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- [00:05]
A
Hi everybody. Welcome to Ask Aviv. Anything today is going to be a very special and unique episode because I have here my boss and mentor in journalism. I don't think he likes me saying this, but in fact, somebody I worked for for 17 of the last 19 years, roughly, and under whose tutelage I honed my journalistic craft. So if you've ever seen me do anything bad in journalism or don't like my journal, the reason David Horvitz is here, and he agreed to come on to talk about an absolutely extraordinary visit that he paid to the capital of the new Syria, whatever the heck that is. We've done several episodes trying to figure that out, talking to a Druze activist, talking to an analyst from the uae, and needless to say, there's a lot of complexity and mystery there. It's not at all clear to me that the new leadership of Syria knows exactly what the new Syria actually is. So we're going to dig into it with one of the very few Israeli journalists who has literally been to Syria to meet some of the new leadership, some of the members of the government, and to look at the remains of the Jewish community, ancient and modern. Let me just say before we get into it, this episode is sponsored by the American Technion Society. With Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah degraded, what technologies will Israel need to defend itself in a new Middle East? Every day, groundbreaking research from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology is transformed into real world defense tech that protects Israel and saves lives. From Iron Dome to Iron Beam just coming online in a serious way. From drones to satellites and cybersecurity to supercomputers, fundamental science born in Technion Labs, is brought to life by visionary Technion alumni serving in the IDF and the defense industries who, who give Israel its qualitative edge. If you love Israel and want to keep it safe, to boost its economy, to strengthen its people, to invest in the great minds, discoveries and inventions that come from the Technion, that's a phenomenal way to make a bigger impact on Israel's future and ensure its safety than just about anything I can think of. I should just say, parenthetically, these are people that I admire and am absolutely amazed by. If you want to learn more, go to ats.org A T S. O R G Khaviv and finally, I want to just invite everyone to join the Patreon. Everything we do, all of our content, with the exception of a monthly livestream, is outside the paywall. It's available for the public. That's Kind of the point of this podcast. But if you join the Patreon, you ask the questions that make us decide what kinds of issues to tackle on the podcast. There's a discussion forum there. People who teach me every day, who bring in fascinating materials, have a great time. So hope to see you there. David, how are you?
- [03:05]
B
How you doing?
- [03:07]
A
I'm doing okay. I'm doing okay. It's funny to have you on the podcast. I'm not going to beat around the bush. It's kind. It's. It's really great to have you here, people, just so they have a context. In 2005, I got my first job in journalism at the website of the Jerusalem Post. That was then under David Horovitz. And then we needed, I think, a military reporter in 2006 to go up north. So I was made a reporter. And the rest is history. 19 years of history. So it's great to have you come on the podcast. I'm going to cover some of the ground that Amanda, our very good friend and longtime colleague, covered on the Daily Briefing of the Times of Israel, which is absolutely unmissable and important if you want to know the actual news coming out of Israel and prefer listening to reading. But you just did something absolutely amazing and really unusual. You mentioned that Engil went to Syria. Really? I mean, snuck into military bases as Syria is falling, but I don't know of another one. In other words, is there a third Israeli journalist who's been to Syria in the last two years?
- [04:21]
B
I think there may be, and I don't even want to say his name in case I'm doing him some harm, but I think there's somebody else who does risky stuff. My trip was not risky, and therefore, I think what is fair to say, as far as I know, is that I'm the first Israeli journalist living in Israel who was allowed into Syria. It was not a sneaky thing on a visit that was sanctioned by the new Syrian leadership. So I had thought that it might be scary, and I didn't know whether they'd let me in, to be honest. Although the American rabbi who led the group that I was invited to tag along with was completely confident that there would be no problem whatsoever. And so it proved.
- [05:01]
A
And that's really the astonishing thing. This is a new Syria, or it's at least a Syria trying to market itself to the world and to American Jews and to Syrian Jews in America, which is what this trip seemed to be structured around as a brand new Syria. Shortly after you visited, right before the UN General Assembly. At the General Assembly, Ashara, the new president of Syria met with Jews in America, the Syrian Jewish community in the United States. Did it feel like a new Syria? Walk us through that. I want to get to sort of larger geostrategic questions, but what was it like to just run around Damascus for a couple of days?
