Mood is Mixed As 250 B’nei Menashe Leave India for Israel

(December 10) Joy, sorrow, hope, and anger mingled in the B’nei Menashe communities of Mizoram and Manipur this week as some 250 of their members left for Israel under an unprecedented cloak of secrecy.

The secrecy, more befitting a military operation than a journey from one open society to another, was striking. Up to the moment of leaving, the immigrants to Israel were instructed by Shavei Israel, the Jerusalem-based organization in charge of their Aliyah, not to reveal to anyone the details of their departure or their trip – most of which were apparently kept from them, too.

Demsat Yosef Haokip

“In the past,” our Newsletter was told by Demsat Yosef Haokip, former vice-chairman of the Beit Shalom synagogue of Churachandpur, “each time a group was selected for Aliyah, it was an occasion for rejoicing. The community would always throw a big farewell party for those leaving. Festive meals were organized by the whole congregation. This time it’s been different. We’ve heard that the group will be flying from Manipur to New Delhi on December 10 and to Israel on the 15th , but beyond that we know nothing. There haven’t even been any private celebrations. I know of only one case in which some guests were invited to a farewell meal, and even then they were restricted to a few relatives.”

No one is sure why the current Aliyah has been conducted in such a hush-hush manner. One theory is that Shavei Israel feared criticism being voiced by B’nei Menashe who were not put on the current Aliyah list and are no longer afraid to express their resentment as they would have been in the past. “People have been frustrated for a long time,” said Nechemiah Lhouvum, a B’nei Menashe Council adviser. “It’s been a dictatorial system in which Shavei decided whom to take to Israel and whom not. It abused Aliyah to control us. Everyone knew it but nobody talked about it. Now that there is hope because of Degel Menashe and the new B’nei Menashe Council, the fear of Shavei is subsiding. Shavei knows that people have a lot of questions, and it doesn’t want to give them an opportunity to raise them in public.”

Nehemiah Lhouvum

Ovadia Touthang of Churachandpur agreed. “There is a lot of anger at Shavei in the community,” he told our Newsletter. “People are calling for fair play. Shavei knows that if this is allowed to spread, its days are over.”

The feeling that there has not been fair play is widespread. “Of course, I feel happy for those who are going,” said Demsat Yosef Haokip. “I’m just wondering when my turn will come. I’ve been with the B’nei Menashe since 1992. I’ve seen many people who joined the community long after me depart for Israel. No one can tell me why they’ve been chosen and I haven’t been. The whole system has to be changed.”

In Mizoram, too, hard questions are being asked. Leah Renthlei, a 50 year-old widow who lives in Aizawl with her 26-year-old son and two daughters, aged 24 and 18, is one of those asking them. “In 2016,” she relates, “we were called for an Aliyah interview by Shavei Israel. We passed the first two stages and were then told by our interviewer in the third stage, a rabbi from Israel whom we had to speak to through a translator, that we had failed. No explanation was given us of why we had and no chance to try again. I feel that there has to be a better way of doing things. But we can’t criticize Shavei. If we do, the consequences can be unpleasant.”

“There’s always a feeling of hope when someone leaves for Israel,” Leah Renthlei continued. “Everyone thinks: maybe my turn will come next. But even when your turn comes, it’s not always a happy occasion. Take my sister Shalom, who is leaving for Israel today with her 24-year-old son but has had to leave a daughter behind. They also were invited for the 2016 interviews, and she and her son made it through all three stages. But one daughter, who later died, was sick at home with tuberculosis and the other one had to look after her that day and missed the interview. The family begged Shavei to set another date for her, but it refused. Now, they have had to leave her behind. What should have been a joyous moment for them has turned out to be a very sad one.”

Just as sad is the case of another Aizawl resident, 26-year-old Yo’el Lalmalsawmna Chhakchhuak. Yo’el also passed the 2016 interviews, and subsequently married a woman from the B’nei Menashe community. He and his wife Dana have two children, 3-year-old Yosef and 8-month-old Yonah. Yet when in November Shavei published its list of those chosen for Aliyah, Dana was not on it. “I asked Shavei officials why she wasn’t,” Yo’el relates, “and was told that she hadn’t been interviewed. ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ I asked them. ‘Divorce her!’ they said. ‘Take my children to Israel and leave their mother in Mizoram?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ they said. ‘Maybe sometime in the future she can be interviewed and selected for Aliyah and then you can marry her again.’”

