Marcelle Taljah, 63: Murdered a day after granddaughter born

Marcelle Taljah, 63, a dual Israeli-South African citizen, was murdered by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha on October 7.

Taljah, who lived near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, was visiting the kibbutz to help out with her grandchildren since her daughter had just given birth to a new baby on October 6. According to her family, Taljah was on the way to visit her older grandchildren in the kibbutz on Saturday morning when she was gunned down by terrorists.

“I am sad to announce that my mother was murdered only a day after I gave birth,” her daughter, Liora Ben Tsur, wrote on Facebook.

“My mother, Marcelle Taljah, was a woman sweeter than honey. She was heading toward Dor and the kids with candy on Simhat Torah when the terrorists killed her in Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha,” she wrote. “She did only good in our world. Our heart is shattered.”

Ben Tsur shared the final photo taken of Taljah, as she cradled her brand new granddaughter in a hospital just hours before she was murdered.

Her friend, Barbara Meltz-Kahn, told the South African Jewish Report that her body was found by her sons “on the path leading to their sister’s home. She was still holding onto a box of Nature’s Valley Granola Bars.”

Taljah and her husband, Yaakov — a fellow South African immigrant, who was killed in a tractor accident in 2015 — established the Taljah farm in the South Hebron Hills in the 1990s.

Her son, Yedidya, wrote on Facebook that his mother was “a special woman, a woman of the land of Israel with all her body and soul, and that’s how she lost her life, for the holiness of the Land of Israel.”

Ben Tsur told Ynet that her mother was “a unique woman, modest and sensitive, who always told us to take care of the land of Israel… my mother passed on her love for the land to her children as well.”

Marcelle’s son, Betzalel Taljah, told Army Radio that “my mother immigrated alone from South Africa, in the name of Zionism, in the name of the Jewish people, she made aliya by herself. She left all of her family there, moved to Israel, chose to live in the State of Israel… a good woman, who never judged anyone else in her life… she accepted everyone, loved everyone, took care of everyone.”

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