Israel Secretly Airlifted 49,000 Jews From Yemen — Operation Magic Carpet

In 1949, a two-thousand-year-old Jewish community in Yemen boarded aircraft for the first time in their lives, convinced by an old prophecy that eagles would carry them home. This episode traces how Alaska Airlines charter planes, a secretly cooperating Imam, British officials in Aden, and a transit camp called Hashid combined to move 49,000 people in about fifteen months into a two-year-old state. It explains the 1947 Aden riots that turned a slow trickle of migration into an urgent evacuation, what the Yemenite Jewish tradition actually preserved in isolation, and what passengers who had never seen electricity or a vehicle experienced inside those planes. It also follows the story past the landing, into the absorption camps and the still-unresolved Yemenite Children Affair. You walk away with the full arc of Operation Magic Carpet: the ancient community, the secret logistics, the arrival, and the painful reckoning that came after. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:29 Who the Yemenite Jews Were 3:51 Life Under Islamic Rule 6:25 The 1947 Aden Riots 8:39 Planning the Airlift 10:56 Inside the Planes 12:15 Arrival in Israel 12:44 The Yemenite Children Affair TAGS operation magic carpet, yemenite jews, on wings of eagles, israel airlift yemen 1949, yemenite jewish history, aden riots 1947, yemenite children affair, hashid transit camp, alaska airlines yemen airlift, jewish agency yemen, yemenite jews israel, aliyah history, yemen jewish community history, diwan yemenite music, imam of yemen jews, israel immigration history, jewish diaspora history, faceless history documentary