. Their arrival was the result of an Israeli initiative, in coop-
eration with Jewish organizations and the rulers of Aden and Yemen. How-
ever, the gradual, planned departure turned into a hasty mass exodus that
cost hundreds of lives. The suffering and the victims were mostly the result
of failures by the organizers: the American Jewish Joint Distribution Com-
mittee, in charge of the operation with the assistance of the Jewish Agency,
and the government of Israel. Despite its catastrophic characteristics, the
immigration from Yemen was described in terms of rescue, miracles, and
redemption—a combination of eschatological and orientalist concepts. In
the following years “Operation Magic Carpet” was commemorated in the
naming of streets and was praised in literature, poetry, historical research,
and in the collective memory of Yemenite Immigrants in Israel, becoming
one of the establishing images of the relationship between the state and its
Mizrahi citizens. It presented these Jews as victims of persecutions by hostile
Arab rule, victims who were sentenced to poverty and to social and cultural
degeneration. According to this image, Israel was portrayed as a rescuer of
these wretched Jews.

149

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150 • isr ael studies, volume 16 number 3

THE MASS IMMIGR ATION FROM YEMEN TO ISR AEL

The immigration of about 50,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel between Decem-

ber 1948 and late 1951 was one of the most complicated, dangerous, and
glorious but also the most painful events in the history of aliya to the new
State of Israel.
In the summer of 1949 hundreds of people lost their lives en route to
Israel and the vast majority of the survivors arrived in poor health. Many of
them died in the routes of Yemen but hundreds died after leaving Yemen, in
the territory of Aden. We have a list of 429 people who died in Hashed, the
refugee camp in Aden, where they were supposed to find food and medical
treatment after their long way in Yemen. We also know about 200–250 who
died near the borders of Yemen in September–October 1949, after they were
not allowed to enter Aden. Most of the 30,000 immigrants who arrived in
Israel between July and November 1949 suffered from hunger and diseases,
including 3,000 children who needed urgent hospitalization that the new
state was not able to provide.1
This catastrophe happened not in Yemen but in Aden, where the
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC), in collaboration
with the state of Israel, was supposed to take care of the tired and sick
immigrants so that they arrived in Israel in good health. The causes for this
catastrophe and the processes whereby a gradual, planned departure turned
into a national disaster are beyond the purview of this article.2 However,
by no means can this operation be considered a success or deemed a credit
to the organizers.
Nevertheless, the aliya from Yemen is described as having brought
relief and deliverance to Yemenite Jewry and it is also perceived as a daring,
miraculous, even cosmic event in which the Yemenite Jews were rescued in
the blink of an eye from a distressed country and taken by their saviors from
a backwards, traditional society to a modern, progressive society.
What was the historical background of these events?—In the late
1940s, Yemen was a poor agricultural country that had not been reached
by modernity, and Yemeni labor migrants, both Muslims and Jews, often
sneaked into Aden in search of work.3 The country’s economy deteriorated
in 1948 as a result of the assassination of the Imam Yahya, a coup d’état, and
a civil war. At this time the Jewish community in Yemen experienced politi-
cal and economic persecution, the most serious case being the accusation
that Jews in Sana’a had murdered two Muslim girls and the imprisonment
of the community leaders.4 However, the situation stabilized in early 1949
after Ahmad, the son of the assassinated Imam, managed to take control

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 151

Yemenite Jews waiting at the Aden Yemen airport for their flight to Israel,
November 1949.
Photographer: Zoltan Kluger
Courtesy of the Israel Government Press Office

of the country. When the Jews began leaving, there were no anti-Jewish
incidents in Yemen.
The aliya from Yemen took place in three stages: In the first stage,
from December 1948 until March–April 1949, 7,000 Yemenite and Adeni
Jews—some of whom had spent months or even years in transit camps in
Aden—were brought to Israel. In the second stage, from July to November
1949, 30,000 Yemenites were brought over. In the third stage, which lasted
until late 1950, 10,000 people arrived. The operation was run by the JDC,
which not only funded the activity, but also, in an unusual step, took charge
of it: the JDC handled ties with the British rulers in Aden, with the Yemeni
Imam, and with the sultans in the areas between Yemen and Aden; was
responsible for contacts with the airlines that carried out the flights; and
was supposed to supply the Jewish refugees with everything they needed in
the camp. Harry Viteles, the JDC representative in Tel-Aviv, was directly
in charge of the activity, although it was run in practice by Joseph Simon,
the JDC representative in Aden.5 In December 1949 Simon was replaced
by Max Lapides, a retired Jewish U.S. Air Force colonel.6

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152 • isr ael studies, volume 16 number 3

The second stage began with a plan agreed upon by the Yemeni Imam,
the British in Aden, the sultans of the protectorate between Aden and
Yemen, Israel, and the JDC. The idea was for the Jews of Yemen to leave
legally for Aden in an orderly, gradual process; this way the difficulties
involved in the illegal emigration of the 1930s and 1940s could be prevented.
The camp in Aden was supposed to provide shelter, food, and medicine to
the people who arrived at the end of a long journey.7
However, the JDC failed in administering the operation. The first fail-
ure related to the transportation of the Jewish immigrants to Israel. In spite
of the obligation to the British rulers of Aden to arrange an airlift to carry
20,000 people in 2 months, it took 5 months to evacuate the waiting people.
Furthermore, the JDC failed in providing elementary conditions to
the thousands of people who were waiting in the refugee camp. In Sep-
tember and October, the population of the JDC transit camp in Aden,
designed to hold only 1,000, reached approximately 14,000. Many of these
people stayed in the open air, in especially hot climatic conditions and
heavy sandstorms, and there was a shortage of food, medicine, and medi-
cal care. Hundreds of people died in the camp in Aden. In addition, the
JDC also failed in taking care of the immigrants who were “stuck” at the
border between Yemen and the British protectorate between Yemen and
Aden, when the British closed the border.8 A few hundred of them died
there of starvation and illness. Significantly, most of the deaths occurred
not in Yemen, where the Jews were protected by the authorities, but in the
British protectorate and in Aden, where they arrived sick and hungry. The
morbidity and mortality happened in the last leg of the trip, which was the
responsibility of the aliya organizers: especially the JDC, but also the Jewish
Agency and the Israeli government. As a consequence, in the summer and
autumn of 1949 some 30,000 Yemenites arrived in Israel physically ill and
emotionally shattered by their ordeal.
This price was contained in the reports by Dr. Moshitz, director of
the Department for Monitoring Medical Care Abroad in the Ministry of
Health, who examined the initial conditions that awaited the immigrants
who arrived at Lod Airport on 30 September 1949:

Each plane was carrying about 140 people—men, elderly people, children,
and infants. . . . On the first plane was a two-year-old boy who had died en
route. On the second plane was a dead boy, about eight years old, who had
died on the plane about two hours after leaving Aden. . . . The mental state
of the immigrants can be classified as closed, even apathetic. Not a word is
heard out loud. The immigrants do not object to anything, do not exhibit

