Special forces recently carried out an operation to rescue the last Jewish family in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

According to an exclusive report in the Jewish Chronicle, the last Jews of Aleppo in Syria were smuggled out of their home in a daring rescue mission earlier this year.

Months before the raid, a relative had told the members of the Halabi family that a rich man in America had a plan to help the family escape their home city, where thousands have been killed in three years of bombing raids, sniper fire and shelling.

The American, business tycoon Moti Kahana, who has extensive links to anti-Assad rebels in the region, had been told that Daesh or Isis was closing in on the Halabis' home. If the Islamist terrorists found out the women were Jewish, they would be instantly killed — or worse. He decided to organise their escape.

At first, the family of eight thought it was soldiers with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s army there to arrest them. But in the bus, a driver told them they would be taken to New York City in hopes of easing their fears, as another handed out fake Syrian passports for each of the family members : the mother, Mariam; her two daughters Sara, in her 60s, and Gilda, in her 50s; Gilda’s Muslim husband, Khaled; and his three children.

At a checkpoint operated by the al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, the driver said they were refugees seeking to reach refugee camps in the country’s north. In total, the journey took 36 hours.

Mariam and Sara, who has never married, were given safe haven in Israel, and they now live in Ashkelon. But for Gilda and her family, things took a turn for the worse.

According to The Jewish Chronicle, Jewish Agency officials — who are charged with verifying a person’s religious identity — decided that Gilda had converted to Islam to marry Khaled around three years ago. They said she could not make aliyah under the law of return.

“The Sochnut took the 88-year-old elderly woman and her non-married daughters to Israel, and they left the one who married a Muslim guy in Turkey,” said Kahana.

“The lease on the house I was renting for them expired. They had no money, no food, they had nothing in Turkey."

Frightened, Gilda and her husband felt they had no choice but to return to Syria — where they remain. “By the time I got her on the phone, she was already in Syria,” he added. “They did not want to be in a refugee camp.