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The family had hoped to be reunited with Yoni in New York but despite the Halabis having fled to safety, their story does not have a wholly happy ending.

When they arrived in Istanbul, Kahana told them visas to America were hard to secure and it would be easier to apply for a right of return visa to Israel — known as Aliyah — to begin with.

Kahana contacted the Jewish Agency, the body responsible for repatriation of Jews to Israel, which dispatched a liaison to arrange the transfer to Israel. But while Mariam and Sarah were granted Aliyah, Gilda was refused because she had converted to Islam to marry her Muslim husband.

They were happy to leave

“They wanted to come to New York but I thought it was easier for them to go to Israel first,” Kahana said.

“Then my contact told me that the Israelis took the mother and the daughter, but left the married daughter behind. I was so frustrated.”

With no money to live off, Gilda and her husband took the risk to return their young family to Syria. Meanwhile, her elderly mother and her sister Sarah have now settled in Ashkelon, Israel.

All three women have declined to speak to journalists, but Kahana knows that they are traumatized by the separation. The Jewish Agency claims it did what it could to help the family but that under the rules of Aliyah migration, converts are not eligible.

Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the agency, blamed Kahana for luring the family out of Syria on the promise that he could get them to America.

Jews lived in Syria for more than 3,000 years until a mass exodus following the creation of Israel in 1948, and again in the 1960s. There are now believed to be only 18 Jews left in Syria, all of them living in Damascus.