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Israel’s foreign minister cuts India visit short as Jews caught in crossfire of violent clashes
(JTA) — India’s small Bnei Menashe community is reeling after a member was killed and a synagogue was burned during violent clashes in the country’s northeast.
Some members of the community, practicing Jews who are seeking to move to Israel, have sought shelter at paramilitary camps, according to Isaac Thangjom, a Jew from the area who now lives in Israel. He said the situation is “very grim,” conditions are “squalid” and food and aid are scarce.
“It’s anarchy,” Thangjom told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week. “They’re specifically targeting Kuki [tribe members] and calling us foreigners, telling us to ‘go back to Burma.’”
Bnei Menashe sources in Manipur, where the violence took place, were unreachable as the government suspended internet service in the region. Jewish community members in Mizoram, the nearby region which is also home to several small communities of Bnei Menashe Jews, said it had not been affected.
A planned visit to India by Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, was cut short on Tuesday because of a military operation in Israel. Cohen had not been planning to visit Manipur, the region where the violence took place, and Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration did not return requests for comment or questions about whether he would address the violence during his visit. His planned agenda included inaugurating a “Jewish Trail” in Mumbai that highlights sites of Jewish significance including synagogues there. An estimated 4,000 Jews currently live in Mumbai.
Manipur is home to an estimated 5,000 Bnei Menashe Jews, all members of a group that an Israeli chief rabbi in 2005 recognized as a “lost tribe” with historic Jewish ties. While researchers have refuted that claim, instead documenting that the group has undergone a recent mass conversion, community members all practice Judaism and many are trying to move to Israel, sometimes putting their lives on hold for years in preparation. About 5,000 Bnei Menashe have successfully immigrated to Israel, where they undergo formal Jewish conversions upon arrival.
The recent violence in Manipur began after a student group organized a protest against talks to grant “scheduled tribe” status to the Meitei community, which represents more than half of Manipur’s population of 3 million. The status would grant the Meitei special privileges in education and employment reserved for minority tribal groups, who say the Meitei community already has outsized political representation and privilege.
The region has been plagued by tribal conflicts for decades, but the recent violence is being seen as a side effect of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist administration. The Meitei are mostly Hindus, while most members of the Kuki and other tribal groups are Christian. Members of the Manipuri Jewish community were targeted because of their dual identity as Kuki-Mizo tribe members, Thangjom says.
The Manipur government said Tuesday that violence has died down in recent days and the state is “returning to normalcy.” Hundreds of cars, homes and churches in the region were vandalized or torched, according to media reports. India’s army has evacuated some 20,000 people and issued “shoot-at-sight” orders as they attempt to gain control over the situation. According to the Manipur government, at least 60 deaths have been recorded so far.
The Indian army was been deployed to Manipur as the people who live there — including the Bnei Menashe — are trying to remain safe during a volatile situation.
In recent years, tensions have arisen within Bnei Menashe communities in Manipur and nearby Mizoram surrounding the process to move to Israel, which since the early 2000s has been managed by Shavei Israel, an Israeli nonprofit dedicated to easing immigration for descendants of Jews in isolated communities. A newer group, Degel Menashe, has launched to advance the emigration, which it alleges Shavei Israel has not advanced effectively; Shavei has denied those allegations. Thangjom is an organizer with Degel Menashe.
Michael Freund, founder and chairman of Shavei Israel, said in a statement that some members of the Bnei Menashe community had been wounded in this week’s violence, in addition to the one who died. A Torah scroll had been burned when a synagogue was destroyed, he added.
“The area in northeastern India where the Bnei Menashe community lives is experiencing grave ethnic conflicts and its members are in real danger,” Freund said in the statement. He added, “It is time for Israel to act and bring them home to the Jewish state before more Bnei Menashe Jews are killed.”
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Leader of Lithuanian Government Party Found Guilty of Hatred Against Jews
Dawn of Nemunas Party leader Remigijus Zemaitaitis attends a press conference after general election in Vilnius, Lithuania, Oct. 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
A Lithuanian court found the leader of a junior party in the ruling coalition government on Thursday guilty of incitement to hatred against Jews and belittling the Holocaust in social media posts in 2023.
Remigijus Zemaitaitis, founder of the populist Nemunas Dawn, was fined 5,000 euros ($5,835) for falsely accusing the Jewish people, as a group, of historical crimes, encouraging hostility, and strengthening negative stereotypes, the court said.
“[Zemaitaitis] publicly mocked and despised Jewish people and incited hatred against the Jewish community” in social media, the Vilnius Regional Court said in its ruling.
It said he had also used “language that is degrading, derogatory to human dignity, and which incites hostility on ethnic grounds.”
Zemaitaitis has denied any wrongdoing. He told the BNS news agency on Thursday that he considered the verdict politically motivated and that he would appeal.
