A Wounded Soldier’s Story

(October 26, 2023) Last week, our Newsletter reported the injury on the Lebanese border of a B’nei Menashe soldier, Natanel Touthang, whose wounds were described as “light.” This week, when we visited Natanel in Rambam Hospital in Haifa, we were made to realize that “light” is a relative term. With partial sight in his left eye and none at all in his right eye, both damaged by debris and shrapnel from a shell that struck the army position he was in, he was awaiting an operation that would, it was hoped, restore the right eye’s vision. Yet his spirits were high, and ours, too, were raised by his story.

One of four children, Natanel, now 27, was born into a B’nei Menashe family and grew up in Phailen, a neighborhood of Lamka, formerly known as Churachandpur. His father, a civil servant in the government department of agriculture, put great stress on his children’s education, and Natanel, after finishing high school, attended Churachandpur College, from which he received a B.A. degree in political science. By the time the family was offered the chance to make Aliyah in 2018, Natanel’s father had passed away, his older brother had died in a swimming accident, and his two sisters had married and lost interest in living in Israel. “It was just my mother and me,” he told us. After a stay in an absorption center, the two were sent to live in the town of Bet She’an, near the Jordanian border south of Tiberias, where they still live

By now Natanel was 23-years-old, slightly above the cut-off age for army conscription. But although he found a job as a lab technician, he didn’t stop trying to join the IDF. “I kept thinking,” he says, “what was the point of coming to Israel if I couldn’t serve my country?” In the end, the army agreed to induct him for a two-year period of service rather than the usual three. “I was disappointed,” he told us, “but it was definitely better than nothing.” After his basic training, he was posted to an infantry battalion, with which he served until his discharge. His fellow soldiers nicknamed him ‘Nun-Tet,’ the initials of his name that also stand in Hebrew for neged tankim, “against tanks,” that is, an anti-tank missile. “I put those initials on everything,” he says. “My gun, my kitbag, all over.” Little did he realize how ironic this was to be.

A year ago, in September 2022, when he was discharged from the army, Natanel returned to Bet-She’an, now an army reservist, and went back to work. Soon afterward, he married his wife Yehudit. “Bet-She’an is a quiet little town,” he says. “The day of October 7, we didn’t know what was happening because our phones were switched off on account of Shabbat. I only heard of the horrible things going on in the south when Shabbat was over. Even then I wasn’t aware of the full extent of it.”

Natanel went to work the next day as usual. “That’s when I realized how serious things were. Everyone was talking about it; war had been declared by the prime minister. All I could think of was of joining my reserve unit. When I found out evening that some of my friends in Beit She’an had been called up, I phoned my commanding officer and asked why I hadn’t been. He told me that whoever was needed was being called and that I should stay home and wait.

“I wasn’t going to take that for an answer. I insisted he tell me where my unit was assembling and he did. The next day I reported for duty. I was issued my uniform and gear, but though I was hoping we would go to Gaza, we were sent to the north, to the border with Hizbollah.”

Gun emplacements in Israel's north.

Natanel’s unit was positioned on the slopes of Mount Hermon, scant meters away from the Lebanese border. The spot was isolated, in rough terrain, with a commanding view of the area. He was assigned to a pillbox, with a narrow slit to look through and fire a gun from, protected in front by a rampart of earth and with a door in the rear, Equipped with their rifles, a machine gun, and binoculars, he stood guard with a partner. Their job was to keep the area under surveillance and report any signs of enemy activity.

The first days were quiet. The only shooting in them that Natanel remembers was one evening when he watched Hizbollah missiles being fired in the distance toward Metula. A little before 5 p.m. on Wednesday, October 18, he and his partner relieved the pair of soldiers on duty before them. They checked their equipment and Natanel’s partner began to scan their right-hand field of vision through the binoculars. “I was to the left of him and further back,” said Netanel. “Suddenly, without taking his eyes off the binoculars, he screamed my name. He hadn’t reached its last syllable when something hit the rampart just below the firing slit with a huge explosion. The blast threw me against the concrete wall at the back of the pillbox and I fell to the floor. I’m not sure if I blacked out or not, but everything was black when I opened my eyes. I couldn't see a thing.

Natanel, second from the right, recuperating at Rambam Hospital, with his wife, Yehudit(second from the left) visited by Degel Menashe's executive director, Yitzhak Thangjom(extreme right) and his wife Jessica (extreme left).

