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India’s Bnei Menashe community in crisis as ethnic violence burns synagogues and displaces hundreds
(JTA) — For the past several years, life was good for Lalam Hangshing as president of the Bnei Menashe Council, the governing body for Jewish communities in the Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram.
While living at his parents’ house, he and his wife enjoyed the clean air and beautiful scenery of Manipur, a state in northeast India home to close to 3 million people. Miles away, Hangshing rented out a newly-built four-story home to a film production company.
Everything changed on May 3, when rioting broke out between the ethnic majority Meiteis and the tribal minority Kukis, a violent conflagration that had been building up for years. Local groups say Meiteis began targeting Kuki institutions and razing homes to the ground, and Hangshing — also the general secretary of a Kuki-led political party — feared his house was next.
“When the problems started on the third of May, with military precision, the mobs went straight to [Kuki] houses,” Hangshing said. “They ransacked them and vandalized them and they burned each and every house in Imphal city within one and a half days.”
According to Shavei Israel, an NGO that helps “lost tribe” Jewish communities immigrate to Israel, over 1,000 members of the community, or 20% of their total, have been displaced. One community member was killed, and another was shot in the chest and is hospitalized. Two synagogues and mikvahs, or ritual baths, were burned down.
(Degel Menashe, an Israeli NGO that is dedicated to supporting the Bnei Menashe and has a longstanding feud with Shavei Israel, said one synagogue was burned.)
Hangshing is Kuki, as are the thousands of other Bnei Menashe Jews in Manipur. On May 4, Hangshing left his home and over a month later, has yet to return.
He spoke with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from Delhi, more than 1,000 miles from his home. His four-story house has been completely destroyed, but his parents’ home is somehow still standing. He worries about family possessions, such as religious books belonging to his father — who had helped found Manipur’s Jewish community — and a favorite set of golf clubs left behind, all in danger of being looted or destroyed any day now.
Another estimated 292 Bnei Menashe families have fled to Kuki-majority hill areas within Manipur or to the nearby state of Mizoram, according to Shavei Israel.
In Mizoram, over 100 Jews initially took refuge in the Shalom Tzion synagogue in Aizawl, in the houses of other Jewish families or at hotels, but most have moved to a paramilitary camp nearby. Community leaders say the refugees are not facing any immediate danger and have enough food and supplies thanks to the tens of thousands of dollars in aid rolling in from Shavei Israel and Degel Menashe.
“They basically just fled with their documents, and they have prayer books, their tefillin and ritual items, and the clothes on their back,” said Asaf Renthlei, a Mizoram Jewish community member and Degel Menashe volunteer. At relief camps, he said, community members have observed Shabbat every week since they fled.
“This is one of the gravest crises the Bnei Menashe in India have ever experienced,” said Michael Freund, who has been chairman of Shavei Israel since he founded the organization in 2002.
Over 100 Bnei Menashe have taken shelter in a synagogue in Mizoram. (Shavei Israel)
“A state gone rogue”
Violence broke out in Manipur state in early May when tribal groups launched a protest against the Meitei’s demand for Scheduled Tribe status, which is traditionally reserved for minority tribes such as the Kukis and ensures certain rights to education, government jobs and other privileges. The Kukis (which make up about 16% of the population and are majority Christian) say that the Meiteis (who make up 53% and are majority Hindu) already have outsized privilege and political representation.
The May 3 protest was only the spark that has ignited a conflict based on long-standing grievances against the Kuki minority, said Sushant Singh, a senior research fellow at India’s Centre for Policy Research.
“At the core of it, it is about Meiteis claiming that they are the original inhabitants of the state, Kukis are illegal immigrants, and… [the Meiteis] have been forced to occupy only 10% of the land,” Singh said. “And because of the special privileges that tribes have in India, they cannot go and occupy the land occupied by Kukis.”
As the conflict enters its second month, over 100 deaths have been recorded and an estimated 40,000 people have been displaced; some entire villages are destroyed and over 200 churches have been burned, as well as the two synagogues in the Imphal area. A statewide internet blackout has been in place since the beginning of May.
