Yemenite Culture Minister Dedicates Award to Country’s 90 Remaining Jews
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by JNS.org
Many Yemenite Jews have immigrated to Israel (seen here en route during the first half of the twentieth century). Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – Yemenite Minister of Culture Arwa Othman is giving away Human Rights Watch’s Alison Des Forges Award, which she received in September, to Yemen’s dwindling Jewish community.
The award honored Othman for her work promoting women’s rights and fighting extremism. On Nov. 20, she called for “tolerance,” dedicating her award to “brothers and friends from the Jewish community,” The Associated Press reported.
There are fewer than 90 Jews left in Yemen, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel, and half of them live in a guarded compound that also protects the U.S. Embassy in the capital city of Sanaa due to threats from Islamic terror groups such as al-Qaeda. Othman has been targeted with a smear campaign by hardline Salafi jihadist groups in the country over her support of Yemenite Jews.