- [05:40]
B
Yeah, the trip was really extraordinary. And I used the word surreal in the headline on the piece that I, you know, I wrote it as a travelogue for the Times of Israel. I wanted people to see what I had done, basically, and what we had done and make of it what they wanted to make of it. It was fascinating from, you know, from even before we left Istanbul. First of all, you know, it's. Maybe you could get there in four hours as the crow flies from Jerusalem to Damascus, but of course you can't. It took me three flights. It should have taken two, I suppose you'd think, you know, Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Damascus. But there are no flights anymore from Tel Aviv to Istanbul. So you have to go Tel Aviv, Athens, Istanbul. And there I met the other eight members of this group, one of whom, it turned out, had traveled from Israel. He's here on a visa. He had a visa in his American passport. And the Turkish Airlines clerk at the gate, at the gate on the road to Damascus, at the gate to Damascus, was looking through the passports and found I used my British passport. Although, by the way, in retrospect, I'm not even sure they would have minded if I'd used my Israeli passport. I don't know that. But this fellow traveler had an Israeli visa in his American passport. And the Turkish Airlines official said, you can't go to Damascus with an Israeli visa in your passport. A phone call was made again by Asher Lopatin, who's the rabbi who led this. I wasn't there. So that's what I think happened. Anyway, everybody got on that plane and off we went from Istanbul to Damascus. And there's a few things. I mean, I could speak about the trip itself at whatever length you let me. So stop me when you want me to stop. But this was a very obviously Jewish group. You know, when I. We're in Istanbul airport and remember, Istanbul is not terribly well disposed or Turkey's not terribly well disposed to Israelis. I would say people with Jewish expertise would also have a take on how they feel about Jews generally, but certainly not well disposed to Israelis. And for what, whatever you make of it. Here was a group of eight or nine people who were pretty obviously Jewish. When I got to the gate the rabbi, Rabbi Asher Lopatin from Michigan, who organized this group was davening. He had his talus on and he was, he was, he was praying. There were two.
- [07:53]
A
That's a dead giveaway.
- [07:54]
B
Usually a bit of a giveaway, but some very obvious other Jewish people, not all terr. By the way, it's again to stress that this was not, you know, there was no, there was no certainty that anything would be risky. And as it turned out, nothing felt risky at all. But this was a very obviously Jewish group. So we fly from Istanbul to Damascus, which is a pretty short flight and you know, it's barren desert, sort of beige desert a lot. And I was trying to pick out where the Runway even was. We come into land, there's maybe half a dozen planes on the tarmac. There's a bus, you know, taking you. There's no arm coming out of the airport terminal, there's a bus and you know, you put down somewhere near the terminal. And we, I at least went to get on the bus, walking past a sort of line of I think five or so black BMW SUVs and I hear somebody calling me off the bus because the convoy of black, you know, BMW SUVs was for us. And we VIP group of nine people were whisked away directly around the back of the terminal. So you want to start with surreal right there. Not merely were we VIP visitors being taken ahead of everybody else, but to the terminal that Israel blew up, you know, attacked soon after October 7th because there was violence across the border and so on. And that kind of set the tone. We go into this VIP lounge at the terminal, the kind of lounge where of course leaders sit with the chairs facing straight out into a room, two chairs facing into the room and where, you know, the diplomats sit with rapt attention as the host and his, you know, his guest give their press conferences and so on. It was that kind of room and that kind of set the tone for the trip that we were treated as VIPs and off we went. And we went off to what was two days of a mixture of very Jewish content. And I'll elaborate on that, including this extraordinary visit to the museum, the National Museum in Damascus, where wall paintings from the Dura Europos synagogue in eastern Syria, which certainly have not been documentedly seen by Jews for a few decades. 2000 year old paintings, the whole story about how they survived. That was sort of one of the Jewish highlights. And meetings with two ministers and one very senior official in the Foreign Ministry, you know, packed into these two days and Anything that you ask me, of course I'll answer you as honestly as I can. I do not claim to have any profound wisdom about the nature of the regime. I have anecdotes, I have impressions. We were only in Damascus and just to give you a little sense of how much of a bubble that apparently can be, one of the people who was with the Foreign ministry team went with us on our first stop after the airport, which was a neighborhood called Jabar on the outskirts of Damascus, which used to have a shul that was maybe several hundred years old, had been in continuous use until the civil war and it is now an absolute war zone. There's no remnant of this shul. We know where it was because even bits of it were there not too long ago. But this official had never been to Jabbar, had never seen the awful impact of the war. Buildings that were shelled, essentially destroyed, just the skeletal frames of them were left. She hadn't seen that before. She was really struck by it. So again, we were in this sort of little bubble of Damascus. I mean, I have got lots of impressions, but it was, you know, I don't claim profound understanding of anything on the basis of 48 hours.
