Members of the Bnei Menashe tribe (Getty Images)
The BBC Newshour graced Christmas by honoring an American-Israeli, Michael Freund, who allegedly has made prejudice melt away. But the newfound tolerance is not toward Palestinians. No, it’s toward “lost tribes” of Israel. Freund, who is also a hero to Glenn Beck, leads a group that works to bring Indians to Israel and the occupied territories:
Dozens of members of an Indian tribe said to be lost descendants of ancient Israelites have emigrated to Israel after the government lifted a visa ban.
Some 1,700 of the 7,200-strong Bnei Menashe already arrived nearly a decade ago after a chief rabbi recognised the community as a lost tribe in 2005.
Israel stopped issuing visas to the group two years later but recently reversed the policy.
Some critics have questioned the authenticity of the tribe’s claims.
The community says it is one of the lost 10 tribes of Israel who were exiled when Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8th Century BC…
Around 50 people landed in the city of Tel Aviv on Monday.
Bnei Menashe first settled in the West Bank settlement Kiryat Arba because, as people of color, they weren’t welcome in Israel. But the BBC story glorifes Freund and Israel by saying that bigotry against such truly Jewish people has vanished, allowing Bnei Menashe to move to Israel proper, near Akko.
Freund says that he’d first thought Bnei Menashe’s claims were nuts, but was soon convinced otherwise, and is now thrilled that Israel has learned to welcome the sect. Yet the print version doesn’t portray half the insult of the radio story. The BBC says nothing about Israel’s racism in using Jewish immigrants to thwart an anti-Palestinian “demographic threat,” or even asks whether the drive to quash Israel’s debate about the “tribe”‘s Jewishness was designed to drive Palestinians out. And not a word about the Palestinian right of return to the communities and villages from which they were chased in 1948. Many of them were Christians.
What a mockery of the spirit we welcome on Christmas, whatever our faiths: ”Peace on earth, goodwill to” all. This BBC distortion soured an hour of my holiday with family yesterday morning, as well as that of Phil Weiss with his. Why air such a travesty?
Israel “creating” facts on the ground.
How Godly of them.
Any Lost tribes of Arabs Jews making aliyah???.
Funnily enough, those Indians look to me like…. Indians. ”Lost tribes”? Too absurd for words. And yet, expect more and more ‘lost tribes’ to be magically ‘discovered’ as the Palestinian ‘demographic threat’ looms ever more largely, and as it becomes ever more obvious that the Jews in the ‘diaspora’ of advanced Western nations might support Israel in an abstract sense, but would never in a million years actually move there in order for their ethnically correct selves to redress that terrifying ‘demographic threat’.
” as people of color, they weren’t welcome in Israel.”- what a nonsense, wrapped in Christmas spirit! And yes 7200 Bnei Menashe will surely make a demographic shift Israel needs so badly. Sigh…
Yessir! Racism toward Jews of color is all but vanished in this here land of Israel. Yessir! First it was them lost Indian tribes and tomorrow it’s Ethiopian Jews in Dimona living in trailers. Yessir! No such thing as Israeli racism, especially not this time o’ year when all through the state not a Jew was stirring, not even a Yemenite stuck in Be’er Sheva.
I love this one!
Some Christian Zionist preacher was staying in their village and had a dream that they were the ‘lost tribe of Menasseh’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnei_Menashe
Pretty much sums up so called Biblical claims doesn’t it?