Group of over 250 Bnei Menashe immigrants from India lands in Israel

Newcomers are first members of the community to immigrate since government decision last year to bring around 4,600 of them to the country

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.

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 “Oseh Shalom” played through loudspeakers.

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

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.

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’s 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 — dubbed Operation Wings of Dawn.

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.

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

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.

“This man is like a brother to me, I haven’t seen him in nine years,” 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.

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.

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

“We were neighbors and among the only Jews in our village,” he told AFP, adding that it had been nine years since he had seen his friend.

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.

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

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.

Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer, who welcomed the newcomers at the airport, told AFP that their arrival marked a “historic moment.”

“This is the beginning of an operation that will allow the entire community to immigrate, 1,200 per year,” he said.

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 “spread out” through the city, according to 17-year-old Amos Namte, who has lived there since age four.

He arrived to meet a childhood friend whom he hadn’t seen in years. “I’m very excited to see how he’s grown, what he looks like, acts like,” he said.

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.

“My dad wanted to come here and enlist in the army, but they didn’t let him because of his age. He very much wanted to fight for Israel, because there’s a Jewish state here, because he truly felt attached to this place, even when he was in India,” Namte said.

Both his parents now work at a factory in Nof Hagalil’s industrial zone. In India, “they worked in agriculture,” he said. “They would leave the house before sunrise to farmland belonging to the family, then come back after sundown.”

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.

Despite having been raised in Israel, Namte still feels different from those born to Israeli parents, saying that the biggest gap concerns “values.”

“We have these ‘Asian’ sort of values — we’re super polite, humble,” he said, while “in Israeli society they love to talk, to express their opinions. We don’t like to talk as much, we’re a bit more shy on the whole.”

“At some point, since I’m here in this country, I learned how to talk a bit more, be more open, but still, it’s a challenge,” he said with a smile.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.