1947 Aden riots | ||||
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Part of Spillover of the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine | ||||
Aden from the Port of Aden, 1949 | ||||
Date | 2–4 December 1947 | |||
Location | 12°48′N45°02′E / 12.800°N 45.033°E | |||
Caused by | Disputes over United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine | |||
Methods | Rioting, melee attacks | |||
Parties to the civil conflict | ||||
Casualties and losses | ||||
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The 1947 Aden riots were three days of violence in which the Jewish community of Aden (in modern-day Yemen) was attacked by members of the Yemeni-Arab community in early December, following the approval of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine on 29 November 1947. It was one of the most violent pogroms in modern times against Mizrahi-Jewish communities in the Middle East, resulting in the deaths of 76–82 Jews, [1] 33 Arabs, 4 Muslim Indians, and one Somali, [2] as well as wide-scale devastation of the local Jewish community of Aden. [1] [3]
The riots were a significant embarrassment for the British government, particularly given that the British-raised Aden Protectorate Levies were blamed for causing many unnecessary deaths. [4]
By the mid-20th century, Aden was under British rule (today part of Yemen) and had a community of around 5,000 Jews living alongside the Muslim population. [5] [1] In the 1930s, there were rare religiously-motivated outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence, as well as a relatively small riot in May 1932 in which Muslims accused Jews of throwing excrement into a mosque courtyard. [5] [6] Sixty people, including 25 Jews, were injured, but there were no fatalities. [7] The Farhi synagogue was desecrated. [6]
In the 1940s, visits of Palestinian Arabs to Aden and expressions of anti-Jewish sentiments became common. [5] The Adenese-educated Arab population had become exposed to Egyptian newspapers, as well as radio broadcasts of Voice of the Arabs from Cairo, which incited political awareness and prepared the grounds for the anti-Jewish riot of November 1947 and later the 1967 withdrawal of the last British forces. [5]
On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181(II), titled: "Recommendation to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union". [8]
This was an attempt to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning Mandatory Palestine into "Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem". Following the vote by the UN on partition of Mandatory Palestine, wide scale protests took place across the Arab countries and communities, with Aden being no exception. [9]
Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries |
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The riots occurred in December 1947, several days after the United Nations' approval of the partition plan.
On 2 December, a three-day strike was called to protest the decision. [10] Demonstrations in the Jewish quarter of Aden led to stone and bottle throwing between Jews and Muslims. [11] Jewish houses and shops were looted, and military control was declared when the crisis exceeded the capacity of the small police force. [11] The main military force available was the 1,800-strong Aden Protectorate Levies who were locally recruited soldiers with British and Arab officers. [11] Assistance was also received from several British warships, which sent landing parties, and the equivalent of two companies of British infantry flown in from the Canal Zone. [10] Order was not restored until 6 December. [11] The British government was severely embarrassed by the riots, noting privately that they were urging the Arab states to protect their Jews when they themselves were unable to. [10]
On the second day, rifle fire began. [11] The Levies proved unreliable and worse; some fired indiscriminately and probably contributed to the casualties. [11]
The main violence of the riots occurred in three locations. In Aden town (also called Crater), an attempt to impose a curfew was largely unsuccessful. [11] Jewish schools and houses were looted and set alight. [11] In the port towns of Steamer Point and Tawahi, most of the Jews were evacuated but some whose presence was not known to the police were killed. [11] Several Arabs who were apparently innocent were shot accidentally. [11] In the Arab town of Sheikh Othman, which had a large Jewish compound, a military contingent arrived to evacuate the 750 Jews to safety. However, several declined to leave and were later found dead. [11]
The official casualty count was 76–82 Jews (6 persons were unidentified) and 38 Arabs killed, and 76 Jews wounded. [11] At least 87 Arabs were known to have been wounded but many others failed to report their condition. [11] The dead included one Indian Medical Officer and one Levy. [11]
