Tel Aviv/New Delhi: With a labour crisis looming in the country due to continuous conflict, Israel is now preparing to airlift around 250 members of the B’nei Menashe community from India to Tel Aviv under a programme called “Operation Wings of Dawn”.
Military mobilisation, internal displacement and a drop in migrant workers from countries like Nepal and Thailand have strained several sectors of the economy.
Many B’nei Menashe migrants from India now work in construction, transport and manufacturing in Israel.
This latest move by Israel is part of a long-running effort to relocate members of the community who identify as descendants of one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, according to a report by The New York Times.
The B’nei Menashe community is concentrated largely in Manipur and Mizoram. Many believe they descend from the biblical tribe of Manasseh, said in Jewish tradition
to have been exiled more than 2,800 years ago.
There were nearly 10,000 members of the community in India. Nearly half of them have already migrated to Israel since the 1990s. Tel Aviv now plans to help bring the remaining 5,800 members in phases.
According to a report in News18, around 1,200 people are expected to relocate this year alone. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the initiative as an “important and Zionist decision”, saying it would help strengthen areas such as northern Israel and Galilee.
The motivation is deeply religious for many families. Community members say practising Judaism completely in remote parts of northeastern India can be difficult because of limited access to synagogues, kosher food and the religious quorum required for certain prayers.
“We have faith in the Torah… We have good faith in the Israeli government. They promised that all the B’nei Menashe will go to Israel by 2030,” a member of the community told The New York Times.
The B’nei Menashe are ethnically linked to the Kuki people and speak Tibeto-Burman languages. While many Kukis converted to Christianity in the early 20th century, interest in possible Jewish roots grew in the 1970s after Israeli researchers noted similarities between local customs and Judaic practices.