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 153

emotion over physical suffering, unwillingness, or joy. No chattering of chil-

dren or even crying is heard. The small children are in extremely poor physical
condition, and the younger they are, the worse their condition. All degrees of
dystrophy and sometimes even signs of incipient toxicosis can be seen in these
children and infants. All the survivors were so weak that it was necessary to
assist each person getting off.9

Yet this testimony and many others that ran counter to the image
desired by the aliya organizers were pushed aside, remaining only in the
memories of the Yemenite immigrants and their families, on forgotten
pages in archive files, in a few memoirs and in some academic research, the
most important of which was not translated into Hebrew.10 Moreover, none
of them indicated clearly the JDC’s responsibility and guilt in these events.
In addition, there is no commemoration of the many victims of this
operation in Israel. Among the general public the image was of a glori-
ous immigration operation, the result of the technological achievements
and daring of the first Israelis. Even those who heard or read about the
Yemenites’ distress and the high price they had paid associated it with poor
living conditions in Yemen, antisemitism, and persecution. The hardships
were perceived as the cause of immigration rather than the cost of it.
How can we explain the development of images that so starkly contra-
dicted facts that were well known to the Yemenite immigrants, the organiz-
ers of the operation, and everyone else involved? Why was the immigration
from Yemen, more than any other wave of aliya, associated with mythical,
messianic, and orientalist images? Who were the “agents” of these images?
How did the images spread and why did they spread so extensively that they
obscured historical facts? Finally, what was their function in shaping the
new Israeli nationalism? I will first survey the various stages in the invention
of the images and then look at them in the context of the characteristics
and circumstances of the aliya from Yemen.

INVENTION OF THE IMAGES

The struggle over how the aliya from Yemen would be etched in the Jewish
and Israeli memory began while it was still in progress. In early November
1949 around 10,000 Yemenite Jews were still making their way from Yemen to
Aden or waiting in the Hashed camp. The preceding months, September and
October 1949, had been the high point of the operation in terms of flying the
Yemenites to Israel and the low point in terms of their health and mortality.11

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154 • isr ael studies, volume 16 number 3

On 7 November 1949, two JDC leaders—Edward Warburg, chair-

man of the JDC in New York, and Dr. Joseph Schwartz, chairman of the
European Council of the JDC in Paris—announced to the media that the
Jews of Yemen were being flown 1,600 miles to the Holy Land in an air-
lift known as “Operation Magic Carpet”. At that time the operation was
already under way, most of the people have already arrived in Israel, but
thousands were still in the transit camp in Aden or on their way from Yemen
to Aden. Warburg and Schwartz praised Israel for agreeing to take in the
Jews of Yemen despite its own hardships and called what Israel was doing a
“heroic and inspiring act”. “The decision,” they said, “exhibits the absolute
determination of the new state to offer haven to distressed Jews.” Afterwards
they described the circumstances of the journey: the Jews had made their
way on foot from Yemen to Aden, leaving their belongings behind:

They have arrived at the border reception camps in rags and emaciated from
their journey. From the border camps the would-be immigrants have been
transferred to Hashad [sic] camp, a gigantic reception center about ten miles
outside of Aden city. Here they have been fed and cared for by the JDC in
cooperation with the Jewish Agency. A staff of some 70 doctors, nurses, clerks
and cooks, both American and Israelis, serve in the camp at the present time.
The immigrants are flown to Israel, 125 passengers at a time, in four-motored
C-54’s operated by the Near East Air Transport Company, chartered by [the]
JDC. The big load is made possible by the fact that the average weight of
the Yemenite Jews, who are small in stature, is 85 pounds (about 39 kilos).
Seats which normally hold two American passengers hold three and four
Yemenites.12

On 7 November 1949, the JDC disclosed the existence of the airlift

from Aden to Israel, which had reached its peak in September with the
assignment of six planes to the Aden-Lod route. Although an operation of
this scope could not be concealed entirely, it had not previously been made
public thanks to cooperation between the Israeli censor and the Israeli and
foreign media, out of concern for the welfare of the Jewish refugees making
their way to Aden or staying in the Hashed transit camp. The announce-
ment even surprised the Israelis involved in the operation—the Israeli gov-
ernment and the Jewish Agency. Although there had already been several
reports in the non-Israeli press,13 these were kept toned down and were not
picked up by many media outlets. The JDC attributed its decision to issue
an official announcement to a story by journalist Ruth Gruber, due to be
published the next day, 8 November, in the New York Herald Tribune, that

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 155

described the airlift at length. It is important to note that Ruth Gruber had
been brought to Aden by the JDC and, actually, her article was published
in coordination with the JDC management.14
This was the background of the announcement by the leaders of the
JDC. They did not merely give a dry description of the events; instead they
tried to report them from the Yemenites’ perspective:

For the thousands of Yemenite Jews who have boarded the planes . . . the
experience seems a genuine miracle. Few, if any, of the immigrants ever saw
a plane until they reached Aden. But the Yemenites, who have preserved an
ancient Hebrew culture, and most of whom speak and read Hebrew, see their
deliverance as prophesied in the Bible, quoting from Exodus 19:IV: “We have
seen . . . how I bare you on eagle’s wings and brought you unto myself.”

They claimed that the Yemenites were adjusting rapidly to life in Israel
and added that they “readily adapt themselves to the new country and
proceed rapidly to acquire western manners and culture.”
The stunning announcement by the JDC is important not only
because of the information that it contained but also because of the infor-
mation that was left out: there were no descriptions or explanations of the
Yemenites’ state of health living conditions in the transit camp in Aden,.
It seems that the main purpose of the announcement was to be the first to
tell the story, to give the JDC credit for the operation and to make it clear
that the role of the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency was secondary.
Additional details were provided by Harry Viteles, the JDC represen-
tative in Israel, in an interview with Arthur Holzman, a reporter for the
New York radio station WMCA. This interview had been prepared a week
before it was broadcast. Viteles began by denying rumors that the Yemeni
Imam had received a generous payment in exchange for agreeing to let the
Jews leave, although he did not deny that a per-person fee and transit taxes
were paid. Then he explained the JDC’s role in organizing the operation,
noting that it had become involved back in 1943, when hundreds of Jewish
refugees from Yemen who had managed to sneak into Aden during World
War II were waiting there to go to Palestine.15 Viteles explained that the
JDC had finished bringing over these refugees, 8,000 in all, in early 1949;
only when it became clear that Jews were continuing to sneak across the
border from Yemen to Aden, endangering their lives and risking arrest in
the process, did the organization decide to try completing the evacuation of
the Jewish community of Yemen. When rumors spread throughout Yemen
of trucks taking Jews from the Yemeni border to Aden, the trickle turned

