Celebrating thirty years of Israel-India relationship

WL Hangshing *

Celebrating thirty years of Israel-India relationship :: Pix - TSE

As the world turned twenty two years into the 21st century, India and Israel celebrated 30 years of diplomatic ties. Those 30 long years seem only like yesterday for most of the 5000 B’nei Menashe from India who had migrated to Israel during that period, a good proportion of those being of a generation born in Israel and assimilated into the land in ways more than one, in language, ethos and sentiment.

Approximately a thousand out of the five thousand B’nei Menashe presently in Israel would be from the State of Mizoram. The remaining four-fifths are from Manipur, making Israel the largest concentration of people from Manipur in any country.

My family’s brush with Israel goes back to the early 80s when my father, TA Hangshing, an IAS officer and a then Commissioner in the Government of Manipur, made a trip there with my mother. They caught up with Rabbi Eliyahu Avichayil, who in the coming years began to take deep interest in the circumstances of the B’nei Menashe.

By the early ‘90s he was to initiate the community’s first Aliya, which has continued till this day. I had by then joined the Indian Revenue Service to be posted in Delhi with my little family of two kids.

Israel and India established their first diplomatic tie-up in 1992 and along with my late uncle LS Thangjom, who was also an IAS officer and a Commissioner in the Govt of Manipur at that time, and his family, we had the privilege of joining the first Passover feast celebrated by the Israeli consulate at Delhi that year.

After that, it was a natural bond that developed between us and the officials of the Israeli consulate at Delhi and by 1994, the first Israel Ambassador to India, HE Ephraim Dowek had drawn up an itinerary to visit Manipur as personal guests of my uncle Thangjom and my Dad who had retired by then.

By and by, the Thangjom family made Aliya to Israel. All four children are married and well settled, now with altogether eleven grandchildren all born and grown up in Israel.

India, for Israel, has always been, since time immemorial, a destination free from any kind of anti-semitism that the rest of the world has been so stuck up with. It has been a regular and a safe winding-down place year after year for young Israelis who have just finished their mandatory draft with the IDF (Israel Defence Force).

Many of them find their way into Manipur and to the B’nei Menashe settlements at Kangpokpi and Churachandpur for a Shabbat or a religious festival such as the Yom Kippur or Passover. I was fortunate enough to have encountered and being host to several of them at my hometown of Kangpokpi and at Imphal in the winter of 2019-20 just before the advent of the Covid outbreak and the consequent lockdowns. They are a happy adventurous bunch of travel addicts.

The India-Israel diplomatic tie has, in the last 30 years, deepened and diversified into other areas such as commerce, tourism, agro-industry and vital defence technology to name a few. Bilateral trade between India and Israel has burgeoned to over $4 billion from a mere $200 million 30 years ago.

An Israeli involvement in Manipur in the field of trade, cultural exchanges, student exchanges, scientific and technological interventions in various fields could go a long way in further cementing the people to people connection, especially given the fact that there are already a sizeable number of Bnei Menashe members who are well placed in the Indian bureaucracy and in the diplomatic service.

Several Ministers and VIPs have visited Israel in the last few years. When Prime Minister Modi visited Israel in July 2017, he was quite overwhelmed by the welcoming committee consisting of a group of 300 Bnei Menashe of Indian origin. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the Minister for External Affairs too was on a visit to Israel in October ‘21, which I had missed by a couple of days as I too was on a visit there for my dad’s Atzcara prayers on Sheloshim.

I was however fortunate in having met, at the Knesset, the hon’ble MK Ms Miri Regev who is a well versed supporter of the Bnei Menashe. During an earlier first visit to Israel in Feb 2020, I had the pleasure of a meeting with the Ambassador of India to Israel, HE Sanjeev Singla as well as the Deputy Ambassador Mr. Tshering Sherpa and his wife Muanpuii, who is also a diplomat herself and serving as the Counsellor. She is, by the way, from our own North East, Mizoram.

There is thus an interesting and an inspiring prospect for building a strong connection between India’s North East, particularly Manipur, and Israel. This needs to be taken up in right earnest.