Long delayed push for recognition of Jewish refugees from Arab lands

Posted Friday, October 12, 2012 12:00 am

Nissim Hassan Yefet (center) surrounded by his family, including wife Mazal, holding youngest child Batsheva, and Drora’s mother, top row left, in a composite photo, circa 1951, photographed in Israel.

Photo courtesy Batsheva Klein

Dr. Paul Brody (L), Vice President of the International Committee for the Land of Israel (ICLI),introduced Councilman Dan Halloran( R), Congressional candidate for Queen’s 6th District, who he recently accompanied to Israel with Dr. Joe Frager, Chairman of the Board ICLI, to Ambassador Ron Prosor., at the recent UN special session to officially recognize Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

Photo courtesy Dr. Paul Brody

By Malka Eisenberg

Drora Brody’s maternal grandparents smuggled thousands of Jews from Yemen to Aden and on to Palestine from 1935 to 1944. They personally sewed dresses as disguises for the men in their clothing factory in Yemen and used their connections to the local sultan and their own funds to bribe border guards.

In response to complaints by the Mufti of Jerusalem, the British effectively blockaded Palestine to prevent Jews from entering there. Jewish refugees came to Nissim and Mazal Hassan Yefet, Brody’s grandparents, from other areas of Yemen for help. The Yefets housed them in their home and in temporary caravans, set up for the overflow of refugees, erected around their home before smuggling them across the border. Hassan-Yefet was the religious and communal leader of Lahj and a confidant of the local sultan, Abed Alkarim Faisal, who authorized Yefet to deal with Jewish matters. Yefet was known as Abba Nissim because, said Brody, a resident of Great Neck, “he redeemed hundreds of orphans from being converted to Islam with his own money. He was a generous and caring man who personally paid for all circumcisions and weddings.”

When the local sultan found out about their secret activities in 1948, the Hasan Yefets fled, leaving behind their textile factory, their home in Lahj, a fortified vacation house in Aden--all their wealth. In 1948, 63,000 Jews lived in Yemen and Aden, a British protectorate. Jews lived in Yemen since the third century C.E. By 1958, only 4,300 Jews lived there; no Jews live in Aden today and only 250 lived in Yemen by 2011. Much of Aden’s Jewish community was destroyed and 82 Jews killed in the wake of a Muslim pogrom after the 1947 partition vote on Palestine; the government of Yemen began evicting Jews in 1948. Between 1949 and 1950, Israel airlifted most of the Jewish community in Operation “Magic Carpet,” close to 50,000 refugees.