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156 • isr ael studies, volume 16 number 3

into a flood, and within two months there were 14,000 refugees in a camp
that was intended to hold only 1,000.
Viteles did not tell the whole story, and his remarks were not necessar-
ily accurate either. True, Jews continued to cross into Aden even after the
first transit camp was emptied out, but the decision to bring the Yemenite
Jews to Israel had less to do with the situation in Yemen than with the Israeli
government’s immigration policy. In early 1949, Israelis were concerned
that after the DP camps had all been emptied out and their inhabitants
brought to Israel, the pool of potential immigrants would have evaporated.
The Jewish Agency and the Israeli government decided to try to bring over
all the Jews remaining in Yemen after the refugees from Aden had been
flown to Israel.16
Viteles portrayed the aliya from Yemen as something spontaneous,
taking place entirely at the initiative of the Yemenite Jews, with the JDC
only providing assistance. This is salient in his explanation of the “inunda-
tion” of the camp with ten times as many immigrants as the organizers
had expected. Viteles linked this to the spontaneous, uncontrolled exodus
of the Yemenite Jews, which had had severe consequences; here, too, the
JDC was offering a helping hand and rescuing them. Viteles didn’t men-
tion the fact that as early as June the British in Aden knew about this influx
and stipulated their agreement for the immigration plan in providing an
immediate airlift for 20,000 immigrants. Nothing was said about the fail-
ure of the JDC to meet this obligation. At the end of the interview, Viteles
discussed the status of the Yemenite Jews in their country of origin. He
described them as the “untouchables of Yemen”, conjuring up the image
of an inferior, oppressed caste like the untouchables in India. He described
their motivations for aliya as “a religious craving to come to the Holy Land”.
The Yemenites, who in the pre-state imagination represented the ancient,
biblical past of the Jewish people, were described here as having experienced
a miracle and been redeemed by means of a technological invention that
fulfilled the biblical vision. Here, again, the flights, which didn’t arrive on
time, were the only “miracle” in this tragic immigration.
The Yemenites were the first group of immigrants in that era whose
aliya was linked to a religious desire.
Looking at the aliya from Yemen from a religious perspective was
nothing new. From the very start of Yemenite aliya in the 1880s, it was por-
trayed as the result of their religious views and their yearning for Zion.17
Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, a prominent scholar of Yemenite Jewry, notes
that until the 1930s there were two widespread but opposing views among
the Jews of Palestine regarding the condition of the Jews in Yemen and

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 157

their motivations for coming to Palestine. One viewpoint, the “narrative

of freedom and work”, described them as living comfortable, tranquil lives
and being better off financially than the people around them; the other,
“the narrative of suffering and agony”, described them as suffering from
poverty and want, persecuted by the Muslims and especially oppressed
by the “Orphans’ Decree”, i.e., the forced conversion to Islam of children
whose fathers had died. The former viewpoint attributed their immigration
to religion and ideology; the latter attributed it to political factors. Whereas
the former strove to attain social prestige for the Yemenite Jews in Palestine,
the latter sought to accelerate the immigration of those still in Yemen. In
the 1930s, as part of the struggle within the Yishuv over the distribution of
immigration certificates, the second, catastrophic viewpoint won out, and
evidence of a comfortable, tranquil life was suppressed or concealed.18 This
viewpoint was reinforced by anti-Jewish riots in Aden following the UN
partition resolution of 29 November 1947, and the deterioration of the Jews’
situation in 1948 during the civil war in Yemen. Israel’s aspiration to bring
the Yemenite Jewish community may also have had a part in reinforcing
this viewpoint. The first viewpoint, which attributed the immigration to
ideological and religious motivations, did not vanish entirely.
Viteles’ explanations combined elements of both of these narratives.
From the first of them he adopted the religious-ideological explanation,
and from the second he took the explanation of the Yemenites’ poor health.
He even drew a link between the Holocaust in Europe and the Yemenites:
“Our human cargo on our planes is a pitiful sight. The people are suffering
from malnutrition. Five year old children weigh as little as 20 pounds. The
skeletons of Bergen Belsen have reappeared in Aden.”19
These remarks and associations created a dichotomy between Yemenite
Jewry and Israel, between suffering and the needy on the one hand and
salvation and saviors on the other. The suffering was placed entirely on
the Yemeni side of the equation, whereas the Israeli leg of the journey was
associated with miracles and rescue. Aden was the zero point, whereas the
“skeletons of Bergen Belsen” were attributed to Yemen, not the JDC failure
or Israel. It is important to note that Viteles was not expressing Zionist or
Israeli attitudes but Jewish national ones, views that characterized the JDC
after World War II and formed the basis for its cooperation with the Zionist
movement.20 This was the first stage of creating the myth of the magical
rescue of Yemenite Jews.
This myth was expressed in much greater detail and much more
comprehensively by the JDC’s Zionist partners and was interpreted by
them in another way. The details appear in a memorandum by Dr. Yaakov

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158 • isr ael studies, volume 16 number 3

Weinstein, a senior official in the Jewish Agency Immigration Department,

who played an important part in the negotiations with the British in Aden
in the first stage of the operation.21 The memorandum mentions the Zion-
ist version of the operation. It extends the story of the aliya to include the
story of the Jewish exile in Islamic countries, where the Jews’ inferior status
was dictated by the “laws of Omar” and the Jews were subjected to political
persecution as a result of the new Arab nationalism. Weinstein describes
Yemen in harsh terms, as “hell” and a “cursed, subjugated land” with savage,
brutal rulers. The Jews, he says, had survived centuries of oppression and
humiliation and were now crying out to be rescued physically. With a
stroke of the pen, the well-known European myth of Muslim tolerance gave
way to another myth—the myth of Muslim radicalism, antisemitism, and
persecution. The establishment of the State of Israel and the immigration
of Jews from Islamic countries to Israel were the watershed between the
myth of tolerance and the myth of extremism.22 While the former suited
a Jewish minority that lived among a Muslim majority and was trying to
ensure its survival, the second suited an independent Jewish state that was
trying to gather in the Jews scattered throughout these lands. None of them
included the complicated and delicate situation of centuries of coexistence
of Jews in Yemen.
Weinstein also helped reinforce the myth that predominated in the
Yishuv regarding the image of the Yemenite Jews by portraying the immi-
grants in the Hashed camp as religiously devout, simple, naïve, and primi-
tive.23 Despite their difficult plight, he said, they insisted on bringing with
them hundreds of Torah scrolls and thousands of religious books, and
he attributed to them messianic ideas: these were “naïve Jews” who saw
Ben-Gurion as the Messiah, people who arrived “broken and shattered by
protracted suffering . . . but on their faces is the splendor of the divine pres-
ence and a lofty nobility.”24 The physical rescue was portrayed as religious
and national salvation; it became redemption. This is important because it
linked the messianic idea with the aliya from Yemen.
At the same time, Weinstein was critical of the Yemenites’ primitive
traits, as embodied in their suspicion of and resistance to modern medical
care and their lack of familiarity with—and even objection to—principles
of hygiene. He also mentions irrational behavioral patterns: people who
moved to Israel and left “one of their wives” or a few of their children
behind in the camp, and people who couldn’t remember the names of their
family members. According to him, the Yemenites thought of airplanes as
“big birds” and preferred to sit on the floor of the airplane rather than on
the upholstered seats. (He didn’t mention that the seats had been removed

