Rafael Suissa

Rafael Suissa was born in 1935 in Casablanca

Rafael Suissa was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1935. He studied at the Em HaBanim yeshiva and moved to Israel in 1950. There he studied at the Sde Hemed boarding school and was among the founders of Komemiyut.

He served in the IDF and was wounded in 1956 during the Suez Crisis. He ran the employment office in Yavne and later worked for Amidar.

He joined Mapai in 1956 and later chaired the party's Judea branch. He sat on the Mazkeret Batya council from 1965 and headed it in 1969. In 1981 he entered the Knesset for the Alignment, and from 1982 to 1984 he again headed Mazkeret Batya.

From 1985 to 1986 he was Commissioner of the Israel Prison Service, and he helped found the Association to Rehabilitate Prisoners. His list in the 1988 elections won 3,222 votes and did not enter the Knesset. He headed Mazkeret Batya again from 1993 to 2003.

After 2003 he remained a council member. In 1992 he received the Knesset Speaker's Quality of Life Award, and in 2009 a street in Mazkeret Batya was named after him. He died on 4 March 2024.