Bereaved parents move to Israel in secret operation

Yemeni couple Yaish and Terneja Nahari immigrated to Israel in a secret operation on Monday, nearly five years after their son Moshe was gunned down in an anti-Semitic attack in the southernmost Arabian Peninsula nation. The couple arrived under the auspices of the Jewish Agency, and were welcomed in Israel by excited relatives, including four of their children and dozens of grandchildren, among them the nine children of their murdered son.

Moshe Nahari was working as a kosher slaughterer and Hebrew teacher in Raydah, in Yemen’s Amran province, when he was killed by a radical Muslim. Five of his children moved to Israel shortly after the incident, and his widow, Louza, and their four remaining children immigrated last August. However, his parents remained in Yemen to bring their son’s murderer to justice.

Moshe Nahari's killer was caught and convicted of murder by a Yemeni court, but was never sentenced.

Some 113 Jews in Yemen have immigrated to Israel through the Jewish Agency since 2009.

During a meeting this week of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors, which is being held in Jerusalem and which includes representatives from Jewish organizations and communities in Israel and from abroad, Arielle Di Porto, who works with distressed Jewish communities to facilitate immigration to Israel, reported on the increasingly paltry Jewish community in Yemen.

Di Porto said there were only about 130 Jews in Yemen, of whom 40 lived in Yemen's capital Sanaa and the remainder in Raydah. According to her report, the Jewish community has been under increasing anti-Semitic threat since former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's resignation last year. Two weeks ago, a Jewish man was beaten by a Muslim fanatic in his own home, and in May last year, one of the leaders of the Jewish community was stabbed to death in Yemen's capital, she said.