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 159

and were replaced by benches, in order to increase the numbers of pas-

sengers.) During the flight they were open-mouthed in amazement and
astonishment. At the end of his orientalistic description he showered praise
on the “human material” arriving from Yemen, its young demographic
composition, its employment structure (most of the men were skilled
tradesmen), and the Yemenites’ industriousness, loyalty, and willingness to
make do with little.
Weinstein’s description reveals a dialectic attitude: On the one hand,
he stressed Jewish identity, represented by the Yemenites’ adherence to
religious symbols such as Torah scrolls and religious articles and by their
willingness to do without property and other material goods to which
they had become attached while in exile. On the other hand, he empha-
sized the lack of modernity, the primitiveness, and the cultural and
social backwardness, which was compensated for by demographic and
employment traits. The combination of all these traits indicated to him
that the immigrants were “natural” candidates to provide Israeli society
with simple manual laborers. Thus Weinstein adopted the dialectic of
the Yishuv myth about the Yemenites and about the place reserved for
them in Palestine,25 and he transferred this myth to the State of Israel. He
clearly linked the immigrants’ culture with the place he expected them
to occupy in the newly stratified Israeli society. This viewpoint was also
expressed by David Remez in a Government meeting at which he said
that the Yemenite Jews would settle the Negev because they were “used
to this climate and to work in general.”26 Press reports at the time also
said that the Yemenite immigrants were being trained for “a life of labor
and productivity,”27 that they were being taught to pack citrus fruit and
grow vegetables,28 and even that a village for Yemenite Jews was being
established in Lifta, near Jerusalem—one of the first “work villages” estab-
lished in the State of Israel.29 “In Israel they will be employed mainly in
agricultural work and as small tradesmen,” Yedioth Ahronoth reported.30
Afterwards the Yemenites would be the main candidates for populating
the work villages being founded in those years.31
The myth of the Yemenites’ primitiveness is especially salient in the
name given to the immigration operation: “Magic Carpet”. Naming a his-
torical event gives it meaning, sometimes even magical meaning. Different
interpretations of an event will lead to different names, as in this case. The
significance of the operation as a constitutive event auguring the end of
the Yemenite exile is indicated by the name “Magic Carpet”. In the 1950s
this phrase reflected Zionist satisfaction and self-congratulation, but in the
1980s, under the influence of Edward Said’s Orientalism, people started to

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160 • isr ael studies, volume 16 number 3

see it as a sign of Zionist-Ashkenazi arrogance and paternalism vis-à-vis the

Jews of Islamic countries. Ella Shohat writes:

The names given to immigration operations, such as Magic Carpet and Ali
Baba, [the original name of the operation that brought Iraqi Jewry to Israel]
borrowed from A Thousand and One Nights, evoke Orientalist discourses by
foregrounding the technological backwardness of the Mizrahim, that naively
saw modern airplanes as “magic carpets” transporting them to the promised
land.32

It is generally assumed that the term “Magic Carpet” came from

the Jewish Agency or the Israeli government, which were responsible for
naming other aliya operations. In this case it was the JDC that provided the
name—and specifically the English name. The name was not given when
the operation was reported in November 1949; nor was it given specifically
to the mass immigration in late 1949. Rather, it was given in the very first
stage of the operation, which began in December 1948. At the time the
Jewish refugees from the Aden camps did not elicit much interest in Israel,
and even when the name of the operation was printed in the newspapers, it
had little impact.33 The name was heard for the first time in the sensational
announcement in November 1949. It is important to note this because had
the name been given in the summer of 1949, the high mortality rate would
have made it sound somewhat cynical. Nevertheless, we can ask why the
JDC kept the original name even though the announcement was made
when the fiasco was at its worst, and when cables from Aden to the JDC
in Paris noted that “the maladministration of Hashed Camp has resulted
in scores of deaths and misuse of public funds.”34 Moreover, two internal
commissions of inquiry were looking into the administration of the camp,
and the decision had already been made to replace the camp director. For
this reason it is important to trace the history of the name of operation.
The immediate source for the name “Magic Carpet” was apparently
the U.S. naval operation that brought millions of American soldiers home
from Europe and the Pacific in 1945–46, after World War II. At the time this
was the biggest-ever transport operation in human history, and the name
assigned to it, Operation Magic Carpet, was a clear allusion to A Thousand
and One Nights. The operation was widely publicized and highly regarded
in the United States,35 so it is no wonder that two years later, when the
JDC was looking for a name for the operation to transport the first wave
of immigrants from Yemen, they chose this heroic phrase, which symbol-
ized returning home. Ultimately Ella Shohat is right because the orientalist

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 161

descriptions in the announcement of the Israeli operation associated it with

the original source of the name and not necessarily the American operation.
Behind the Yemenites’ “naïveté” was primitiveness and backwardness.
Even before the official announcement of the operation in November
1949, the leaders of the JDC seem to have sensed the problem with the
foreign—non-Jewish and non-Zionist—meaning of the name. This spurred
them to add the biblical context of the prophetic vision of the ingathering
of the exiles. This was one of the first statements since Israeli independence
to link aliya with the Jewish messianic vision. In later reports, such as those
by the Jewish Agency, the messianic context would be stronger.
This combination was rejected by the Yemenite immigrants, who did
not view their aliya through the Western prism of Arab legend, but through
the prism of biblical prophecy. They transferred the operation to the world
of the Bible and Jewish messianic imagery and called it “On the Wings
of Eagles”. As a result, the story of the aliya from Yemen is embodied by
two parallel images: the “magic carpet” of the Arabian Nights, and “on the
wings of eagles”, a miraculous, instantaneous journey drawing on biblical
sources regarding messianic redemption and the Jews’ return to their land,
and possibly also an allusion to messianic expectations or legends prevalent
in Yemen about a miraculous, rapid journey to the Land of Israel.36 Many
documents written about the operation by Yemenite immigrants do not
even mention its original name.37 “On the Wings of Eagles” reflected the
Yemenites’ religious and messianic beliefs and suited their aliya narrative.38
In this case, too, the dichotomy is retained between the exile as a place of
suffering and the Land of Israel as a place of rescue.

DISSEMINATION OF THE IMAGES

The reports on the immigration of the Yemenite Jews caused tremendous

excitement throughout the Jewish world. The images used by the organiz-
ers appeared in all the media and were quickly adopted by Israelis and
the Jewish world. Some of them were even adopted by the Yemenite Jews
themselves. The “agents of memory” included Israeli and Jewish journalists
and media figures, poets and authors, heads of Zionist and Jewish institu-
tions, and the various Israeli commemoration committees. The first was the
Israeli press, which until the announcement had been silent on the censor’s
orders and now quickly adopted the narrative provided by the aliya organiz-
ers, focusing mainly on the emotional side of the events. The day after the
press conference given by the heads of the JDC, newspapers in Israel and

