Operation Magic Carpet is a widely-known nickname for Operation On Wings of Eagles , an operation between June 1949 and September 1950 that brought 49,000 Yemenite Jews

Yemenite Jews

Yemenite Jews are those Jews who live, or whose recent ancestors lived, in Yemen . Between June 1949 and September 1950, the overwhelming majority of Yemen's Jewish population was transported to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet...

 to the new state of Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 transport planes made some 380 flights from Aden

Aden

Aden is a seaport city in Yemen, located by the eastern approach to the Red Sea , some 170 kilometres east of Bab-el-Mandeb. Its population is approximately 800,000. Aden's ancient, natural harbour lies in the crater of an extinct volcano which now forms a peninsula, joined to the mainland by a...

, in a secret operation that was not made public until several months after it was over. At some point, the operation was also called Operation Messiah's Coming.

The Operation

In response to an increasingly perilous situation, most of the Yemenite Jewish community secretly emigrated to Israel between June 1949 and September 1950 in Operation Magic Carpet. A smaller, continuous migration was allowed to continue into 1962, when a civil war put an abrupt halt to any further Jewish exodus. Some wealthy Jewish families who doubted promises of a better future in Israel decided not to leave their properties, and a total of some 300 Jews remained in Yemen.

During the course of Operation Magic Carpet (1949–1950), the overwhelming majority of Yemenite Jews — some 47,000 Yemeni, 1,500 Aden as well as 500 Djibouti

Djibouti

Djibouti , officially the Republic of Djibouti , is a country in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Eritrea in the north, Ethiopia in the west and south, and Somalia in the southeast. The remainder of the border is formed by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden at the east...

an and Eritrean Jews — were airlifted to Israel. Most of them had never seen an aircraft before. They left their religious ways of life as farmers and adopted a totally new way of life in a new world.
The operation's official name originated from two relevant biblical

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 passages:

• Exodus 19:4 - "You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I bore you on wings of eagles, and brought you to Myself."
• Book of Isaiah
  Book of Isaiah
  The Book of Isaiah is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, preceding the books of Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the Book of the Twelve...
  
   40:31 - "But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

Since they had never seen aircraft before, many of the immigrants were extremely scared and refused to board, but were assured when reminded of these verses by their rabbi.

Operation Magic Carpet was the first in a series of operations

Jewish exodus from Arab lands

The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries was a mass departure, flight and expulsion of Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Muslim countries, from 1948 until the early 1970s...

 whose purpose was to transport entire communities of Jews from Arab countries to Israel en masse during the 1950s and 1960s.

A street

Kanfei Nesharim Street (Jerusalem)

Kanfei Nesharim Street is a major east-west thoroughfare in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of western Jerusalem. Unlike most Jerusalem streets, Kanfei Nesharim is a wide thoroughfare with two traffic lanes in each direction, separated by a median, and spans three kilometers in a straight line...

 in Jerusalem and another in Herzliya

Herzliya

Herzliya is a city in the central coast of Israel, at the western part of the Tel Aviv District. It has a population of 87,000 residents. Named after Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, Herzliya covers an area of 26 km²...

were named "Kanfei Nesharim" (wings of Eagles) in honor of this operation.