- [11:46]
A
There's so many directions to go to it. The Doi Europo synagogue is a great maybe window, a way to start. Two things struck me. First of all, extraordinary. You actually have pictures in the piece which was wonderful because I even filmed.
- [11:59]
B
A little video Khabib which is so atypical for me, but I thought better use that other button on my phone.
- [12:06]
A
Some things pushed you into the TikTok age, some extraordinary things. I have to say that two things struck me. One, it's this 2,000 year old shul from eastern Syria and there are particular conditions that you describe in the piece. The battlefield conditions between the Romans and who was invading the Persians. Whoever it was, those specific conditions protected these walls, these paintings. But then Syria protected them. And they sit in the National Library in the National Museum, excuse me, of Syria. And it's a closed off area, nobody's allowed into, and it's light controlled because they don't want the paint to fade away after 2,000 years. And so they protect it without showcasing that they protect. In other words, I was amazed that the Syria of Assad would protect this ancient Jewish artifact just because. What did I miss? Saddam Hussein's Iraq threw ancient Jewish texts and parchments into basically basement dungeons that were flooded and destroyed. I mean, why would the Damascus Museum world, even under the Assad regime, have this room that is not even available to the public, but is absolutely protected to the point where we now have the oldest ancient. Well, what exactly is it? The oldest ancient Jewish paintings of biblical images of biblical scenes in the world is currently a closed off room in the National Museum of Syria that they wanted you to see. That's an unbelievably good sign, right? I mean.
- [13:45]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [13:46]
A
I mean, that's a bit of a convoluted question.
- [13:48]
B
No, I'm not looking to be cynical. I think it was. I mean, I think one should be suitably wary of things, but sure. So two things. First of all, just a little bit of history on that. So, yeah, the synagogue was built very close to the wall of the city of Jurieropus. And the Romans fortified the wall. And in that, in this instance, it meant they filled the synagogue with earth and debris, packed it as fortification, and therefore then it got covered up through time. It wasn't destroyed by any invading people. And in 1932 it was excavated and yielded this extraordinary find. Not the only find, but certainly the most extraordinary find in that area. And at some point between 1932 and, I don't know, maybe in the early 60s, but I'm not sure it was brought to Damascus. When I was first writing the piece, I used the wrong words like they brought the paintings. But no, they couldn't possibly have brought the paintings. They brought the walls because they're on the walls of the, of what was the shul and built a room, or built them, built a room around it. You know, I imagine there's something outside the original walls from 2000 years ago protecting those walls. So they built a facility in the National Museum in Damascus, as you say. And indeed it was protected during the Assad era, by the way, that area of eastern Syria and finds there were, I think, trashed by ISIS not too many years ago. In contrast again to what the Assad regime did and what the new leadership has done. I know because after I wrote the piece, somebody an academic wrote to me from the States, I think I'm right in saying, from Duke University that she and her husband visited and were allowed to see this in the early 80s, but I don't know of when it was seen since then. And we actually had an expert with us on in our little group. Her name is Jill Joshowitz. And she was like, you know, this has to be part of our trip. And she was sending all these messages before we went. And I don't think, I certainly didn't register how central that might prove. And on the Day when we were going to the museum, she said, you know, this is either gonna be the most disappointing or one of the best days of my life. They let us in and let us in in the most gracious and helpful way, I suppose. The chief curator at the museum took us in, I'm sure. I mean, everything about this trip was overseen, like I say, by the Foreign Ministry. So the order was given to let this group see the Dura Europa's wall paintings. And we go into this room, and Jill was, you know, basically transformed, I think, by the experience. She's been finished a book in which this finding features, and all of a sudden she's seeing something that she never thought she would see in her lifetime. And she and the chief curator basically spent a lot of the time walking around this vast room. I mean, these paintings are seven meters high on one wall, and most of the two side walls, there was a ceiling which was also, broadly speaking, saved, but it was reconstructed in Damascus because most of the tiles of the ceiling or some of them with certain American universities. But these two people were basically pooling their understanding of the exhibit. And again, in terms of your question about the Assad regime, after we'd visited that room and like, it was, I don't want to keep saying surreal, but you're in this room and you're overcome by the art because the art is incredibly powerful. And there it is, 2,000 years old, which means that. That I'm not good on archaeological timelines, but I kind of think that some of the events it depicts, it was closer to those events than we are to it. Do you understand what I'm saying? We're 2,000 years later. The things they were drawing, some of them, some may have been somewhat less than 2,000 years. That's a pretty striking thing to internalize. And then this very nice curator at the museum takes us unannounced. And I don't think it wasn't on a program. I mean, I know it wasn't. She said, do you want to see? She takes us to a storeroom somewhere else in the museum. And there, in a storeroom are. I don't use the wrong artifact is the right word. Relatively modern artifacts from that synagogue I mentioned in Jabbar. And there they are stored somewhere in the museum. Like, there's Sifra Torah, there's scroll Sifra Torah stored in what look like ammunition boxes, right? Wooden cr.