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162 • isr ael studies, volume 16 number 3

throughout the Western world printed emotional front-page stories, full of

pictures, with big headlines.
According to an editorial in the Palestine Post, no story from the Ara-
bian Nights was “so romantic and picturesque, so adventurous and exciting
as this home-coming of a whole community.”39 Yedioth Ahronoth wrote:
“Like chickens from the coops, they emerged from the belly of the plane,
stunned and astonished by the wonders of technology, their lips mouth-
ing prayers.” The paper mentioned the apathy with which the Yemenites
accepted the intake procedures at the Rosh Ha’ayin immigrant camp: “They
don’t ask questions, they show no interest, they don’t protest, and they don’t
make demands. They accept everything with love”—as if they were over-
grown infants.40 “There was plenty of ‘color’,” Voice of Israel correspondent
Shlomo Barer wrote regarding the news coverage. “An Arabian Nights flavor
was evoked by a few random items worked into the reports.”41
The operation that brought the Yemenite Jews to Israel was com-
memorated extensively, especially in its “Magic Carpet” version. It was
commemorated in pictures printed in newspapers and coffee-table books,
in the names of streets, restaurants, and reception halls, and in literature
and poetry. It has been the subject of historical research and is part of the
collective memory of the Yemenite immigrants and Israeli society. Within
a short time the expression “magic carpet” became a common part of the
language. Pictures of the Hashed camp and the aliya operation were shown
in the newsreels preceding films in Israeli movie theaters. In January 1950,
a Voice of Israel delegation headed by radio correspondent Shlomo Barer
went to Aden and broadcast from the transit camp there. Barer described
his impressions of the Hashed camp in a book entitled The Magic Carpet,
published in London and New York in 1952, and subsequently published in
Hebrew as Al Kanfei Nesharim (On Wings of Eagles).42 The phrase “magic
carpet” is also found in coffee-table books documenting Israel’s early years
and in encyclopedias, history books, and more. The Israel Philatelic Service
issued two stamps commemorating the events: The first, issued in 1960 to
mark the tenth anniversary of the operation, shows a flying carpet carry-
ing people who are unmistakably Yemenite. The second, issued in January
1970 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the operation, shows an airplane
drawn in the form of a colorful carpet. The figurative drawing was replaced
by the abstract, but the message remained the same.
Several Israeli towns have streets named for Operation Magic Carpet:
Herzliya, Holon, Yehud, Kefar Sava, Rishon Lezion, Ofakim, and Beer-
Sheva. Streets named “Wings of Eagles” are also found in some cities,
including Rosh Ha’ayin, Jerusalem, and Tel-Aviv (in the Kerem Hateimanim

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 163

neighborhood). In several towns both names are used. Similarly, “Magic

Carpet” appears in the names of synagogues, restaurants, catering services,
and so on. Despite the Yemenites’ objection, the phrase became identified
with them.
Even in subsequent decades, Operation Magic Carpet has retained
its place in the Israeli collective memory. In the Internet era, information
about it has been posted on the websites of Israeli government institutions,
especially those having to do with education and culture, and on many
Jewish sites in Israel and the United States. They all tell the story of the
operation, with pictures of men, women, and children in the transit camp
in Aden, on the planes en route to Israel, in the Lod Airport, and in tents
in the immigrant camp. The pictures create and reproduce the constitutive
images of the Yemenites: exotic and primitive, authentically Jewish but also
impoverished. These images are represented by the dark, gaunt faces, the
long sidelocks of the men, and the traditional outfits of the women, includ-
ing head coverings, colorful trouser cuffs, and abundant heavy jewelry.
Many of the pictures show men carrying Torah scrolls that they brought
with them from Yemen. The photo captions are full of superlatives: “One
of the more legendary rescue operations,”43 says the website of the Anti-
Defamation League; “One of the most wondrous immigration operations
that the state has known,” says the IDF website.44
The Zionist narrative presented by the organizers regarding the immi-
gration of Yemenite Jewry has appeared over and over again in texts about
the establishment of the state. The price of the immigration is downplayed
or concealed; what remains is the hardship in Yemen, the messianic yearn-
ing, the exhausting trek on foot through the desert, and the wondrous
arrival in Israel. An example of this narrative can be seen in The Immigrants’
Album, published by the Jewish Agency in the early 1960s. The book
documents in pictures the history of aliya from the late nineteenth century
until the arrival of the millionth immigrant to the State of Israel. Four
pictures are devoted to the aliya from Yemen: a family of immigrants walk-
ing through the heart of the desert; people boarding a plane at the Aden
airport; Moshe Sharett with immigrants in the Hashed camp; and finally,
smiling Yemenite Jews at the entrance to a sukkah in a tent camp in Israel.
The caption for the pictures refers to the spontaneous exodus prompted by
messianic attitudes:

When it became known there, in the remote villages of our Jewish brethren,
that salvation and redemption had come to the Jewish people, they got up
with naïve simplicity, left their homes, and started walking. . . . Through

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deserts of sand and stone, with unsurpassed patience, they walked from the
benighted Middle Ages into the twentieth century—to a plane that went,
in just a few hours, from the Arabian Peninsula to the Holy Land. . . . The
messianic era, plain and simple. In Aden, where the immigrants from Yemen
assembled, all the good rumors were confirmed. . . . And when they reached
Israel, the gloomy tents were like palaces to them, and joy pervaded their
homes. Had they not seen the consolation of Zion?45

A book on the history of El Al, the airline that brought the immigrants
to Israel, adds the element of the shofar: “News of the return to the Holy
Land traveled by word of mouth like the sound of a tremendous shofar,
rolling over deserts and mountain ranges, to the most remote corners of
Yemen . . . From all directions, the Jews gathered and came to the camp.
Some walked hundreds of kilometers, and many died on the way. . . . The
elderly among them never ceased to see their immigration on the wings of
eagles as a miracle.”46
The influence of the myth was so powerful that it also found a place
in the titles given by scholars of the aliya from Yemen to their books. One
example is Nitza Druyan’s study of the settlement of Yemenite Jews in Pal-
estine before World War I. The title, Without a Magic Carpet, alludes to the
hardships of immigration and absorption at that time, when there were no
miracles and shortcuts.47 Similarly, the subtitle of Reuben Ahroni’s book
on the immigration to Israel of the Jews who remained behind in Yemen
after 1951 is Carpet without Magic.48 In contrast, the anthropologist Herbert
Lewis, who studied the absorption of the Yemenites in Israel, refers in the
title of his book to the same miracle but with the name After the Eagles
Landed.49 Particularly interesting is the title of a book by Tudor Parfitt, a
British scholar, who in 1996 published a comprehensive, in-depth study of
Yemenite Jewry including their aliya. Despite the harsh facts that he dis-
covered about the price of the immigration, he adopted the eschatological
context of the aliya images and called his book The Road to Redemption: The
Jews of the Yemen 1900–1950.
The state commission of inquiry into the disappearance of Yemenite
children went even further in a report published in 2001, stating: “A mes-
sianic fire of redemption was sparked in people’s hearts, and Yemenite Jewry,
almost in its entirety—in a breathtaking, thrilling step almost unparalleled
in the history of nations—got up, eyes lifted towards Zion, and marched—
literally—towards the Geula camp in Hashed, Aden, from where the com-
munity was supposed to go to Israel.”50 Thus the committee gave its legal
imprimatur to the messianic imagery of the aliya from Yemen.

