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Indian Bnei Menashe Jews miraculously survived Oct. 7. Now they’re fighting wars in Israel and India.
(JTA) — In the 2000s, as the small Israeli town of Sderot endured heavy rocket fire, thousands of residents left the city. Around the same time, a new population began moving in: Bnei Menashe Jews from the northeast Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram.
More than 100 Bnei Menashe families called Sderot their home until Oct. 7. The community was deeply proud of what it created: the first synagogue and beit midrash — or Torah study hall — run exclusively by Bnei Menashe Jews. It was a dream, for many, that began halfway across the world in India.
The dream was interrupted when Hamas terrorists infiltrated many towns and kibbutzes surrounding Gaza. By the end of Oct. 7, 50 civilians in Sderot had been killed, as well as 20 police officers, according to the Times of Israel.
But none of them were Bnei Menashe Jews.
That day, about 40 people gathered at a new synagogue building given to the community by Sderot’s mayor, Alon Davidi, only a few weeks before. Rabbi David Lhungdim recalled feeling rushed by Davidi to begin high holiday services there long before the community felt ready to make the move.
But in the end, the building saved them. The new synagogue, Alfei Menashe, is located to the east of Menachem Begin Road. While Hamas terrorists patrolled that road on Oct. 7, shooting people in the street, in their cars and in their homes, the Bnei Menashe prayed.
“I told them, let’s finish our morning prayer, we have no choice,” Lhundgim said.
After the attacks, “I questioned myself, why was the mayor in a state of hurry? When it was Simchat Torah, everything was clear,” Lhungdim said. “I said, wow, this is a miracle that God gave us … Had we been praying at the old site [a caravan on Natan Elbaz Road, which does not have a bomb shelter], the terrorists would have seen us because they were on the main road and shooting everyone that they see. But because the mayor gave us the new site, we don’t need to cross the main road.”
Rivka Guite, Lhungdim’s sister, and her husband Zevulun had been visiting Guite’s mother for the holiday. Their home, located near the old synagogue where Hamas had been active, was destroyed in a Hamas rocket attack. Nothing could be salvaged from the rubble, Guite said.
But Guite is just thankful to be alive and living in Israel.
“It’s a miracle indeed. I really do not have an explanation for these things,” Guite said through a translation provided by Isaac Thangjom, project director at the Israel-based nonprofit Degel Menashe. “How many of us would have died if the old synagogue had been used?”
Now, most of the Bnei Menashe community in Sderot has been evacuated to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, where they are waiting out the war in refugee hotels. An estimated 200 young Bnei Menashe men have joined the Israeli military’s war effort, Thangjom told JTA. One soldier, Natanel Touthang, was injured by a rocket while on duty at the northern border.
“When I went to the reserves without being called up,” Touthang said, “I did it for my family. It sounds selfish, but I did it for my family.”
From Manipur to Sderot
The Bnei Menashe Jews are said to be descendants of the “lost tribe” of Manasseh, separated from their fellow Israelites after exile over two thousand years ago. They are part of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo ethnic groups that reside in northeastern India, western Myanmar, and southern Bangladesh.
Researchers say the group came to Judaism via Christian missionaries, who introduced them to the Bible in the late 19th century. Bnei Menashe tradition recalls the story of Met Chala, a Christian local tribal leader in Mizoram who was told by God in a dream to return his people to the land of Israel and their true religion: Judaism.
They began immigrating to Israel in the late 1980s with the help of Israeli Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail and his organization Amishav, undergoing formal conversions upon arrival. The immigration process was handed over to the Israeli nonprofit Shavei Israel in 2004, headed by Michael Freund, a former advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu.
Both Avichail and Shavei Israel have faced intense criticism and accusations of right-wing political motives from the Israeli left, as new Bnei Menashe immigrants moved to West Bank settlements upon arrival — particularly Kiryat Arba, which today hosts a community of about 700 Bnei Menashe Jews.
Shavei Israel halted that practice over a decade ago following the criticism, but some still move to settlements upon arrival to Israel to be with their families who already live there. Many have also settled in other towns within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
Their settlement in the West Bank and on the border with Gaza has been less a product of political motivation than of convenience and accessibility, said Gideon Elazar, an anthropologist at Bar-Ilan University who researches the Bnei Menashe and other “lost tribes.”
“These were the communities that would accept them,” he said.
