Ben Naflah, Rafael (Rafi)

Rafael, son of Masoudi and Shlomo, was born on November 5, 1953, in Casablanca, Morocco, and immigrated to Israel with his parents in 1962. Raphael enlisted in the IDF in early May 1971 and successfully passed various courses in the Artillery Corps. “When I learned that he had fallen on the Syrian front, it turned out that many members of his family did not even know that he had served in combat. In the Yom Kippur War, Rafi participated in the battle over Tel Fares in the Golan Heights. When the shelling began, he hurried to his cannon – but could not reach it. A shell hit him and he was killed. For a long time, Rafi was considered missing and his parents hoped that he had been captured by the Syrians. They think they discovered it in photographs that came to Israel from various sources. But when the list of prisoners full of Damascus arrived, hope vanished. It turned out that Rafi was killed in the shelling on October 6, 1973, and was later identified as someone who had been buried as a non-Jew in Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, and left behind his parents, four brothers, and two sisters. His parents donated to a synegoug In Be’er Sheva, a Torah scroll named after Rafi.