Shortly after expelling the Syrians from the Golan Heights in October 1973, Israel recovered the bodies of Israeli soldiers who, judging by the condition in which they were found, had all been murdered and mutilated after being taken alive. The American Zionist Federation this week distributed a passage, in English and Arabic, from the official gazette of the Syrian government, Al-Jarida al-Rasmiya, dated July 11, 1974, which has been overlooked until now which reveals the manner in which some of these Israeli soldiers were murdered by their Syrian captors.
In the course of a debate in the Syrian National Assembly in December 1973, the Minister of Defense, Mustafa T’las cited the following incident as an example of “supreme valorized
“There is the outstanding case of a recruit from Aleppo who murdered 28 Jewish (Israeli) soldiers all by himself, slaughtering them like sheep. All of his comrades in arms witnessed this. He butchered three of them with an axe and decapitated them. In other words, instead of using a gun to kill them he took a hatchet to chop their heads off. He struggled face to face with one of them and, throwing down his axe, managed to break his neck and devour his flesh in front of his comrades. This is a special case. Need I single it out to award him the Medal of the Republic? I will grant this medal to any soldier who succeeds in killing 28 Jews and I will cover him with appreciation and honor for his bravery.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
