Yemeni diaspora ancestors having left Yemen for the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia over four centuries ago. In 2015, due to the conflict in Yemen, many have migrated to the northern coasts of Djibouti and Somalia. Almost 350,000 Yemenite Jews live in Israel. Yemenite Jews have a unique religious tradition that marks them out as separate from Ashkenazi, Sephardi and other Jewish groups. Yemenite Jews are generally described as belonging to "Mizrahi Jews", though they differ from the general trend of Mizrahi groups in Israel, which have undergone a process of total or partial assimilation to Sephardic culture and Sephardic liturgy. Avigdor
Haredim and Zionism Sephardi or Mizrahi rabbis is far lower than among Ashkenazi rabbis, and these constitute a small minority of the Sephardi Haredi leadership. The Sephardi Haredi political party in the Knesset is Shas, which represents the vast majority of Sephardi Haredim, and is headed by Aryeh Deri. In 2010, Shas joined the World Zionist Organization, and officially became the first Zionist Haredi party. The party's long-time spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, opposed saying Hallel in the Yom HaAtzmaut prayer service, but writes that, "One may say Hallel after the completion of the prayers, without the blessing..." While in the past, when