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 165

Like other Israeli myths, the “magic carpet” myth changed somewhat
over the years. It began as a magical legend aimed at hiding the failure and
glorifying the operation and the people running it, took on religious sig-
nificance in a national context, and finally donned a messianic mantle. It
was widely reported in the media and was recorded for posterity by various
means of commemoration. It was also quickly adopted by the Yemenites
themselves. Five decades later, the aliya from Yemen is still perceived in
cosmic terms of suffering and miracles, salvation and redemption, and as a
magical messianic act. Nevertheless, even as these lines are being written,
it remains a formative myth.

NATIONALISM AND THE MYTH

We cannot understand the invention, dissemination, and rapid, compre-

hensive adoption of the imagery of the aliya from Yemen without the
context of the attitudes that characterized Israeli nationalism in the early
years of the state and Ben-Gurion’s political ethos, which had a messianic
ideology at its center.51 Having doubled its population within three years by
taking in Jewish immigrants from around the world, Israel needed a unify-
ing ethos that would create a cohesive community by developing a common
destiny and shared social and cultural assets. But in 1949 it was hard to find
a common denominator among the long-time residents of the country, the
recent arrivals from Europe, and the Jews from Islamic countries who were
starting to arrive.52 Concerns about the image and values of the Zionist
“model society” plagued the Israeli elite and triggered a dispute over the
continuation of the mass aliya policy.53 The main problem was how to mold
that mix of populations from around the world—“red dust” as Ben-Gurion
put it—into one nation,54 thereby ensuring the cohesion of the new society
and control of it by the old elite, despite the far-reaching changes.
Ben-Gurion played a central part in addressing this dilemma. The
melting pot ideology, myths of heroism, and state ceremonies55 were sup-
posed to resolve the dilemma, and the messianic idea was central to them.
Ben-Gurion viewed this concept as a “redemptive process starting with the
establishment of the state and the ingathering of the exiles and ending who
knows where?” The basis for this approach was found in the Bible. The dis-
tant past of the biblical era was linked to the recent past of the ingathering
of the exiles, and the move from exile to the Land of Israel was described as
a leap in space and time. For Ben-Gurion, the messianic vision had replaced
Zionist ideology.56

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166 • isr ael studies, volume 16 number 3

Ben-Gurion was the first Zionist political leader to consciously make

significant use of the messianic myth in the nation-building process, accord-
ing to David Ohana.57 The messianic myth was supposed to bring about
social homogeneity by means of the melting-pot policy and to cultivate a
pioneering avant-garde that would take on national tasks. The messianic
myth was also supposed to revitalize modern Jewish history, and it engen-
dered other important myths that helped shape the new Israeli identity:
the return to Zion, the ingathering of the exiles, the model society, and
the chosen people. The establishment of the State of Israel was perceived as
the start of the Jewish redemption and also the universal redemption.58 In
addition, Ya’akov Shavit points out the pragmatic aspects of the messianic
viewpoint: “The Ben-Gurion era was characterized by a degree of messianic
rhetoric and pathos, but it was primarily an era of realism and recognition
of limitations, which engendered pragmatism in various realms.”59 Anita
Shapira explains the new approach introduced by Ben-Gurion as a result
of concern for the fate of the state that he had established. He was worried
about the ability of the mass aliya to stand the tests that it would face and
was aware of the weakness of the fabric holding together the Jewish popula-
tion of Israel. “He was looking for the narrative that could serve as a shared
basis for the nation-in-the-making.”60 This narrative was supposed to suit
both camps forming in Israel: Ashkenazim and Mizrahim. At its forefront
was the Jewish people’s relationship with its land throughout the period of
the exile as well as the unmediated bond between the territory and Jewish
nationalism. The messianic vision was supposed to link these different
Jewish groups. Along with the messianic vision, the Bible played a central
role in constructing the new Jewish identity because it was supposed to give
the country a unique soul, replacing the old universalist socialist vision of
the labor movement with a universalist vision with Jewish roots. By giving
all the Jewish immigrants a common distant past and by means of the
“messianic vision”, the masses of immigrants from Islamic countries were
linked to Israeli identity.61 It may explain the fact that religious motifs were
linked to immigration from Islamic countries, not to European ones. If in
the early twentieth century Shmuel Yavne’eli arrived in Yemen wrapped in a
mantle of religious sanctity and acted in the name of messianism, forty years
later Ben-Gurion readopted the messianic idea in connection with the aliya
from Yemen. In both cases, religious practices were placed at the service
of national aims, and religion was subordinated to ethnic nationalism.62
It is hard to know the significance of messianism in Ben-Gurion’s
thinking at the time of the mass aliya from Yemen, but we can guess that
this aliya influenced his thinking.63 In any case, the aliya from Yemen

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 167

not only was linked to the messianic myth of redemption, but it made an
important contribution to it. In the Yishuv’s perception, as it had taken
shape since the first encounter between Yemenite Jews and Ashkenazim in
the late nineteenth century, the Yemenites were ancient Hebrews who had
retained their authenticity for two thousand years. Their traits, including
Bible study and the routine use of biblical Hebrew, the focus on kabbalah,
and emphasis on faith in the coming of the Messiah, were proof that the
yearning for Zion had, at least to some extent, preserved the Jewish people
and that the Yemenites had moved to Israel due to a messianic vision that
had remained constant among the Jewish people over the generations.64
These traits were eternal proof of Ben-Gurion’s new attitude. Actually there
were strong political, economic, and social reasons to leave Yemen, but in
Israel, the messianic motive became prominent.
Furthermore, the Yemenites themselves associated their aliya with mes-
sianism. They did so primarily because the messianic aspect brought up by
Ben-Gurion was not foreign to them; it fit in with an existing foundation
of eschatological values and was part of a traditional weave produced by
many generations in Yemen against the backdrop of their religious world
and their understanding of redemption. It should be kept in mind that
messianic movements existed in Yemen in the second half of the nineteenth
century, and even in the early twentieth century.65 But aside from the
religious aspect, the adoption of the messianic viewpoint by the Yemenite
immigrants and their leadership was rational: if the choice was between
being portrayed as miserable wretches who were rescued or as people who
chose to move to Israel despite the high price, the second option was more
prestigious and more rewarding. It was also consistent with the circum-
stances of the aliya and the personal feelings of the Yemenite Jews. After
all, they had not been expelled or forced to leave; they had chosen to leave.
The compromise, as far as they were concerned, was to convert the “magic
carpet” into “wings of eagles” and try to stress the religious-messianic aspect
of their aliya, the ideological aspect, and the sacrifices that they had made to
come. Thus “On the Wings of Eagles” became the Yemenites’ story, whereas
“Magic Carpet” remained the story of the organizers, and both became and
remained myths.

