Degel Menashe Food Relief Campaign Continues

(August 27) As rigorous Covid19 lockdown restrictions in Manipur and Mizoram have been relaxed only slightly despite a significant decrease in daily cases of the illness in late August, Degel Menashe has launched a new round of food relief this week for the B’nei Menashe communities of both states. The food comes just in time for Rosh Hashana and Sukkot.

Our correspondent in Manipur writes:

“There has been great anticipation of the aid arriving right before the High Holidays. There couldn’t have been a better time for it. Moreover, compared with Degel Menashe’s previous food campaign in Manipur in the summer of the 2020, the aid money will go further this time. Then, the market was in chaos, with prices of essentials shooting up in the panic that followed the first lockdown, and the blackmarketeers were having a field day and overcharging for everything. Now, the government has taken measures to control prices and we expect the cost of rice, our daily staple, to drop by as much as a third.”

The food relief campaign in Manipur will be administered by the B’nei Menashe Council, whose executive board met recently to plan the operation. As opposed to last year, when food was distributed at central depots, generally local synagogues, a voucher system will be used. Local suppliers, our correspondent reports, will be designated in each area, and families will pick up their allotments from them directly and have their purchases charged to the BMC. A BMC team will make the rounds of the suppliers to make sure the system is functioning smoothly.

Presided over by its chairman Lalam Hangshing, the BMC’s Manipur executive plans food relief.

In Mizoram, where a similar system was employed earlier this summer, it is being resorted to again. This time, our Mizoram correspondent writes, a greater effort has been made to expand the operation beyond the capital of Aizawl, located in the north-central part of the state, where most of its B’nei Menashe reside. Food aid will be available as far south as the town of Pukpui in the Lunglei district, whose B’nei Menashe community has been isolated from such campaigns in the past.

“It’s hard for me to express my feelings,” Pukpui resident Merabi Khupchawng told our correspondent. “This is the first time that we’re receiving any outside attention or assistance from anyone.” To which her fellow townsman, Benjamin Fanai, added: “May the aid organized by Degel Menashe for Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot be to the eternal merit of all those who are making it possible. May we all be sealed in the Book of Life!”

A B’nei Menashe family with its food aid.

Shavei Israel To B’nei Menashe: Sign A Loyalty Oath Or No Aliyah!

(August 26) J.P. is a member in good standing of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe community, but he has asked for the initials of his name to be changed in order to protect his identity. He and his family are on the list of B’nei Menashe approved for Aliyah in 2016 who have not yet come to Israel and who are slated to compose the next group of immigrants in the months ahead J.P. has also been a supporter of the B’nei Menashe Council, the representative body chosen by Manipur’s B’nei Menashe last November in democratic elections that Shavei Israel sought to prevent and whose outcome it subsequently tried to undermine.

Recently, J.P. received a call on his mobile phone from Manipur’s Shavei Israel administrator Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen. If he wished to make Aliya, Kipgen told him, he was required to report immediately to Shavei Israel headquarters at the Beit Shalom synagogue in Churachandpur , where he would be given a form to sign. J.P. relates:

“When I reached the office, I was directed to sit in a waiting room. There were two or three other B’nei Menashe there – whether for the same reason I was, or for something else, I don’t know. When my turn came, I was asked to enter an inner room. Sehjalal was sitting at a table. on the other side of which, typing on computers, were Avior Haokip [the editor of of Shavei News] and Bentzion Suantak [a Shavei activist]. Sehjalal handed me a typed statement in Kuki and said: ‘Read this. No one is forcing you to sign it. But remember:

Shavei Israel is in charge of the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah. Whether you sign or not is up to you. If you don’t, though, don’t blame anyone but yourself for losing your chance for Aliyah.”

J.P. was not allowed to take a copy of the document with him when he left and could not remember its exact wording. He did, however, recall five things that he was made to declare:

Sehjalal Shlomo Kipgen

1. That his name had been put without his knowledge on a B’nei Menashe Council petition asking for the community’s Aliyah to be taken out of Shavei Israel’s hands. (Signed by over a thousand B’nei Menashe, this petition was sent last February to The Jewish Agency and Israel’s Ministry of Immigration.)

2. That he wished Shavei Israel to have sole jurisdiction over the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah with no involvement of outside organizations such as The Jewish Agency.

3. That he did not in any way support Degel Menashe or its activities.

4. That he regretted having registered as a BMC member and acknowledged the errors of his way.

5. That he did not recognize the BMC or its chairman W.L. Hangshing as legitimate representatives of Manipur’s B’nei Menashe.

“What could I do?” J.P. told our Newsletter. “Not a word of it was true, but I didn’t want to be taken off the Aliyah list with my family. I had no choice but to sign and I did.”

In recent days, our Newsletter has learned, this scene has been repeated many times at Beit Shalom. A phone call is made, a summons is issued to a family head to report to Shavei’s office, and the statement described by J.P. is handed him to sign with the same warning of what will happen if he refuses. The great majority of those contacted have come to the office and signed. They were encouraged to do so by Degel Menashe, which issued a communiqué, disseminated over B’nei Menashe social media, urging all prospective Aliyah candidates to submit to Shavei’s ultimatum rather than put their Aliyah at jeopardy.

“Shavei can make you sign a piece of paper,” said the Degel Menashe statement, “but it cannot make you change your thoughts and feelings. We know that in your hearts many of you will continue to support us. Sign what you are asked to sign with our blessing!”