New Bnei Menashe immigrants have experienced difficulty learning Hebrew, finding profitable work and assimilating into Israeli society. Some experience discrimination and racism. Last year, Yoel Lhunghal, an 18-year-old Bnei Menashe Jew who had immigrated just a year earlier, was murdered in northern Israel. Though police found no evidence of a racial motive behind the attack, his father believes Yoel was “a victim of racism.”
The case of Lhungdim’s Sderot community is a slightly different story. The 120-family-strong community moved there on their own accord, Lhungdim said. Some came from other areas such as Carmel and Kiryat Arba — both towns where Lhungdim lived before coming to Sderot — and some directly upon arriving from India to join their families. Affordability was a major factor, as costs were lower due to Sderot’s location on the Gaza border. The area also offers work that corresponds with the Bnei Menashe community’s skills, such as fruit and vegetable packing.
Some relocated Bnei Menashe community members seen at a Western Wall tour in Jerusalem. (Courtesy of Degel Menashe)
“We want to strengthen Israel, that’s why we go to live in Sderot. And I’m proud to be from Sderot,” Lhungdim told JTA. “As a convert Jew, I would have been ready to sacrifice my life to the Jewish nation.”
Like other Israelis in towns near Gaza who survived the Oct. 7 attacks, the entire Bnei Menashe community in Sderot was relocated to hotels in Jerusalem. The more than 100 families staying there have kept busy by continuing religious education, praying at the Western Wall and enjoying free admission to local museums. Many had never before enjoyed stays at four-star hotels or had the opportunity to spend much time exploring Jerusalem.
But they are still eager to get back to their hometown. Guite and other community members have been making day trips to the south to tend to vegetable fields that have been left abandoned since the evacuation.
“The government is doing so much for us, and of course, we are only too happy to contribute and give something to Israel in forms of service,” Guite said.
The other war in India
Bnei Menashe Jews are now facing war and displacement on two fronts: within Israel, and in Manipur, where an ethnic conflict has been raging for nearly eight months.
There, hundreds of Bnei Menashe Jews are rebuilding their lives in the midst of an ethnic conflict that began in May and has no end in sight. Human rights groups say the ethnic Kukis — the group to which the Bnei Menashe belong — have been targeted by the majority Meiteis in what some have called an “ethnic cleansing.” Many Kukis have been forced out of their local valley, which is now mostly occupied by the Meiteis, to the hills, which have become Kuki territory.
Others have moved to the neighboring Mizoram state, where other Bnei Menashe Jews live.
Unlike in Israel, the hundreds of displaced community members in northeast India have no hope of returning home, as new informal territorial borders based on ethnicity have become the norm. Many are living in newly-built houses with vegetable plots on a picturesque 200-acre piece of land donated by community leader Lalam Hangshing. It has been named “Moaz Tzur,” and Degel Menashe, which advocates for the community, proudly refers to it as India’s first kibbutz.
These Jews have dreamed of immigrating to Israel for more than two decades. Thangjom called the war a “setback” to the process and will lengthen the timeline before the next slate of immigration, but conversations with the government are continuing, he said.
The war in Israel also impacted the amount of aid that Degel Menashe has been able to provide to Bnei Menashe refugees in India, as international Jewish organizations pour money into Israel.
“Since the war started in Israel, I don’t know if I’ll be able to give the same amount of help. But we are approaching our donors,” Thangjom said.
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The post Indian Bnei Menashe Jews miraculously survived Oct. 7. Now they’re fighting wars in Israel and India. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Palestinian Authority’s Abbas Offers to Work With Trump to Broker Peace Deal With Israel
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas holds a leadership meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has offered to work with US President Donald Trump to broker a comprehensive peace deal with Israel, praising the American leader for brokering a ceasefire between the Jewish state and Iran and calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
In a letter sent to Trump, Abbas expressed his “deep gratitude and appreciation for [Trump’s] successful efforts in reaching a ceasefire between Israel and Iran,” the official Palestinian Authority (PA) news agency WAFA reported.
After 12 days of conflict between the two Middle Eastern adversaries, Trump announced a “complete and total” ceasefire on Monday, just hours after Iran launched missile strikes on the Al Udeid US airbase in Qatar in retaliation for American attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend.
The US joined Israel’s airstrike campaign against the Islamist regime by launching a large-scale military strike against Tehran, destroying three key nuclear enrichment facilities, including the heavily fortified Fordow site.
Although the fragile ceasefire appears to have since held, Tehran initially broke it within minutes, with Israeli officials reporting that three Iranian missiles were launched within the first three hours of the truce.
