ISRAEL COOPERATES WITH SAUDIS & EGYPTIANS, AND RESCUES YEMEN’S ENDANGERED JEWS

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SAUDI ARABIA NEEDS TO CHANGE COURSE

Ray Takeyh

National Review, Mar. 25, 2016  

The Middle East today is once more on the edge of implosion. The humanitarian catastrophe in Syria continues unabated, the Islamic State is on the march, and Russia remains the only great power with a serious presence in the region. Another state that is dangling precariously in the new Middle East is Saudi Arabia. The twin bases of the monarchy’s legitimacy — cradle-to-grave welfare provisions and religious orthodoxy — are both waning sources of authority. The changing complexion of the energy markets and the rise of alternative fuels means shrinking budgets for the kingdom at a time of a growing population. And historically, the monarchy’s internal stability has been most endangered when the region polarizes along competing ideologies. As the flatfooted and aging Saudi rulers confront dramatic threats to their rule, they may have neither the money nor the Islamist legitimacy to fend off their rising opponents.

Wahhabi Islam may be the House of Saud’s rallying cry, but the welfare state is its most practical achievement. The kings offered their subjects not just the promise of salvation but also material rewards. At times of tight oil markets, the kingdom drew from its vast financial reserves so as not to disrupt this transactional relationship. Oil prices always rebounded, and the population was small enough for stability to endure. But this national compact was endangered by new demographic changes and by the diminishing importance of the kingdom’s staple crop. Saudi Arabia is hardly on the edge of fiscal bankruptcy, but its economic future is uncertain. The kingdom’s rulers may not have the luxury their predecessors had of being able to simply buy off their subjects.

In recent months, the kingdom has instituted certain austerity measures, and it seems poised to reduce its subsidies. However, the monarchy is still overtly reliant on foreign labor, and its foray into subsidy reform is tentative. Too many Saudis still abjure the private sector and prefer a government job that is well-paid and demands little of them. It is this mindset that has been cultivated over a century of promises and pledges from a monarchy that has seldom exercised fiscal prudence.

The troubling economic news comes at a time when the monarchy is locked in a regional conflict with its longstanding nemesis, Iran. In 1964, the historian Malcolm Kerr published a pithy book called The Arab Cold War, in which he described how the region was being polarized between the conservative monarchies and the radical republics led by Gamal Abdul Nasser’s Egypt. The Middle East today is undergoing another cold war, this time pitting the Saudi monarchy against the Shia power in Iran. This new sectarian cold war is playing itself out in Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, Yemen, and, most dramatically, Syria.

It is a costly affair for the Saudi monarchy, as it has the ambitious goal of negating the Islamic Republic’s efforts in the region. At a time when Iran is reaping the windfall of its nuclear deal and America seems indifferent to the regional tremors, the Saudis have emerged as the principal banker of Sunni resistance. And thus far it is proving to be a losing affair. Iran is consolidating its position in Iraq and Syria, manipulating sectarian divisions in Bahrain and Lebanon, and successfully ensnaring the Saudis in a Yemeni quagmire. The longer these conflicts drag on, the more the Saudi treasury will be depleted.

As significant as economics may be, Saudi Arabia’s chief difficulties have arisen when the region’s political convulsions radicalize its population. In the 1950s and ’60s, the Saudi state was emerging as a significant oil producer, and the monarchy was undertaking impressive development projects. Such as building a vast national infrastructure while offering its citizens free housing, education, and health care. Yet, Nasser’s message of pan-Arabism and anti-Americanism resonated with the youth and the intelligentsia. The kingdom was under siege, as even some in the princely class found Nasser’s message of revolutionary defiance preferable to the monarchy’s cautious conservatism. In one of the paradoxes of the Middle East, it was Israel that came to the rescue of the House of Saud. By decisively defeating Nasser and his radical allies in the 1967 war, Israel proved that pan-Arabism and its claims of empowerment were hollow slogans. A crestfallen and bankrupt Nasser had to make his peace with the Saudis, as his need for their petrodollars exceeded his contempt for their traditional ways…                                                                                        

   [To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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‘WE HAVE NOTHING LEFT’: THE SAGA OF YEMEN’S RESCUED JEWS 

Shira Rubin

Daily Beast, Apr.  8, 2016

Nineteen Yemeni Jews are adjusting to life in Israel after a covert airlift brought them here in March, marking the end of their struggle to survive as a tiny minority in the crosshairs of hate amid the fighting in Yemen’s brutal sectarian civil war.  

Most brought almost nothing with them for the long journey, but Sulaiman Dahari, a rabbi from northern Yemen, had proudly carried a duffel bag containing his community’s 800-year-old leather Torah scroll. As he showed it to The Daily Beast, he recited the Shehecheyanu prayer, which marks blessed and unexpected events. “We have nothing left from our homes in Yemen,” said Dahari, speaking, like many of his Yemeni Jewish countrymen, in an ancient Hebrew dialect. The 2,000-year-old community had maintained its religious identity by reciting and memorizing religious Hebrew and Aramaic texts, and classes were held even in recent years, when only a handful of children attended. Dahari said that when he met with representatives from the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, which reportedly worked with the U.S. State Department to arrange the group’s travel out of Yemen, Dahari asked that Israel provide “the help that we need in order to hold onto our traditions and also to reunite with our brothers.”