Here is the full text of the WhatsApp announcement:

“What Shavei is doing is obscene,” says Yitzhak Thangjom, Degel Menashe’s executive director, in whose name the communiqué was issued. “It is using its control over the Aliyah process to coerce people into violating their consciences and knowingly putting their signatures to lies. It was a difficult decision for us to tell them to go ahead and sign, but we felt that we had to do it. Aliyah comes before all else. Once those who signed are in Israel and out from under Shavei’s thumb, they will be able to be their true selves again.”

Despite Degel Menashe’s urgings, there were those who refused to give in. One of them was Demsat Yosef Haokip , 57, a Churachandpur rice cultivator and BMC advisor. “I’m proud to be associated with the BMC,” he told our Newsletter, “and I won’t pretend otherwise. If anyone should be denounced, it’s Shavei for having divided our society by sabotaging the BMC."

Demsat Haokip

Demsat continued.. "And I won’t sign anything against Degel Menashe, either. It’s the only organization that has taken our grievances seriously and that has provided aid during the Covid pandemic. Aliyah is my right. I don’t have to sell my soul to a corrupt organization like Shavei to be entitled to it.”

Bidan Lalthang Singson, 55, a rice farmer too, agreed. “In the end, I’m sure I’ll get to make Aliyah even if I don’t sign,” he said. “It’s been promised me by Minister Pnina [Tamano-Shata, Minister of Immigration] and I’m confident she’ll keep her word.”

And Nachshon Haokip, 37, a plumber and mason, declared:

“If Shavei wants me to sign, let them give me a copy of what I signed for my records and so that I can show everyone what I was made to do . Otherwise, they can forget about it.”

Haaretz: Shavei Given Millions With No Tender

(August 26) An article in the prominent Israeli newspaper Haaretz, written by veteran reporter Judy Maltz, has revealed that the Jerusalem-based Shavei Israel has been granted nearly ten million shekels (about $3.1 million) by Israel’s Ministry of the Treasury for the job of bringing 548 B’nei Menashe immigrants to Israel. The sum was approved by an Exemptions Committee that accepted a request by the Ministry of Immigration to waive the usual requirement for a public tender that would have mandated bidding for the job. However, a second request made to keep the agreement a secret was denied by the same committee, which published an announcement of it.

“The [first] request, wrote Maltz, “was approved even though the Ministry had been made aware of harsh allegations against Shavei by members of the B’nei Menashe community. Petitions and letters sent to Aliyah Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata and her aides in recent months by members of the community and by organizations representing them – copies of which were obtained by Haaretz – allege that Shavei has engaged in tactics of intimidation, discrimination and blacklisting to silence its detractors. According to testimonies shared with the Aliyah Ministry and the Jewish Agency, community members who dared criticize the organization would find their names deleted from lists of candidates for Aliyah. In the case of those already living in Israel, they would receive threats that their relatives would not be allowed to join them.”

Shavei Israel, Maltz’s article points out, has been “effectively awarded a monopoly by the government to oversee the Aliyah of the B’nei Menashe,” thus making it “the only case of a private organization being vested with responsibility for a particular community of prospective immigrants [to Israel].” Its monopolistic status also garnered it two previous Aliyah contracts similarly conducted without tenders: one for $7 million in 2013 for the bringing of 899 Bnei Menashe, and another for $6.6 million in 2016 for the bringing of 712.

Asked why the present agreement was for a larger sum but fewer immigrants, an Aliyah Ministry spokesman told Maltz, “Our professional investigations determined that the costs of putting these immigrants up in Israel have risen over the years.” And yet no breakdown of the $10 million appears in the Exemptions Committee’s announcement and it is unclear how or on what the money will be spent.

In explanation of its request to waive the tender requirement, the Ministry, Maltz writes, informed the Treasury that Shavei is the only organization that “works with the Bnei Menashe in the country of their origin” and that it alone is “acquainted with the special characteristics of this community.” Confronted by Maltz with the existence of Degel Menashe and its widespread activities in Manipur and Mizoram, the Ministry spokesman backtracked by explaining that Shavei alone “provides lessons in Judaism and conversion preparation.”

Degel Menashe chairman Hillel Halkin, Maltz reports, accused the Aliyah Ministry with knowingly having provided the Exemptions Committee with inaccurate information. For years, Halkin says, Shavei Israel has exploited the monopoly granted it to the detriment of the B’nei Menashe community, and “the Ministry of Aliyah knows this.” The Ministry’s request to keep the agreement with Shavei a secret, he told Maltz, would appear to stem from its desire to avoid a public inquiry into Shavei’s prolonged misconduct and the Ministry’s complicity in it.

To our Newsletter, Halkin added: “Since no tender was issued, it’s impossible to say whether or not Degel Menashe could have competed in it. Obviously, Shavei Israel has experience with the Bnei Menashe’s Aliyah that Degel Menashe does not. This does not mean, though, that Degel Menashe could not have bid on parts of a tender had there been one.”

In response to the question why he thought the Ministry was so eager to go on working with Shavei despite its awareness of the numerous complaints of malfeasance against it, Halkin said: “I’m not sure what the answer to that is. The Ministry and Shavei have been working together for years and have developed a cozy relationship that the Ministry is loathe to disrupt, but I can’t tell you why its determination to continue it is so great that it wishes to hide Shavei’s abuses from the public. There is much that we still don’t know. I hope that Judy Maltz and Haaretz will continue to investigate.”