The Remarkable Story of Yaron Avraham: From Muslim to Jew

Yaron Avraham was born into a Muslim Arab family in Lod, Israel. His family was not only Muslim, but affiliated with the Islamic Movement in Israel — that is, the Muslim Brotherhood. He is now a religious Jew, with a Jewish wife and four Jewish children. He lives in Jerusalem. And he is about to open a restaurant. Will he be paid a visit by Muslims determined to punish him for his conversion? Nothing, he says, can frighten him anymore. Growing up as a Muslim, he became inured to death. The astonishing tale of his moral trajectory can be found here: “Gaza mosques to Jerusalem synagogues: A radical Islamist’s journey to Judaism,” by Ohad Merlin, Jerusalem Post, June 12, 2024:

“I’m sorry for all the mess, I’ve been busy with setting up my new restaurant, a dream come true,” said Yaron Avraham, 46, smiling apologetically while talking to The Jerusalem Post. Almost nothing in the appearance of Avraham, a religious Jew, can provide any hint of his past life and horrible childhood experiences.

Avraham was born in Lod to a radical family affiliated with the Islamic Movement in Israel, the 12th child in a household of 18. “We usually start observing some of the Muslim commandments at the age of seven. This is when I was sent to mosques for the first time, aspiring to be a religious and pious man. I would wake up at 5:30 a.m.,” he remembered.

However, growing up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, he was also exposed to crime at a very young age. “I remember finishing my studies around 3 p.m., finding myself walking around with a backpack full of drugs to distribute between addresses I got.”

Drug trafficking was not the only type of crime he was exposed to. “In our culture, family honor is of the highest importance. It is not a religious matter but a cultural one, with the value of preserving the honor of the family sometimes even bypassing some religious commandments, especially when it comes to women, something the Western world would find difficult to grasp,” he explained.

“Women must uphold the ‘honor of the family’ by essentially obeying everything the men tell them, including how and when to leave the house, how to dress, whether to open a bank account and get a driver’s license, etc.,” he said.

“I had an older sister, Sarah. She was in 11th grade, around 17-18 years old, when I was nine. My older brother, a cruel and merciless drug dealer, yet pious in his way of life, approached Sarah one day and informed her that she was not allowed to leave the house without his consent. Not to meet friends, not to go to school – she had to get his permission for everything.

“But Sarah was not ready to listen. She had dreams and hopes and wanted to do everything that girls her age did, so she stood her ground. My brother did not like that, and soon Sarah was subject to recurring, terrible violence from him and two of the other older brothers.

“After three months of violence and torture, the older brother approached Sarah again and told her that he allowed her, in all his ‘kindness,’ to go out to work, but only if she dressed modestly and returned home at a set curfew of 5 p.m. There would be no talking to men, no going out, not anything else, just from work, home, and back.

“Sarah would sometimes come home late by a few minutes and had to face beatings and violence again. One evening she returned very late, around 8:30 p.m. She was ‘interrogated’ by my brothers and she admitted that she had gone for a walk in the mall.

“My oldest brother determined straight away that she had crossed a red line and disgraced the family’s honor. This is an unpardonable offense for which only one punishment exists.

“Around 10-10:30 p.m., the older brothers dragged all of us to our rooms and locked us in them, while Sarah was locked in another one. We heard terrible beatings and screams from the room next door, and it kept on going like that for hours.

At around 12:30 a.m., we started hearing the most horrible screams I have ever heard, of Sarah begging for her life. These terrible screams were the last 15 seconds of her life; the three brothers had slaughtered her there.

“I can hear her screams in my ear to this day, though it’s been 37 years. This is not something I can ever forget, a sister who screams and begs for her life – and then complete silence.

“During the night the body disappeared and no one knows where she is buried. For some reason she is still defined as ‘missing’ by the authorities,” Avraham added somberly.

“The doors were opened soon but we didn’t dare to leave our rooms. I left around 6:30 a.m. and saw that the room where everything happened was clean with barely a trace of anything.

“I saw my mother sitting in the yard, her eyes red, crying. She was sad and nervous and I asked what happened to my sister. My brothers who murdered my sister were also sitting there, smoking and laughing. It was as if death and killing were just a normal thing.”

Stranded in Gaza

For the culprit brothers, Avraham’s questions were was a red flag. “They thought I would endanger them so they had to get rid of me. Three days later they forcibly dragged me to the car and I found myself abandoned in a mosque in Gaza.”

Avraham stayed in that mosque, which had a sort of boarding school, for more than five years. “It was a difficult time for me. It was a cruel education on the path to being a martyr. I see it as a defense mechanism to confront the fear of death, while looking fear in the eyes.

“They made me experience death and find the ‘thrill’ in it. We were taken to participate in funerals of so-called shaheeds. Imagine this: Children are made to walk past the corpses of those alleged martyrs, kiss their hands or feet, depending on what’s left of them. Lots of brainwashing about heaven, hell, the afterlife.

“I managed to study the Quran by heart. At the age of 12.5, there came a stage where, according to them, I now rose to a higher level and should continue the mission to fight the Jews. By the way, this fight was never related to an occupation. This war is religious. To this day, when I am asked when there’ll be peace, my answer is always: ‘When the last Jew stops breathing,’” he added somberly.

“The most cruel experience I remember was at the age of 14, when we were taken to a cemetery in the center of Gaza, near a military base, each of us had to go down and lie in a grave with our eyes closed while other kids were reading verses of the Quran over us, so that we could feel the so-called ‘ascension of the soul.’

“I also remembered how kids paid with their lives for various offenses, including the execution of two of my colleagues, aged 13 and 15, who were beheaded following accusations that they had sexual relations.

“Death was just such a central part of life and life there has almost no value. What we were taught to fear was not death, rather life itself,” Avraham explained….

Be sure to read the rest. I told you at the beginning that Yaron Avraham’s story was astonishing. The violence of his Muslim home life. Hs brothers and their “honor” killing of their sister Sarah because she dared to take a walk in a mall, window-shopping, for a few hours. The cult of death at the mosque in Gaza where he remained trapped for five years. The kindness of so many Jewish strangers, from Uzi Sadeh to Benny Begin to his IDF commander, to his ultra-Orthodox friend Yaron, whose first name he took as his own. His volunteering for the IDF’s Givati brigade. Finally, his conversion to Judaism. Should you be in Jerusalem, go to the Bar Baguette, that will soon be up and running, and check out the amazing Yaron Avraham. You won’t be disappointed.