- [18:31]
A
And we should say burned.
- [18:32]
B
And some of them burned. I mean, some of them intact artifacts.
- [18:36]
A
Destroyed and broken, and they have to now restore them and she talked about it.
- [18:40]
B
We didn't, you know, there were artifacts that were not burned and destroyed. The Sifray Tora were definitely damaged, and they were not with any protective covering. And she was very adamant. The curator, please, you know, make clear that we're showing you this because we're trying to preserve them so that they can be restored and exhibited. But they were brought there also in the years of the Assad regime, and she didn't hide that. They were brought here when the Jabbar Synagogue was being destroyed at some stage and given to the museum for safekeeping. So I don't know what you should make of that. I think we can make of the fact that we were shown especially the Dure Europa's paintings, but also those little, much less valuable, much less significant, but still especially the Sifrata, are tremendously precious. We were shown these things with the goodwill and cooperation and initiative of the new leadership. And that's, you know, make of that what you will, but that's quite something.
- [19:43]
A
One of the extraordinary things I learned from the piece was that the Syrian government has appointed one of the deputy ministers of foreign affairs or somebody head of a department at the Foreign Ministry in charge of affairs of Jews, in charge of the Jewish Syrian diaspora, in charge of communicating with Jews, in charge of dealing with maybe also Jewish history in Syria. That connection, I want to just take two minutes and just tell people. The Syrian Jewish community is one of the stories of the emptying out of continents of Jews in the 20th century. In other words, there were probably in the 40s, 30,000 Jews. Many Jews fled during Ottoman times and French rul by the time Assyria is established after the French rule. Put it this way, in 48, there's roughly 30,000 Jews in Syria. Half of them run away over the next three, four, five years. It's a similar story in many parts of the Arab world. And in the 1950s, I think 1957, maybe, the Syrian regime actually outlaws Jews emigrating from Syria. So they have a few thousand left and they forbid them to emigrate and they seize their assets. And there are these smuggling operations I once published. I don't know if you remember. I think this was back in the Jerusalem Post days, an interview with Judy Feld Carr, this just mother homemaker in Toronto, who as a volunteer at her Toronto synagogue, slowly built out and masterminded over 20 years a massive smuggling operation of like 1,500 Jews bribing the right Lebanese and Syrian officials in trying to smuggle these people out. And the community has Literally depleted. Over, by the way, people who were caught smuggling out, trying to smuggle themselves out of Syria were killed and imprisoned. And so there was real fear. And in 1992, Hafez Al Assad allows the Jews, because of American pressure, I think because of his talks with the Israelis, allows the Jews to leave, and they're gone within two, three years. Every last Jew, almost. There's 15 left, maybe. And his one condition, of course, is that they not go to Israel. And nobody wanted to be the one who goes to Israel and then makes Assad close the doors and the Jews left. And so they didn't go to Israel. And so the whole story of the Syrian Jewish community is a story of abuse by the Assad regime. And now everything that they were trying to tell you was, that's not us. This is different. You actually wrote a sentence, and I don't think it was in quotes. I think it was your impression of what they were saying. So I want to ask you about it, that they would like Syrian Jews to come back. What do you make of that?
