Light blogging this week—sorry—but this story was too good to pass up. I guess the Israeli government has run out of Peruvian Native Americans to import for demographic padding, because now they’re shipping in “lost tribes” from India.
“This is my land,” said Mr. [Sharon] Palian, a 45-year-old widower who left a lush rice farm and brought his three children with him from the Bnei Menashe community in northeastern India. “I am coming home.” Yet by making their home here, over the hill from the Palestinian city of Nablus, they have thrust themselves onto the front lines of the Middle East conflict.
Now, Israel’s immigration policy should be no one else’s business, but not when they stick the immigrants in Palestinian territory. The policy of moving new Israelis into settlements is particularly amusing in light of the controversy over Palestinian right of return. Of course, the dispossessed are not amused:
“Israel can bring lost tribes from India, Alaska or Mars, as long as they put them inside Israel,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. “But to bring a lost person from India and have him find his land in Nablus is just outrageous.”
Why bother importing folks just to dump them in someone else’s yard?
[P]eace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements, says the recruitment of far-flung groups with questionable Jewish ancestry is part of an effort to raise the number of settlers and to increase the Jewish population relative to the Arabs.
But, gosh, why would poor folks want to move to the Sweden of the Middle East? Oh, what a mystery:
It is not clear what prompted the Bnei Menashe to begin practicing Judaism. In the 1950’s they were still Christians, but they began adopting Old Testament laws, like observing the Sabbath and Jewish dietary laws. By the 1970’s, they were practicing Judaism, Mr. Halkin said. There was no sign of any outside influence. The Bnei Menashe wrote letters to Israeli officials in the late 1970’s seeking more information on Judaism. Then Amishav contacted them, and the group began bringing the Beni Menashe to Israel in the early 1990’s.