160 B’nei Menashe Immigrants Reach Israel, Covid19 Strands, Separates, 115 in New Delhi

(May 31) As 160 B’nei Menashe from the state of Manipur landed at Ben-Gurion Airport today, another 115 found themselves initially confined to their rooms in a New Delhi hotel after they or their family members had tested positive for Covid19. Then, on Thursday afternoon, after spending a day, as one of them told our Newsletter, “staring at the walls” of their hotel rooms, all of the positives were removed by the Delhi police to a Covid isolation center. Since few of them speak Hindi or English, they can be expected to have difficulty communicating with the center’s personnel. It is not clear how many if any of them have developed Covid symptoms, and at the time of this article’s posting, a pall of uncertainty hung over them all.

The Hotel Good Times reception desk

Under the auspices of the Jerusalem-based organization Shavei Israel, which has been entrusted with the B’nei Menashe’s Aliyah, the entire group of 275 flew last week in three contingents from Manipur to New Delhi, where it was put up at the Hotel Good Times in the city’s center, near the Karol Bagh market. While there it was sent, as per Israeli government regulations for all travelers to Israel, for Covid19 tests.

Allegedly, the 275 had been proven Covid-free before leaving Manipur, where Shavei Israel required each family to test negative before boarding the flight from Imphal to New Delhi. Yet on May 30, several days after the last of the three contingents reached Delhi, Shavei’s Information Secretary Eliezer Baite announced that 115 of the group “have been afflicted with an illness that is common these days” and will be kept in isolation for two weeks in India. “This,” declared Baite, “is God’s will.”

Baite’s announcement was inaccurate. Not all 115 had tested positive, nor, at this moment, is the exact number of those who did known. Many who did not apparently stayed behind to remain with infected family members.

How a supposedly zero rate of Covid19 in the group turned into a high incidence within a few days is unclear. One rumor making the rounds is that a large B ‘nei Menashe family already carrying the illness boarded the Imphal -New Delhi flight with erroneous or counterfeit test results and quickly passed it on to others. So far, however, there has been no corroboration of this.

Leaving Imphal for New Delhi

The immigrants remaining in the Hotel Good Times, our Newsletter has learned, are being looked after by Shavei Israel’s travel agent in India, Malka Moses. As far as is known, no Shavei officials have visited them or come to their aid, nor has Shavei issued any clarification regarding them. Neither has any been provided by Israel’s Ministry of Immigration. A senior ministry official told our Newsletter that the ministry would act vis-à-vis the detained group in accordance with Ministry of Health guidelines and that he could release no further information.

The Jerusalem Gate Hotel

Meanwhile, the 160 olim who arrived in Israel Thursday afternoon were bused directly from the airport to the Jerusalem Gate Hotel at the western entrance to nation’s capital. There they will spend two weeks in quarantine before beginning the course that will lead to their rabbinical conversion to Judaism. All were reported to be in good health.

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.”