In his letter to Trump, Abbas called the ceasefire a “necessary and important step to defuse the crises plaguing the world, which will have a positive impact on the security and stability of the region.” He then turned his attention to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“A ceasefire in Gaza would constitute an additional step to [Trump’s] crucial efforts to achieve a just and comprehensive peace between the Palestinians, the Israelis, and the entire world,” the Palestinian leader wrote.
In an effort to earn trust within the international community, Abbas expressed his willingness to work with Trump, Saudi Arabia, and other global partners “to fulfill the promise of peace.”
The Palestinian leader said he was ready “to immediately negotiate and implement a comprehensive peace agreement within a clear and binding timeframe that ends the occupation and achieves security and stability for all, a just and lasting peace.”
Although Trump attempted a peace deal with the PA during his first term, he ultimately bypassed it and instead pursued the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries.
“With you, we can achieve what seemed impossible: a recognized, free, sovereign, and secure Palestine; a recognized and secure Israel; and a region that enjoys peace, prosperity, and integration,” Abbas wrote in his letter.
Given the PA’s long-standing lack of credibility and widely known support for terrorism against Israel, Abbas has been making promises of change as he seeks to secure international trust and position the PA to play a leading role in the Gaza Strip once the current Israel-Hamas war ends.
The PA, which has long been riddled with accusations of corruption, has also maintained for years a so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis.
Under this policy, the PA Martyr’s Fund makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and injured Palestinian terrorists. Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
Earlier this year, Abbas announced plans to reform the system, but the PA has continued issuing payments, with top officials stating they will not deduct any of the funds.
Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term in 2005, has also promised to hold elections soon — the first the PA will hold since then.
Even with his commitment to long-promised administrative reforms, the PA lacks public support among Palestinians, with only 40 percent backing its return to govern the Gaza Strip after the war.
Abbas has also promised the demilitarization of his rival Hamas, while condemning the terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — an attack he had previously celebrated.
In the past, Abbas praised Hamas for achieving “important goals” with the Oct. 7 onslaught, describing the attack — the deadliest single-day massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust — as one that “shook the foundations of the Israeli entity.”
Other PA officials, including Mahmoud al-Habbash, Abbas’s adviser on religious and Islamic affairs, have similarly praised Hamas’s atrocities, describing them as “legitimate resistance.”
The post Palestinian Authority’s Abbas Offers to Work With Trump to Broker Peace Deal With Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New York City Jews Sound Alarm After Anti-Israel Socialist Zohran Mamdani Wins Democratic Mayoral Primary
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
Following Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, local Jewish leaders are expressing deep apprehension about their future status in a city facing the prospect of being led by a man who has been accused of antisemitism and made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career.
Mamdani, the 33‑year‑old state assemblymember and proud democratic socialist, defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other candidates in a lopsided first‑round win in the city’s Democratic primary for mayor, notching approximately 43.5 percent of first‑choice votes compared to Cuomo’s 36.4 percent.
Voters in New York City rank their choices in order of their preference. While Mamdani declared victory and Cuomo conceded defeat, the race’s ultimate outcome will technically be decided when every vote is tallied, taking into account the ranked choice count. Mamdani’s victory is all but assured.
Some observers have speculated that Mamdani’s win over an older, high-profile Democrat signifies growing frustration with the party’s status quo and represents a generational change.
The election results have also alarmed members of the local Jewish community, who expressed deep concern over his past criticism of Israel and defense of antisemitic rhetoric.
“Mamdani’s election is the greatest existential threat to a metropolitan Jewish population since the election of the notorious antisemite Karl Lueger in Vienna,” Rabbi Marc Schneier, one of the most prominent Jewish leaders in New York City, said in a statement. “Jewish leaders must come together as a united force to prevent a mass Jewish Exodus from New York City.”
Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, who along with her husband Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt co-founded the Altneu, an Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, suggested that Mamdani’s political ascendance indicates that antisemitism might actually be a political “asset” these days.
“Perhaps soft antisemitism is not a liability for a NYC politician. It’s an asset,” Chizhik-Goldschmidt wrote. “Perhaps New York City is not the city we thought it was.”
Former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who later founded the organization Americans Against Antisemitism, similarly repudiated Mamdani and encouraged New Yorkers to consolidate behind a single candidate to oppose the presumptive Democratic nominee in the general election in November.
“Mamdani has won the Democratic primary,” he said in a video posted to social media. “It is pathetic, it is sick, it is painful for people who care about the future of New York and in particular the Jewish community.”