The 17 Yemeni Jews who arrived on March 20 joined two other Yemeni Jews who had been flown in previously, according to the Jewish Agency. In Israel, Dahari is joining family members who are among the 200 Yemeni Jews who have trickled in over recent years, but Israel is also home to an older Yemeni population of roughly 350,000. They are the descendants of the 50,000 Jews brought in during Israel’s “Operation Magic Carpet” in 1949 and 1950, when riots in the Yemeni port city of Aden after the creation of the state of Israel left more than 80 Jews dead and Jewish-owned shops destroyed.

Violence against the Jews erupted again after the Arab Spring ouster of Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2012. He was an autocrat who had ruled Yemen for 33 years, but he had also served as a special guardian to the Jewish community, appearing frequently on state TV with rabbis. In 2007, he facilitated the relocation of the Jews of Saada to the gated enclave near the American Embassy known as Tourist City in the capital after they were expelled by Houthis.

The group of recent arrivals who are being put up in an immigrant absorption center here in the southern Israeli city of Beer Sheva said that life had become unbearably frightening in the shadow of radical Islamic terrorism spreading through Yemen. For more than a year, the country’s civil war brought chaos and strengthened groups who may be fighting each other but also find time to turn on the Jews. Iranian-backed Houthis rebels operate under the slogan, “Death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam.” The so-called Islamic State as well as the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have also benefited from the power vacuum in Yemen.

The 19 Yemeni Jews who arrived in the past month include 14 from the northern town of Raydah, once home to Souq al-Yahud, a thriving Jewish market, and a family of five from the capital of Sanaa. Both cities currently are under Houthi control. Yemen’s Jewish community was once vibrant and well organized, and prided itself on being the largest and oldest in the Arab world, consisting of religious scholars, teachers, and community leaders who celebrated Jewish life publicly. But today, the handful of Jews left in the country pull back their side locks so as not to be recognized on the streets as Jews. “There were many cases of kidnappings of Jews, and many people ended up staying within the small, low-rise houses of the Jewish quarter, afraid to go outside,” said Natan Roee, a historian and representative from the Jewish Agency. He added that the country’s Jews have for many years been subject to discriminatory laws that forbade them from wearing new or good clothes or from carrying the traditional daggers which they are famed for carving.

Some 40 or 50 Jews remain in Yemen who have refused the Jewish Agency’s offer to move. The newly arrived group was not allowed to speak of the details of their own journey lest they endanger those who stayed behind. Nonetheless, on March 24, the Jewish Chronicle reported that a Jewish Yemeni man and a Yemeni airport employee were arrested by authorities due to the publicity surrounding the 800-year-old Torah scroll, which Yemeni authorities said had been illegally smuggled out of the country. “Those who stayed wanted to tend to their families, or to see if they could wait to sell their homes or properties at a better price,” said Dov Levitan, an expert on Yemeni Jewry and professor at Bar Ilan University. He said that the Jews of Yemen have for decades met animosity from their Muslim neighbors, “But when people ask why the Yemeni Jews didn’t come earlier, it could also be connected to the ‘Jewish syndrome’—the hope that better times could still come.”

In retrospect, that does sound like cockeyed optimism. In 2008, militants detonated a car bomb outside the U.S. Embassy in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa, killing 16 people, and three months later, a lone gunman shot a Jewish teacher in Raydah. In 2012, Yehiya Zindani and his 53-year-old father Aharon visited the nearby market to buy vegetables, when they were approached by a Yemeni Muslim who accused Aharon Zindani of practicing witchcraft.  The man stabbed him from behind in the neck and stomach and four hours later Aharon Zindani succumbed to his wounds in hospital. “The killer said that he was going to go to the Garden of Eden because he had killed a Jew,” said Yehiya Zindani, one of the new arrivals. He added that although the killer was imprisoned after the attack, it is unclear if he is still locked up or roaming free, “since the war has turned everything upside down.” Like many of his fellow travelers, Yehiya Zindani said he was thrilled to be in Israel and see families publicly celebrate Jewish holidays. “We only celebrated our holidays there quietly; there we were prisoners,” he said.

Beyond the anxieties and security problems, however, 18-year-old Zion Dahari, said that he made the choice to leave for Israel four years ago, after many of his friends had made the trip, because of economic reasons. “I want to study, find the right job, and build a life,” he said. But coming here has also required a cultural adjustment, he said, explaining that Yemeni families often marry off their children as teenagers, and Yemeni women are expected to maintain their modesty by covering their hair in a headscarf, or, sometimes, their whole faces except the eyes, in a full niqab. While the Jewish Agency has announced that it would continue to help any individuals who would choose to come to Israel, it also said that this was likely the last group. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who welcomed the group in Jerusalem, said, “For many years we have thought about bringing you, and with God’s help it is over.”