Operation Magic Carpet (Yemen)

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Most of Yemenite Jews had never seen an aircraft before, but they believed in the Biblical prophecy: according to the Book of Isaiah (40:31) and Exodus (19:1), God promised to return the Children of Israel to Zion "on wings of eagles".

Operation Magic Carpet, the widely-known nickname for the lesser-known official name Operation On Wings of Eagles, was an operation between June 1949 and September 1950 that brought 49,000 Yemenite Jews 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. At some point, the operation was also called Operation Messiah's Coming.

[edit] Background

Following the 1947 UN Partition Plan in which a Jewish State in Palestine was declared, Muslim rioters engaged in clashes in Aden that killed 82 people and destroyed a number of Jewish homes. Early in 1948, the accusation of the murder of two Muslim Yemeni girls led to looting of Jewish property. Aden's Jewish community was economically paralyzed, as most of the Jewish stores and businesses were destroyed.

Yemenite Jews started gathering at "Camp Geula" (Hebrew: Redemption) in Aden, in a wish to emigrate to newly-declared Israel. However, British troops, who controlled the Colony of Aden, prevented this emigration until the hostilities in Palestine ended at the beginning of 1949. By that time, some 10,000 people have gathered at Camp Geula. Yemen's newly-appointed Imam Ahmad bin Yahya gave his secret approval for an airlift and the stage was set for the operation.

[edit] The Operation

In response to an increasingly perilous situation, most of the Yemenite Jewish community secretly emigrated to Israel 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 who doubted promises of a better future in Israel decided not to leave their properties, and a total of some 300 Jews remained in Yemen.

During the course of Operation Magic Carpet (1949–1950), the overwhelming majority of Yemenite Jews - some 47,000 Yemeni, 1500 Aden as well as 500 Eritrean and Djiboutian Jews - were airlifted to Israel. Most of them had never seen an aircraft before. They were uprooted from their ways of life as farmers and had to adapt to a totally new way of life in a new world.

The operation's official name originated from two relevant biblical passages:

Exodus 19:1 - "You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I bore you on wings of eagles, and brought you to Myself."
Book of Isaiah 40:31 - "But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

Operation Magic Carpet was the first in a series of operations whose purpose was to transport en-mass entire communities of Jews from Arab countries to Israel, during the 1950's and 1960's.