Lebanon the Model Iraq isn't the Arab world's first democracy.

BY MICHAEL J. TOTTEN


Of all the rationales for demolishing Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the most compelling was the Middle East's desperate need for at least one free Arab democracy to act as a model and an inspiration for oppressed and demoralized citizens in the others. So far it is not working out, despite the recent successful elections. Most talk of Iraq on the Middle Eastern street revolves around occupation, terrorism and war. Iraq is not yet a model for anything. It looms, instead, as a warning. Hardly any Arab wants his country to become another Iraq. In time that may change, but right now that's just how it is.
Lebanon, though, is an inspiration already--despite the assassinations and the car bombs that have shaken the country since February. I have an apartment in Beirut, and I recently traveled to Cairo. Arriving back here was like returning to the U.S. from Mexico. Almost everyone I met in Egypt--from taxi drivers all the way up to the elite--was profoundly envious when I said I live in Beirut. "It is a free and open city," I told them, but they knew that already. Many Americans and Europeans still think of Beirut as a hollowed-out, mortar-shattered necropolis where visitors are well-advised to bring a flak jacket. Egyptians, though--at least the ones I talked to during my stay--know the truth.
Beirut is where the taboos in the region--against alcohol, dating, sex, scandalous clothing, homosexuality, body modification, free speech and dissident politics--break down. Its culture is liberal and tolerant, even anarchic and libertarian. The state barely exists. The city's pleasures are physical and decadent. Beirut is where American and European tourists used to go to loosen up, gamble, drink booze and pick up women--and that was in the 1950s. Today it is where Saudis and other Gulf Arabs like to vacation because they can do, think, wear, and say whatever they want.

Last month the Economist Intelligence Unit's Index of Political Freedom ranked Lebanon the freest Arab country, followed by Morocco. Iraq came in third. (Libya brought up the rear, below even Syria and Saudi Arabia.) Lebanon's Cedar Revolution peacefully ousted the Syrian military, which had ruled the country as a raw imperial power since the end of the civil war in 1990. Free and orderly elections promptly followed. If Iraq becomes a success in the end, it won't be the first Arab democracy. It will be the second.
That doesn't mean Lebanon is a Middle East Switzerland. The Syrian regime still smuggles weapons into Palestinian camps, infiltrates civilian society with its security and intelligence agents, and assassinates its Lebanese political enemies. The radical Shiite Hezbollah militia still holds its own effectively sovereign territory along the border with Israel and in the suburbs south of Beirut. Though the electoral laws no longer produce a rigged pro-Syrian parliamentary majority, the voting districts are the same ones gerrymandered by the Damascus regime during its occupation.
From a distance Lebanon may look like a typical Middle East country racked with the usual chaos, but it isn't. What makes this place unique is that the Lebanese political system is nearly incapable of producing dictatorship. The three main sects in this country--Christian, Sunni, and Shiite--do not share the same political ideals and values. They do, however, share power, since every group here is a minority. By tradition, the president is always a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni, and the speaker of Parliament a Shiite. Parliament decides who fills the top three government posts, and members of Parliament are elected by the people of Lebanon. Each sect's parliamentary bloc keeps the others in check. The result is a weak state and a de facto near-libertarianism. Syria and Iraq, which also are composed of rival ethnic-religious sects, may do well under a similar system.
It works in a flawed-but-muddling-through sort of way. Lebanon's model wouldn't work everywhere else in the Middle East and North Africa. It would not work in Egypt, for example, where Sunni Muslims make up the overwhelming majority of the population. Something other than institutionalized sectarianism will be needed there to weaken the state and provide checks and balances.
Even so, Lebanon inspires Egyptians in ways that Iraq doesn't and perhaps can't. Iraqi freedom is being born in blood, fire and mayhem. Sometimes that's what it takes. America's freedom didn't come peacefully, and neither did Western Europe's. But because Iraqi freedom is seen as violently imposed from the outside, a huge number of Egyptians, along with plenty of other Arabs in the neighboring states in the region, dismiss it as an imperial sham.
No one thinks Lebanese freedom is a sham. This country would not be even a ramshackle sort-of democracy if the people who live here had not demanded that much for themselves. The March 14 revolt, in which almost one in three Lebanese demonstrated in Martyr's Square for freedom and independence, reverberated powerfully throughout the Middle East. Iraq still makes most Arabs shudder. Lebanon, though, is genuinely inspiring.

Lebanon is not and should not become an American project the way Iraq and Afghanistan are. That doesn't mean the U.S. should shrug off the importance of its security and stability. Nor should Washington see Lebanon's troubles merely as a means to the end of pressuring or overthrowing Bashar Assad's Baath regime in Syria. Syria matters because it exports violence to three of its neighbors, to Israel and Iraq as well as to Lebanon. But Lebanon matters for reasons beyond the continuing conflict with its former master.
It matters for one simple reason. Oppressed Arabs need an inspiring country of their own that they can look up to. And right now, they have one. Lebanon is not just a country with an elected government. It seduces the region with its culture as well.
Beirut has more in common with raucous freewheeling precommunist Hong Kong than with drab Amman, Damascus and Cairo. The nightclubs, the shopping, the restaurants, the bookstores, the intellectual cafés--these things are all world-class in Beirut. The sight of Lebanon's famously beautiful unveiled Arab women makes a lasting impression on men who travel here from neighboring countries.
Freedom means more than just relieving the boot from your neck. Freedom also means fun and the pursuit of happiness. That's why so many Arabs come here on holiday, and why so many would rather live here. Never forget: demand for Levi's and rock 'n' roll did as much to bring down the Soviet Union as the yearning for Western-style democracy did.
Lebanon is a special place, and the U.S. should treat it accordingly. It is already what we hope Iraq someday will be.

click under to watch:


Lebanon



Who said they forgot?!
Who said they don’t want to return?!
Who said they don’t miss Lebanon every second?!
Do you think there is something that can stop them?
You doubt?!
Open Asda’ Tv and see what they do beside working hard,
collecting money and sending them to their parents in Lebanon!
While seeing them I remember every word of our national hymn…
I don’t know so much about the cedar’s club in Canada,
but what is special are the juniors, learning everything beautiful about their country,
while not looking about their religion and political parties…
they just dance, hand by hand, just as one… just because they are one lebanese…
Look in their eyes, all what you can see are the reflections of our white beautiful snow,
our martyr’s blood, and our eternal cedar…
Wherever we are, we are the same… we love life, and life loves us…
No one can put us under the ground… why?
because we will resucitate again in seconds…
A wish that the eyes like Asda’a Tv will be wherever there are Lebanese in the world…
With them you know that we don’t need to Lobby…
but we need some music to dance…
Watch them online: http://www.asdatv.com/online.html