After resigning from parliament over the issue in April 2024, Zemaitaitis was re-elected in October of that year and his party, Nemunas Dawn, joined the new coalition government led by the Social Democrats. He is not himself a government minister.
Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene, whose three-party coalition has a slim majority in Lithuania’s parliament, told reporters she had not yet read the verdict.
Her Social Democratic Party said in a statement it respected the court’s ruling, while noting the decision was not yet final.
Thousands gathered at the parliament in Vilnius in November 2024 and again in August this year to protest against Nemunas Dawn’s inclusion in the government.
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Israel Strikes Hezbollah Targets in Two South Lebanon Towns
People inspect a damaged site after Israel’s military said it struck targets in two southern Lebanese towns on Thursday, in Jbaa southern Lebanon, Dec. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Hankir
Israel‘s military said it struck targets in two southern Lebanese towns on Thursday after ordering the evacuation of two buildings it alleged were being used by Hezbollah terrorists.
About an hour after the initial warning, the army’s Arabic spokesperson issued another notice instructing residents of buildings in two other towns to leave.
The strikes came a day after Israel and Lebanon sent civilian envoys to a committee overseeing a fragile ceasefire agreed a year ago that both sides have accused the other of breaking.
The envoys would broaden the scope of talks between the long-time adversaries, both sides said.
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Anti-Hamas Gazan Clan Leader Reported Killed
Leader of the Popular Forces Yasser Abu Shabab and his deputy Ghassan Al-Duhaini stand next to armed men in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, in this screenshot taken from a video released on Nov. 18, 2025. Photo: Yasser Abu Shabab/Popular Forces via REUTERS
The head of an armed Palestinian faction that opposes Hamas in Gaza has been killed, Israeli media reported on Thursday, in what would be a blow to Israeli efforts to support Gazan clans against the ruling Islamist terror group.
Yasser Abu Shabab, a Bedouin tribal leader based in Israeli-held Rafah in southern Gaza, has led the most prominent of several small anti–Hamas groups that became active in Gaza during the war that began more than two years ago.
His death would be a boost to Hamas, which has branded him a collaborator and ordered its fighters to kill or capture him.
There was no immediate word about Abu Shabab’s status on the Facebook page of his group, the Popular Forces.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged in June that Israel had armed anti–Hamas clans, though Israel has announced few other details of the policy since then.
RAFAH SECURITY SWEEP
Abu Shabab’s group has continued to operate from areas of Gaza controlled by Israeli forces since a US-backed ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was agreed in October.
Rafah has been the scene of some of the worst violence during the ceasefire. Residents had reported gunbattles there on Wednesday, and Israel said four of its soldiers were wounded there. The Israeli military said on Thursday its forces had killed some 40 Hamas terrorists trapped in tunnels below Rafah.
On Nov. 18, Abu Shabab’s group posted a video showing dozens of fighters receiving orders from his deputy to launch a security sweep to “clear Rafah of terror,” an apparent reference to Hamas fighters believed to be holed up there.
Abu Shabab’s death was reported by Israeli media including Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, citing a security source.
Israel’s Army Radio, also citing a security source, said he had died in Soroka hospital in southern Israel of unspecified wounds, but the hospital soon denied he had been admitted there.
The reports did not say when he died or how he received the reported wounds.
RAFAH ADMINISTRATION
An Israeli government spokesperson declined to comment on the reports. Hamas had no comment, its Gaza spokesperson said.
Israel’s policy of backing anti–Hamas clans took shape as it pressed the Gaza offensive against the group, aiming to end its rule of the coastal strip in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on communities in southern Israel.
In an article published in the Wall Street Journal in July, Abu Shabab – a member of the Tarabin Bedouin tribe – said his group had established its own administration in the Rafah area and urged US and Arab support to recognize and support it.
Abu Shabab’s group has denied being backed by Israel.
Netanyahu said in June that Israel’s backing for Gazan clans was a good thing that had saved the lives of Israeli soldiers.
But the policy has also drawn criticism from some in Israel who have said such groups can provide no real alternative to Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007.
CONTROVERSIAL POLICY
“The writing was on the wall. Whether he was killed by Hamas or in some clan infighting, it was obvious that it would end this way,” Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, told Reuters.
Several other anti–Hamas groups have emerged in areas of Gaza held by Israel. Palestinian political analyst Reham Owda said that Abu Shabab’s death would fuel doubts among them about their “ability to challenge Hamas.”
US President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan foresees Hamas disarming and the enclave run by a transitional authority supported by a multi-national stabilization force. But progress has appeared slow, with Hamas so far refusing to disarm and no sign of agreement on the formation of the international force.
Hamas has accused Abu Shabab of looting UN aid trucks during the war. Abu Shabab’s group has denied this, saying it has protected and escorted aid.