280 B’nei Menashe To Leave For Israel Next Week Amid Protests against Manipulation of Aliyah lists

(May 21) 280 B’nei Menashe from Manipur will be leaving for Israel next week, Shavei Israel’s Manipur administrator Shlomo Kipgen announced on May 16 over the organization’s WhatsApp news portal Shavei News2. The group will set out on the first leg of its trip in three contingents, slated to fly from Imphal to New Delhi on May 24, 25, and 26.

Shlomo Kipgen’s announcement

All of the 280 come from the “2016 Dayyanim Interview Pass List,” drawn up by Shavei Israel and representatives of Israel’s Rabbinate five years ago. Since then, no more B’nei Menashe have been approved for Aliyah by Israel’s government. Of the 722 individuals on the 2016 list, 252 reached Israel last December and are now living in the Lower Galilee city of Nof ha-Galil. The remaining 470, plus children born to them since 2016, were recently authorized by a government decision to make Aliyah this year. In addition to the 280 now setting out, a second group is scheduled to fly to Israel three months from now, our Newsletter has learned from sources in Israel’s Ministry of Immigration.

A dark shadow, however, hangs over all this. 107 names from the 2016 list, belonging to 19 families, so it was charged this week by Manipur’s B’nei Menashe Council, have been struck from it. These 19 families comprise that part of the 2016 list that has publicly stated its allegiance to the Council, which has been in a state of conflict with Shavei Israel since its election in a community vote last November. Shavei has refused to recognize the BMC’s legitimacy and has repeatedly threatened its supporters with removal from the 2016 list – and now, since not a single member of the 19 families has been included in the group of 280, Shavei is obviously is carrying out its threats. “A quick look at the list of the 280,” says Ohaliav Haokip, the BMC’s General Secretary, “shows that Shavei is doing what it said it would. It has played pick-and-choose with the original ‘Interview Pass List,’ selecting whoever has been loyal to Shavei and crossing out the names of whoever stuck with the BMC.”

Protesting this development, an anti-Shavei demonstration was held by the 19 families in Churachandpur this week at the Beit Shalom synagogue, the city’s largest. The families held signs calling for a fair and transparent Aliyah process not subject to Shavei’s cronyism and discriminatory practices.

Anti-Shavei protest in Churachandpur

In respond to the protest, Shavei Israel’s Information Secretary Eliezer Baite issued a Kuki-language statement condemning it. The Aliyah of the B’nei Menashe, Baite declared, was Shavei’s exclusive domain and no one had the right to interfere in it. “Israel’s government and the Jewish Agency have handed the Aliyah of the B’nei Menashe to Shavei Israel,” the statement read. “Only Shavei will have a say in it…As for transparency, Shavei Israel does not owe it to anyone. Everyone knows all they need to know.”

The first lines of Eliezer Baite’s statement

Baite’s statement appeared to represent Shavei Israel’s interpretation of an agreement recently arrived at with the Jewish Agency [see our May 11 article “Jewish Agency to Join in Bringing B’nei Menashe to Israel”. The Agency’s role in B’nei Menashe Aliyah, Shavei holds, will be merely an adjunct one that leaves all substantive decisions to Shavei itself.

The statement also included the admission that the names of BMC supporters have indeed been struck from the Aliyah list. “The present Aliyah list,” it said, “may not be the previous Aliyah list because there are some people and their families who have taken back their passports from Shavei, in effect refusing Aliyah.”

Ohaliav Haokip

“This is an outrageous lie,” says Ohaliav Haokip. “In the first place, Shavei had no business collecting and holding these passports years before the current Aliyah was undertaken. But quite apart from that, what it says simply isn’t true. Of the 19 families, all deposited their passports with Shavei a long time ago. Two of the 19 asked for them back but then returned them to Shavei a second time, while the other 17 never saw their passports again after initially handing them over. The passports of all 19 families are still in Shavei’s possession and the BMC knows where, at last report, they were being held – unless since then they have been destroyed or thrown away. Shavei has invented the story of the passports being returned as a pretext for eliminating the 19 families from the current Aliyah list.”

Following up on Haokip’s charges, Degel Menashe chairman Hillel Halkin turned to both the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Immigration for clarification. The Agency declined to comment. Almog Moscowitz, Senior Adviser to Minister of Immigration Penina Tamano-Shata, wrote back:

“It is possible that the [107] individuals you mentioned will make Aliyah in the second round [that is slated to depart in three months] and has not been excluded from the list.”

In reply, Halkin pointed out that there was no statistical chance that all 107 “just happened” to have been assigned to the second group. Clearly, he said, their total exclusion from the first group represents deliberate Shavei policy, as is borne out by the fabricated story of the “returned” passports.

“The passports have simply been stolen,” Ohaliav Haokip insists. “If necessary, we’ll go to court to get them back.”

Against Rockets, Riots, Israel’s B’nei Menashe Wanted Tougher Line

(May 19) Thursday night’s ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came too late for our Newsletter to ask any members of Israel’s B’nei Menashe community about it, but to judge from earlier conversations, it wasn’t what they wanted. Don’t give an inch to either Hamas or Israeli Arab rioters: such was the sentiment we heard this week.

Yaacov Tuboi

North or south, whether living close to Hamas rockets or far from them, in mixed towns or all-Jewish ones, the refrain was trhe same. Seventy-one-year old Yaacov Tuboi of Sderot could expressed it when he said, “Our government has been too soft on Hamas. Enough! This time we have to fight until we finish them. It’s discouraging to think that the government might agree to a premature ceasefire under government pressure. Hamas will just use the respite it’s given to restock its rockets and become even deadlier. We mustn’t allow this to happen again.”