More than 100 Jewish shops were looted and 30 houses burned. [11] An official enquiry conducted by Sir Harry Trusted determined that many individual Levies were sympathetic to the rioters and did not act to control them. [11] Nine Levies were imprisoned for looting. [11] Trusted put most of the blame on Yemeni "coolies," workers temporarily in the country who "have a low standard of life, are illiterate, fanatical and, when excited, may be savage." [11] He did not find claims of Jewish sniping to be convincing, though the Governor Sir Reginald Champion secretly reported to the British government that the two military fatalities were killed "almost certainly by Jewish sniper." [10] Jewish leaders acknowledged "many instances of Arabs and Indians sheltering and otherwise befriending their Jewish neighbours." [11]
The Aden government established a second enquiry, under magistrate K. Bochgaard, to consider claims for compensation. [12] Claims totalling more than one million pounds were submitted, exceeding the total annual income of the colony. [12] On the grounds that most of the damage was inflicted by non-residents of Aden, Bochgaard awarded £240,000 with a maximum of £7,500 per claim. [12] The Aden government then further reduced the maximum per claim to £300 with some options for interest-free loans, much to the anger of the Aden Jewish community. [12]
Shortly after the riots, Aden's Jewish community almost entirely left, together with most of the Yemeni Jewish community.[ citation needed ]
The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, or Jewish exodus from Arab countries, was the departure, flight, expulsion, evacuation and migration of 850,000 Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab countries and the Muslim world, mainly from 1948 to the early 1970s. The last major migration wave took place from Iran in 1979–80, as a consequence of the Iranian Revolution.
Yemenite Jews or Yemeni Jews or Teimanim are those Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen. The term may also be used in reference to the descendants of the Yemenite Jewish community. Between June 1949 and September 1950, the overwhelming majority of Yemen's Jewish population was transported to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. After several waves of persecution throughout Yemen, the vast majority of Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, while smaller communities live in the United States and elsewhere. Only a handful remain in Yemen. The few remaining Jews experience intense, and at times violent, anti-Semitism on a daily basis.
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Farhud was the pogrom or "violent dispossession" carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq, on June 1–2, 1941, immediately following the British victory in the Anglo-Iraqi War. The riots occurred in a power vacuum following the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali while the city was in a state of instability. The violence came immediately after the rapid defeat of Rashid Ali by British forces, whose earlier coup had generated a short period of national euphoria, and was fueled by allegations that Iraqi Jews had aided the British. Over 180 Jews were killed and 1,000 injured, and up to 300–400 non-Jewish rioters were killed in the attempt to quell the violence. Looting of Jewish property took place and 900 Jewish homes were destroyed.
The 1947 Jerusalem Riots occurred following the vote in the UN General Assembly in favour of the 1947 UN Partition Plan on 29 November 1947.
Aden Colony, also the Colony of Aden, was a British Crown colony from 1937 to 1963 located in the south of contemporary Yemen. It consisted of the port of Aden and its immediate surroundings.
Operation Magic Carpet is a widely known nickname for Operation On Wings of Eagles, an operation between June 1949 and September 1950 that brought 49,000 Yemenite Jews to the new state of Israel. During its course, the overwhelming majority of Yemenite Jews – some 47,000 from Yemen, 1,500 from Aden, as well as 500 from Djibouti and Eritrea and some 2,000 Jews from Saudi Arabia– were airlifted to Israel. British and American transport planes made some 380 flights from Aden. At some point, the operation was also called Operation Messiah's Coming.
Adeni Jews, or Adenite Jews are the historical Jewish community which resided in the port city of Aden. Adenite culture became distinct from other Yemenite Jewish culture due to British control of the city and Indian-Iraqi influence as well as recent arrivals from Persia and Egypt. Although they were separated, Adeni Jews depended on the greater Yemenite community for spiritual guidance, receiving their authorizations from Yemeni rabbis. Virtually the entire population emigrated from Aden between June 1947 and September 1967. As of 2004, there were 6,000 Adenites in Israel, and 1,500 in London.
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