Shama, Mordechai

Mordechai, son of Sarah and Abraham, was born in 1946 in Libya and immigrated to Israel with his family in 1950. He completed his studies at the elementary school in Moshav Ahisamek. After immigrating to Israel, his family settled in Ahisamek, where he grew up and spent most of his life. After graduating, Mordechai worked in his parents’ farm, and since he was the eldest son of a large family, he helped the family and supported it. Eventually he bought his own farm unit in the moshav, raised vegetables and treated several cows and chicken coop. In fact, he worked in both his parents’ and his own farms, and did the hard work there. In November 1967 he married his girlfriend Mazal. Mordechai was drafted into the IDF at the end of October 1968 for short-term compulsory service, because he was initially rejected because he supported his parents, after he married a wife and owned his own farm, and was discharged from regular duty. When the Yom Kippur War broke out, Mordecai served in reserve in his unit in the Sinai, at Maoz Morakrat, on the Suez Canal, on the first day of the war, Mordechai was hit and killed when the Egyptians broke into the stronghold . At first his burial place was not known, and it was only four months later that his body was returned from the area held by the Egyptians. He was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Kiryat Shaul. He left behind a wife and three children, parents, seven sisters and six brothers. After his fall, he was promoted to corporal. In a letter of condolence to the bereaved family, the commander of the unit wrote: “Mordekhai fought with great courage, and during his service with us in the battalion we found qualities of a man and a model warrior.”