Many Jews in Israel of Syrian origin, along with Syrians throughout the world, rejoiced in the fall of the brutal 54-year Assad regime that began with the cruel iron-fisted rule of President Hafez al-Assad in 1971 and continued with his son Bashar’s ascent to power in 2000.

Yaffa Levy told Ynet that she could feel the heavy burden her father, Marco (Mordechai) Khalifa, carried for the rest of his life after enduring the cruelty of the Assad regime.

“It’s a shame my father isn’t here to witness this meaningful closure,” she said. “My father was born into a wealthy family in Syria. They owned a nigella seed factory and lived well. His name was Mordechai Cohen, but he changed it to Marco Khalifa to hide his Jewish identity from Muslims. At 16, he left Syria for Lebanon, where he was tasked with smuggling Jews from Syria to Israel.”

“He did this for almost 20 years, starting in the early 1950s, using trucks to sneak them through the Golan Heights. Assad’s men eventually caught on. As punishment and to set an example, they imprisoned and tortured Marco’s father, Yitzhak-Zaki Khalifa.”

Following his father’s arrest, Marco was asked to return to Syria to rescue a prominent Jewish family. “My father was here in Israel,” Yaffa said. “They sent an Arab man from Yafo, a father of eight, to accompany and monitor him, warning that his children would be harmed if anything happened to my father. They were his collateral.”

“My father disguised himself as an Arab and arrived at his mother’s home in Syria, initially pretending to beg for tzedaka and food. He asked to stay the night and then revealed that he was her son. Years had passed since they parted. At first, she didn’t recognize him, but when he told her, she said, ‘Leave this place, return to Israel immediately and never come back.’”

“She told him they had tortured his father in prison and gouged out his eyes. She feared he’d meet the same fate. My father was a Zionist. He returned to Israel, fought in all the wars, served in the army as both a recruit and in the reserves, participated in the liberation of the Kotel in Jerusalem and started a family,” she said.

“But he always carried the weight of what happened to his father. Together with longing for his mother and the family he left behind, it was a burden he carried to his last day.”

Yaffa said that although her father passed away over 30 years ago, she and her family feel a sense of closure at the fall of the regime

“We were overjoyed,” Yaffa says. “We saw how much it pained him so it’s a great relief for us.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)