- [22:19]
B
So, first of all, the facts, as far as I could discern them, is that there are six Jews in Syria at the moment. Nothing is, or many things are not as simple to work out as you might think they would be, but that seems to be the sense. Four men, two women. I think that our group met two of them. I certainly interacted with one of them. I write about him who decides. I think he's got relatives in Israel and in the States, and he wants to stay, and he will stay, and he'll stay until his last days. The official who basically said, we want. We want to build relationships with Syrian Jews. We want them to come back. We want to encourage them to come back was a very, very senior official in the Foreign Ministry. He's the head of American affairs. That's an interesting thing, because the main focus, I think, when they're looking at ex Syrian Jewish residents and citizens is the United States, especially Brooklyn. One of the people who helped coordinate some of the logistics of our visit is an American ex Syrian Jew. He was One of the 11 people who were invited to this meeting that Ashara had at the, you know, in the. In the. In. In the period when he was in the States just now. So this very senior official said, yeah, we. We want to reach out to Jews. They're part of our country, and they. They are our citizens. We want them to come back. It's. Obviously, there's a. A goal here to show tolerance for different religions as emblematic of a new Syria that they want the world invest in. I can tell you that we saw signs of how much readiness there is. I mean, we all saw it. When Donald Trump went to the region not so many months ago and met with Ashara and came away basically gushing about this good looking guy, difficult job, tough job he's got. And it immediately lifted all the sanctions. It's my understanding, Khaviv, that Ashara went to the United States. Trump would have been delighted by that. But the UN still has him under sanction, and therefore he was only allowed to travel certain distances on his trip to America because he's under UN Sanction. And in his speech he said, please lift all the sanctions that remain against me in Syria. So they're certainly trying to signal a new Syria. And one of the ways that they're doing that, as well as a specific interest, is to be emblematically encouraging and tolerant of the Jewish community. And they're succeeding. I mean, the report that I had from the one person who I know who was in that meeting, it was not just with Jews or hundreds of people. I think it was in the Mandarin Hotel and there were 11 Jews in the room among hundreds of people. But I think at least one or two of the Jews got up to speak and said nice things. And this person had a very good impression. I quote him, and we had a little subsequent article, was very impressed. There is a will to at the very least to believe that something might get better unless proven otherwise. So I think their sort of outreach, goodwill effort is paying dividends at the moment. And if you even the speech that Ashara made at the UN which was very critical of Israel, and we'd heard very, very similar things, including there's now an apparent obstacle about Israel wanting some kind of humanitarian corridor to get to the Druze in, in Sweda in southern Syria, that was mentioned to us by this official as something that Syria would not tolerate. Kind of Israeli incursions basically legitimized Israeli corridors in Syria. But Ashara in his speech was like, you know, but we want dialogue and we're committed to the 1974 Disengagement of Forces agreement and so on, even as he was bashing Israel. And again, we heard this as well for ostensibly targeting this leadership's forces rather than the bad people in Sweden. Again, I want to underline the surreality of some of these things. We're driving around Damascus, we drive past the Defense Ministry khabib. Israel whacked the Syrian Defense Ministry not very many weeks ago. Because of what was going on in Sweden to try to deter what Israel said were attacks on the Druze and so on. So this was not taking place. Years after everything had calmed down. Here we are. I'm an Israeli being welcomed to Syria, and there we are in this convoy with government security, driving past the Defense Ministry that Israel not too long ago attacked.
- [26:55]
A
I don't know what to make of it. Ashara, I'm going to put you in the hot spot. I'm going to Devil's Advocate. Okay, you are. You are the Times of Israel editor, founder, and an Israeli all your adult life and not a Syrian, and certainly not here to advocate for them. But some of the points that were made in the piece were so extraordinary and so indicative and could not have just been manipulations or propaganda. They were so indicative of a change of direction. And yet Ashara, when he ruled Idlib during the civil war period, forcibly converted a village of Christians to his brand of radical Sunnism. Forcibly converted a Druze village to his brand of radical Sunnism. Ashara is former Al Qaeda now. He hasn't been Al Qaeda in a while. He and Al Qaeda had a big falling out. Okay, fine. But how far could he have gone from that? Al Qaeda and you. So, and all these feelers with Israel, is it a way to get into the Trump administration's good side? You give the Trump administration a chance to imagine a peace, they're going to walk with you very far. They're going to lift all kinds of sanctions. They're going to hug you and bring you to the White House and do all kinds of wonderful things. You can pocket. You don't actually have to sign any deal with the Israelis. And Trump has a clock ticking when he leaves office. Right. So how. I don't know if I buy it. And just as somebody who's been watching the Middle east, writing about the Middle east, you are very humble. One of the things I learned from you is that a journalist doesn't know as much as almost anyone else in the room. Any story you cover structurally, definitionally, you're not the general and you're not the scientist, and you're the guy who doesn't understand the story in the room. You're the storyteller. So. Yes, but still, you've been in a lot of these rooms and watched a lot of these. Do you buy the new Syria? Or how much do you. What should we be looking for? Or how do you make sense of this?