posted by Sasmen

Laughter and Tears

Posted by Dr. Sassine EL Nabbout


As the Sun withdrew his rays from the garden, and the moon threw cushioned beams upon the flowers, I sat under the trees pondering upon the phenomena of the atmosphere, looking through the branches at the strewn stars which glittered like chips of silver upon a blue carpet; and I could hear from a distance the agitated murmur of the rivulet singing its way briskly into the valley.When the birds took shelter among the boughs, and the flowers folded their petals, and tremendous silence descended, I heard a rustle of feet though the grass. I took heed and saw a young couple approaching my arbor. The say under a tree where I could see them without being seen.After he looked about in every direction, I heard the young man saying, “Sit by me, my beloved, and listen to my heart; smile, for your happiness is a symbol of our future; be merry, for the sparkling days rejoice with us.“My soul is warning me of the doubt in your heart, for doubt in love is a sin. “Soon you will be the owner of this vast land, lighted by this beautiful moon; soon you will be the mistress of my palace, and all the servants and maids will obey your commands.“Smile, my beloved, like the gold smiles from my father’s coffers.“My heart refuses to deny you its secret. Twelve months of comfort and travel await us; for a year we will spend my father’s gold at the blue lakes of Switzerland, and viewing the edifices of Italy and Egypt, and resting under the Holy Cedars of Lebanon; you will meet the princesses who will envy you for your jewels and clothes.“All these things I will do for you; will you be satisfied?”In a little while I saw them walking and stepping on flowers as the rich step upon the hearts of the poor. As they disappeared from my sight, I commenced to make comparison between love and money, and to analyze their position in the heart.Money! The source of insincere love; the spring of false light and fortune; the well of poisoned water; the desperation of old age!I was still wandering in the vast desert of contemplation when a forlorn and specter-like couple passed by me and sat on the grass; a young man and a young woman who had left their farming shacks in the nearby fields for this cool and solitary place.After a few moments of complete silence, I heard the following words uttered with sighs from weather-bitten lips, “Shed not tears, my beloved; love that opens our eyes and enslaves our hearts can give us the blessing of patience. Be consoled in our delay our delay, for we have taken an oath and entered Love’s shrine; for our love will ever grow in adversity; for it is in Love’s name that we are suffering the obstacles of poverty and the sharpness of misery and the emptiness of separation. I shall attack these hardships until I triumph and place in your hands a strength that will help over all things to complete the journey of life.“Love - which is God - will consider our sighs and tears as incense burned at His altar and He will reward us with fortitude. Good-bye, my beloved; I must leave before the heartening moon vanishes.”A pure voice, combined of the consuming flame of love, and the hopeless bitterness of longing and the resolved sweetness of patience, said, “Good-bye, my beloved.”They separated, and the elegy to their union was smothered by the wails of my crying heart.I looked upon slumbering Nature, and with deep reflection discovered the reality of a vast and infinite thing — something no power could demand, influence acquire, nor riches purchase. Nor could it be effaced by the tears of time or deadened by sorrow; a thing which cannot be discovered by the blue lakes of Switzerland or the beautiful edifices of Italy.It is something that gathers strength with patience, grows despite obstacles, warms in winter, flourishes in spring, casts a breeze in summer, and bears fruit in autumn — I found Love.
Gibran Khalil Gebran

Kanaan Speaks from the Grave? & Syria in Iraq

Mideastwire.com has translated a few stories of interest. The first is the al-Seyassah story reporting that Ghazi Kanaan, the Minister of interior and long time intelligence chief and master of Lebanon who committed suicide last fall at the time of the UN's release of its first interim report on the Hariri investigation, recorded all he knew about the Hariri murder. Although plausible, this sounds like black propaganda timed to build suspense before the release of the final UN report, which is due. The source was a "Gulf diplomat," who also described how Kanaan was murdered and where he was shot. How he could know this information, which was surely not included on a pre-recorded video by Kanaan, is a mystery and hard to figure. Sounds like gory detail thrown in for a little extra sensation, but which ultimately is unbelievable. Here is the article.“Ghazi Kanaan in videotape before his assassination reveals names...”

In its September 4 edition, Al Seyassah, an independent daily, reported that: “According to diplomatic information at the UN in New York, there was ‘a possibility that a dramatic surprise might emerge in the investigations into the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Al-Hariri, which might give the Syrian regime in Damascus a deadly blow’, in light of the increasing talk about ‘finding the most truthful evidence which proves that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad himself, along with a few members of his family and close aides, have supervised, minute by minute, the course of the assassination operation since its early stages and months before it occurred, in terms of planning, preparation and execution, in collaboration with Lebanese political, military and security leaders, as well as groups affiliated to a number of parties, factions and Salafi groups’. “A Gulf diplomat at the UN headquarters in New York, stated that the information – the source of which he preferred to keep out of the spotlight for the time being – pointed out that ‘this mind-blowing surprise was due to the possible existence of a videotape, recorded in picture and sound, by the head of the Syrian military intelligence and former minister of interior…, Major General Ghazi Kanaan, a few weeks before his suspicious ‘suicide’’. “[The diplomat continued:] ‘In this tape, he revealed the plot to assassinate Al-Hariri from A to Z, with names, dates and the details of the crime from its planning stages until its execution in February 2005, in addition to the reasons which made the head of the Syrian regime make such a move, the most prominent of which is the fact he received false information which claimed that Al-Hariri was planning with foreign and Arab sides to overthrow the Ba’thist regime in Damascus, and that these plans had reached very advanced stages since the issuance of resolution 1559, which called on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon’. “The Gulf diplomat added in a phone conversation with Al Seyassah in Paris, that ‘the intelligence bodies of Major General Asef Shawkat, Al-Assad’s brother-in-law and the second men in the state today, had information according to which Ghazi Kanaan was planning to leave the regime and resort to the US with all the documents and information regarding the assassination of Al-Hariri, as well as the assassination and attempted assassination plans which preceded and followed it in the ranks of Lebanese politicians and journalists’. “Also, according to the information of the Gulf diplomat, ‘the Syrian minister of interior (Kanaan), had been placed along with his family members, his aides and followers outside of the security circle of the Ba’th party politicians and businessmen, and under strict observation… He realized that his plans to leave the regime and resort to the US were uncovered, and he was determined to elude [them] sooner. However, everything got out of his control’. “According to the information, ‘on October 12 2005, and as he had just arrived to his office at the Ministry of Interior, he might have received a phone call or a warning from one of his close aides, regarding the fact that Asef Shawkat and his people were heading personally to confront him with the information they had about his plan to escape and his relations with the Americans. He realized that it was all over, which would justify why he left his office and went home for 45 minutes then came back to the Ministry: he smuggled out the videotape and surrendered it to someone that is not necessarily a member of his family…’ “According to the information of the Gulf diplomat: ‘The regime of Bashar Al-Assad and his brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat, might not know about the existence of Ghazi Kanaan videotape…’ The diplomat expressed his belief that Kanaan might have resisted Shawkat and his people when they confronted him in his office with the information they had about ‘his betrayal of the party and the president’ and that after he realized what was going to happen to him following his arrest, he desperately attempted to use his personal weapon. However, they beat him by shooting him all over his body, then gave him a mercy bullet in the head…” - Al Seyassah, Kuwait“Riyadh whispers to Damascus: this is the end between us”
Elaph, a pan Arab website, reported in its September 5 issue about the diplomatic differences between Saudi Arabia and Syria. The website reported: “It seems that the silent crisis between Riyadh and Damascus is on its way towards escalation after the servant of the two holy shrines, king Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz, refused to receive one of Al-Assad’s delegates who came to Jeddah last week in an attempt to explain his president’s speech which aroused the anger of the Saudi government according to what Arab sources told Elaph. This practically marks the end of the time of ‘low voices’ in what relates to conflicts inside the Arab house. In an indirect reply to the criticisms that came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan against Hezbollah for capturing two Israeli soldiers which led to the war in Lebanon, the Syrian president announced: ‘If the resistors are adventurers then do we say that Sultan Basha Al-Atrash and Ibrahim Hananu (Syrian indepen! dence heroes) and Sa’d Zaghloul (Egyptian patriotic leader during British colonization) were adventurers’. The Saudi government was the side that described Hezbollah’s operation as an ‘uncalculated adventure’.”Iraq

The Jews of Syria

Another Syrian Jew added: “Asad is the best bet for America and for everyone. If he was strong enough and could manage, he would do a lot of good things. He is the best thing for America and Israel, no matter what he talks.”
As a whole, the Syrian people started to see Israel as a weaker version of its former self. Previously Israel seemed to have had an all-encompassing power that could challenge all external influence; it seems that Hizbullah has revealed a tender under belly. "In this mishmash of appeasement and retreat, Syrian people rapidly lost their fears and came to see Israel as a paper tiger”, as Dr. Daniel Pipes put it, and “weaker than a spider's web.", as Hassan Nasrallah put it.


