October 18, 2026
Maryam Jammous passed away from our world during the last Jewish Day of Atonement, carrying with her a 42-year-long secret about the fate of her husband Suleiman Murad Jamous, one of the most prominent officials of the Jewish community in Lebanon, who was kidnapped in Beirut in 1984. Her departure came at a time when hopes of knowing the fate of her husband increased, coinciding with the inclusion of the file of missing Jews in Lebanon in the ongoing negotiations between Beirut and Tel Aviv.
Maryam’s story, according to a report published by journalist Lior Ben Ari on the Israeli “Yedioth Ahronoth” website, sheds light on a complex era in the history of the Lebanese civil war. Maryam’s life began in Damascus, where she worked as a mobile nurse, and took advantage of her nightly movements to smuggle Jewish girls from Syria to Israel. This activity resulted in her being arrested and imprisoned twice for several months, before she was able to leave Syria as part of a group that arrived in Lebanon and decided to settle there.
In Beirut, she met Suleiman Jammous, who worked in the textile and real estate trade, and they married in 1975, with the outbreak of the civil war. The family had three sons, while Suleiman managed his business from an office inside the Magen Avraham Synagogue in the Wadi Abu Jamil area. However, the family’s path turned upside down in August 1984, when Suleiman was kidnapped under mysterious circumstances, and his office was burned, with the word “Jew” written on its walls.
Her son Moshe indicated that his father was involved in smuggling operations, and that he advised his wife not to inquire about the nature of his activities or the sources of his money. In the absence of her husband, Maryam bore heavy burdens within the Jewish community, which included identifying bodies suspected of being Jewish, which were left near the family home in Beirut to arrange their burial.
The seriousness of the situation escalated after the family received a call from an entity linked to the kidnappers, offering to release Suleiman in exchange for handing over his eldest son. These threats prompted Maryam to smuggle her children to Israel in October 1986, where they were placed in internal institutions, while she continued to move between Lebanon and Israel via Ras Naqoura until her final settlement there in 1989. The son raised questions about the parties that facilitated his mother’s movements and provided her with financial support and communications in Lebanon, without providing conclusive answers.
Despite her move to Israel, Maryam faced difficult living conditions and lost her social status, and her children were forced to remain in residential institutions while she worked in manual professions. However, she continued to seek to uncover the fate of her husband, and in this context she met repeatedly with the Coordinator for Prisoners and Missing Persons Affairs in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, Gal Hirsch, to follow up on the negotiation rounds.
Moshe confirmed that informing his mother that her husband’s file was officially included in the negotiations revived her hope, but it doubled her grief and longing. As her health condition deteriorated and she was admitted to the hospital, she continued to ask about the results of the talks and inspect her husband’s belongings, until she died after saying to her son in her last moments: “Moshe, I can now leave the matter… I am tired.”
The fate of Suleiman Jamous is still unknown, so his case remains pending awaiting the outcome of the negotiations between Beirut and Tel Aviv, shedding light on a mysterious chapter of the Jewish presence in Lebanon during the civil war.
