Palestinian Commander Khaled Mansour’s Daughter Tells Al-Ahed about her Educated Father

By Mustafa Awada

Khaled Saeed Mansour was the commander of the southern region in Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Paletine’s Islamic Jihad Movement.

He was martyred on August 6, 2022, during an “Israeli” air raid on his birthplace, the Rafah camp, with two of his companions. 

He began his journey at an early age and became a martyr at 43 on the road to Al-Quds.

In 1988, martyr Commander Khaled Mansour assumed the responsibility of developing the infrastructure of the Al-Quds Brigades, especially in the field of local missile manufacturing.

He joined the military arm of the Islamic Jihad movement and assumed command of the southern region. He was one of the founders of Al-Quds Brigades groups in the Gaza Strip, and he supervised the implementation of many of the brigades’ operations against the “Israeli” occupation. 

He was the mastermind of a number of martyrdom operations during the second Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, and he was the target of several assassination attempts, the last of which was in 2014.

On the first anniversary of his martyrdom, Baraa Mansour, the daughter of the martyred leader, talks to Al-Ahed about some aspects of her father's family life.

She recalls how the family meetings were sudden and irregular due to the security measures that the martyr was taking, and the conditions being imposed by the occupation.

He took care of the affairs of his eight children in the short time he spent at home and through phone calls from time to time, or through his wife, who was responsible and took on the role of the father in his absence. She was able to raise her children in accordance with the martyr’s wishes.

“My father was absent for the first six years of my childhood because of his jihadi work and the security situation, but he made that up to me as I got older and took me with him as much as possible. I sometimes accompanied him for a whole day. This engraved many memories. I even bid farewell to most of his martyr comrades,” Baraa said.

When talking about her father’s most prominent qualities, Baraa says he “was a very light, shy guest who did not burden me when he visited my house and did not stay for a long time, not because the Zionist enemy was pursuing him, but rather as a commitment from him to the etiquette of hospitality. In addition, he insisted on the grandchildren staying in his house and always checked on them, even late at night, in almost daily phone calls.”

“Although my father did not finish his education, he was keen on acquiring knowledge by reading and sharing it with us. When he decided to learn Hebrew, he tasked us with helping him with the lessons. He wrote my name and my seven brothers in the enemy’s language with the aim of learning, albeit to a small extent,” She narrated.

My father also had a large library in our house containing hundreds of books, some of which he distributed for the purpose of collective benefit, and he could not read some of the others because he was preoccupied.”

Touching on his last days and his martyrdom, the daughter of Commander Mansour tells Al-Ahed, “It is difficult to describe that painful moment, as we expected to receive news of his elevation repeatedly, but not in this short battle. Our circumstances did not allow us to meet because of the conditions at that time, and only three of my brothers who lived in another place saw my father. We heard the news of his martyrdom by chance on the radio when we were going to sleep at dawn. We waited for the news to be disproved, but the letters of disproval fell with the rise of my father as a martyr.”