Sderot’s population, which includes some 70 B’nei Menashe families, has come in for heavy shelling in the current rounding of fighting, just as it has in the past. “It’s unnerving,” Tuboi said. “We’re always on the alert, ready to run to the nearest shelter within seconds.”

Yoel Misao, 54, of the southern town of village of Nitzan not far from Sderot, said he was lucky to have a shelter in his own house. Still, said Misao, “this time the rockets gave us a good battering. We’ve been hearing ten sirens or more every day. We haven’t had a good night’s sleep for days, even though we’ve become so numb that we’ve lost our sense of fear.” Nevertheless, he went on, “I’m all for the government’s decision not to agree to a ceasefire that will let Hamas off too easily again. It has to be made to pay an unaffordable price for all this.”

Maor Lotzem

Maor Lotzem, 37, lives in Kiryat Arba in the Judean hills, which though within range of Hamas missiles was not targeted, perhaps because it is on the outskirts of the large Arab city of Hebron. “We haven’t even heard a siren,” he told our Newsletter. “We’ve busy, as usual, with our jobs and families.” Lotzem, too, however, thought that Israel’s government should take as strong a stand as possible with Hamas. “I was happy to hear that it turned down a ceasefire,” he declared. “Israel should destroy as much of Hamas’ arsenal as possible, Hamas should never be allowed to threaten us again.”

Gershom Mate, 28, of Acre, also thought that Hamas could only be subdued by force. “Peace with Hamas simply isn’t possible,” he stated..

Gershom Mate

Mate lives in the mixed seaside city of Acre, north of Haifa, which has seen extensive Arab rioting, attacks on Jews, and looting and vandalizing of Jewish property. “Fortunately,” he told us, ”my own photography shop wasn’t touched, because the disturbances were all in Acre’s old walled city and I live in the new part of town. But it’s been a terrible situation. First a year of Corona and then this!” The one bright spot in the disturbances, Mate said, was that most of the rioters arrested by police were non-locals. “Relations between Jews and Arabs in Acre have been good,” he says. “I think the unrest has been caused by outside elements.”

Ethnic conflict is not something new to the B’nei Menashe, especially not to those who come from Manipur, a state riven by rivalries and violence between the different parts of its population for as long as anyone can remember. “This is the first time, though, that I’ve seen anything similar break out in Israel,” said Yaacov Tuboi. “It happened because the Arabs have

perceived us Jews as being weak. I’m not saying we should behave like them. We have five or six Arab families living here in Sderot, and nobody bothers them and nobody will. Just think of what would have happened had the situation been reversed! But our tolerance is seen as timidity. That’s where the problem lies.”

Yoel Misao, too, thought “the recent rioting was unprecedented. I never thought it could happen here. It shouldn’t have been permitted to happen.” Misao agreed with Gershom Mate that outside instigation was involved. “None of this would have taken place without it,” he said.

For Maor Lotzem, the riots called for self-examination. “Maybe it’s time to look more carefully at ourselves,” he told our Newsletter. “We need to be stronger in our faith.”

Isaac Thangjom

On the whole, B’nei Menashe reactions to the past week’s violence reflect the views of a community that leans heavily to the Right politically. “This partly has to do with its background in Northeast India,” says Isaac Thangjom, Degel Menashe’s executive director. “We come from a heavily ethnicized society. In Manipur, for instance, where I’m from, it’s one group against another: Kukis against Nagas, Nagas against Meiteis, and so on. If you’re a Kuki, as all the B’nei Menashe from Manipur are, the Kukis come first. There’s no sense of a society in which everyone needs to be treated fairly and no group should be given an advantage over another. The understanding is that someone will always have the advantage – and you want that to be you. In the old days, a Kuki chief could make peace with his enemies, but he only made it after he vanquished them. We’ve brought that attitude with us to Israel. That’s why endless ceasefires with Hamas make no sense to us.”

Jewish Agency To Join In Bringing B’nei Menashe to Israel

(May 11) For the first time since B’nei Menashe began coming to Israel in the early 1990s, The Jewish Agency will join in bringing them, it was announced in Jerusalem this week. Since 2007, B’nei Menashe Aliyah has been the exclusive domain of the private Jerusalem-based organization Shavei Israel. This will no longer be the case.

The development represents a victory for Degel Menashe, which has campaigned for a new approach to B’nei Menashe immigration with both The Agency and The Ministry of Immigration and Absorption. As reported by our Newsletter at the time, a January 11 meeting between Degel Menashe representatives and high officials of The Agency, including its chairman Isaac Herzog, helped pave the way for the change.

Five-hundred-forty-eight immigrants, it was also announced, will be in the next contingent of B’nei Menashe to arrive. This number comes from a list of 722 candidates for Aliyah, drawn up by Shavei Israel in 2016, 252 of whom reached Israel last December. All future lists, Degel Menashe has been assured by reliable sources in The Jewish Agency, will be compiled with The Agency’s full participation and under its oversight.

The 548 olim, our Newsletter has learned, will be divided into two groups, the second to follow upon the first’s completion of its conversion process. Unlike the past, in which Shavei Israel footed most or all of the bill for the airfare of B’nei Menashe olim, the bulk of the costs will be paid for this time by the The Jewish Agency. Shavei Israel is said to be in financial straits and unable to shoulder the burden as once it did.

Following their conversion, the new group of immigrants will reportedly be housed in Nof ha-Galil (formerly Upper Nazareth), where the 252 who preceded them now reside.