The Jews of Syria

By Robert Tuttle

On a Sunday night in February 1975, the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes broadcast what would become one of the most controversial episodes ever aired. Titled “Israel’s Toughest Enemy,” Mike Wallace traveled to Syria just a year after the Yom Kippur War and was permitted to film interviews with members of Syria’s then roughly 4,500-strong Jewish community.In the United States and internationally, pro-Israel groups had portrayed Syria’s Jews as persecuted minority, who lived in ghettos, whose movements were restricted and who faced constant risk of arrest. Their identity cards were stamped with the words Mossawi, a polite Arabic expression for Jew, in big red letters. “I knew it was a deeply controversial subject,” said Wallace, “And the Israelis particularly were raising a lot of money on the plight of the Jews in Syria and I wanted to find out for myself, so we went there.”What Wallace discovered in Syria surprised him. He found that Jews were indeed subject to special surveillance and restrictions not imposed on other Syrians. But “having said that all,” he noted in his broadcast, “It must be added that today life for Syria’s Jews is better than it was in years past.”The broadcast included interviews with a Jewish pharmacist who claimed that assertions of mistreatment were mere “Zionist propaganda” and a Jewish school teacher who said she could never become true friends with an Israeli. In the days and weeks following the broadcast, CBS received a barrage of letters from viewers and Jewish groups, complaining that Wallace presented an inaccurate picture of Syria and that the Jews featured could not have possibly expressed themselves freely. The American Jewish Congress called the program “inaccurate and distorted” and filed a complaint with the National News Council, a defunct organization that followed up complaints on the accuracy and fairness of news reporting. The attention generated by the segment prompted 60 Minutes to re-air the broadcast the following June and return to Damascus to film a follow-up segment.While filming the second segment, Wallace met Dr. Nassim Hasbani, a young, distinguished Jewish physician who ran a successful medical practice in the heart of Damascus. A member of a seven-man committee that governed Jewish affairs, Hasbani was one of just a handful of leaders who spoke publicly for the community. Hasbani told Wallace that Jews were living well in Syria. He showed Wallace his new ID card, one without the word Mossawi stamped on it.“The government said to us, they want to give us the card identity like all Syrian people,” he said, “Without religion. And this is for all the people.”Then Wallace asked Hasbani a pointed and somewhat awkward question. “Dr. Hasbani,” he said, “If all the Jews of Syria were told they could leave the country, go to the United States, or Mexico, or Israel, or wherever – how many of them would go?”“I think,” Hasbani replied, “That not more than five percent to, to Israel. And perhaps if they want to leave to the United States, to Brazil, to other… other country, perhaps the number is 20 or 30 percent.” A decade and a half later, Syria’s Jews were granted permission to freely emigrate abroad. Within a few short years, almost the entire community had left the country, a little less than half for Israel. Out of approximately 30,000 Jews who lived in Syria in 1947, less than 50 remain today, according to community leaders in the United States. All but a handful of those live in Damascus. Today, most Syrian Jews live in the close-knit neighborhoods of south Brooklyn, in single-family homes located in a few-square mile area around where Ocean Parkway and the thriving market street of Kings Highway intersect. The area, in no way, resembles centuries old Jewish quarters of Damascus, Aleppo and Qamishli, but Syrian Jews have recreated bustling new neighborhoods. Walk down any street in South Brooklyn and one hears neighbors chatting with one another in Arabic. Shops sell items like rolled apricot paste, lentils and fava beans, all familiar ingredients in Syrian cuisine. This is where Hasbani now lives in a modest home he rents with his wife. Now in his sixties, Hasbani is no longer an energetic doctor he was nearly 30 years ago. After moving to the United States in the early 1990s, he stopped practicing medicine and tried unsuccessfully to open a few businesses. He lives on meager savings and suffers a heart problem that limits his movement. Hasbani prefers to speak in Arabic and smiles wryly when recounting his brief moment of fame on American television. In a community that generally shuns publicity, Hasbani is outspoken, passionate and animated. In the highly emotive debate over the Arab-Israeli conflict, the true story of Syrian Jewry was more complicated than either Wallace or his critics fully appreciated, Hasbani said. On the one hand, critics of 60 Minutes were correct to doubt Hasbani’s rosy portrayal of Jewish life in Syria. In a country considered Israel’s most formidable enemy, Syrian Jews had long been subject to special restrictions, mistrust and, at times, outright persecution. In the northern city of Aleppo, Synagogues were burned and vandalized shortly after the United Nations voted to partition Palestine in 1947. In 1949, a bomb was placed in a Damascus Synagogue killing 12 people. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli War - in which Syria lost control of the Golan Heights overlooking the Galilee – armed Palestinian fighters broke into the homes of Jews and pointed guns at family members. No one was shot but the incident was a reminder to the community of its vulnerability. For most of Syrian history after 1947, Jews could not travel outside their country except on rare occasions and travel within Syria required permission. The Jews who did leave Syria escaped covertly through Turkey or Lebanon. Most continued onto the United States or Israel. Those who were caught were imprisoned. Hasbani said that his glowing portrayal of Syria was intended to win favors from Syrian authorities. Yet, he added, the 60 Minutes broadcast was not totally false either. Conditions were beginning to improve for Syria’s Jews and would continue to improve in the months and years after Wallace’s visit. For a man who says he spent most of his years at Damascus University’s Medical School lying about his religion, and whose own brother was stabbed to death by a person who bragged he killed a Jew, Hasbani is surprisingly nostalgic about the land of his birth.“I live in the past,” he said, which is evident from the reams of newspaper clips, photos and other memorabilia he saves from his time in Syria. He carefully unfolded a wrinkled old identity card with the word Mossawi written across it. He displayed a photo of himself posing with his family next to Edward Djerijian, American Ambassador to Syria from 1988 until 1992, at the ambassador’s opulent Damascus residence. But among the assortment of memorabilia, the Syrian doctor is particularly fond of a small stack of folded newspaper clips that show him and other Jewish leaders shaking hands with the late Syrian President Hafez al-Asad. Asad, who rose to power in a coup in 1970 and remained in authority until his death thirty years later, is regarded by much of the world as an oppressive dictator who permitted virtually no dissent and crushed it violently when it emerged. Along with the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, he launched a daring, if largely unsuccessful, surprise attack against Israel in 1973 in an effort to wrestle back control of the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and Syrian Golan Heights. Both territories were captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. But unlike Sadat, who combined bold military action with bold peacemaking by traveling to Jerusalem four years later to address the Israeli Knesset, Asad remained wedded to the struggle against Zionism. He opposed the 1978 Camp David Treaty between Egypt and Israel, and was cool toward the Oslo accord between Israel and the Palestinians signed 15 years later. He also criticized Jordan for signing peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and backed the Lebanese militia Hezbollah in its fight against Israeli forces in South Lebanon and a myriad of Palestinian groups opposed to the Oslo process. Although the Syrians did participate in on-and-off American-mediated negotiations with Israel, coming remarkably close to a final settlement toward the end of Asad’s life, publicly they remained decidedly stand-offish in their approach toward the negotiations. In 2000, when Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Sharaa met with then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak during negotiations in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, he refused to publicly shake hands with the Israeli leader. Many of Syria’s Jews, however, remember Asad differently.“For us, of course, he was like the Messiah,” Hasbani said. Before him “you could not walk for four kilometers [without permission]. You could not buy and sell [property]. Walking in the street, you were afraid to say I am a Jew. There were [Jewish] schools. But there was someone from the government sitting on your head, and capable of doing whatever he wanted.”Asad, Hasbani said, was different from past Syrian leaders in that he was the first president to truly pay attention to the concerns of Syria’s Jews.“When we met with him in 1976, people [the Jews] rose,” Hasbani said. “When you sit with the president, people outside would not dare to do anything to you. He who is against you can do nothing to you because he saw the president receiving you and taking pictures with you.” Such sentiments about a man long regarded as Israel’s most formidable enemy might surprise some people who follow the pulse of the Middle East. But they are quite typical among the approximately 3,000 Syrian Jewish émigrés who left for Brooklyn and Israel more than a decade ago. Many complain bitterly about the abuses and discrimination they suffered in Syria during the decades before they were permitted to leave. Like Jews everywhere, many also profess sympathy for the state Israel and its policies. But, in almost the same breath, many credit Asad, the man who built his public persona on upholding Arab honor in a gallant struggle against the Jewish state, as the man most responsible for granting them their freedom. “Before Hafez al-Asad, the people were scared to say, I am Jewish,” said Jack al-Boucai, a Syrian Jewish businessman who owns a cell phone store on Kings Highway. “So when he helped in making the situation improve, I saw him as being good for us.” Boucai spoke in Arabic.The 1976, Asad met with Jewish community leaders including Hasbani; Ibrahim Hamra, Chief Rabbi of Damascus; and the late Salim Totah, head of the Syrian Jewish community. Hasbani recalled telling Asad about the bomb that was placed in a Damascus Synagogue in 1947. “President Asad didn’t know about it,” Hasbani said. “When I told him, he was astonished. ‘Who did it, the government?’ I told him not the government, some lowlife.”The meeting turned was historic, Hasbani said. In the months and years that followed, most restrictions on Jews were lifted. The Mossawi stamp was eventually removed from all forms of identification, although not as quickly as Wallace may have been led to believe from his interview with Hasbani. Domestic travel restrictions on Jews were lifted. Businesses that had previously been closed to Jews, such as import-export, were opened. Jews could buy and sell property and the community began to prosper. The only restriction that remained on Jews was a prohibition against free Jewish emigration abroad with family members, a rule that remained in effect until 1992. But there were exceptions. Following a meeting between Asad and American President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the Syrian president began to permit around two dozen Jewish women each year to join grooms-to-be in the United States to correct a gender imbalance in the community.The Syrian president’s increasing leniency toward Jews probably stemmed, in part, from international pressure applied on his regime by the United States, other foreign governments and the international media. Indeed, Syria’s Jews became something of diplomatic bargaining chip that the Syrian government could play when it wanted better relations with the United States or an improved negotiating position with Israel.What is more, after Asad lifted restrictions on the community, many hardships persisted. Jews caught trying to escape continued to be imprisoned. Many complain that they continued to face harassment from Syrian intelligence officers and other low-level officials. One member of the community recalled visiting the Department of Motor Vehicles in Aleppo to renew his driver’s license, armed with a presidential order rescinding the requirement that Mossawi be stamped on all Jewish identity documents. The official behind the desk told him he could not renew the license at that moment because he did not have his Mossawi seal. When the man protested, brandishing the presidential order, he recalls the official telling him: “‘I’m not going to stamp it in red. I’m going to stamp it in purple.”But whatever hurdles Jews continued to face, the late president’s image remains largely untarnished in the eyes of many in the Syrian Jewish community. Although Asad was known as a micromanager of his countries affairs, few Syrian Jews blame him, even indirectly, for difficulties suffered during his 30 years of power.The story of Albert Fouerti is revealing. Fouerti came to the United States in the early 1990s, during the final wave of Syrian Jewish emigration to the United States. He is shy but becomes passionate and animated when speaking about his life. He spoke mostly in Arabic. Fouerti once owned a factory that made children’s clothes but today manages a small thrift store along McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn. Coming to America was not joyous.In 1949, two of his sisters were evacuated to Israel along with other Jewish children following the Damascus Synagogue bombing. Fouerti’s family planned to join the two girls, but shortly after the children were evacuated, Syria closed its doors on Jewish emigration. For the next twenty years, Fouerti’s family was unable to communicate with the girls. In the early 1970s, Fouerti obtained permission to travel to Great Britain so that his son, who was ill, could receive medical treatment. During the visit, he secretly made arrangements, through the Israeli embassy, to fly one of his sisters to London so he could see her. The other sister was ill and could not travel. The two siblings were reunited but the visit was fleeting.“I must come back,” he remembers thinking. “I have no choice.”Fouerti returned home and told his mother about the reunion. Nearly twenty years passed before the Syrian government finally allowed Jews to emigrate. As Syrian Jews began to sell their homes and businesses and leave for America, Fouerti applied for passports for his entire family so they could travel to the United States. His wish, he said, was to witness the reunion of his elderly mother with her two lost daughters. Days later, the Syrian authorities granted the family passports. But one of Fouerti’s sons was denied for unknown reasons. Fouerti did not want to leave his son behind so, for two years, he returned to the office of the secrete police chief in charge of Jewish affairs. “Every day, I visited him in the office,” he said. “I knew what he was doing. He was just giving me a hard time.”Finally, in late 1994, after most Syrian Jews had already left, Fouerti’s son was finally granted a passport and the family began to make travel arrangements. Then, just days before their scheduled departure, as his sisters waited in Brooklyn, Fouerti’s mother died suddenly. Later, on his way to the airport, Fouerti stopped at the Jewish cemetery and peered down at her grave. “I said mom, I’m sorry. I can’t help you to see your children,” he said. “The last picture I see in Syria is my mother.”Fouerti was deeply bitter. “I feel no one can let me forget what happened to me,” he said. “Why did they do that to me? Why?”But after an emotional recounting of his experience, he became calm. “I miss Syria. I miss my friends. But I am scared,” he said. “Our only problem [in Syria] was with the Mukhaberat [secrete police]. We lived with Muslims, Christians. We were like one family. They loved us.” President Asad, Fouerti said, could not possibly have known about the harassment he and some other Jews suffered. “He was good with Jewish people,” he said. “He gave us our freedom… He should put this person [head of Jewish affairs] in prison. He damaged the reputation of Syria. If he [Asad] knew, he would not have let them.”Surprisingly, some Syrian Jews are almost apologetic about the restrictions placed upon them by the Syrian government. “I lived with Syria,” said Hasbani. “I ate and drank, whatever they did not give me, it would be perfectly fine. In my view, I don’t ask for all my rights because [they] will not give me all my rights because I have feelings for Israel which is the enemy of Syria.” In 1987, two Jewish brothers from the Swed family were arrested for secretly visiting family members in Israel, which was illegal for all Syrian citizens. The brothers spent the next five years in prison until they were pardoned by President Asad in 1992. The Sweds’ plight became a major focus of concern for Jewish groups around the world and a personal crusade for a Canadian activist named Judy Feld Carr. Hasbani saw the situation of the Sweds differently. Traveling to Israel was a capital offence, he said, and had the Sweds not been Jewish, they would likely have been executed. “What kind of heroism did the Sweds show?” he asked. “They were in Syria then went to Argentina and from there they went to Israel then went back to Syria. Israel is an enemy state. Why did they go there? Do they want Hafez al-Asad to say welcome back?” (The Sweds actually traveled to Italy, not Argentina). Another member of the community added that the Sweds trip put the whole community in jeopardy. “If you are a lamb, you cannot play with lions,” he said. When Asad died in 2000, three pro-Likud Jews of Syrian origin – a prominent Syrian-Jewish rabbi named Jack Kassin, Hassidic community leader Jack Avital, and another businessman named Sam Domb - placed an ad in the New York Times offering their condolences, although Domb later complained to The Jewish Week that Kassin had added his name without consent. Kassin was invited to attend the funeral but a Syrian official informed him that his security could not be guaranteed because of threats posed by Asad’s brother and rival Rifat, according to The Jewish Week.Asad’s cult of personality did not end with his passing. His son and successor, Bashar, is not held in the quite the same esteem as his father. A British-trained optometrist, some Syrian Jews privately said they consider Bashar young and inexperienced, overly reliant on what are often unscrupulous advisors. But most also said they were confident that he would eventually be able to carry on his father’s legacy. “It appears that he took his father’s track,” said Hamra, the former chief Rabbi of Damascus who now lives in Israel. “Thank God the stability in Syria remained. His existence in the government and the permanent stable situation in Syria are a proof of his success. It will take time to become as wise as his father.” Hamra spoke in Arabic. Another Syrian Jew added: “Asad is the best bet for America and for everyone. If he was strong enough and could manage, he would do a lot of good things. He is the best thing for America and Israel, no matter what he talks.” In contrast to the refined, diplomatic style of his father, Bashar has made a few remarks that have sparked sharp condemnation from world leaders. He was widely criticized for making what many perceived as an anti-Semitic comment to the Pope in 2001. “They tried to kill the principals of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad," Asad was quoted as saying. While the remark sparked widespread outcry from Jewish groups in the United States and Israel, some Syrian Jews said they consider the whole controversy to be frivolous, the result of inexperience or poor advising. “I don’t think he’s anti-Semitic,” said one member of the community. “He say something to please the people around him.” Hasbani agreed. “Alak,” he said of Asad's remark, a colloquial Syrian expression meaning “nothing important.”Such words would likely come as welcome news to Damascus’ embattled government. Not since America’s disastrous intervention in Lebanon in 1982 have relations between the United States and Syria been as strained as they are today. A member of the U.S. Department of State’s list of nations that support terrorism, Syria is currently under intense pressure to prevent insurgents from crossing its border into Iraq, stop interfering in the affairs of neighboring Lebanon, and cut all support for groups fighting Israel including Hezbollah and Hamas. Just last year, President Bush signed into law the Syrian Accountability Act, which imposed a range of mostly symbolic sanctions on Syria. He threatened new sanctions if the Syrians did not change their behavior. In September, the United States and France won passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, demanding that Syrian troops leave Lebanon. The recent assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a fiery explosion in downtown Beirut sent relations to yet a new low. Although Syria condemned the killing, many in Lebanon and abroad strongly suspect the involvement of Syrian intelligence agents. His assassination prompted mass anti-Syrian protests – as well some pro-Syrian rallies – on the streets of Beirut. The United States and France, joined by Russia and a number of Arab states, renewed their calls for an immediate Syrian pullout from Lebanon in time for Lebanese Parliamentary elections in May. At the time of this writing, Syrian soldiers had begun to decamp and withdraw across the border. In the midst of all this, Syria’s unusually outgoing Ambassador to the United States, Imad Mustapha, has been on a public relations campaign trying to smooth over some of the rougher edges of his country’s image. He has appeared on television regularly and, since assuming his post two years ago, has reached out to groups and legislators long at odds with Syria. Last January, he escorted former Democratic Presidential candidate and