Syrian Jews calls on the White House to lift sanctions on Syria
Since the fall of the Assad regime last December, the capital Damascus has witnessed a rare event, represented by the return of some Syrian Jews to inspect the properties they left decades ago, as this visit was the first of its kind in years.
Meanwhile, Syrian-American Jews who have previously fled the country appealed to the White House this week, urging the Trump administration to lift sanctions on Syria that are hampering the restoration of the country’s historic synagogues.
Henry Hamra, who left Damascus with his family in the 1990s to settle in New York, visited the Syrian capital last month with his father, Rabbi Yosef Hamra, (77), and a small group of Jews.
The purpose of the visit was to search for ancient synagogues and a Jewish cemetery.
Among the places Hamra and his father visited was the Franj Synagogue in the Jobar area of Damascus, where his father had previously served as a rabbi.
Hamra said they had briefed State Department and White House officials on the latest developments in Syria.
They were accompanied in these efforts by Moaz Mustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, who played a prominent role in the past in urging the US administration to impose sanctions on the Assad government for crimes of torture and systematic killing.
Mustafa called on the US administration to lift comprehensive sanctions that hinder investment and reconstruction in Syria after the fall of the Assad regime, noting that rebuilding the Jobar synagogue could be a small but important step towards stability in Syria.
He added that Trump is the person who can achieve this goal.
Hamra met Mustafa during the Syrian war under Assad, when he contacted him to help rescue artifacts inside the Jobar synagogue while fighting was raging around it.
In the 1990s, thousands of Jews fled Syria, and today only seven members of the Jewish community remain in Damascus, most of them elderly.
It’s noteworthy that the sanctions imposed by successive US administrations on the Assad government came as a response to human rights violations, including torture, killing and arbitrary arrests of opponents.