While both Kukis and Meiteis have participated in the violence, Kukis have “suffered the most,” and state police and security forces have joined Meitei groups in targeting Kukis, Singh said. Human Rights Watch has called on India to investigate police violence in Manipur, which local groups have disputed.
“It has essentially been a state gone rogue acting against a minority community,” Singh said.
Though the government has called for a ceasefire and established a peace committee, those efforts to quell the violence have been unsuccessful. The military has implemented security measures and evacuated Kukis further into the hills and Meiteis into the plains, but Singh said this has only reinforced geographical divides, instead of facilitating a solution that could allow the two groups to live alongside one another in the future.
Citing the government’s failure to protect them, Kukis have called for separation from the state of Manipur. As the conflict stretches into its second month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has yet to comment on the crisis in his country’s northeast.
“The army has been called in but they are very ineffective because it’s a civil war. They can’t take sides. They just stand around and when the firing gets too heavy, they stand aside so it’s left to us to fend for ourselves,” Hangshing said.
According to one organization, two of the community’s synagogues have burned down and another Torah scroll was torched. (Shavei Israel)
An appeal to Israel
The Bnei Menashe identify as descendants of a “lost tribe” group, tracing their origins to the Israelite tribe of Menasseh. In 2005, a chief rabbi of Israel affirmed their identity as a “lost tribe” group with historic Jewish ties, but researchers have not found sufficient evidence to back the claim. Bnei Menashe Jews began immigrating to Israel in the 1990s, and because of their “lost tribe” status, they all undergo formal Orthodox conversions upon arrival. Around 5,000 remain in the states of Manipur and Mizoram today, and about 5,000 have already immigrated to Israel.
Many have struggled to gain entry into Israel over the past two decades, and they are now asking the Jewish state to expedite the immigration process to help them escape the violence. But despite recent celebrations surrounding the opening of a new Indian-Jewish cultural center in central Israel, to which Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog sent recorded blessings, Jerusalem has yet to publicly respond to the situation.
Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, visited India last month on a planned trip aimed at strengthening ties between the two countries. He did not comment on the matter, and his visit was cut short due to a military operation in Israel.
“I think under [Benjamin] Netanyahu, particularly in this stint as prime minister, there are very few expectations. He is very close to Mr. Modi’s government, so I don’t think anybody expects anything from Netanyahu,” Singh said.
The Bnei Menashe’s “grey zone” religious status, in the words of Renthlei, makes their immigration to Israel more complicated for them than most. Before the Bnei Menashe can even apply to immigrate, they must face a panel of rabbis — who usually come all the way to India — for interviews.
“It’s not like Ukraine. The Ukrainians are Jewish without any doubt. But the Bnei Menashe, we are in some gray zone of not exactly not Jews, but not exactly Jews also,” Renthlei said. “It’s unlikely that the Bnei Menashe would just be able to make aliyah, even in this situation, unlike the Ukrainians.” Thousands of Ukrainian Jews have immigrated to Israel since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022.
The Jewish Agency for Israel, which helps facilitate immigration, and the UJA-Federation of New York have provided funding to Shavei Israel to help displaced persons, representatives from Shavei said. The Jewish Agency, the ministry of aliyah and integration, and the Israeli consulate in India did not respond to JTA’s requests for comment.
“We’re too small to matter, I suppose,” said Isaac Thangjom, director of Degel Menashe. Thangjom, who lives in Israel, has been in contact with officials in the ministry of aliyah and integration.
“They are very concerned, but they haven’t given me any explicit answer despite my proddings,” he said. “Their responses have been very tepid.”
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Exclusive: As Ceasefire Extended, Iranian Voice Describes Deepening Repression, Waning Hope Under Regime’s Grip
People attend the funeral of the security forces who were killed in the protests that erupted over the collapse of the currency’s value in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 14, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
As a fragile ceasefire halting the US-Israeli military campaign in Iran continues, some Iranians say the pause in fighting has not brought relief but rather fear that the regime is regaining strength while internal repression intensifies.