drafter of the Syrian Accountability Act, John Kerry, to Damascus for a meeting with Syrian President Asad. Over the past year, Mustapha has been making rounds in South Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish neighborhoods, introducing himself to members of the community, making friends, and encouraging Syrian Jews to visit their country of origin. Last year, he accompanied a delegation of prominent Jews of Syrian origin, some with close ties to members of Israel’s Likud government, on a visit to Syria. There, the group held a meeting with President Asad and toured prominent Jewish sites around the country. Mustapha said he is aware of the links that some Syrian Jews have with Israel and he hopes that his recent outreach in the community might eventually help lead to the restarting of negotiations between his country and the Jewish state. “We don’t expect [Syrian Jews] to do anything vis-à-vis the Syrian-Israeli conflict, but we are realistic,” Mustapha said, speaking under a large portrait of President Bashar al-Asad that hangs in the Syrian embassy. “We understand what’s happening. They have contacts with other Jews from Israel and at least, at least, they can tell them the true story about us. So yes, they can play a role, not a direct role, an indirect role.”In the meantime, the ambassador has been trying to counter a rising chorus of so-called neoconservatives calling for the overthrow of regimes across the Middle East. Despite the continuing instability in Iraq, foreign policy pundits like Richard Perle, former chairman of the U.S. Defense Advisory Board and a confidant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have said openly that Syria is an appropriate second target for regime change: part of a grand strategy to democratize the Middle East.Many Syrian Jews prefer not to delve into serious political matters, saying they would rather leave issues of war and peace to the wisdom of kings and presidents. But those who did speak made clear that regime change, in Syria’s case, would be unwise. Some said they hold little sympathy for Syria’s policies, particularly its support for groups like Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas. But they also argue that, while the United States may need to prod and push Syria to change some of its ways, attempting to undermine Asad’s secular government would be a mistake. Bashar al-Asad, they argued, is a source of stability in a turbulent region and a potential peacemaker.“I think that his [Hafez al-Asad’s] son wants to make the country better,” Fouerti said. “I think he likes the Jews. If there is peace, it’s good for Israel and Syria.”Hasbani, for his part, does not hide sympathies in the Arab-Israeli dispute.“My heart is Jewish,” he said. “I cannot say that I am not Jewish and I love the Jews, regardless of Syria. And I love Israel much more than Syria, for sure, even though I lived, ate and drank in Syria.” But Hasbani is also remarkably understanding of Syria’s predicament. He spoke about the country’s current difficulties with the United States with the cold eye of an independent observer giving an objective analysis. “I am speaking theory,” he said repeatedly, as though the opinions he expressed were not his own but rather were grounded in common sense.The nationalist persona that Hafez al-Asad created for his country, Hasbani said, makes complying with the wishes of United States or engaging in the kind of dramatic peacemaking that characterized the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s efforts almost impossible for Bashar. “They make themselves out as holding up the Arab Nation,” he said. “It supports them.” But Syria’s government is also flexible and pragmatic, Hasbani said. When faced with stark choices of bending to the will of the United States or facing isolation or worse, the Syrian government will opt for safety over posturing. The United States, he said, cannot rule out the use of force against Syria but it must be careful.“If America wants to pressure Syria,” he said, clinching his fist. “It must put pressure, tighter and tighter and tighter, economically and politically. If [Syria] continues to help Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others, and America sees that as against its interest, [the United States] needs to strike them, but without occupying Syria: essential centers for aircraft and so forth, just to show the Syrians that the temperature has risen. Then its possible Syria will back off.” But there is a second option, Hasbani said, leaning back in his chair. “They can create reconciliation between Israel and Syria,” he said. “If there were reconciliation between Syria and Israel, and there was a peace agreement, that was official and guaranteed by the United Nations, in that case, Syria will no longer be able to support Hamas and Hezbollah. They will come with Syrians to the dinner table.”How to create such reconciliation is, of course, a question that has plagued successive U.S. administrations. During the 1990s, a settlement between Syria and Israel, two of the Middle East’s most intractable enemies, seemed at imminent. Then Secretary of State Warren Christopher was shuttling between Jerusalem and Damascus on an almost weekly basis, but the negotiations consistently stumbled on the question of the strategic Golan Heights. Syria demanded a full return of the territory in exchange for a peace treaty. Israel wanted to retain control of, at least, some of the Golan for security reasons. A few months before Hafez al-Asad’s death, U.S. President Bill Clinton met with the Syrian leader in Geneva in a last ditch effort to broker a settlement. The talks failed and Asad died. Shortly thereafter, the Camp David talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians also broke down and the second Intifada erupted. The deterioration of the peace process was something that Rabbi Hamra had not anticipated when he made a highly publicized but surprise aliyah from Brooklyn to Israel ten years ago. “Everything indicated that the peace was on the door,” he said, sitting in the Brooklyn home of his daughter. “We imagined that we could work in Syria and spend the weekend in Israel or visa versa.” A solid-looking man with a bushy black beard, Hamra resembles a lumberjack. He lives in Israel but travels to the United States regularly to visit some of his children.Hamra became head of the Syrian Jewish community in the late 1980s, after the then leader Totah passed away. Hamra said he met with Asad four times during his life and once organized a march to the Presidential Palace in support of the president’s predictable reelection. He became an international figure during his time in Syria. “I had interviews with many countries, I mean journalists from Spain, Argentina, Brazil, America and Europe,” he says. “I received many senators and congressmen.”By the end of the 1980s, a movement to free Syrian Jewry was actively lobbying the American government to pressure Damascus to allow Jewish citizens to emigrate. In 1992, Syrian Jewish leaders, including Hamra and Hasbani, met with Asad and the Syrian president ordered restrictions lifted on Jewish emigration, although not directly to Israel. Hamra spent the next two years traveling between the United States and Syria until 1994 when he moved to Israel. Sitting at his daughter’s home, Hamra glimpsed at the television. Al-Jazeera - a popular source of news in many Syrian Jewish households - was reporting that Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat was dieing in a Paris hospital bed. Hamra met Arafat once. Shortly after moving to Israel, he received a letter from then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had just been nominated to share the Nobel Prize with Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Perez.“He felt that many people in Israel deserve the Prize and [I was] one of them,” he recalled the letter saying. “I would be very happy if you could come with me. I chose you among 30 people… As I remember I met Arafat at that time.”When Hamra first moved to Israel, he saw himself as an emissary of peace, expecting that a final settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute was imminent. That changed five years ago when the second Intifada erupted. “Everything returned to the old situation, like in the beginning with more hostility,” he said. “Personally, I was not influenced by the failure of the peace process. But the whole region was influenced by it. I was influenced by the fact that I am a person who calls for the peace.” The Syrian Jewish community in Israel, he said, was shaken by the deteriorating security situation, unaccustomed to the threat of suicide bombers and violence. Hamra remains decidedly apolitical, saying he simply dreams of the peace he expected a decade ago. He still thinks of his home and friends in Syria and the vision he had of traveling between Syria and Israel on weekends. He heard about Syrian Ambassador Mustapha’s outreach in the Brooklyn community. “I wish I could talk to him,” he said, and paused. “But I do not know how positive he will be. I do not know if the fact that I am from Israel will put him in an embarrassing situation. And I do not wish that… Perhaps if the Intifada never took place and things remained the same, it would be normal to contact him.” Perhaps, Mustapha said, but in the meantime communicating with Hamra would be problematic. “An Israeli citizen is a different case,” he said. “I’m not saying I don’t meet with him. I’m saying that Syria is publicly inviting Israel to rejoin the peace process. The minute that Israel says yes, we will. We will start meeting with them and engaging with them.”Mustapha became acquainted with Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community through his wife. While a student at Damascus University, she was friends with a Syrian Jewish woman named Salim al-Boucai, the daughter of the Brooklyn businessman Jack al-Boucai.Jack al-Boucai immigrated to the United States a decade ago but said he maintains strong connections with officials in the Syrian government. Until two years ago, he said he would travel regularly to Syria to import brass and copper decorations that now adorn his small store. Mustapha, who sought to strengthen relations between the embassy and the Syrian expatriate community, telephoned Boucai and introduced himself. “He asked me if I needed anything,” Mustapha said. “I said yes. I would like to meet with the Syrian Jewish community. And after a little while they came back to me and said, if I would be interested in visiting with them, they would like to meet with me at their community center in Brooklyn.”Boucai, Rabbi Kassin, Hassidic community leader Avital and others, spent a day with the ambassador, taking him on a tour of the neighborhoods. Mustapha said he had never had contacts with Syrian Jews before, including in Syria.“They are like us,” he said, “Their food, their habits, their social customs, they are like us. We, us and them, are different from the Americans… This taught me a lesson.”The visit ended cordially.“For the final time, they asked, can we do anything for you,” Mustapha said. “I said yes, actually you can. Whenever you have a wedding or a barmitsfa, invite me, I want to come.” Shortly after that meeting, the ambassador was invited to a Syrian Jewish wedding held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. There he was approached by an elderly man from a prominent Syrian Jewish family in Mexico called the Sabas.