- [28:57]
B
Yeah, I think these are really important questions, and I think skepticism is necessary. I would note that our Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is certainly making comments about the desire to reach agreements with Syria. He's got plenty of skepticism in his arsenal, and I don't think he's going to be persuaded to do things that he thinks would be harmful to Israeli security. But he sees potential for some kind of agreement, even at a limited level, about security arrangements at the border. So it's not as though somebody who has to take real responsibility for his assessments is rejecting the notion that there is something to be done with this leadership. So we, you know, we should say that, but we don't know. And the points you made are valid. I think there are. There are two things that struck me in that context. First of all, already it's the same point that we're talking December 2024, Assad is ousted. So we're talking nine, 10 months. That's the whole story. This is a guy who had a $10 million reward on his head, American reward, as a terrorist until December 2024. The people that we met, some of them at least, were not people who were fighting side by side with him in his former guise. Okay, so this guy at the Foreign Ministry, and it's in the story and so on, he's, you know, was working at the Atlantic Council. You meet this guy and you think, I mean, perfect English, very elegantly dressed, very impressive in terms of the nuance and the specifics of what he was saying. Extremely effective diplomatically. We met two ministers, one of whom is the only woman in the ministerial team in the cabinet, and the only Christian. I think she. I don't want to misrepresent her, so I think she would see herself as having been a member of the opposition or active in the opposition to Assad. What does that mean in terms of her previous relationship with Ashara? I don't begin to know. She told us that she grew up with Bashar Assad. She went to school with him, the French school in Damascus, and she knew him subsequently after school as well. I don't know in what context. And with Bashar Assad, you couldn't say no. There was no possibility to say no. Whereas she said, with Ashara, you can say no and then explain why she's talking about the job she does as a Labor and Social affairs minister. The Minister of Trade, who we also met, had worked in the Assad government. He resigned or he left in 2011. And he very wryly said, I managed to leave and get out intact because he quit working for Assad. And he's very Very heavily American, experienced. He worked for seven years for Fannie Mae, the mortgage bank, I think as head of some kind of globalization global department. He said on the anti Semitism thing, I mean, he was like, three of the five people who signed off for my PhD were Jews. This person was my friend. Whatever. My point is, these are not people who've come from the battlefield, and I don't think they were necessarily natural ministers you would think would be filling key roles in a jihadist government. And what's striking to me about that was that within this very short period of 9, 10 months, Ashara has established some kind of hierarchy in which he was able to, or his people were able to identify people who would be effective in trying to build a stable Syria and who were prepared to work for him. I thought that was really interesting. I don't know about. The trade minister said it took him three minutes to decide to take the job job. And he said, if we can't make a success of this, Syria is finished. Now, that's not what politicians usually tell visiting groups. We got the sense that certainly some of the people that we met feel that this is a kind of make or break moment for Syria and they're not playing around if it doesn't work. The Foreign Ministry guy said, when there's a civil war and there's a transition, usually there's a recurrence of the civil war. So we've got a limited window. That was the kind of message that you heard, are they going to succeed? Are his intentions radically different from the mindset of not so long ago? We'll see. But the people we met certainly gave that sense of urgency that Syria needs to be stabilized, that if the people want to revert to civil war, said the Foreign Ministry guy, they can. We think they don't want to. And really our task is to. To build some kind of stability. The Christian minister told us that unemployment, I think she said, 60%, maybe a little higher. I think I wrote that in the piece as well. No messing around. It's her job to create jobs, and if she doesn't, then they're going to be incredibly unpopular and it's going to fail. That was the kind of sense that we got.
- [34:06]
A
That, to me, was the convincing part. Not that there was this extraordinarily articulate Foreign Ministry guy who's in charge of talking to the world, which is a good thing to have, but that the people that are presentable to you for telling that story happen to also be in charge of tackling the most important Economic issues. And so it seems to be. Ashara seems to be wanting to avoid becoming Yemen, and that seems to be the priority, and everything else is secondary. And if that's true, that's phenomenal. Good news, right? I mean, that's a pivot in Syria's history that we can hope will succeed and, and flourish and reverse everything Syria has been. So there's a lot of reason for optimism there. I want to ask you, one of the things that Qutayba Idlibi, the Foreign Ministry guy, said to you was specifically about Benjamin Netanyahu. And you quote this at some length. He assesses, you write that Netanyahu is leading Israel into a period of international isolation. He thinks that Netanyahu was trying to use the internecine fighting in Sweden to create another war, maybe to trigger a civil war, a return to the civil war. And he says many people in Israel want to turn the page, but that is not shared by Netanyahu. Since December 8, he says to you the Netanyahu government has been the main threat to Syria. He said there have been 900 attacks by the Israeli army. I think we've reported 200. I don't know if they're that much.
- [35:42]
B
Whatever thousand at the U.N. actually, a thousand.