“The first thing I did was run my hands over my body and touch every part of it to make sure it was still there. I suppose it's human instinct to make sure you are whole in situations like these. I heard my partner firing the machine gun while I tried to drag myself to the door. Soon medics arrived and gave me first aid. I still couldn’t see, My right arm was hit, too, and my eyes were bleeding, I could feel the medics trying to clean them. Then I was on a stretcher and in a helicopter taking me to the hospital. I remember thinking: what a shame! It’s the first helicopter ride of my life and I can’t even see and enjoy it!”

The greater irony, though, was what wounded Natanel. It was an anti-tank missile, a Nun-Tet shell! “Talk of a bullet having your name on it!” he smiled from his hospital bed.

Natanel’s arm is already healing and he has regained some of the vision in his left eye but still can’t see with the right one. “Let's hope for the best,” he answered when asked what he would do if the planned operation did not succeed. “I’ll live with whatever happens without weeping and wailing over it. I’m not a self-pitying type. God’s will has to be accepted. He does His best and expects us to do ours. The army is looking after me very well. I have a private room and my wife stays with me all the time. There are doctors, nurses, and social workers looking after all my needs. I did what I had to do for my country. I’m fine.”

In Manipur, Ma’oz Tsur Doesn’t Wait for Hanukkah

(October 23, 2023) It’s no longer called Suongpi, which means “big rock” in Kuki. In honor of the first five B’nei Menashe families to take up occupancy in their newly constructed home at the site last week, it has been renamed Ma’oz Tsur, Hebrew for “fortress of the rock” – or, as the Hanukkah candle-lighting song of that name is traditionally known in English, “Rock of Ages.”

The five are among over one hundred B’nei Menashe families that lost their homes, possessions, and livelihoods in the civil strife between Meiteis and Kukis (to which latter group the B’nei Menashe belong) that broke out in Manipur last May, resulting in widespread ethnic cleansing, particularly of Kukis from the low-lying hills bordering on Manipur’s Meitei-dominated Central Valley. Many of the displaced B’nei Menashe families have found temporary shelter with relatives in Manipur; others have fled to neighboring Mizoram, where most are staying at a large government refugee camp near the town of Thingdawl.

Some members of the five families who have taken up residence at Ma'oz Tsur.

Sitting on 200 acres put at the disposal of the B’nei Menashe by Lalam Hangshing, chairman of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe Council, Ma’oz Tsur is situated some seven kilometers south of the center of Lamka, formerly Churachandpur, Manipur’s second largest city and its main stronghold of Kuki life. Already two years ago, when he offered the land to the community, Hangshing dreamed of building on it what he called “a B’nei Menashe kibbutz.” Now, in becoming a reality, this dream has taken on a new meaning. Ma’oz Tsur, Hangshing hopes, will provide housing for a large number of displaced B’nei Menashe in an environment in which they can live cooperatively while supporting themselves from the land, growing food for sale and their own consumption, and raising poultry and livestock.

A view of a field at Ma'oz Tsur.

Ma'oz Tsur’s first residence, whose construction began a little over two months ago, was completed right after Sukkot. The 120 x 25 foot building, its main materials bamboo, plywood, and corrugated tin, is divided into five units, each housing a family, plus a communal kitchen. Two auxiliary sheds will in the meantime accommodate additional residents. “Our hope,” says Jesse Gangte, B’nei Menashe Council treasurer and the Ma’oz Tsur project’s director, “is that this first building will serve as a pilot that grows into a fully functioning community with its own synagogue, school, and community center. The demand is great. We already have more than a dozen applications from other displaced families, and all that is keeping us from erecting houses for them is a lack of funds. The building that has now been occupied cost about $8,000, that is, $1,600 per family, and we should be able to put up future structures even more cheaply.”

Pioneers, from the left, Shem Haokip, Shimon Thomsong and Reuven Haokip.

"Ma’oz Tzur has given us new hope,” says Shem Haokip, who supervised construction of the building and heads one of the families that have moved into it. “Our goal is to stand on our own feet and contribute all we can to creating and sustaining a community. We’re still in the process of settling in. We have electricity and water tanks to which the water is trucked, although we hope that’s only a temporary solution. There’s a stream running through the property from which water can be piped, and if we dam it at some point, we can also have a commercial fish pond. We have the will and the know-how to do many things. It’s only a matter of money.”.