“He says to me, ‘I’m 72 or 73 years old, I have a dream.’ I said to him, what’s your dream? He said, ‘I want to visit Aleppo. This is the birth city of my parents.’ I didn’t hesitate. I immediately said to him consider you dream come true.” After the wedding Avital, a personal acquaintance of Israeli Prime Minister Arial Sharon, telephoned Mustapha and asked him about organizing a visit to Syria. “He [Avital] had a curiosity about Syria,” Boucai said. “He would love to visit Syria so he requested permission to visit Syria and they welcomed him… nothing official just personal.” A delegation of a dozen Jews of Syrian origin visited Syria in the spring of 2004, accompanied by Mustapha. Some American Jewish leaders disapproved of the trip. "It is wrong for American Jews or any Americans to help sanitize the Syrian regime by visiting Syria," said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. The group toured the country, visiting a Jewish cemetery near Damascus, the markets of Aleppo and meeting with members of the tiny Jewish community that still lives in the country. During the visit, the group met with President Asad and presented him with a gift: a traditional Jewish Shofar or rams horn. When the meeting was over, Hasbani said the group asked the president if he would invite them back to Syria.“He said no,” Mustapha said. “They were surprised. He said to them, ‘I can’t invite you back. I can’t invite Syrians back to Syria. You are always welcome.’” Mustapha recalled the men’s reaction. “They were so amazed,” he said. “We were still inside the Presidential Palace, we had not left, and they came to me and said, ‘We are so amazed. Back in America they told us, this is an evil guy. Don’t go and meet with him. But look at the way he treated us. He was so sincere with us.” Repeated calls to Avital for and interview went unreturned. A few months after Avital returned home, Boucai invited the ambassador to his son’s wedding. Over 500 people attended the ceremony, the majority of them immigrants who had come to the United States a decade ago, Boucai said. “When Dr. Mustapha came to the wedding, he said he was coming to congratulate [us],” Boucai said. “He made a small speech; he made a very beautiful speech. I sent a video of the wedding to Syria, to the people in Syria, so they could see it. And the people in the community were very happy about the reception.”The Ambassador, Boucai said, offered his services to the community. If anyone wished to renew his or her passport or return to Syria for a visit, Mustapha was willing to help. Few Syrian Jew have returned to Syria permanently, but many say that they would like to visit, if only to see the homes in which they once resided, the Synagogues in which they worshiped or the graves of their ancestors. A small, but growing minority are returning to do business and reestablish old ties. Boucai counts at least 10 individuals who are trading with Syria or own businesses there, up from five a few years ago.Yousef Jajati is one such individual. Jajati replaced Hamra as head of the community in 1994 and was one of the few Jews to remain in Syria throughout the 1990s. He said he traveled frequently to Europe and the United States. The small number of Jews who remained in Syria since all travel restrictions were lifted worship at a single Synagogue in Damascus and no longer have a full-time Rabbi. But, Jajati said, they enjoy freedoms that members of the community could not have imagined thirty years ago. In the mid-1990s, Jajati became the first Jew living in Syria to speak before the World Jewish Congress. During his trips abroad, he mingled with leading political figures in the United States and Europe including ardent critics of Syria like U.S. Representative Tom Lantos, who invited Jajati to his office.The Jajatis owned what was widely considered the smartest clothing store in Damascus. The family sold the business but still owns a factory in the Jewish Quarter that is managed by one of Jajati’s sons: Khalil. The Jajatis transferred the retail end of the business to New York, where they sell their Syrian-made clothes wholesale to such high-end stores as Porta Bella.Jajati met with Syrian President Bashar al-Asad shortly after he was sworn in as president in 2000. “I hope and wait for the day that you go to Jerusalem and sign a peace treaty,” he recalled telling Asad. “Bashar said, ‘Speak with your friends in the Israeli government, with [then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak.’ I said you are my friend, not Barak.” Jajati spoke in Arabic.Before the meeting was over, Jajati recalled Bashar telling him: “I really was sad that the Jewish community left and I would have preferred them to stay and I hope they return.”One year later, Jajati moved to New York, where most of his children reside. But he says he remains proud of his Arab identity and loyal to his country of birth. If negotiations between Israel and Syria resume, he said that he is willing to play a role.“I hope that Syria appoints me to carry out negotiations with Israel,” he said, “To represent my country.”It is easy to dismiss Jajati’s glowing comments about Syria and its president. He, after all, continues to maintain strong business links to the country and would naturally want to remain on good terms with its government. It is much harder to explain why individuals who suffered during their time Syria and cut their ties with the country long ago, like Hasbani, Hamra, Fouerti, would continue to speak fondly about the country and its leader.Some might argue that Asad’s cult of personality is the legacy of the regime. Syria is country where the president’s photo adorns every store front and is plastered on billboards, where deference to authority is the norm. But such a view overlooks two very real benefits Asad provided Syrian Jews: stability and relevance. The years proceeding Hafez al-Asad's rise to power were time of immense chaos in Syria. A succession of coup d'états resulted one repressive regime after another. For Jews, instability brought some of the worst abuses and there was always the uncertainty about the future. Asad, by contrast, quickly consolidated his power, exiling or imprisoning rivals.Ironically, the very power that made Asad feared was also the power that gave him the leverage to improve the status of those Syrians who had been most marginalized, including Jews.Asad was himself a member of a minority group: the Alawis. Concentrated in the mountains near the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, the Alawis had been victims of a long history of persecution, said Patrick Seale, author of the leading biography of Hafez al-Asad and personal acquaintance of the late Syrian leader. “They were very poor and downtrodden,” Seale said. “They were thought of as collaborationists with the French,” the former colonial rulers of Syria. Many Alawi men served as tenant farmers for Sunni landowners and Alawi women sometimes worked as domestic servants. The Alawi faith is somewhat secretive but it is known to blend Shia’a Islam with aspects of Christianity. Many Muslim clergy initially questioned Asad’s own Islamic credentials. Some Syrian Jews said they believe that Asad’s minority status may have inspired sympathy for their plight. “The Asads were a family oppressed like any Jews,” said one member of the community. Seale is more circumspect. The late Syrian president’s policies toward Jews probably stemmed more from a general opening up that accompanied his rise to power. But, he added, “He [Asad] had a feeling for downtrodden peasantry particularly. His regime was made up of country boys, not just Alawis, but Sunnis, Druze and Ismailis.”Asad made the struggle against Israel a central plank of his leadership, but Israel never posed a mortal threat to his regime and never were Syrian Jews ever implicated in spying for Israel. Asad’s only true threat, in fact, came from the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, who staged an insurrection in the city of Hama in 1982, which Asad violently suppressed. “The Jews in Syria never had a spy,” said Hasbani. “They also never had a problem with Israel or another country. Their only problem was that some of them wanted to leave. The President understood that.” In a hierarchical society like Syria, where a resident of Damascus could go an entire lifetime without catching a glimpse of the president except on television, a public meeting with Asad was the highest of honors. That is why Hasbani’s newspaper clips of Asad shaking hands with Syrian Jewish leaders are significant. Those photos made Jews relevant in Syrian society, he said, and gave the community a level of respect it had never enjoyed before. In effect, Asad brought Syrian Jews into the national tent.But all this begs a question: if life was so good under Asad, why did nearly all of Syria’s Jews leave when given the opportunity?Most left behind successful businesses and expensive homes in order to start over all again in Brooklyn or Tel Aviv. Most Syrian Jews received housing and financial assistance from local Jewish and civic organizations for one year after their arrival, but many continued to struggle. Hasbani, once a respected doctor, has watched his life sink into anonymity in a country that he himself characterized as being impersonal and lonely. Some Syrian Jews like Hasbani said that fear of the future prompted the mass departure. Although Asad had treated the Jews of Syria well, there was no guarantee that his predecessor would do the same. Jajati attributed the exodus to inertia. By the time the Syrian president lifted restrictions on emigration, most Syrian Jews had already escaped Syria for Brooklyn or Israel, where they had established thriving new communities. As life slowly drained out of the ancient Jewish neighborhoods of Damascus, Aleppo and Qamishli, the remaining families saw few reasons to remain.Then there was the Syrian government’s own dithering that might have contributed to the mass flight of Syrian Jews. Asad opened the door for Syrian Jews to leave in 1992 and then, for reasons no one entirely understands, the door was shut a year later and then reopened shortly after that. Many of those who had not left, when first given the opportunity, felt that if they did not leave immediately, the door would close again, said Hasbani. Fouerti explained his reason for leaving with a simple metaphor. “If you have a bird and locked it in a cage and later opened the door, it will fly away,” he said. “I had one choice: to go see the outside.”Yet living on the outside, Syria’s Jews continue to look back in. Much like Palestinian-Israelis, they straddle the very dividing line of the Arab-Israeli dispute. Although this awkward position has caused many to suffer pain and torment, it has also provided them with unique insight into a conflict that has festered for far too many years. Syrian Jews will likely never play a role in resolving who gets what part of the Golan Heights. But they may someday be able foster a warm peace.“If there is peace between Syria and Israel, and I am sure there will be peace, we will bring them together,” Fouerti said. “We must be a bridge between Israel and Syria.”

