{"id":749316,"date":"2026-04-24T07:07:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T07:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/749316\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T07:07:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T07:07:19","slug":"group-of-over-250-bnei-menashe-immigrants-from-india-lands-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/749316\/","title":{"rendered":"Group of over 250 Bnei Menashe immigrants from India lands in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 250 Indians claiming descent from a biblical tribe landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday, as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel.<\/p>\n

At around 10 p.m at Ben Gurion Airport, the newcomers, bleary-eyed from a long flight, passed under an arch of blue-and-white balloons and shuffled with their luggage down a red carpet unfurled at the entrance to Terminal 1. Well-wishers, many from their own community, cheered them while waving small Israeli flags as a rendition of \u201cOseh Shalom\u201d played through loudspeakers.<\/p>\n

Men in the community were wearing either knitted kippahs or hats, while married women wore head coverings, as is customary in Orthodox Judaism.<\/p>\n

They were the first Bnei Menashe to arrive in Israel since the government decided in November to fund the immigration of thousands more community members from the states of Mizoram and Manipur in northeast India.<\/p>\n

The Bnei Menashe community, which claims descent from the biblical tribe of Manasseh, has been slowly making its way to Israel since the 1990s. Regardless of whether their claim to Israelite ancestry holds up, the community\u2019s slow trickle into Israel was bound to speed up after the government approved a decision to relocate the remaining 6,000 members of the community to Israel by 2030 \u2014 dubbed Operation Wings of Dawn.<\/p>\n

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The group that landed today marked the first group of several, as the government plans to fly 1,200 people to the country over the course of 2026. Two additional flights are scheduled in the next two weeks, according to the Aliyah and Integration Ministry.<\/p>\n

The Shavei Israel organization, which seeks to trace the descendants of the Lost Tribes and has facilitated the community\u2019s immigration process, said that some 4,000 Bnei Menashe have immigrated to Israel since the 1990s, with around 7,000 still living in India.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tMembers of the Bnei Menashe community from northeastern India after arriving at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel on April 24, 2026. (Charlie Summers\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

Despite their visible exhaustion, many of the new immigrants took delight in seeing longtime friends and family members after having spent years apart. Some shed tears of joy when finally embracing their loved ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis man is like a brother to me, I haven\u2019t seen him in nine years,\u201d said Dagan Zolat, a 71-year-old who moved to Israel in 2006, hugging his neighbor after he walked through the doors of the terminal.<\/p>\n

Zolat, whose eldest son, Gary, was killed by Hamas rocket fire in Jabalia during the Gaza war, said his friend used to carry the child in his arms when they still lived in India.<\/p>\n

The bereaved father has lived in Afula for the past 16 years, having moved from Sderot, a southern city near the Gaza border.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were neighbors and among the only Jews in our village,\u201d he told AFP, adding that it had been nine years since he had seen his friend.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tMembers of the Bnei Menashe community from India arrive at Ben Gurion Airport on April 23, 2026. (Jack Guez\/AFP)<\/p>\n

The oral history of the Bnei Menashe tells of a centuries-long exodus through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet and China, all the while adhering to certain Jewish religious practices, such as circumcision.<\/p>\n

In India, they were converted to Christianity by 19th-century missionaries. The newcomers to Israel will need to convert to become Israeli citizens.<\/p>\n

Manipur has seen periodic clashes for nearly three years between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki community, which have killed more than 250 people.<\/p>\n

Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer, who welcomed the newcomers at the airport, told AFP that their arrival marked a \u201chistoric moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the beginning of an operation that will allow the entire community to immigrate, 1,200 per year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tMembers of the Bnei Menashe community from India wave Israeli flags as they arrive at Ben Gurion Airport in Lod on April 23, 2026. (Jack Guez\/AFP)<\/p>\n

The immigrants will first be settled in an absorption center in Nof Hagalil, a northern city overlooking Nazareth. There is already a large Bnei Menashe community \u201cspread out\u201d through the city, according to 17-year-old Amos Namte, who has lived there since age four.<\/p>\n

He arrived to meet a childhood friend whom he hadn\u2019t seen in years. \u201cI\u2019m very excited to see how he\u2019s grown, what he looks like, acts like,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Namte, currently in his last year of high school, is enlisting in the army in another six months. He is slated to work as an operator of the Iron Dome air defense system, but hopes to switch into a combat role.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad wanted to come here and enlist in the army, but they didn\u2019t let him because of his age. He very much wanted to fight for Israel, because there\u2019s a Jewish state here, because he truly felt attached to this place, even when he was in India,\u201d Namte said.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tAmos Namte, a member of the Bnei Menashe community from northeastern India, which claims descent from a biblical tribe, poses with an Israeli flag while awaiting his friend at Ben Gurion Airport on April 23, 2026. (Charlie Summers\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

Both his parents now work at a factory in Nof Hagalil\u2019s industrial zone. In India, \u201cthey worked in agriculture,\u201d he said. \u201cThey would leave the house before sunrise to farmland belonging to the family, then come back after sundown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Zolat, Namte spoke in fluent, unaccented Hebrew. He said he had started learning the nuances of the language once he enrolled in boarding school, where he is the sole member of his community.<\/p>\n

Despite having been raised in Israel, Namte still feels different from those born to Israeli parents, saying that the biggest gap concerns \u201cvalues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have these \u2018Asian\u2019 sort of values \u2014 we\u2019re super polite, humble,\u201d he said, while \u201cin Israeli society they love to talk, to express their opinions. We don\u2019t like to talk as much, we\u2019re a bit more shy on the whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point, since I\u2019m here in this country, I learned how to talk a bit more, be more open, but still, it\u2019s a challenge,\u201d he said with a smile.<\/p>\n

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 250 Indians claiming descent from a biblical tribe landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday, as…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":749317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[19703,308469,308470,202610,99,50],"class_list":["post-749316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-aliyah","tag-bnei-menashe","tag-immigration-to-israel","tag-indian-jews","tag-israel","tag-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116458425682865600","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}