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CONCLUSION

I have traced the transitions in the meaning and the role of the term “magic
carpet” in connection with the Yemenite immigration to Israel. When it
was published for the first time, the JDC leaders wanted to present their
version of the operation, which was under their responsibility and to avoid
publishing the failures in executing it. They explained the poor health
situation of the Yemenites in the conditions of Yemen while Hashed camp
was portrayed as a place of rescue. They also attributed the great influx of
the Yemenites to Aden to their religious devotion. The Zionist partners of
this operation added an explanation about the influence of the Yemenites’
messianic expectations.
It seems that from that time on the great immigration to Israel was
not just the fulfillment of Zionist vision of Jewish immigration into the
Jewish state but also the fulfillment of the prophets’ vision of ingathering
the exiles. The immigration received a religious meaning.
This article reveals that the historical events were more complicated.
Operation Magic Carpet is an example of a tragic failure that, with the
help of a myth, became a tale of rescue and redemption, a constitutive
myth that Israeli society tells itself about itself and on which generations
of young people have been reared. The images of the Yemenite Jews dis-
seminated by the organizers of Operation Magic Carpet had an important
role in the absorption process. They served to make the Yemenites part
of Israeli society, with emphasis on their belonging to the Jewish people.
This was accomplished in two ways. The first was “negation of the exile”,
which underscored the “otherness” of the Jews in Yemen, since, despite
being there for two thousand years, they viewed their native land as a tem-
porary home, maintained their belief in the coming of the Messiah, and
never stopped hoping to return to the Land of Israel. Their foreignness
and outsider status were stressed by descriptions of the Muslims’ hatred of
them, the humiliations they had experienced under Islamic law, and harsh
persecution. Second, emphasis was placed on their authenticity as the heirs
of the ancient Hebrews, as evidenced by their religious observance, their
knowledge of Hebrew, and the heavy sacrifices they made to reach Israel
and to bring the Torah scrolls, ancient manuscripts, and items of Judaica
there. These practices emphasized their unquestionable membership in the
Zionist project and were supposed to compensate for their “negative” traits:
their physical differentness, their primitiveness, their passivity and what
seemed to be their reluctance to adopt modern traits. These perceptions
fit in with the prevalent image in Israeli literature, especially the stories by

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 169

Haim Hazaz, written in the 1950s and 1960s, which portrayed the Yemenites
as believers and mystics.66
The images of Operation Magic Carpet were not limited to the
Yemenite community. They were applied to the immigrants from other
Islamic countries as well, who arrived in Israel at an increasing pace after the
Yemenite aliya. The images played an important part in forming the image
and perceived traits of the Jews in Islamic countries and the image of their
redemption, while clarifying the three-way relationship between Israel, the
Jews from Islamic countries (who would later become known as Mizrahim),
and the Arabs in neighboring countries. These images had consequences in
three realms: First, they constituted the Yemenites in particular and the Jews
from Islamic countries in general as oppressed, primitive victims on the one
hand and as irrational mystics on the other. Second, they constituted the
Muslims as antisemites who harassed, persecuted, and killed Jews, ignoring
the more complicated coexistence. According to these images, the Jews in
Yemen had experienced religious, ethnic, and political persecution, which
had intensified as a result of the rise of nationalism in the Middle East.
Finally, the images portrayed the Israelis as the redeeming force and
Israel as the place of redemption, the site of the fulfillment of the prophetic
vision of the ingathering of the Jewish people in its land and the salvation
of the Jews from their bitter fate in exile.
These images were of great importance to the Israeli perception of
the Middle East because they constituted the dichotomy between the Jews
and Israel on the one hand and the Arabs and Arab countries on the other.
Within the newly coalescing Israeli society, these images made possible the
“nationalization” of the Jews of Islamic countries by Zionism and their
integration in the Jewish national space.
On the other hand, the implication was that anything given to these
people in Israel would be a substantial improvement over the hunger and
suffering they had known in their countries of origin. This perception
legitimized the disdain for their culture, their values, their family lives, and
everything about them. In all these senses, the images of Operation Magic
Carpet were constitutive, not only in relation to the Yemenites or Jews from
Islamic countries but in relation to Israeli society as a whole.

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170 • isr ael studies, volume 16 number 3

Notes

1. Health Minister Moshe Shapira, Israeli Government meeting, 20 September

1949, Israel State Archives (ISA) Jerusalem.
2. This subject was profoundly researched in my book: From a Failed Operation
to a National Myth: The Jewish Exodus from Yemen [Forthcoming].
3. See Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, “Jewish Immigration from Yemen during the
Mandate: Between the Policies of Yemen, Great Britain and the Jewish Agency,”
in Ancient Customs of the Yemenite Jewish Community, ed. Shalom Seri and Israel
Kessar (Tel-Aviv, 2005), 267–86 [Hebrew].
4. On these incidents, see Tudor Parfitt, Road to Redemption (Leiden and New
York, 1996), 173–74.
5. Other than his name, we have no reliable information about Joseph Simon.
The Hashed camp personnel files in the JDC Archives in Jerusalem ( JDCAJ) are
classified.
6. Max Lapides was an attorney by training and a colonel in the U.S. Air Force
during the war.
7. JDCAJ, AR45/54-0025, May 1949, Acting Chief Secretary to Jewish
Emergency Committee.
8. Parfitt, Road to Redemption, 215–27; see also JDCAJ, 100/52/14, “List of
People Who Perished in the Geula B (Hashed) Camp,” 27 Tevet 5711 (5 January
1951) [Hebrew].
9. Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem (CZA), 6/7328), Dr. Moshitz to min-
ister of immigration and others, 4 September 1949. The date is inconsistent with
the content of the document and should be 4 October.
10. The most important of the memoirs are Abraham Sternberg, A People Is
Absorbed (Tel-Aviv, 1973) [Hebrew]; Chezy Laufban, A Man Goes unto His Brethren:
The Story of Immigrant Absorption in Israel (Tel-Aviv, 1967) [Hebrew]. The most
important research is Tudor Parfitt, Road to Redemption.
11. Of the 429 immigrants who died in the Hashed camp between the summer
of 1949 and the spring of 1950, the vast majority passed away between mid-
September and mid-November 1949. See “List of People Who Perished in the
Geula B (Hashed) Camp.”
12. JDCAJ, Container 52/14, file 11, 7 November 1949.
13. George Weller, “Secret Air Lift Is Transporting Thousands of Jews from
Yemen to Israel, Crossing 2 Arab States,” Chicago Daily News, 27 October 1949.
14. Tom Segev, “History Lesson,” Ha’aretz, 18 July 2008, 8 [Hebrew].
15. JDCAJ, 100/52/14/9.
16. CZA, Minutes of the Jewish Agency Executive ( JAE), 29 April 1949.
17. For example, in the memoirs of Yemenite immigrants who went to Palestine
in 1881–82, the authors mention a religious-ideological motivation for immigrating.
There is no mention of other motivations suggested by scholars of the aliya from