Reuven Haokip, whose family is also among Ma’oz Tsur’s first residents, is equally optimistic. “I’m honored to be living here and proud to have helped build our first home,” he says. “With God's help we’ll turn this into the first all-Bnei Menashe village. I know that’s a long way off. At the moment, we don't even have a minyan for prayers, but we’re planning to invite friends for each Shabbat so that we can at least have a full service then. One of our families is headed by Shimon Thomsong, who taught Judaism at the Eliyahu Avichail School and will be our religious leader. We have plenty of land and can turn this into a cooperative farm that will fulfill all our needs and even more. The potential is endless.”

First B’nei Menashe Military Casualty As Hundreds Called Up

Natanel Touthang, in full battle gear.

(October 19) As hundreds of young B’nei Menashe reservists headed for their army units this week after receiving their mobilization orders, a first casualty among the community’s combat soldiers was reported. The wounded soldier was Natanel Touthang of Beit Shean, who was hit by shrapnel from a Hizbullah shell on Israel's border with Lebanon. He was evacuated to Rambam Hospital in Haifa and treated for hand and eye injuries that were reported to be light.

Although exact numbers are unavailable, some 300 B’nei Menashe reservists, most in combat units, are estimated to have been called up in the past two weeks. Well over a hundred more were already serving in the army when the Gaza crisis broke out. “Nothing could better demonstrate how much of a part of Israeli life we B’nei Menashe now are,” says Degel Menashe’s managing director Yitzhak Thangjom. “Considering that the total B’nei Menashe population of Israel is barely five thousand, we probably have a higher percentage of youngsters now in uniform than most other sectors of the population.”

For nearly all of them, being called up in a military emergency was a new experience. A typical case was that of D., an infantry soldier in the Golani Brigade who spoke to us from his cell phone shortly after reaching the army base he had been told to report to. “I had just finished my regular military service earlier this year and was married a few months ago,” he told our Newsletter. “Last Shabbat the army sent a courier to tell me to report for reserve duty immediately. I explained to him that my wife would be left alone and asked for a day to make arrangements for someone to be with her. When Shabbat was over that evening I called my mother, and as soon as she arrived early the next morning. I said a hurried goodbye and took the first bus for my base. I have no idea yet where I’ll be sent. I have a brother in the Tank Corps who’s been called up to. I’m proud to be defending our country.”

Bnei Menashe rookie soldiers post basic-training. File photo.

So are the hundreds of others. “I think that when this is over,” Thangjom says, “we B’nei Menashe will feel Israeli in a different and more profound way than we have felt until now. We’ll have put our lives on the line for this country as so many Israelis are doing and have done. In the fighting ahead, there will inevitably be more casualties among us. Some of us may be killed. If Israel will be, as many people are saying, a different country when this is ended, we B’nei Menashe will certainly be a different community.”

This holds true, Thangjom says, for the parents of B’nei Menashe soldiers no less than for the soldiers themselves. “My oldest son began his regular army service a few months ago,” we were told by Enosh Lhouvum, the head of one of the 120 B’nei Menashe families of Sderot that have been evacuated, along with all the town’s other residents, to hotels in various parts of Israel. “He was very enthusiastic about it, so excited that he couldn’t sleep in the nights beforehand. His hands, he said, were 'itching' to hold a gun that he could fight for Israel with. To tell the truth, I would have preferred that he stay in in his yeshivah, where his studies exempted him from the draft. I wanted him to go on studying Torah. But you know how it is in Israel. Children make their own choices.”

Bnei Menashe soldiers, called up and ready to serve.

Lhouvum, who is also chairman of Sderot’s B’nei Menashe community council, spoke to us from the hotel on the Dead Sea where he and other community members he is in charge of are now being put up. “It’s nice to relax here after all we went through in Sderot,” he told us. “The government is paying for our entire hotel bill, although not for private expenditures. Apart from that we’re in the dark, though. We don’t know how long we’ll be here, or whether we’ll continue to get our pay from our workplaces. These are uncertain times. So many of our sons are in the army and we have no idea of where they are or how they will be deployed. My own son was almost finished with his basic training when the fighting broke out. Today, the ceremony celebrating the end of it was supposed to have been held. I don’t know what unit he’s been assigned to, although the last time I spoke with him, he told me it was a combat one. Part of me is very worried and part is very proud that he’s doing his duty. We’ll pray for his safe return and victory for Israel.”

As will we all!