Hikind added in a written post accompanying the video: “NYC must unite to defeat the dangerous antisemite Mamdani.”
A little-known politician before this year’s primary campaign, Mamdani is an outspoken supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.
Mamdani has also repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, falsely suggesting the country does not offer “equal rights” for all its citizens, and promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.
Most recently, Mamdani defended the phrase “globalize the intifada”— which references previous periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels and has been widely interpreted as a call to expand political violence — by invoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II. In response, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum repudiated the mayoral candidate, calling his comments “outrageous and especially offensive to [Holocaust] survivors.”
The same week, an old X/Twitter post from 2015 by Mamdani resurfaced online showing him appearing to threaten that a “third intifada” was coming.
New York City, which is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, has experienced a major spike in antisemitic incidents since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, with police data showing Jews were targeted in the majority of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City last year.
Concern among Jewish leaders over Mamdani’s victory amid rising antisemitism extended well beyond New York.
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, warned that Mamdani’s victory represents a well-known pattern that starts with hatred of Israel and ends with violence targeting Jews.
“Zohran Mamdani’s win in #NYC feels deeply familiar to #Europe’s #Jewish community. We’ve seen where radical politics — especially cloaked in ‘justice’ rhetoric — can lead. It starts with slogans. It ends with violence,” Goldschmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow, posted on social media.
“In Europe, we’ve learned the hard way: when far-left ideologues and radical Islamists turn Israel into a symbol of absolute evil, it quickly becomes a weapon — not against a state, but against Jews. ‘Anti-Zionism’ becomes the mask. Exclusion and incitement follow,” the rabbi continued. “This isn’t about legitimate critique of Israeli policy. It’s about obsession. Israel becomes a dog whistle — a coded target on synagogues, schools, and Jews in public life.”
Europe, like New York, has experienced a surge in antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, with antisemitic incidents often liked to animus against Israel.
“The safety of all New Yorkers — including Jewish New Yorkers — is the single greatest responsibility of the mayor of New York,” said Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.
“That safety has been deeply impacted by the rhetoric and actions of those whose opposition to Zionism has driven them to work to instill fear and intimidation in Jews who support Israel,” he added.
Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), called for Jews in New York to immigrate to Israel.
“As an American Jew and as a human, I am truly frightened that an antisemitic communist Mamdani has actually promoted murdering Jews by supporting and legitimizing the antisemitic rally cry ‘globalize the intifada,’ refuses to accept the Jewish state of Israel as a Jewish state, states he will arrest PM Netanyahu if he comes to NYC, and is friendly with Israel bashing Jew-haters – and yet has been mainstreamed in the most important Jewish city in America,” he posted. “Is it time to make aliyah to Israel.”
The post New York City Jews Sound Alarm After Anti-Israel Socialist Zohran Mamdani Wins Democratic Mayoral Primary first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Teen Threatened at Knifepoint in France Amid Surge in Antisemitic Attacks
Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
A Jewish teenager was threatened at knifepoint and called a “dirty Jew” in an antisemitic attack in France — the latest in a growing wave of hate crimes targeting the country’s Jewish community.
Last week, a 15-year-old boy was violently attacked in Colomiers, southwestern France, after attending a meetup arranged with a girl over social media, French media reported.
When the boy arrived at the meeting point, two men were waiting for him at the entrance to a basement. They held him at knifepoint, humiliated him, and shared the assault on social media.
One of the attackers, armed with a knife, forced him to remove his shirt and dance, then grabbed him by the neck and forced him to kneel.
Then, the attacker reportedly told him to “beg and pray,” repeatedly calling him a “dirty Jew” because he attended a private Jewish school. He also threatened to kill him if he tried to contact the police.
The following day, the teenager found out that the assault had been filmed and circulated on social media. Using the attackers’ TikTok accounts, the victim was able to file a formal complaint.
On Friday, local police arrested one of the suspects who posted the video, according to the French broadcaster Europe 1. He was taken into custody on charges of aggravated assault motivated by religious hatred.
As of this week, the investigation is ongoing, with authorities actively searching for the remaining suspects.
The brutal assault is the latest antisemitic incident amid a troubling surge in anti-Jewish violence sweeping the country since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) – the main representative body of French Jews.
The total number of antisemitic outrages in 2024 was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022.
In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.
The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.
The post Jewish Teen Threatened at Knifepoint in France Amid Surge in Antisemitic Attacks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.