New Delhi: Geri Gideon Hanghal, a staff sergeant serving in Israel’s army and who immigrated to the country from India in 2020, was killed in a ramming attack in the West Bank on Wednesday (September 11), media reports said.
According to the Times of Israel, 24-year-old Hanghal was killed when a Palestinian man crashed his fuel tanker into an army post near the Jewish settlement of Givat Asaf in the Palestinian West Bank.
Israel’s military was cited as saying by the BBC that the truck driver was “neutralised” by soldiers and an armed civilian.
PTI reported that Hanghal hailed from the Bnei Menashe community of Jewish people living in Manipur and Mizoram and that he immigrated to Israel from India in 2020.
His funeral was scheduled for Thursday, the news agency added.
It also reported that some 5,000 Bnei Menashe Jews are thought to have moved to Israel in the last five years, while another 5,500 remained in India and “are waiting to immigrate”.
About 300 young people from the Bnei Menashe community are thought to be serving in Israel’s army in its war against Palestinian group Hamas, PTI’s report said.
The Times of Israel has reported that the Bnei Menashe consider themselves descendants of the “lost” Israelite tribe of Menasseh.
A chief rabbi of Israel “affirmed their identity as a “lost tribe” group with historic Jewish ties” in 2005, the newspaper said, adding that researchers are not convinced of the claim.
The truck drivers’ attack that killed Hanghal comes against the backdrop of Israeli forces conducting a sequence of operations in the northern West Bank, with prolonged raids in three cities, Reuters reported.
This in turn takes place as Israel remains engaged its war against Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls the separate Gaza territory, for its eleventh month.
The war began after Hamas conducted an attack into Israeli territory in October last year and killed around 1,200 people. Israel’s armed forces retaliated by moving into and bombing Gaza, with the territory’s health ministry estimating that over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed.