Yoel Lalmalsawmna Chhakchhuak, his wife Dana, and their two children

Yo’el declined the offer and chose to remain with Dana in Mizoram. His unmarried brother Mawizuola, who was also on the list, announced that he will stick by his brother’s side and not go, either. The two now face a difficult economic situation. The owners of a taxi business, they closed it and sold their vehicles in preparation for their Aliyah and will now have to start all over.

The brothers’ parents, on the other hand, having been chosen by Shavei for Aliyah too, decided to part with their sons and leave for Israel. “I know the family well,” another Aizawl resident, Elisheva Khiangte, told our Newsletter. “The parents left with a heavy heart. Their grief would have suited a funeral better. I feel bad for them. But Shavei Israel has told us not to despair, because it says there will be another Aliyah after Passover.”

Olim in Aizawl wait to board bus for airport.

Police Complaint Filed Against Shavei Israel Bank Fraud in Manipur

(December 10) The B’nei Menashe Council’s newly elected general secretary Ohaliav Haokip has filed a complaint with the Churachandpur police against Meital Singson, ex-Shavei Israel administrator in Manipur, charging her with fraud and check forgery. Listed in the complaint as possible accomplices are Shavei Israel’s director Tsvi Khaute, its current administrator in Manipur Sehjalal Kipgen, and a mysterious figure named B. Suantak

Haokip came across the forged check when he went to the Churachandpur branch of the Bank of Baroda to inspect the records of the B’nei Menashe Council account there. As the newly elected secretary of the BMC, he turned to the bank after having requested a copy of records from Ms. Singson’s replacement, current Shavei administrator Shlomo Sehjalal Kipgen. At first claiming to possess no BMC documents at all, Seimang later turned over a large batch of them, including 200 pages of internal audits extending to the year 2015. None of these audits, however, covered the past five years or had any statements from the Bank of Baroda.

Meital Singson

What Ohaliav Haokip discovered at the bank was unexpected. First, it turned out that Meital Singson, though she served in no official BMC capacity, was a signatory of the BMC’s bank account. Secondly, on November 30, 25 days after a new B’nei Menashe Council was elected, Ms. Singson, without asking its permission or informing it, closed its Bank of Baroda account. And thirdly, in closing it she withdrew the account’s balance of 2,047 rupees in a check written to herself with the stamp “Secretary (Finance), Bnei Menashe Council” – a position she never held.

Nor was this all. On the check were two countersignatures. One belonged to the mysterious B. Suantak, identified as “Chairman, Bnei Menashe Council.” Yet not only was he no such thing, no one in the B”nei Menashe community of Churachandpur has ever heard of him or knows who he is. Whether such a person as B. Suantak exists at all is unclear.

Even more startling was the third signature on the check. It purported to be that of Avihu Singsit, chairman of the BMC up to the time of the November 5 elections. Singsit, however, as reported by us on November 19, died on November 16, two weeks before the check was written on November 30!

The forged check

Armed with this information, BMC Secretary Haokip went immediately to the Churachandpur police to file a complaint in the BMC’s name. The complaint, known in India as a “First Information Report,” stated that “Meital Singson, an ex-Administrator of Shavei Israel, which is an NGO based in Israel, and her colleagues have wantonly and deliberately stolen our Bank Cheque….withdrawn Rs. 2047.43 on 30 November….and closed the same account to destroy the evidence.”

Ms. Singson is slated to depart for Israel next week with a group of 150 B’nei Menashe from Manipur, who will be joining another group from Mizoram. “Two-thousand-and-forty-seven rupees,” Ohaliav Haokip told our Newsletter, “is not in itself a large sum. It comes to about 40 dollars, which is an average weekly wage in Manipur. But it looks like this check fraud is but a sign of what still remains to be uncovered. A quick glance at the records that the Bank of Baroda has provided us with points to far greater and graver financial infractions. We hope soon to get to the bottom of them, if necessary with the help of the police.”

