A private organization that brings members of “lost tribes” of Jews to Israel was recently awarded a nearly 10-million-shekel government (almost $3.1 million) contract, despite complaints of serious abuse of power by many of the prospective and new immigrants it was meant to help.
Shavei Israel won the contract from the Aliyah and Integration Ministry without having to go through the usual tender requirements. The ministry had asked that its dealings with Shavei be kept secret – a request denied by the treasury. A spokesman for the ministry did not respond to a question about why the request for secrecy had been made.
According to government documents, in late June the treasury approved a request by the Aliyah Ministry to exempt from tender obligations a contract worth 9,890,184 shekels. This was meant to cover the costs of bringing another 548 members of the Bnei Menashe community from northeastern India to Israel.
The justification for the exemption, according to the documents, was that Shavei is the only organization in Israel capable of working with this community.
The request was approved even though the ministry had been made aware by then of harsh allegations against Shavei by members of the Bnei Menashe community. Petitions and letters sent to Aliyah Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata and her aides in recent months by members of the community and organizations representing them – copies of which were obtained Haaretz – allege that Shavei has engaged in tactics of intimidation, discrimination and blacklisting to silence its detractors. The organization denies these allegations.
According to testimonies shared with the Aliyah Ministry and the Jewish Agency, community members who dared criticize the organization would find their names deleted from lists of candidates for aliyah. In the case of those already living in Israel, they would receive threats that their relatives would not be allowed to join them.
Tzvi Khaute, the coordinator for the Bnei Menashe department at Shavei, described the allegations as “groundless” and “tendentious.” In a statement issued through the organization’s public relations consultant, he said, “We reject them out of hand.”
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He insisted that Shavei is not authorized to decide which members of the Bnei Menashe community are eligible for aliyah and that such decisions are the “exclusive responsibility” of the Chief Rabbinate and the government of Israel.
Yet, members of the community who have been through the process and have inside knowledge of it say that Shavei is deeply involved. According to them, Shavei draws up a preliminary list of candidates for aliyah. In the next stage of vetting, it interviews these candidates. The Rabbinate is not involved in either of these stages.
Only in the final stage of the selection process, when follow-up interviews are conducted, do representatives of the Rabbinate enter the picture. According to the community members, these follow-up interviews are conducted through translators provided by Shavei. The final lists are then sent to the government for approval. In addition, government documents show that representatives of the Rabbinate who help determine eligibility for aliyah are paid by Shavei and not by the Rabbinate.
A young member of the Bnei Menashe community waving an Israeli flag.
Ilan Assayag
Begging for intervention
Shavei Israel was established nearly 20 years ago by American-born Michael Freund, who worked as an aide to Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s first stint as prime minister in the late 1990s. Its declared mission is returning “lost Jews” to their roots. The main focus is bringing to Israel members of the Bnei Menashe community, who claim descent from the ancient Israelite tribes.
In the early years of its operations, almost all these immigrants would be settled in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (before the Israeli disengagement in 2005).
Shavei was effectively awarded a monopoly by the government to oversee the aliyah of the Bnei Menashe. It is the only case of a private organization being vested with responsibility for a particular community of prospective immigrants. With all other communities, the Jewish Agency determines eligibility, often in consultation with the Interior Ministry, and plays a key role in the absorption process. While Nefesh B’Nefesh facilitates aliyah from North America, for instance, it does not determine eligibility.
In February, 1,230 members of the Bnei Menashe community – mostly from the region of Manipur – signed a petition that was sent to Tamano-Shato and then-Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog begging for their intervention. Introducing themselves, they wrote: “We, the undersigned, members of the Bnei Menashe community of Israel and northeast India, are suffering from our situation.”
Another petition signed by 280 members of the smaller Mizoram community, containing similar allegations, was sent to the Aliyah Ministry and Jewish Agency last week.
“For over a decade, Shavei Israel, a private organization, has abused the monopoly given it over our aliyah while operating with an utter lack of transparency or accountability to any outside body,” they wrote in the February petition. “It has procrastinated in bringing us to Israel; played favorites in its choice of those it brought; discriminated against individuals and groups; blacklisted whoever opposed it; used its control of the aliyah process to dominate and intimidate us for its own interest; turned us against each other in matters of prayer and worship; and deliberately undermined food relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Declaring that they had “had enough,” the signatories urged the ministry and Jewish Agency “to assume direct responsibility for our aliyah by taking it out of Shavei Israel’s hands and freeing us from its tyranny over our lives.”
Responding to these allegations, Khaute said: “To the best of our understanding, the vast majority of those signed onto this petition are not members of the Bnei Menashe community. And as for the rest of them, tens have already made aliyah and many others will be immigrating soon – which would contradict the false claims that appear in the petition.”
He added: “Shavei assists in the aliyah and absorption of every single member of the Bnei Menashe community, regardless of their organizational affiliation, so long as they observe a Jewish way of life and their arrival in Israel has been approved by the relevant authorities.”
Aliyah and Integration Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata.