In western Iran, a former schoolteacher who asked to be identified as “Maddie Ali” for security reasons says the ceasefire has left many ordinary citizens feeling abandoned and exposed, watching authorities tighten control while hopes for meaningful change fade.
“People actually felt more hopeful when the war was ongoing. Now, with the ceasefire in place, many feel discouraged and disappointed about the future, which feels increasingly uncertain,” Ali told The Algeminer in an exclusive interview.
Ali lost her job after authorities imposed a nationwide internet blackout when fighting erupted earlier this year — a disruption that continues to shape daily life and restrict communication with the outside world, effectively cutting millions of Iranians off from independent reporting on the war and access to global news.
Internet access remains unstable across much of the country, forcing many people to rely on illegal black-market virtual private networks (VPNs) — tools that bypass government censorship — to stay connected beyond Iran’s borders, with access reportedly costing millions of tomans per gigabyte. (A toman is one-tenth of the rial, the official currency of Iran.)
Iran’s nationwide internet blackout has become the longest recorded of its kind, as authorities continue restricting access to the outside world in an effort to suppress internal opposition and silence domestic dissent.
Iranian authorities have even warned that citizens suspected of accessing the internet through VPNs could face arrest or imprisonment. According to state media reports, Iranian security forces have arrested several citizens in recent weeks for using the Starlink satellite internet system, which allows users to bypass state-controlled terrestrial infrastructure.
Human rights groups have warned that the regime repeatedly uses nationwide internet shutdowns as a tool to intensify its crackdown on opposition movements and conceal ongoing abuses from international scrutiny.
Ali said many people in Iran fear the ceasefire is giving authorities time to regroup and rebuild.
“People are deeply disappointed that the US and Israeli sides agreed to a ceasefire without taking the Iranian population into account,” Ali told The Algemeiner. “The regime has repeatedly proven its capacity to rebuild and recover time and time again.”
The US–Iran ceasefire, which took effect on April 8, was initially set to expire on Wednesday night if no agreement was reached. US President Donald Trump told Bloomberg on Monday that he was “highly unlikely” to extend the truce without a deal with Tehran.
“I’m not going to be rushed into making a bad deal,” the president said.
On Tuesday, however, Trump announced that he was extending the ceasefire indefinitely, to allow the two countries to continue peace talks to end the war.
In a statement on social media, Trump said he had agreed to a request by Pakistan, which has mediated the talks, “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Noting Iran’s government was “seriously fractured,” Trump said the US military would remain ready and continue its blockade on Iranian ports but continue abiding by the ceasefire “until such time as [Tehran’s] proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
According to Ali, who spoke with The Algemeiner before Trump’s announcement, reconstruction efforts began quickly after the fighting stopped, even as widespread infrastructure damage remained and internal repression intensified.
“There is frustration that the ceasefire may help the regime recover,” she said. “They started reconstruction for damaged sites and internal repression is still going on.”
Ali also said security forces remain highly visible across the country, especially after a sweeping crackdown earlier this year following mass demonstrations.
“We don’t have an option to really be out on the streets right now. It is really hard because of what happened in January. People are too afraid,” she said, referring to the nationwide anti-government protests, which security forces violently crushed, leaving tens of thousands of demonstrators tortured, imprisoned, or killed.
Checkpoints and surveillance now shape daily movement across many areas of the country.
“There are security forces on the streets stopping people, checking phones to see who they have been in contact with and reviewing messages — and they even make arrests,” Ali said.
Despite the risks, Ali said frustration with the regime runs deep after years of sustained crackdowns and tightening control.
“Most Iranians want an end to this regime. People are exhausted after decades of repression, arrests, executions, surveillance, and control,” she said. “Everybody was waiting for Israel and the US to do something and help us.”
“At the same time, people don’t support war itself — they support removing the regime, which is deeply rooted throughout the country,” Ali continued.
She said many Iranians initially saw the outbreak of fighting as a rare opening for change after years of failed internal protest movements.
“When the war began, many people actually felt hopeful,” Ali told The Algemeiner. “It’s not that they didn’t try to overthrow the regime themselves before — they did. But nothing worked.”
