Surprising Allies for Syrias New Leaders: Some Jews Who Fled Long Ago
Henry Hamra left Damascus as a teenager more than 30 years ago and never stopped pining for home.“It was my dream to go back,” he told lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday.In February, shortly after the Assad regime was toppled, Mr.
Hamra and his father, Rabbi Yosef Hamra, finally returned with other Jews to see ancient sites that are remnants of many centuries of Syrian Jewish history.The new government of President Ahmed al-Shara, a former rebel leader with jihadist roots, helped make the trip happen.The visit was hopeful, but it also broke Mr.
Hamra’s heart.Fourteen years of civil war, and a thicket of financial restrictions imposed by the U.S.
government and others, have crippled Syria, physically and economically.The sites he ached to see are in disrepair or destroyed, including the ancient Jobar synagogue and a Damascus cemetery that is the resting place of a prominent 16th- and 17th-century mystic.“There’s a lot of work that has to be done and I think the only thing that’s stopping the whole thing is the sanctions,” Mr.
Hamra said in a meeting with Representative Jimmy Panetta, Democrat of California.The Hamras have joined Syrian American advocacy groups, initially formed in opposition to the government of Bashar al-Assad, in lobbying the United States to lift sanctions on the new government.The family, prominent members of Brooklyn’s large Syrian Jewish community, reached out to those groups for help making their visit to Syria, and were in turn enlisted to help make the case for sanctions relief, in a play calculated to intrigue American officials.But Marshall Whittman, spokesman for the pro-Israel lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said, “Any change in policy must be based on a sustained demonstration of positive behavior from the new Syrian government.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
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