How Iran radicalised Yemen’s most tolerant tribe

My family left Yemen for Israel in 1935, at a time when tens of thousands of Jews were still living in the country. Their journey was particularly noteworthy because a member of my family was riding on a camel. My pregnant mother sat in the saddle, while my father and brother walked beside her. For centuries in Yemen, Jews had only been permitted to ride on donkeys. This was just one of a litany of laws that humiliated and subjugated Jews, and slowly pushed them to leave a country that they loved.

Almost a century later, the climate for Jews in Yemen has turned from prejudiced to perilous. Only one Jew now remains in Sanaa. He is a prisoner of the Houthis and bears the weight of their hateful ideology on his shoulders.

The Houthis are responsible for closing the book on 3,000 years of Jewish history in Yemen, which began in the time of King Solomon.