Even those who opposed the war, she said, are not necessarily defending the government.
“Those who were against the war mostly believed it would not lead to real change in the end — not that they supported the regime,” she explained.
More broadly, Ali said many citizens viewed outside military pressure as a necessary catalyst rather than something they welcomed.
“For many Iranians, support for the US and Israeli strikes came out of necessity and exhaustion — not because they support war,” she said.
Despite significant leadership losses during the conflict, Ali said the regime’s structure remains deeply entrenched nationwide.
“The regime and its ideology are embedded at every level — in cities, towns, and institutions across the country,” she said.
“From what we can see, the system is still functioning almost completely intact,” she continued. “It remains coordinated at both the national and local levels, and internal repression is actually increasing.”
“It feels suffocating and extreme, but at the same time it isn’t surprising,” she added.
For some inside Iran, Ali said, this reality has reshaped how people understand the scale of effort needed to dismantle the regime’s entrenched security apparatus.
“People support Israel and the United States, but they also believe airstrikes alone are not enough,” she said.
“Many believe that only a military ground intervention with troops on the ground could remove the regime from its roots,” she continued.
At the same time, she said many Iranians feel especially frustrated by what they see as political solidarity between Muslim-majority governments and Tehran’s leadership rather than support for ordinary citizens.
“Just because a government presents itself as Islamist does not give it the right to repress dissidents and crush its own people,” she said.
“Many Muslim countries have continued to cooperate with this regime, shaking hands with a killer regime instead of standing with the Iranian people,” Ali added.
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Netanyahu heckled at Israel’s official Memorial Day ceremony as bereaved families grasp for comfort
(JTA) — TEL MOND, Israel — Thousands of Israelis gathered in cemeteries all over Israel to commemorate the nation’s fallen soldiers and terror victims on Memorial Day, as public mourning collided with political anger, fresh wartime uncertainty and the private aftershocks consuming bereaved families.
In a Memorial Day message to bereaved families, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also addressed the war against Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, saying Israel has “already removed an existential threat.”
A short while later, President Donald Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernan that he “expects to be bombing” Iran again if talks collapse ahead of Wednesday’s ceasefire deadline.
“We have returned all our hostages, struck our enemies hard, and made Israel a nation stronger than ever before,” Netanyahu said at an official Memorial Day ceremony at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
His comments prompted a heckler in the crowd to yell out, “Some of them died in tunnels,” in reference to the Israelis kidnapped to Gaza by the Hamas terror group and held underground.
Skirmishes broke out during a speech by MK Ofir Sofer, of the far-right Religious Zionist party at the Kiryat Shaul military cemetery in Tel Aviv, when attendees attempted to snatch signs held up by protesters that read “Government of death” and “I refuse to hear words of comfort from a government of criminals.”
At a cemetery in Tel Mond, Eyal Golan, whose sister Shirel died by suicide on her 22nd birthday, a year after surviving the Nova massacre near the Gaza border, also had harsh words for the government.
Reflecting on Knesset debates he attended after his sister’s death, as he pushed for a law in her name to provide unlimited, comprehensive mental health care to victims of terror, Golan said he was furious at what he described as the performative behavior of politicians from both the coalition and opposition.
“Off camera, they speak to each other normally,” he said. “But the moment the cameras turn on, it’s showtime. They fall into their roles, shouting and attacking each other. I’m sitting there thinking, how can this be real?”
“Instead of coming together, they just deepen the divide,” he said, but he credited two Knesset members from opposite sides of the political aisle — Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism and Merav Michaeli of Labor — with taking up the cause and advancing the legislation.
Eyal and other members of his family say the government failed Shirel as she grappled with acute PTSD in the months after the attack. Now advancing the bill, he said he hopes it will spare other families the same fate.
“The whole point of my crusade is to save others. No one will be able to bring back my sister. If I’m able to save one more soul, I’ve done my job,” he said.
The legislation, known informally as the Shirel Golan law, passed a preliminary reading in January 2026.
