martillo@ihuxt.UUCP (Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo) (04/07/84)
The story of the rape-murder of a pregnant Jewish women in Haleb was called dubious in a net article. I put out a call for articles on it. This is the first which I received. It comes from the WOJAC Bulletin. [ WOJAC is: World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries Organisation Modiale des Juifs Originaires des Pays Arabes Washington Relations Office 905 16th St., NW Washington, D.C. 20006 USA (202) 347-4969] The article: The recent atrocity perpetrated in Aleppo against a Jewish family serves as a grim reminder of the precarious position of the Jewish community in Syria. On December 28, 1983, Chaim Victor Abadi returned home from his office to find that his 25-year-old pregnant wife, Lillian, had been shot, repeatedly stabbed, her breasts cut, stomach slit open, the fetus she was carrying destroyed, and her body mutilated. Next to her were the butchered bodies of her daughter Sandy, 3 and son Joseph, age 6. Some suspect that the atrocity was carried out by the "special forces of Rifaat Assad, brother of President Hafez Assad, as part of a campaign to further intimidate and terrorize the small Jewish community of Syria. The victim, Lillian Antabi Abadi was raped by an officer of Rifaat Assad's forces in July 1980 during an ostensible house search for outlawed Muslim brotherhood literature. It is especially disturbing to note that this atrocity, which is difficult to imagine being carried out without the implicit approval of the Syrian secret police, the Mukhabarat, which keeps close surveillance of the Jewish community, has gone virtually unreported in the United States. This fiendish triple-murder is a particular grotesque reminder of the extreme vulnerability of the Syrian Jewish community whose situation is so treacherous that it looks upon Hafez Assad as its protector. Should Hafez Assad disappear from the Syrian scene, the general expectation is that the security status of the community would decline even more rapidly at hands of an unleashed Moslem Brotherhood, and may even be engulfed in a bloodbath. There are presently about 4,000 Jews in Damascus, 700 in Aleppo and 200 in Kamishly. I will post more articles as I receive them in the original language (if the character set permits) and in translation.