Eliyahu Hershkovitz
Special government approval
The Bnei Menashe are not eligible for aliyah under the Law of Return, which requires proof of at least one Jewish grandparent. Bringing them to Israel, therefore, requires special government approval. Once they arrive in the country, Shavei arranges for the Bnei Menashe to undergo Orthodox conversions. (India prohibits religious conversions on its territory, which is why they need to wait until they come to Israel.)
In recent months, a new organization called Degel Menashe, which advocates for the community, has attempted to draw attention to the allegations against Shavei and has pleaded with the government and Jewish Agency to wrest control of the Bnei Menashe aliyah from the private organization. Degel Menashe has also organized special relief aid for members of the community stuck in India who have been adversely affected by COVID-19. The organization’s chairman is Hillel Halkin, a respected writer and literary translator, and widely regarded as an international authority on the Bnei Menashe community.
A spokesman for the Aliyah Ministry confirmed that Tamano-Shata had been in contact with Degel Menashe but said the organization had not provided any proof to substantiate the claims against Shavei.
About 4,000 Bnei Menashe live in Israel and the West Bank settlements, and an estimated 5,000 others live in the regions of Manipur and Mizoram in India.
In May, the previous Netanyahu government approved a decision to bring another 548 Bnei Menashe to Israel by the end of 2021. The contract with Shavei is meant to facilitate its execution.
This is not the first time Shavei has been awarded a contract from the Aliyah Ministry without having to compete in a bidding process. In 2013, it won a 7-million-shekel contract to bring over 899 Bnei Menashe, and in 2016 landed a 6.6-million-shekel contract to bring over a further 712.
In each case, the Aliyah Ministry said that it requested an exemption from tender obligations because no other organization was qualified to undertake such work.
According to its financial reports, Shavei has received more than 25 million shekels in government grants and contracts since its establishment in 2004 – almost all that money in the past seven years.
Of the group of 548 immigrants approved for this year, 275 were due to land in Israel in early June. While they were in transit in New Delhi, 36 members of the group tested positive for the delta variant of the coronavirus. The Aliyah Ministry decided to leave them and their families in India until they had recovered. However, defying recommendations by the professional staff at the Health Ministry, it allowed the remaining group of 160 immigrants into Israel the following day.
Several days later, 16 of those allowed into the country tested positive for COVID. This was long before the delta variant had become the key cause of COVID infections in Israel. The Aliyah Ministry spokesman refused to say when the rest of the group would arrive in the country, insisting that such information was “classified.”
A member of the Bnei Menashe community in Israel.
Ilan Assayag
‘Well aware of our activities’
Asked to explain its decision to approve the contract with Shavei without putting it out to tender, a treasury spokesman said: “Our exemptions committee relies on the professional recommendations of the [Aliyah] Ministry and, when necessary, asks the relevant questions.”
The Aliyah Ministry spokesman said that since assuming her position, Tamano-Shata has been trying to get the Jewish Agency more involved in bringing over the Bnei Menashe and that the Agency had, in fact, helped fund the group that recently came.
Indeed, under a government decision approved in May, the Agency agreed to donate close to 900,000 shekels to help pay for flights and other costs involved in bringing these immigrants to Israel. However, the Agency was not at all involved in determining eligibility for aliyah among the Bnei Menashe, as it is with all other immigrants to Israel.
“Assuming there will be more waves of aliyah, the minister will work to hand over more responsibilities to the Jewish Agency,” the spokesman added.
Asked to explain why Shavei’s latest contract was larger than previous ones, the spokesman said: “Our professional investigations determined that the costs of putting these immigrants up in Israel have risen over the years.”
Members of Bnei Menashe who immigrate to Israel are eligible for free housing and other necessities during their first few months in the country.
When asked to explain its claim that Shavei is the only organization capable of handling the aliyah of the Bnei Menashe, given the recent establishment of Degel Menashe, the spokesman insisted that the new organization had no experience working with the community in India and was active only in Israel.
“As far as we know, the only organization active in the community for this many years, in conjunction with the Rabbinate, and that provides lessons in Judaism and conversion preparation already in India, is Shavei,” he said.
Halkin, of Degel Menashe, issued the following response: “Degel Menashe, which has been actively engaged for the past two years with the Bnei Menashe community in Manipur and Mizoram, was astounded by the decision of the treasury exemptions committee, and its grounds. The Aliyah Ministry, which requested the exemption, is well aware of our activities, since we are in regular contact with it. It knows that it provided the exemptions committee with inaccurate information when it reported that Shavei ‘is the only organization that works with the Bnei Menashe in their country of origin’ and the only one ‘acquainted with the special characteristics of this community.'”
Halkin noted that the Aliyah Ministry was well aware of the “ongoing and well-documented allegations” about Shavei “exploiting its monopoly power over the Bnei Menashe aliyah for years to the detriment of the community.”
“In light of this, it is clear that the Aliyah Ministry’s request (which was happily rejected by the exemptions committee) to keep its new dealings with Shavei a secret was prompted by fears of their revelation,” he wrote. “And indeed, now that it is out in the open, we hope the exemptions committee will draw the appropriate conclusions.”
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