Get Off Our Backs, Mr. Freund - an Editorial

Michael Freund, the founder and chairman of Shavei Israel, has sent a message. For the benefit of those of you who do not have access to his Facebook account, here it is:

The chairman of Shavei Israel is apparently so scared of us that he cannot bring himself to call us by name. But let there be no mistake: when he speaks of “people spreading rumors, false information, and Lashon Hara [malicious gossip],” he is talking about us. And so my first piece of advice to him is: Don’t be afraid to say it, Mr. Freund. We’re called Degel Menashe. Pretending we’re anonymous won’t make us go away.

And here is my second piece of advice: Stop treating us B’nei Menashe as simpletons. Do you really think any of us believe you when you say, “We must unite because that is the key to redemption?” You, whose organization, Shavei Israel, has done all it can to foment among us the “jealousy, division, and hatred” that you hypocritically accuse Degel Menashe of causing?

Where were you, Mr. Freund, in all the years in which Shavei turned brother against brother by playing on the differences between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi rites of prayer in order to assert its power over us ? Where were you when Shavei drove the “Ashkenazim” – which, until it came along, we all were --out of the B’nei Menashe community? Was that your idea of achieving unity among us?

Where were you last spring and summer when Degel Menashe distributed over 50 tons of rice to the hungry B’nei Menashe communities of Manipur and Mizoram while Shavei Israel not only failed to lift a finger to help but did its best to frighten our brothers and sisters into refusing the food they so badly needed because it came from us? Is that what you call working for B’nei Menashe unity?

Where were you last month when all 24 of the B’nei Menashe communities of Manipur went to the polls to conduct the free elections for the B’nei Menashe Council that Shavei Israel had long prevented from taking place and did everything to prevent this time, too? Where were you when Shavei, after running its own candidates at the last moment and losing in a fair vote, launched a campaign to split and destroy the newly elected body? Is that your contribution to our unity?

You write that “Shavei Israel will continue to do everything in its power to ensure that ALL Bnei Menashe will be able to make Aliya.” Whom do you think you are fooling? Who of us does not know how Shavei Israel has, over the years, blacklisted hundreds of B’nei Menashe in North East India and kept them off its Aliyah lists because they did not kowtow to it and its dictates? Who of us does not know of wives who have been separated from their husbands, sisters from their brothers, children from their parents, families from their close relatives, because of Shavei’s policy of divide-and-rule? This is not just something that happened long ago. It is still going on. If you are not aware of it, you can read about the latest cases of it in this week’s News section of our Website.

You say, Mr. Freund, that you are worried that our actions might “halt the Bnei Menashe Aliya.” You can stop worrying. We will not halt B’nei Menashe Aliyah, which – unlike you and Shavei Israel – we really do want to include ALL B’nei Menashe. What we will halt is Shavei’s monopoly over our Aliyah, which it has used for nearly two decades to rule tyrannically over the B’nei Menashe communities of India and Israel, You have held Aliyah as a whip over our heads, threatening to withhold it for the slightest act of disobedience. We are going to take that whip out of your hands by removing B’nei Menashe Aliyah from your grip and entrusting it to the government of Israel and its institutions, where it belonged in the first place.

And that is what really worries you – not our Aliyah coming to an end, but your power over us coming to an end. On the day that happens, Aliyah will not slow down, it will speed up, because it will no longer be subject to Shavei’s slow pace. In the past 17 years, ever since it gained control of B’nei Menashe Aliyah, Shavei has barely managed to bring an average of 100 of us to Israel per year. Perhaps you consider that a great success. We consider it a grand failure. At this rate, it will take another half a century for us all to reach Israel.

The photograph of you being carried like a lord on our backs on one of your visits to India appeared in a Shavei Israel publication. It is a true picture and it speaks truly, because it tells us what you think of us. You think that we are here to serve you and Shavei Israel. Get off our backs, Mr. Freund!

Yitzkhak Thangjom

Degel Menashe Project Manager