Source: Beliefnet
Wire Service: UPI
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/163/story_16373_1.html
On April 1, 2005 United Press International reported, "A chief rabbi in Israel has determined members of India's Bnei Menashe community are descendants of the ancient Israelites. Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar has dispatched a team of rabbinical judges to formally convert them to Orthodox Jewry so they can immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported Friday. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a group that raises money among evangelical Christians for Jewish causes, will finance the process of converting the Menashe and bringing them to Israel. The community consists of nearly 7,000 members of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo tribe, which lives in northeast India near the border of Myanmar (formally Burma)."