Yemeni Jews refuse to leave for Israel
An official at the World's Jewish Congress Foundation, Moshe Nahum, said they have tried in vain in the past three decades to convince Yemeni Jews to move to Israel.
He said the foundation has even dispatched teams from New York and London and promised money and benefit to lure the tiny community to migrate.
"But they are afraid of losing what they have," Nahum said in an interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, published on Tuesday.
Yemen has a small community of two to three hundred Jews who mostly reside in the capital Sana'a, while dozens of them have chosen to convert to Islam.
In December, the US joined Sana'a in pounding the southern part of the country to weed out what Washington claims is a cell of al-Qaeda operating in the Arabian Peninsula.
Local officials and witnesses maintain that scores of civilians have been killed in operations confirmed by US media as being directly carried out by the American army.
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described insecurity in Yemen as a threat to regional and global stability, saying Washington was working closely with its allies on deciding "the best way forward" to address the issue.
Clinton said the Yemeni government had to take measures to restore stability or risk losing Western support.
MRS/SC/DT
