Sixteen years ago, Avi Karni, then an infant, was brought to the UK by his Jewish Yemenite family, who settled in the Charedi neighbourhood of Stamford Hill, in east London.
They had come from Monsey, New York, where his family had lived among the Chasidic community after being lured from Yemen’s largest city, Sana’a, by Satmar missionaries in 1993.
The Karnis were one of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Yemenite families who were convinced by Satmar Chasidim to eschew emigration to Israel, where they would have received support from the state as new olim, to instead live among Ashkenazi Charedim in New York and London.
Now 21, Karni — who sometimes goes by his birth name, Abraham Ibrahim — has been sentenced to seven and a half years in jail after being convicted of nine counts of sexual offences against young girls he met through social media.
Karni’s crimes have now cast fresh attention on these Yemenites, many of whom faced great hardships as they struggled to adapt not only to the language and culture of their new countries, but also to the strict and mysterious social mores of the Satmar.
Who are they, what has become of them and why did the Satmar raise millions to fly them to the US and UK, to house and educate them in their deeply traditional communities?
With statistics hard to come by, estimates of the number of Yemenite Jews resettled in Stamford Hill vary, but it is thought roughly 20 families emigrated from the mid-1990s until around 2010.
According to the 2011 Census, there were 396 Jews from Yemen living in the UK — although this includes Adeni Jews, who are distinct culturally and ethnically from the Yemenite Jews.
In 2001, the first year in which questions on religion were included in the main census form, there were 76 Yemenite and 273 Adeni Jews in Britain.
Sources have told the JC that subsidised housing and school places were promised, as well as employment opportunities.
A parallel campaign, but on a much larger scale, was orchestrated by Satmar groups in the US, going back to the early ’90s. It is thought Yemenites in their hundreds were settled in New York’s Chasidic strongholds — primarily Monsey, Monroe and Borough Park.
The majority of Yemenite Jews — a community dating back to the Jewish exodus from Israel in biblical times — had already left the country decades ago.
Almost 50,000 were airlifted out to the newly-founded state of Israel between June 1949 and September 1950 as part of Operation Magic Carpet. As members of an impoverished and persecuted minority group, many had never even seen aircraft before. Only a few hundred stayed behind.
But life in Israel was tough. With the strictly secular Jewish Agency taking responsibility for the Yemenites’ integration, many were forced to cast religious practice aside, along with some ancient traditions and customs, in the process of becoming citizens of the fledgling state.
There were also widespread claims of economic and social marginalisation of Mizrachim.
But by far the worst tragedy visited upon the community was the ‘Yemenite Children Affair’ — the disappearance of thousands of babies and toddlers born to new Mizrachi immigrants, mostly Yemenites, in the early 1950s.
It is widely believed that many were abducted from hospitals, and given or sold to wealthier Ashkenazi couples. Many believe it was motivated, at least in part, by the welfare state’s struggles to support the sudden influx of economically deprived Mizrachi immigrants. The Satmar, in their attempts to convince Yemenites to turn their backs on Israel many decades later, could point to this outrage.
For the Chasidic sect, saving fellow Jews from Yemen, a country riven by conflict and economic deprivation, may have been a mitzvah in itself.
But for the stringently anti-Zionist group, it is widely suspected that keeping them out of Israel was the goal itself — with Satmar Chasidic opposition to political Zionism borne of the belief that it will delay the Messianic redemption of the world.
The Jewish state is not the same country as it was in its early years. With a modern state infrastructure built to absorb them — as well as established Mizrachi communities — wouldn’t Israel have been a better bet?
“It was a political issue for the Satmar,” a senior British Charedi figure told the JC. “They would have integrated better in Israel — that I can tell you.
“They were telling them not to go to Israel, because they would have no freedom of religion. They said, ‘Come to England, we will look after you and you will be able to carry on your traditions’.
“The Satmar felt Israel failed the initial community. It’s a very sad part of Israel’s history… Satmar were still harking back to those times. They hadn’t realised things had changed.”
Yemenite children were instantly enrolled in Charedi schools — much to the chagrin of headteachers of already-oversubscribed schools, who were now forced to find room for a cohort of children who were already far behind their classmates.
According to Izzy Posen, who was raised as a Satmar Chasid but broke away from the community four years ago, at the age of 20, the Yemenites were immediately marginalised in their new community, although “not always intentionally”.
Mr Posen recalled the racist bullying a Yemenite classmate faced from Ashkenazi children, for whom it was “the first time they saw brown-skinned people.
“In every regard they were very different — even in terms of colour,” he said. “The Chasidic community is homogeneous white and Ashkenazi.
“I remember as a kid it was very perplexing. To us, a Jew was white. The teachers didn’t tolerate racism in the school towards these kids. But among children that’s just how it is. From time to time we would call them ‘black’ and ‘brown’.”
Schvartze — the derogatory Yiddish term for a black person — was commonly directed towards the group, several people have said.
Rachel Kosky, a Yemeni-Israeli woman who came to the UK on her own in 1970, and later helped Yemenite families make aliyah from Stamford Hill, alleged that young Yemenites were also physically attacked at school.
“At school they used to beat them. They used to come home with the leg blue. It’s not fair, the way they treated the children,” the 74-year-old said. “To them, they are just schvartze.”
