Thursday, March 19, 2009

Yemenites - Satmar vs. Jewish Agency


Fearing a possible spate of killings following threats to the Yemenite Jewish community, the umbrella body of American Jewish federations will be evacuating almost half of the remaining Jewish community in Yemen to the United States over the next two weeks, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The UJC is working with the US State Department, local federations and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to implement the evacuation and help finance the $800,000 expense of absorbing 110 Yemenite Jews in the United States, over one-third of the roughly 280-strong community.

"The funding would go toward such resettlement costs as housing, food and social-service programs," said a statement by the UJC on Tuesday.

Jewish Agency officials blasted the move. A senior agency official told the Post that Jews "should not immigrate to the United States. The place of Jews is in their homeland, the land of Israel, and like all the Jews of the world, the Jews of Yemen have to make aliya to Israel. That is their destiny."

The agency is particularly upset because the extraction of the Yemenite Jews comes at the behest of the New York Satmar community, a hassidic Jewish sect that is opposed to modern political Zionism and funds Jewish education institutions in Yemen.[...]

3 comments:

  1. The United States has granted refugee status to the Yemenite Jews.

    I believe that the claim for refugee status in Canada of the sons of Rabbi Uzi Meshullam due to proven persecution of the Yemenite community by the Israeli gov't might be a mitigating factor in the US Gov'ts granting of refugee status to the Yemenite Jews.

    The attorney on the case was Rabbi Yair Yaish, a Harvard educated attorney who donates his time to the Yemenite Federation.

    Rabbi Yaish successfully made the case to the US gov't that the Yemenite Jews faced persecution in Israel as well as in Yemen and on this basis were eligible for refugee status.

    It really does not have so much to do with Satmar ideology as it does with the evidence of Israeli persecution that was accepted by both the US gov't and Canada.

    It is interesting that people from all over the world are free to go anywhere they wish, but Jews are only permitted to go to Israel.

    Israel has become a great big concentration camp waiting for the Christian world to ignite the spark of the war of Armageddan and wipe us all out, chas v'shalom.

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  2. While I may recognize the relative freedom provided by the Islamic world, as oppossed to the harsher persecution in the Christian world, until recent times, I think that the initial comment implying a Christian War against Jews in Israel is out of line when it follows in the same virtual breath as an explination that the predominantly Christian US (and Canada) has granted assylum to Jews from an Islamic country.

    I think we need to be sober about the realities of antisemitism, but hakaras hatov is also called for.

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  3. Israel has become a great big concentration camp waiting for the Christian world to ignite the spark of the war of Armageddan and wipe us all out, chas v'shalom.

    PREDICTED IN THE NAVI......except the Chofetz Chaim said that a refugee will be in the land of ZION. (or did he mean the Zion restaurant)

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