- [35:45]
A
I don't know what they're calling an attack. Maybe each individual bomb, but that seems like a lot. But nevertheless, there has been. I think it's definite that there's been in the three digits and there have been zero threats from Syria to Israel. And then he says, we want to establish security over the south, an arrangement where people can feel secure on both sides of the border. We understand. This, to me, was the most extraordinary point. And then I'll get to my question. Do we understand the October 7th trauma for the Israeli people? And he says he wants a peace deal based on the 1967 borders. Here's my question. Israel on October 7th suddenly absorbed this very clear sense that everybody in the Middle east who says they want to kill us, actually want to kill us, and are going to do it, and worse than that, are willing to destroy their own societies and polities to do it. Because the destruction of us is the redemption of Arab honor. The Islamic restoration, what, whatever ideology they happen to subscribe to, they have nothing is holding them back and they will do whatever it takes. And Hezbollah was willing to lead Lebanon into the hellfire to destroy Israel because God said to. And Hamas, Gaza, and the Iranian regime has basically ruined Iran for nothing. Right? All of that was destroyed in 12 days. The very fact that Our enemies are willing to destroy their own polities on the altar of destroying us. The very fact that they're undeterrable, therefore for means we have to actually remove them. And that sense shared by a great many Israelis, a great many progressive left wing Israelis who went into the Gaza war shoulder to shoulder with every other kind of Israeli. Arguably, we're hearing this a lot from Emiratis lately. Arguably is produced in Israel. That's a little too trigger happy at this point. That is still just bombing things anytime they look at it sideways. Answer. For example, there are different Druze factions. There were atrocities committed. We saw the videos of them online. There's no question about that. I know I and most Israelis took the Druze side kind of instinctively, automatically. And I still think that we should have taken the Druze side more than any other. But nevertheless, it was complicated and some of the atrocities were committed by a Druze militia. And there's complexity there. And us suddenly bombing Army HQ in Damascus without any clarity about exactly what it is we were demanding from the Syrians. The Israelis themselves, themselves then pulled back and said, okay, well, we're going to maybe change tack here. We bomb a little too quickly. Right? That Israeli sense. Are we overstepping this talk that they had about, look, we're trying to do this to Syria, we're trying to stabilize Syria. You're destabilizing us. You are constantly bombing. You are the thing. What did Shahra say? We're afraid of you. And know if he said it exactly in that way. But that was how the headline picked it up, right? Is Israel now hurting Syria's chances of being a stable, secure country on our border, maybe with some kind of a long term security arrangement that we call in the Middle east peace occasionally? Are we overstepping? Was your impression in Syria that really the Israelis now look a little bit like the deranged militant Iranian in the region?
- [38:56]
B
Well, the Mr. Mr. Il Dibli, I'm pronouncing him wrong, was making the point that I don't quite know how they did it. And again, I have no real expertise that after Assad was ousted, Iran and Hezbollah were trying to muscle in in southern Syria and they managed to not let them, to prevent them. And therefore his argument was that instability in southern Syria close to the Israeli border is not an Israeli interest. I think.
- [39:27]
A
Wait, I'm sorry. The Israelis managed. He said not to let them in.
- [39:31]
B
He said they, the Syrians, they, okay, rebels, incoming leadership, however you want to describe them, they managed to prevent Iran and Hezbollah getting established in southern Syria near the Israeli border. And therefore his argument was that instability close to the border will be seized upon by forces that avowedly seek Israel's destruction, and therefore, that's not in Israeli interest. And I think. I think if you can look at Netanyahu in the last, you know, not just the last few days, but.
- [40:00]
A
I'm sorry, can I just interrupt? I just need to understand what that meant. In other words, if you create a power vacuum, thinking that you're removing any chance of any monster growing on the border, as an Israeli official has told me and told a lot of journalists, you actually are creating the vacuum which will bring about some kind of, you know, Hezbollah on the Syrian side. In other words, don't create a vacuum. Let us in. That was his argument.
