By Christian Chaise

RAYDAH, Feb 19, 2009 (AFP) - They have closed their three synagogues and two schools, and avoid public places -- members of the small Jewish community of Raydah in northern Yemen are gripped by fear.

The 260 Jews who stayed on in the area when their co-religionists emigrated to Israel by the thousand used to coexist comfortably with their Muslim neighbours.

But on December 11, Masha Yaish al-Nahari, a father-of-nine who taught Hebrew at one of the community's two schools, was gunned down by a Muslim who accosted him near his home demanding that he convert to Islam.

The suspect, Abdul Aziz Yahya al-Abdi, 39, who has repeatedly confessed to the murder in court saying he had warned the town's Jews to leave or convert if they wanted to stay alive, faces a possible death sentence if convicted when the trial wraps up on March 2.

Jewish neighbours of the victim attended two earlier hearings in the trial but they stayed away from a new hearing this week after receiving death threats from Abdi's Muslim clansmen from the powerful Kharef tribe, community leader Yahya Yaish told AFP.

The only Jewish people present for Monday's session were the victim's father and widow, as Abdi's clansmen packed the courtroom, many wearing traditional curved daggers on their belts, to support the man in the dock.

"In the past, we lived in security, but now, we are all afraid," the victim's father Yaeish al-Nahari told AFP at his home in Raydah, a large dusty agricultural town swept by the wind.

At his side, his wife Tranjah sat inconsolable at the loss of her only son. "I see him everywhere," she sobbed.

Wearing the black skullcap worn by observant Jewish men, Nahari said his family had lived in the area for 40 years without previously facing any problems.

Now in his 60s, he said that he still considers himself Yemeni first and Jewish second, but that he is desperate to leave as soon as he can sell his house and doesn't mind where he goes.

"The president supports us. We are under his protection," Nahari said.

"But if the government does not protect us, we will go to Israel," he said, adding that three of his five daughters have already emigrated there.

The Raydah Jews are not the first of Yemen's dwindling number of Jewish communities to take flight from their Muslim neighbours in recent years.

In early 2007, the even smaller community in Al-Salem district, in the far northern mountains near the Saudi border, fled their homes in the face of an armed uprising seeking the restoration of the Zaidi imamate that ruled Yemen until a republican coup in 1962.

A total of 49 people from nine families sought the protection of government troops, first in the provincial capital Saada and then in the capital Sanaa where they continue to live in tightly guarded accommodation provided by the government.

Israel's deadly three-week offensive against Gaza in December and January has further inflamed Muslim animosity towards the country's tiny Jewish minority.

"What happens in Palestine creates hatred in the Islamic world," said Khaled Al-Anesi, the Nahari family's lawyer. "After Gaza, the hatred is even bigger."

One of the suspected murderer's fellow tribesmen, Samir al-Mattari, agreed. "They have every reason to be afraid, especially after what happened in Gaza," he said, swiftly adding that he did not personally hold his Jewish compatriots responsible for Israel's actions.

"They are our neighbours. They are Yemenis. They should stay," he said.

But community leader Yaish said the climate of fear was now such that Jews were hiding their religion when they went out to shop and were avoiding all public places or gatherings.

"We have received death threats on the phone, in the street, in the courtroom," he told AFP.

When asked whether there was any future for Yemen's millenia-old Jewish community, which even 60 years ago still numbered 60,000, Yaish answered: "No, none."

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Copyright AFP 2009.