Indian soldier from ‘lost Jewish tribe’ killed while fighting for IDF in Gaza

In early September, Staff Sergeant Geri Gideon Hanghal, 24, became the first member of the Bnei Menashe community to be killed in the war that followed Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel.

Staff Sergeant Hanghal, whose family immigrated to Israel from Manipur in 2020, was killed in a car ram attack near Asaf Junction, close to the West Bank settlement of Beit El.

The Bnei Menashe, who hail from the northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, identify as descendants of the Manasseh tribe, one of the ten “Lost Tribes of Israel” exiled by the king of Assyria at the end of the First Temple period. than 2,700 years ago.