The Syria Problem

The Syria ProblemUntil it's resolved, there will be no peace in Lebanon.

by Lee Smith

THE CIVIL WAR IN LEBANON may have already begun, or perhaps it never ended and is now entering a new phase after 16 years of relative calm. Yesterday a roadside bomb injured Lt. Col. Samir Shehade of the Internal Security Forces and killed four of his associates. Shehade had been assisting the U.N. investigation into the murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri."The attempt was almost invariably linked to the investigation," says Beirut Daily Star opinion page editor Michael Young. "And it targeted the number two person in an ISF branch considered to be controlled by the Hariri Camp."The ISF, which is not part of the Lebanese army, is also the body that American policymakers have sought to strengthen on behalf of the Siniora government with financial assistance and FBI training. An attack on that institution then might be understood as an attack on the Sunnis, and, more broadly, the Saudi-US-French project in Lebanon .Before Hezbollah's war with Israel , that alliance was counting on the U.N. investigation to break Syria 's hold on Lebanon and punish Damascus to an extent that the Assad regime might have trouble surviving. " Syria 's overwhelming priority is to escape the murder rap by any means," says William Harris, a professor of political studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand . Indeed, it is so vital, says Harris, that Hezbollah's war with Israel should be seen in this light. Nasrallah wasn't fighting on behalf of the Iranian nuclear program, but to move the Hariri investigation to the bottom of the international agenda."From Iran 's perspective," says Harris, "Hezbollah's use of the arsenal was probably premature. The nuclear issue is on a longer time-frame in which these few months are not critical. However, these months are critical for Syria 's fate."This theory also explains the media campaign Bashar al-Assad's regime is now openly waging against Saudi Arabia , or what news sites close to Syria 's presidential palace have started to call "The Kingdom of Scattered Dust.""Assad's inner circles are charging the Saudis with all kinds of sins," says Tony Badran, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and editor of Syria Monitor. "Everything from accusing the Saudi military attaché of reaching out to Syrian tribal leaders trying to get them to revolt against Assad, blaming Prince Bandar for coordinating with Assad's opponents, former VP Abdel-Halim Khaddam and Muslim Brotherhood head Ali Sadreddine Bayanouni, and claiming Riyadh supports the Israelis." Some of those charges may contain a kernel of truth. "I suspect the Syrians were especially angry with the Khaddam and Bayanouni interviews on Hariri's Future TV," says Michael Young, "which might partly explain targeting the ISF deputy yesterday."As for supporting the Israelis, it's no secret that Riyadh wanted Hezbollah defeated and their Syrian and Iranian patrons pushed back.Badran explains this war of words as Damascus 's way of highlighting its strategic commitments. "This is another indicator that Assad has made his choice to hitch his ride to Iran . The notion circulated in U.S. diplomatic and media circles about prying Syria away from Iran is ignorant of the reality in Syria ."LAST TIME WE CHECKED in on Damascus , the United States , Saudi Arabia , and Israel were all ambivalent about regime change. The United States was worried about regional stability, and, more specifically, a Muslim Brotherhood take-over. That was also a concern for the Israelis, as was the possibility of the United States saddling them with a Syrian Abu Mazen--another weak, though ostensibly moderate, Arab leader for whom Washington would demand concessions, notably the Golan Heights . The Saudis just didn't want to see another Arab regime fall for fear the Americans might make a habit of it. Things have changed. The United States is rumored to be meeting with Muslim Brotherhood representatives among other opponents of the Assad regime. Saudi Arabia 's King Abdullah, according to the Arabic-language website Elaph, refused to meet with a Syrian emissary, and is instead giving the enemies of Damascus enough air-time to make their case. So, where does Israel stand?It's hard to tell. Right after the war, Amir Peretz, Israel 's novice minister of defense, and former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter talked about opening up peace channels with Damascus , which Olmert thankfully shot down. Maybe Jerusalem has good reasons to look past its problems with Syria -- Iran being the number one threat to the Jewish state--but it may also indicate that Israel 's national security strategy has hit something of a wall.Many Israelis believe that a major benefit of the recent war is that Hezbollah is no longer seen by the international community as a national resistance outfit but rather as an instrument of Syria and Iran . However, it remains unclear whether or not anything will be done to stymie that relationship, even by those nations that dispatch UNIFIL troops. Ironically it is Israelis, who have distrusted the U.N. ever since 1967, who are now counting on the moral clarity of the international community. Their neighbors to the north, if they had a choice, sure wouldn't.Given the nature of Lebanese sectarianism and the fragility of the Lebanese state, the Lebanese themselves have long viewed their political situation with an eye toward regional and international conflicts, mindful that Lebanon is a stage on which many outside actors pursue their own interests. The Israelis, of course, have long been isolated from most of the region's powers. For Israel , things are relatively simple: They must consider the Americans, a host of enemies, and a Europe full of nuisances. As we have seen, Lebanon 's obsession with other interests, and frequent courtship of them, has rendered the country incapable of saving itself. And yet, the Lebanese are adept at convincing others that their interests lie in helping to rescue that beautiful damsel that is Lebanon .Of course, it will be a long time before the Arabs believe it is to their advantage to help Israel openly. Still, it says something about the relative insularity of Israeli strategic thinking that so many here should be surprised to find themselves, all of a sudden, on the same side as the region's conservative Sunni regimes.Even before the end of the war, Israeli intellectuals had started to hammer away at the failures of the political and military leadership, though they did so in the absence of an accurate assessment of the damage to Hezbollah. Introspection and unsparing self-criticism is what distinguishes Israeli society from every other country in the region, and perhaps the world; moving at such a pace, however, does not seem conducive to formulating a good long-term strategy: Oslo and Disengagement are the two most obvious examples of this problem.Maybe some Israelis were surprised when Siniora rebuffed Olmert's vague peace overtures. As every Lebanese, pro- or anti-Israel, knows instinctively, the bottleneck is Syria . If it will be a long time before Israel can have a real accord with its neighbor, the country's leaders can learn at least one thing from the Lebanese experience: Syria is a problem that will not go away.
Lee Smith, a Hudson Institute visiting fellow based in Beirut, is writing a book on Arab culture.