Cultural differences often arose, Mr Posen said. For one, their traditional clothing stuck out in a neighbourhood of Charedi uniformity — black hats and coats for men, with women wearing long skirts and sheitels.
The sight of a woman in trousers was shocking enough, but some Yemenites unwittingly challenged the biggest Charedi taboo of all: sex.
Mr Posen “vividly remembers” a Yemenite schoolmate being expelled for discussing the topic on the schoolyard.
“Chasidic kids are extremely sheltered, we had no idea,” he said. “Presumably in his house they were more open about it. He told us that his parents have sex, and he described it to us.
“I remember there was a massive investigation by the headteacher… they dismissed him from the school.
“I don’t think it’s an isolated story. I think this kind of thing happened pretty much to many of the Yemenite kids because they failed to integrate.”
Perhaps most damaging of all was the lowly status Yemenite families held in matchmaking or shidduch — the practice around which the rigidly hierarchical Charedi world turns.
“They find shidduch for them but if it’s a Yemenite, it’s only with another Yemenite,” Mrs Kosky told the JC.
Mr Posen concurred, but said this was less a Yemenite issue as one faced by all new entrants to the community, including baal teshuva — Jews who return from secular society to strict Orthodoxy.
A senior Charedi source disputed the claim, saying that “maybe 50 years ago if someone had a disability they could only marry someone Sephardishe,” but that “thank God that attitude has changed”.
Things were largely similar on the other side of the Atlantic.
A 2003 documentary, In Satmar Custody, made the explosive claim that Satmar Charedim confiscated Yemenites’ passports and prevented their children from learning English, thus isolating them further and making them more dependent on religious authorities.
According to a 41-year-old lapsed member of the Monsey Satmar community, whose father was heavily involved in efforts to bring Yemenites to the West, In Satmar Custody was more or less true to the reality.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, said his father travelled to Yemen on at least one occasion, and two Yemenite teenagers later lived with them in the family home.
“In their opinion they’re rescuing the Jews from being taken by the Zionists,” he said. “They tried to civilise them, and made sure they were dressed with the black hat and the jacket. But life was difficult for the Yemenis; they didn’t give them the tools to integrate.
“[They] should have got them to a place where they have their own community, not being considered second class. In my opinion, it was a failed experiment.”
A senior Labour Party source who was involved in negotiations throughout the 1990s with the Yemeni government to support the country’s remaining Jews, accused the Satmar of seeking to “frustrate all attempts to give the Yemeni Jewish community a viable future and the freedom to decide where to live”.
The Chasidic sect, he said, attempted to force the community to remain in Yemen, rather than make aliyah, and only later “sought to encourage a few they had links with to join their communities in London and New York”.
“There is nothing wrong with anyone settling inside the Chasidic community but I think the Satmar have a very fixed viewpoint and are not keen on compromise, liberty or Israel. They think they know best and I am not sure that they ever worked in the best interests of the people they professed to help.”
Eliezer Low, who had responsibility for settling Yemenite families in the 1990s and 2000s, declined to comment for this article.
The Satmar community — based in the Yetev Lev D’Satmar centre in Cazenove Road and the Kehal Yetev Lev Satmar in Clapton Common — did not respond to several requests for comment.
Karni’s family were tempted to go to Monsey with the promise of financial support and employment, according to his older brother, Yossi, who himself was sentenced to 12 months in prison for perverting the course of justice, after he contacted “a victim’s friend” to ask her to change her story.
He said his father — only able to speak Arabic — found himself unable to support his seven children on the wages from menial jobs in a pizza parlour and a butcher’s shop. Ten years later, by which time Avi was born, they left for Stamford Hill.
After school years marked by racist bullying and academic struggles, Yossi, who also goes by Yousef Ibrahim, found work in a local Charedi-owned supermarket. Avi, eight years his junior, worked as a delivery driver for Simcha Cars in Stamford Hill.
Another member of the Stamford Hill Yemenite community estimated that only around a fifth of those remaining in the UK have adopted a faithful Satmar way of life. The 30-year-old, who wished to remain anonymous, defended the Satmar, who he said rescued his family from a “war zone”, bringing them to London in 1999.
“At the end of the day, I do thank them that I am here, and I didn’t stay in Yemen to be killed,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter — you’re in London, you’re in Israel. There’s always problems. But it’s a better life than Yemen.
“We’re all grown-ups now. We understand that if you want to move on to a different country you’re welcome to move on. You want to stay, you stay. But you can’t blame someone who actually helped you.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t difficult — it was. Don’t forget, you come from Yemen, you only know one language, Arabic. You’re with loads of white boys and you are brown or black. It’s a different environment, but it would have been wherever you go. No-one is holding you. No-one is forcing you to do anything you don’t want to.”
But regardless of the negative consequences of the efforts to bring Yemenite Jews to the West — felt both inside and outside their community — the Satmar would consider the project anything but a “failed experiment”, Mr Posen suggested.
“Satmar sees itself as the upholder of traditional, authentic Judaism. In the Satmar Chasidic mindset, there is no difference between a law-abiding, decent secular person and a criminal sex offender. The second you’re not religious, you may as well be a criminal. You’re not doing God’s will.
“If you ask these people nowadays they wouldn’t see it as a failure. If they can point towards even two or three of these people who did manage to integrate, then everything was worth it. The rest were just collateral.”
