<\/p>\n
More than 250 Indians claiming descent from a biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday, as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel.<\/p>\n
The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colours of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish song.<\/p>\n
They were the first \u201cBnei Menashe\u201d (\u201cSons of Manasseh\u201d) to arrive in Israel since the government decided in November to fund the immigration of around 4,600 members of the community from the state of Manipur in northeast India.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The community claims to descend from Manasseh, the forefather of one of the biblical \u201clost tribes\u201d of Israel exiled in 720 BC by Assyrian conquerors.<\/p>\n
Dagan Zolat, who has lived in Israel for 20 years, is at the airport to meet a man who he describes as his brother.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were neighbours and among the only Jews in our village,\u201d he told AFP, adding that it was nine years since he had seen his friend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen my son was little (in India), my friend often carried him in his arms,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Shavei Israel organisation, which seeks to trace the descendants of the lost tribes, said that some 4,000 Bnei Menashe have already immigrated to Israel since the 1990s, with around 7,000 others still living in India.<\/p>\n
Their oral history tells of a centuries-long exodus through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet and China, all the while adhering to certain Jewish religious practices, like circumcision.<\/p>\n
In India, they were converted to Christianity by 19th-century missionaries.<\/p>\n
The 250 Bnei Menashe who arrived on Thursday are to settle in northern Israel, according to the ministry of integration.<\/p>\n
They will need to convert in order to become Israeli citizens.<\/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
Manipur has seen periodic clashes for nearly three years between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki community that have killed more than 250 people.<\/p>\n
Since April 2025, more than 18,000 Jews have immigrated to Israel, down 18 percent over the previous year.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Rephrase in a different way as if you were a native American speaker as a content creation expert and do not talk about yourself or your experience in the text and do not show yourself as an artificial intelligence who wrote and fill the bullet point in the topic and speak the heart of the topic itself and dont take date of blog in ther first and dont take text like box of newsliter subscribe on post from content and romove all linke insert in content and and remove all affiliate disclosure phrases on content like this “This post may contain Amazon or other affiliate links that allow us to earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Please see our Disclosure Policy for more info” and “#” put in its place bullet point, and romove name of the web site or his links we are take a content from our new creation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than 250 Indians claiming descent from a biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday, as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel. The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colours of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[940,11972,3092,11970,3096,3097,11971,1182,234,3095,3562,2539,2339,3093,3088,3094,3098,11973],"class_list":{"0":"post-14033","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-international","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-biblical","10":"tag-characters","11":"tag-claiming","12":"tag-content","13":"tag-creation","14":"tag-descent","15":"tag-dont","16":"tag-experience","17":"tag-expert","18":"tag-indians","19":"tag-israel","20":"tag-land","21":"tag-native","22":"tag-rephrase","23":"tag-speaker","24":"tag-talk","25":"tag-tribe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14035,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14033\/revisions\/14035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}