Operation Magic Carpet (Yemen)

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Operation Magic Carpet was an operation between June 1949 and September 1950 that brought 45,000 Jews from Yemen to the new state of Israel. British and American transport planes made some 380 flights from Aden, in a secret operation that was not made public until several months after it was over. In 1948, after the declaration of the state of Israel, Muslim rioters engaged in clashes in Aden that killed 82 people and destroyed number of Jewish homes. Aden's Jewish community was economically paralyzed, as most of the Jewish stores and businesses were destroyed. Early in 1948, the false accusation of the ritual murder of two Yemeni girls led to looting.

Organized Zionism used this increasingly perilous situation to plan for the emigration of most of the Yemenite Jewish community - perhaps 40,000 - between June 1949 and September 1950 in Operation "Magic Carpet". A smaller, continuous migration was allowed to continue into 1962, when a civil war put an abrupt halt to any further Jewish exodus.

Some wealthy Jewish families decided not to leave their properties, they were simply not pursuaded by the promises of better future.

In the course of Operation "Magic Carpet" (1949–1950), the majority of Yemenite Jews (about 49,000) immigrated to Israel. Most of them had never seen an airplane before, and Israeli newspapers when reported the incident, claimed that they were sprayed chemicals upon their arrival as a mean of sanitation. They were uprooted from their ways of life as farmers and had to adopt to a totally new ways of life in a new world. Although Jews, most eastern Jews in Israel are treated as second class citizens and had limited chances in the important public offices.

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