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 171

Yemen. See Nitza Druyan, Pioneers of the Yemenite Immigration: Chapters in Their
Settlement, 1881–1914 ( Jerusalem, 1982), 7–8, 13–14, 17–18 [Hebrew].
18. Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, “Yemeni Jewish Historiography and the Forma-
tion of National Identity,” in To Invent a Nation, ed. Yossi Dahan and Henry
Wasserman (Raanana, 2006), 299–330 [Hebrew].
19. JDCAJ, 100/52/14/9.
20. See Yaron Tsur, A Torn Community: The Jews of Morocco and Nationalism,
1943–1954 (Tel-Aviv, 2001), 152 [Hebrew].
21. CZA, S6/7307, Dr. Yaakov Weinstein, “Liquidation of the Yemenite Exile,”
probably November 1949 [Hebrew].
22. Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages
(Princeton, NJ, 1994).
23. Yafah Berlovitz, To Invent a Land, to Invent a Nation (Tel-Aviv, 1996)
[Hebrew].
24. Weinstein, “Liquidation,” 3.
25. Gershon Shafir, “The Meeting of Eastern Europe and Yemen: ‘Idealistic
Workers’ and ‘Natural Workers’ in Early Zionist Settlement in Palestine,” Ethnic
and Racial Studies 13.2 (1990): 172–97.
26. ISA, Minutes of Government meeting, 20 September 1949.
27. H. Sar-Avi, “Teenagers and Children among the Immigrants from Yemen,”
Davar, 22 November 1949.
28. H. Sar-Avi, “Courses in the Camps in Yemen,” Davar, 18 November 1949.
29. A. H. Elhanani, “Yemenite Village Established in Lifta,” Davar, 18 November
1949.
30. Yedioth Ahronoth, 7 November 1949.
31. On immigrants in rural settlements, see Israel Kessar, “Rural Settlement of
the Yemenite Immigrants at the Time of the Establishment of the State,” in Se’i
Yona: Yemenite Jews in Israel, ed. Shalom Seri (Tel-Aviv, 1983), 231–43 [Hebrew].
32. Ella Shohat, “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its
Jewish Victims,” in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspec-
tives, ed. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat (Minneapolis, 1997), 45.
33. “Magic Carpet on Its Way from Aden to Israel,” 31 March; “Those Who
Managed to Escape the Imam’s Claws and Reach Aden Are Patiently Waiting Their
Turn on the ‘Magic Carpet’ That Will Take Them to Israel,” Ha’olam Hazeh, 13
April 1949 [both in Hebrew].
34. Parfitt, Road to Redemption, 229.
35. On this operation, see Owen Gault, “Operation Magic Carpet,” Sea Clas-
sics (2009), [Link]
36. Dov Noy, “The Magic Way to Eretz Israel in Yemenite Jews’ Tales,” in
Seri, Se’i Yona, 17–26; Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, “Expressions of Messianism in
the Immigration from Yemen to Eretz Israel (1881–1914), Pe’amim 10 (1981): 21–35
[both in Hebrew].

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172 • isr ael studies, volume 16 number 3

37. Parfitt, Road to Redemption, 229. He cites Prof. Yehuda Nini.

38. On the messianic aliya narrative, see Eraqi Klorman, “Expressions of
Messianism.”
39. Shlomo Barer, The Magic Carpet (New York, 1952), 5.
40. “Thus the Yemenite Exile Arrived,” Yedioth Ahronoth, 8 November 1949.
41. Barer, Magic Carpet, 5.
42. Shlomo Barer, On Wings of Eagles: The Story of “Operation Magic Carpet”
(Tel-Aviv, 1955) [Hebrew].
43. [Link]
44. [Link]
45. Shmuel Schnitzer with Haim Gouri, The Immigrants’ Album ( Jerusalem,
undated [probably 1963]), pages unnumbered [Hebrew]. A similar description is
found in Golda Meir’s autobiography, My Life (New York, 1975), 260–1.
46. Arnold Sherman, El Al: Odyssey in the Skies (Tel Aviv, 1972), 48–53 [Hebrew].
47. Nitza Druyan, Without a Magic Carpet: Yemenite Settlement in Eretz Israel
(1881–1914) ( Jerusalem, 1981) [Hebrew].
48. Reuben Ahroni, Jewish Emigration from the Yemen, 1951–98: Carpet without
Magic (Richmond, Surrey, UK, 2001).
49. Herbert S. Lewis, After the Eagles Landed: The Yemenites of Israel (San
Francisco, 1989).
50. “Report of the State Commission of Inquiry on the Disappearance of
Children of Yemenite Immigrants, 1948–1954” ( Jerusalem, 2001), 33 [Hebrew].
51. David Ohana, Messianism and Mamlachtiut: Ben Gurion and the Intellectu-
als between Political Vision and Political Theology (Sde Boker, 2003), 58 [Hebrew].
52. The distant past of the Jewish people did not compensate for deep cultural
differences. In this sense Israel was no different from other new nation-states that
attempted to create a shared national identity, as is shown by Benedict Anderson,
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London
1983).
53. Much has been written about this subject. See, e.g., Yaron Tsur, “Carnival
Fears: Moroccan Immigrants and the Ethnic Problem in the Young State of Israel,”
Journal of Israeli History 18.1 (1997): 73–104; Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, Between
Baghdad and Ramat-Gan: Iraqi Jews in Israel ( Jerusalem, 2009), 74–101 Hebrew].
Martin Buber initiated a debate on this subject in a meeting of writers with Ben-
Gurion on 11 October 1949, while the aliya from Yemen was at its height. See “The
Prime Minister’s Meeting with Authors,” in Ohana, Messianism, 65–125.
54. Anita Shapira, “Ben-Gurion and the Bible: The Creation of a Historical
Narrative?” in New Jews, Old Jews (Tel Aviv, 1997), 227 [Hebrew].
55. See Maoz Azaryahu, State Cults (Sde Boker, 1995), 39–67 [Hebrew].
56. Shapira, “Ben-Gurion,” 236.
57. Ohana, Messianism, 59.
58. Idem.

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 Operation Magic Carpet • 173

59. Ya’akov Shavit, “Messianism, Utopia and Pessimism in the Fifties,” Iyunim
Bitkumat Israel 2 (1992): 78 [Hebrew].
60. Shapira, “Ben-Gurion,” 242.
61. Ibid., 243–4. Nir Kedar explains this in terms of the need to create a culture
and a set of basic, even simplistic symbols that could be understood by the masses
of immigrants from different cultures, Mamlakhtiyut: David Ben Gurion’s Civic
Thought ( Jerusalem, 2009), 100 [Hebrew].
62. Yehuda Shenhav, The Arab-Jews: Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity (Tel-
Aviv, 2003), 92, 95 [Hebrew].
63. Shapira, “Ben-Gurion,” 228. Shapira argues that Ben-Gurion formulated his
historical outlook during 1950 and presented it in his lecture to the IDF high com-
mand. Later the lecture was published under the title “Uniqueness and Destiny”
in his book Netsah Yisrael (Tel-Aviv, 1963–64).
64. Shapira, “Ben-Gurion,” 244.
65. Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, The Jews of Yemen in the Nineteenth Century: A
Portrait of a Messianic Community (Leiden, 1993).
66. Especially Ya’ish (1955), and Thou That Dwellest in the Gardens (1965). On the
image in literature, see Berlovitz, To Invent a Land; Haya Hofman, “The Yemenites
in Eretz Israel in the Hebrew Literature (1883–1948) (M.A. thesis, Tel-Aviv Uni-
versity, 1982). Hazaz was opposed to the emphasis that Ben-Gurion placed on the
Bible and on the suppression of Jewish culture in exile. See Shapira, “Ben-Gurion,”
239–40.

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