Daughter of murdered SA expat reclaims kibbutz life

The verse “a time to be born and a time to die” in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), which speaks of there being a time and season for everything, has always struck a chord with Liora Ben Tsur. Yet, she never could have imagined how deeply these words would resonate when, on 7 October 2023, she lost her beloved mother just one day after giving birth to her own daughter.

Ben Tsur’s South African-born mother, Marcelle Taljah, was visiting her daughter’s home on Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha on the Gaza border for a few days over the 7 October holiday weekend. There to help Ben Tsur’s husband, Dor, look after the couple’s two older children while their baby sister was being born, she stayed in a guest house on the kibbutz.

The South African Zionist Federation and the Israel Centre were scheduled to bring Ben Tsur to South Africa on 7 October, 2024, but her flight was cancelled. She spoke to the SA Jewish Report from Israel.

“On 6 October 2023, my mother came to visit me in hospital and to see my newborn, Asif,” Ben Tsur recalled. “She held her for the first and last time. In Hebrew, the meaning of ‘Asif’ is ‘last fruit before the winter’.”

When at 06:30 the next morning rockets were fired into Israel, Ben Tsur was in Assuta Hospital in Ashdod with baby Asif. “I contacted my husband, and he told me that he and the kids were going into the shelter and that he’d contact me later. I asked him if my mother had come and he said, ‘Not yet.’”

From the multiple WhatsApp messages she received from her friends, Ben Tsur soon realised that Hamas terrorists had infiltrated the kibbutz.

“They asked me to help them, to save them because I was one of the only ones outside of the kibbutz that day. I didn’t have contact with my family. I realised I needed to open a war room. I had Asif in my right hand and the phone in my left hand.” As a reporter, Ben Tsur had worked as an army correspondent, and so began calling all the military numbers she had saved on her phone.

Yet her heart sank when a policewoman on the other end of the line eventually told her, “I’m sorry, the soldiers we sent to you are now dead.” Realising that her family and friends were truly alone, Ben Tsur called her brothers, Betzalel and Yedidiya, for help.

Guiding her brothers via WhatsApp, Ben Tsur kept in touch with a pregnant friend who was also her neighbour. “She called and told me that they had terrorists inside their house. I realised that the house they would go to next would be ours. I told my brothers to run to Dor and the children. Dor came out with a knife, and my brothers gave him a gun to protect himself and saw that the children were fine.”

Now en route to the guest house searching for their mother, the horrified brothers suddenly found her body in a pool of blood. “She’d been hit by a lot of Kalashnikov bullets,” said Ben Tsur. “Searching for something to hide her body so that it wouldn’t be kidnapped by terrorists, my brothers saw that she was holding snacks for my children next to her heart.”

This epitomised the grandmother that Taljah was. “She really loved all her grandchildren, and was always bringing juice and sweets to give them,” Ben Tsur said. “In the days before 7 October, she was jumping with my kids on the trampoline. I said, ‘You’re 65, why are you jumping on the trampoline with the children? Be careful with your knee.’ She was always telling me that life is short. She was right.”

At 16:00 on 7 October, Ben Tsur received a call from Dor confirming her worst fears – her mother had been murdered. “I was screaming. My shouting was louder than the newborn babies in the hospital. In that moment, I realised that I was an orphan. My father had died in 2015 in a tractor accident.”

Though Ben Tsur’s parents met in Israel, they both came from South Africa and had farming backgrounds. Together, they established Taljah Farm on Mount Hebron and imported sheep from South Africa. Today, Ben Tsur’s brothers and niece run the farm.

“My mother was an only child after years of her parents trying to have a baby,” said Ben Tsur. “She decided in her 20s that she wanted to make aliya, but her parents wanted her to stay in South Africa. She told us the story of going into the field where her family farmed. She touched the grass, and asked G-d for a sign whether or not to make aliya. She saw that every blade of grass had a drop of water on it, and told herself that if G-d was taking care of every blade of grass, he would also take care of her, so she moved to Israel by herself.”

Working on various kibbutzim, Taljah also studied Torah. “She connected with Israel and Judaism, and she wanted to build a family of proud Jews in Israel,” said Ben Tsur. She recalls that once, when she asked her mother to take her to get a South African passport, she told her there was no way she was leaving Israel.

“She said, ‘I didn’t come here to Israel so you would go back to live your life in South Africa. You should stay in this country and build your life here.’”

With this in mind, Ben Tsur and friends from her region in the south called Otef Aza (the Gaza envelope) have started a movement called Atid Le’Otef (Future for the Otef). “We want to build trust, rehabilitate the region, and take people home. After the loss of my wonderful mother, I told myself we needed to do everything we could to get back home.”