A 24-year-old Indian-origin Israeli soldier from the Bene Menashe community was killed after being hit by a vehicle near the Beit El settlement in the West Bank. On Thursday, the Israeli army said that Staff Sergeant Gerry Gideon Hangal was a resident of Nof HaGalil and a soldier of the Nahshon battalion of the Kfir Brigade.
Community members told PTI they were shocked by the news of the death of a young man near Assaf Junction on Wednesday. Footage of the attack has also emerged, showing a truck with Palestinian license plates veering off the busy highway and hitting an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) guard post near a bus stop, before stopping.
Israeli security sources named the suspect as 58-year-old Hayal Dhaifallah, a resident of the central West Bank city of Rafat. They said Sergeant Hangal’s funeral would be held on Thursday. Hangal immigrated to Israel from northeastern India in 2020. About 300 young people from Bnei Menashe are performing military duty during the current war, most of them serving in combat units.
The Bnei Menashe, who come from the north-eastern Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram, are believed to be descendants of the Israelite tribe of Menasseh, one of the extinct tribes of antiquity. Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar declared them to be descendants of Menasseh in 2005, paving the way for their migration to Israel as members of the “lost tribe”.
About 5,000 members of the Bnei Menashe community are said to have immigrated to Israel, of which about 1,500 have immigrated to Israel in the last five years. Another 5,500 still live in India and are waiting to immigrate.
The attack comes after a series of suicide bombings and shootings in the West Bank, for which the Islamist Hamas has claimed responsibility. Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year, which has led to the ongoing war in Gaza.
Israel has said it is stepping up its counter-terrorism operations in the West Bank, claiming Iran-backed groups are smuggling weapons into the region from Jordan and trying to launch attacks on Israeli territory.
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