Sitting close to his daughter’s grave, covered in flowers, wreaths and candles, Eyal’s father Meir said he has fallen into a strange nightly ritual. Every night, he wakes up at 3 a.m. and makes himself a cup of coffee. He opens the smart TV to her YouTube account and for an hour or so watches the videos she had liked and subscribed to, including trance music emblematic of the Nova scene. At 4 a.m., he returns to bed.
“As soon as I turn it on, it says, ‘Hello Shirel, welcome back,’” Meir said, adding that it gives him a measure of tranquility, as if his daughter “is still around.”
Later, as Eyal made the 45-minute drive back to his home in the central Israeli city of Holon, he described the journey as the emotional hinge between mourning and the return to ordinary life.
“It’s a kind of magic hour during which I store the grief of the day in a box in my mind,” he said. “By Independence Day, I’ll go back to my main role, being a father to two daughters.”
He added, “That journey is a microcosm of Israeli society.”
Meir’s late-night visits to his daughter’s digital world are part of a wider private language of mourning that has taken hold among bereaved Israeli families, many of whom continue to reach for their dead through screens. On phones across the country, especially on the popular messaging platform WhatsApp, parents and siblings keep sending messages to loved ones who were killed, writing as if the conversation never ended. The messages, some of which were recorded in a special Memorial Day project by the Ynet news site, come at unguarded moments, during a football game, before a birthday, or in the middle of the night.
“What a goal, Yahav,” one father, Nir Maayan, wrote to his son, Yahav, who was killed in Gaza in January of last year.
Texting his son from his graveside, Nir wrote: “There are days of collapse, of longing, of not being able to accept reality. Moments when I try to imagine your final moments. What did you think? What did you feel? Answers I will never know. So I just rest my head on you, and somehow you comfort me and hold me. Someone is watching over me from above.”
“Tomorrow is your birthday, send mom a message,” a sister wrote to her deceased brother.
“The sky is beautiful today,” another wrote.
Dorit Ron keeps on texting her son Itai, who was killed on Oct. 7 at the Nahal Oz base near the Gaza border. “I expect an answer, a sign that he’s okay and with his father,” she said, according to the report. “Even though I know he won’t reply, to me he’s alive, just nearby, in another dimension.”
The post Netanyahu heckled at Israel’s official Memorial Day ceremony as bereaved families grasp for comfort appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel jails soldiers who smashed Jesus statue in Lebanon, installs a new one
(JTA) — An Israeli soldier who bludgeoned a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon and another soldier who photographed the act have both been dismissed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in military detention, the Israeli military said on Monday.
“The IDF expresses deep regret over the incident and emphasizes that its operations in Lebanon are directed solely against the Hezbollah terrorist organization and other terrorist groups, and not against Lebanese civilians,” the IDF said in a statement.
The military also announced it had replaced the damaged statue with a new one “in full coordination with the local community of Debel in southern Lebanon.” The town is a Christian enclave within a region that is a Hezbollah stronghold.
A short while ago, in full coordination with the local community of Debel in southern Lebanon, the damaged statue was replaced by IDF troops. The Northern Command worked to coordinate the replacement of the statue from the moment it received the report of the incident.
The IDF… pic.twitter.com/nGh1s1iia1
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) April 21, 2026
Photos of the incident, which depicted the soldier striking an overturned Jesus statue, were quickly condemned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF as they spread on Sunday.
By Monday, a letter condemning the act had drawn over 80 signatures by prominent Jewish leaders, including former Israeli cabinet minister Michael Melchior; American antisemitism activist Shabbos Kestenbaum; and Orthodox rabbis in Israel and the United States.
“This act is a chillul Hashem — a desecration of God’s name,” the letter said. “It is an affront to the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East and to Christians all over the world. It is a vile betrayal of the Jewish values upon which the State of Israel was founded. And it is a wound inflicted upon the fragile Jewish-Christian friendship that is more important than ever.”
The announcement of the punishment comes as the IDF said it was probing an incident in the West Bank in which a reservist soldier reportedly killed two Palestinians, aged 14 and 32.
The post Israel jails soldiers who smashed Jesus statue in Lebanon, installs a new one appeared first on The Forward.