The Yemenite Children Affair: A Moral Call

The immigration to Israel of most of Yemenite Jewry in 1948–1950, titled “Operation Magic Carpet” is symbolic of a miraculous leap in space and time from distant Yemen to the modern Jewish state. The Yemenite Jews’ utopian ethos, however, was far from able to foresee the trauma that awaited them in the transit camps where they were placed after their arrival in Israel: the kidnapping of thousands of infants in what became known as the “missing Yemenite-Jewish children affair.”

Visiting Graves of Ẓaddiqim in Yemen

The article deals with the phenomenon in Yemen of Jews’ visiting the graves of ẓaddiqim, which was a very limited one. Throughout Yemen there were but a few gravesites of Jewish ẓaddiqim to which pilgrimages were made; they were of interest only to people living in their vicinity. The most famous among the Yemenite graves of ẓaddiqim was that of Rabbi Shalom Shabazi, the most highly esteemed figure among Yemenite Jewry. This was the only site to which Jews came from all over Yemen. Despite the difficult journey and the dangers along the way, Yemenite Jews visited the grave for various purposes: to make personal requests, to pray, to ask for success and for the fulfillment of vows made by people who had been ill but had recovered. In this paper, I present new oral and written testimonies about pilgrimage to his grave.

Rethinking Approaches to Prevention under the Responsibility to Protect

Within the responsibility to protect (R2P) principle, there is an assumption that is rarely questioned. Beneath the statement that states and the international community are charged with the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, lies the implication that vulnerable populations cannot protect themselves. In periods of crisis, when the international community might consider mobilising a response under pillar three, this is often the case. Yet outside of such crises, when pillar one – the enduring responsibility of the state to protect its own populations – and pillar two – assistance from the international community to meet this responsibility – might be invoked in a preventive capacity, vulnerable populations may not be wholly reliant upon protection from external actors. In these circumstances, persecuted groups may actively seek to protect themselves, and may be successfully able to do so. In this paper, I challenge the current understanding of prevention within R2P as an externally imposed process, by considering how persecuted groups have themselves acted in ways that mitigate their vulnerability to mass atrocities. The paper considers a number of historical case studies in which targeted groups were able to leverage their own agency, often with assistance from others, to reduce this vulnerability. These include cases that culminated in genocide, namely the experiences of German and Austrian Jews under Nazi rule, and negative cases studies in which a demonstrable risk of mass atrocities was not realised, such as the experiences of Yemenite Jews in the first half of the twentieth century and those of the Bahá’í community in Iran since the 1979 Iranian revolution. These cases suggest that assisting persecuted populations to empower themselves can be an effective way to promote resilience to mass atrocities. In the final section of the paper, I explore why this approach is often overlooked, despite its capacity for some success. I consider the potential benefits and costs of a greater focus on utilising the agency of vulnerable groups in endeavours to prevent mass atrocities.

The Identity of the Apostate in the Epistle to Yemen

In his Epistle to Yemen, Moses Maimonides answers an anonymous Jewish apostate's polemical claims about the truth of Islam. This apostate challenged the Yemenite Jews by presenting quotes from the Torah that Muslims considered proof of the future advent of Islam and Muḥammad (dalā'il). The identity of the apostate, however, has been disputed by researchers. This article proposes that the apostate Maimonides had in mind was Samaw'al al-Maghribī, the Jewish convert who authored Ifḥām al-Yahūd. The reasoning is based on unique characteristics of Samaw'al's tract that distinguish it from other polemical works. Samaw'al discussed the dalā'il with much greater sophistication than any earlier polemicist and used an advanced manner of presentation, in response to which Maimonides provided well-conceived refutations. This combination of Samaw'al's sophisticated polemical arguments and Maimonides's replies demonstrates that the two appear to be matched.