- [40:24]
B
That's what they are arguing. And I think Netanyahu, with a declared readiness to work on the agreement, there are direct negotiations, would seem to have at least entertained, be entertaining the possibility that maybe some kind of security arrangement with this new leadership is better than ongoing instability. So we'll see how that plays out. But I don't need to shill for the Syrians or for Netanyahu. But I assume Netanyahu's thinking was, we don't know this leadership, really, and therefore. Therefore, if we allow them to set up as they wish right on our border, we could be paying a terrible price not very long from now. So I think that's what's being weighed. And I think the concern took precedence for some time. And obviously, given that there are direct talks and the things that Netanyahu has been saying lately, there's at least a readiness to entertain the notion that, you know what, maybe with lots of security precautions and lots of wariness, us, maybe our interests are better served with some kind of enforceable, potentially stable relationship. So that's where I think we are now. I want to stress again how non. I mean, I. I genuinely didn't know what to expect. I didn't know if they would actually let me in. When push came to shah, and I'd. Even on my phone, my screensaver shows some of my kids in army uniform. I changed the screensaver. I took shekels out of my wallet. And like I say, I don't think any of that was necessary. What was striking to me was, you know, you talked about how the Jews were essentially forced to leave Syria, and I've said to you, there's only six left. We walked in a neighborhood that was a pretty Jewish neighborhood in Damascus. We went and dovened In a shul that felt like it had been left yesterday. It was the first minion there for a long, long time time. We walked through this neighborhood. There were security people escorting us, but not particularly closely. And there was, you know, you know, you can sense when, when you're in a hostile environment. I mean, for sure, you know that we all know that. And I have felt that in, in other places in this part of the world with whom we have peace treaties. I didn't feel any hostility to us as Jews, as obvious Jews. Again, don't think that this is people who look like you and me. These were, you know, at least three of us had beards. Asher was walking around with this to fill in. I don' I suppose people would have known what that was. But there's a bunch of Jewish people strolling through the neighborhood and we did not feel threatened. By the end of the first day, when the official itinerary was done, basically most of the security went home and most people on our little group went out. We were quite near the main souk, the main market. It's not the old city market that you'll think of, or it's partly that it's mainly where people get their stuff, where Damascus, ordinary people go shopping, lots of coffee shops, clothes and so on. So these very obviously rabbinical people were walking around in the shook. They would have known if they should feel hostility. Asher wore his kippah most of the time I was with him. With multiple interactions with people. It wasn't that they were oh my goodness, wow. And smiling. It was just completely some mild interest and friendliness. The one of the members of our group is the main. He's the chief rabbi of I think the Ashkenazi community in Turkey. We were walking back to the hotel, me and him. A middle aged guy comes up on a little moped and asks him for a selfie and takes a picture because. And with a smile, that's all. And, and I was, he's a rabbi.
- [44:05]
A
Sorry, he's dressed like a rabbi.
- [44:08]
B
You know, people. So where's the picture? Well, obviously I don't have the picture. He took the picture. Remember he went off on the motorbike. But you know, it was the sense of kind of that little walk around in the neighborhood was a sense of kind of re. Normalizing the unremarkable presence of Jews in the Damascus neighborhood where there had been Jews. And I asked this Syrian born American, how is it that we did not sense hostility as Jews in Damascus, for example, do they not watch Al Jazeera? I mean that to me, if you're watching Al Jazeera, you're kind of hostile to Jews. Maybe that's too simplistic, but I kind of think it's true. And he thought that maybe they don't watch a great deal of Al Jazeera because they're kind of preoccupied with life and trying to be, you know, trying to maybe get their country working again. Again, incredibly limited brief access. But the bottom line is that in unremarkable, unscripted interactions, a group of us Jews walked around Damascus and one of them was the wife of a very well known Jewish scholar. There are people in their 70s. These were slow moving, nice Jewish people and they felt that it was not.
- [45:21]
A
Have been able to run away or something.
- [45:23]
B
We weren't, it wasn't like subtle, unobtrusive. No, it was really the opposite by definition. And we felt safe. Can things happen at any moment? Could things have happened at any moment? The fact is that they didn't. We should read no more into it than that. But that was our experience.
- [45:43]
A
David, first of all, I'm going to put a link to that article in the show notes. People should check it out. Thank you so much for joining me. We, I think, walk through all of these amazing signals that suggest optimism and there's so, so many reasons, as you've also laid out, to distrust it. I mean, there's who ashara was until 10 minutes ago, the Syrian Jewish experience when there were Jews in Syria. My automatic instinct is skepticism. That good old Zionist assumption of disaster is my sort of baseline. And yet these signals don't have to be there, there and they would have gotten a lot of what they've gotten without them. And there's something extraordinary about a country that is so eager to get itself put together again, it doesn't even care about Jews. That to me is a very good sign. The more a country has anxious thoughts about its Jews, the more it's probably in decline. Read into that what you will. Dear listener and viewer, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. That was an amazing article and glad to have you here.
- [46:50]
B
Thanks, Khabib. Take care. It was a pleasure.