Halaweh ... Syria Israeli
by kadmous

George said Nasraoui, the lab "spring" that "informed sources that it bought the relief goods Syria" and added that he had informed the body that "It is natural that the Syrian goods cheaper and said : "Give us the costs of Syria to give Lebanon biggest ... and I am sorry for the work you have done and Mkhalvickm. " Country "

Nabih Berri said on the anniversary of Imam al-Sadr said that the absence of a "Dairy and milk اجبان name" Lebanon "owned MP Nabil de Freij in the Bekaa area. I do not know what is the relationship between the lab with "Hezbollah" and the resistance, it was important to tender this lab and an Israeli company, to supply the troops of UNIFIL milk? the auction took place on the plant Lebanese, a target of Israeli planes and spotted presence. It can be said that this was a coincidence, this talk with the documents as saying the letter to Ms. Rice and the Secretary-General of the United Nations and to all the delegates. There is another plant named "Dalal" in Shuafat. it was awarded the tender on the subject of prefabricated buildings to the American Army in the Gulf and Iraq. The challenge also Israeli companies because of this survey also exist, may also said that this "coincidence." There is another plant in Shuafat ", and continues to speak to the San Nabih Berri, "distributes Coca-Cola in Turkey were bidding between him and an Israeli company. Once again the tender was awarded, and Israeli aircraft also targeted. There is in this manner no less than 11 companies. "
The mismatch, the Commission Higher Relief buy sweet Syria Syria because it is cheaper.

The Damascus-Hizballah Axis: Bashar al-Asad’s Vision of a New Middle East
By Seth Wikas

On August 15, Syrian president Bashar al-Asad gave a significant policy speech to the Syrian Journalists Union in which he expressed his support for Hizballah. More importantly, the address sought to redefine Syria’s position in the Arab world. Building on Washington’s talk of the birth of a new Middle East, Asad described his own vision for a new Middle East, one with an empowered Arab resistance, a weakened Israel, and a renewed regional unity against Western interests.

Core Messages
Criticism of anti-Syrian Arab regimes and leaders. In a grand departure from his previous public remarks, Asad attacked his Arab counterparts, past and present, assailing “supposed Arab sages” and “half-men” who brought nothing but defeat and humiliation to the region. He criticized the Arab leaders who believed Hizballah would be unable to confront Israel effectively. Asad said that Hizballah’s success in forcing Israeli to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000 proved those Arab leaders wrong.
However, in his speech, Asad’s greatest criticism came in his comparison between the current anti-Syrian Lebanese leadership and those who supported the Israeli-Lebanese peace agreement of May 17, 1983. Across the Arab world, the May 17 agreement was viewed as illegitimate. Although the Lebanese parliament ratified it in 1984, Lebanon’s then-president Amin Gemayel never signed it, leading to its collapse. Asad invoked the agreement in his discussion of the March 14 forces, the anti-Damascus coalition currently in power in Beirut, led by Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt. Asad described the March 14 forces as Israeli and American agents who invited Israel to make war on Lebanon in order to undermine Hizballah.
Unwavering support for Hizballah. Syrian support for Hizballah is nothing new. Since the group’s formation in the early 1980s, Syria has offered its territory as a training ground and transit point for Hizballah arms and personnel. Damascus has also given money and arms to the organization. Advocating Hizballah’s “resistance,” Asad emphasizes in his speech that when negotiations between conflicting parties fail, resistance remains as the viable alternative for conflict resolution. Resistance and peace are not separate, he says, but “constitute the pillar . . . and he who supports part of it has to support the other part.” The Syrian president affirmed the legitimacy of the resistance, saying it is an honor and source of pride for the Syrian people, and he himself expresses his “appreciation and admiration to the men of resistance” in Lebanon.
Asad also tackled the nature of resistance and its relationship with the Lebanese government in his address. He argued that resistance takes its legitimacy from the government and the people, not permission from the government, an ironic distinction given that Asad heads a one-party dictatorship.
Israel’s weakened position. Asad expressed great pride in Hizballah’s battles against Israel, and he focused on Israel’s weakened military position after the war. He notes that Israel’s 1982 invasion of Beirut was completed within a week, but in 2006 after five weeks the Israeli military “is still struggling and suffering to occupy several hundreds of meters here and there” of Lebanese territory. Asad noted that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have lost the credibility they once had, remarking that the Hizballah victory is even greater as the technical gap between Israel and the Lebanese has widened over the past two decades. In contrast to 1982, he said, the Arab forces fighting against Israel have shown that they are now better trained, organized, and led, and that Arab fighters are now more determined than they ever were. Hizballah won the war against Israel, Asad argued, not only at its end but from the very beginning of the hostilities. The goal for Asad now is to translate the military victory into victory on the Lebanese political battlefield, which will create a new Lebanon with Hizballah playing an even more central role.
Appeal to pan-Arabism. One of the significant themes in Asad’s speech was the return to pan-Arab rhetoric. The regime of Bashar and his late father Hafiz al-Asad has long given lip service to notions of Arab unity and solidarity. The novelty of Bashar’s pan-Arab rhetoric in his recent speech comes from his condemnation of the failures of the past and his long diatribe describing the Arab world’s failures and humiliations during the twentieth century. Asad said that one source of Israeli military strength is the moral and physical weakness of the Arabs. He also conceded that Arabs have talked much and done little throughout their history, and are rarely able to agree on anything. In this context, Asad lauded Hizballah as a model for transforming resistance from a purely Lebanese phenomenon into a shared Arab phenomenon.
Assessment
Asad’s speech accomplished three goals: criticizing the anti-Damascus government in Beirut; reaffirming Syrian support of Hizballah; and reviving, at least rhetorically, pan-Arab themes that had been on the wane in recent years. While Asad did not address most of his critics and enemies by name, he explicitly identified the March 14 forces, calling them Israeli agents. The speech was also aimed at those Arab regimes—notably Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states—that did not support Hizballah in its war against Israel because they fear the growing power of the group’s Iranian patron and an increase in the regional political and religious influence of Tehran’s Shiite regime.
Asad affirmed Syria’s strong bond with Hizballah. The Syria-Hizballah connection goes back nearly two decades, and as an ally of Iran, Syria is positioned to be the Arab state in the region with the most to gain by Hizballah’s rise. If Hizballah and Iran continue to grow in influence and prominence, Asad’s position will be enhanced; he will be associated with the only Arab leader—Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah—who has been able to inflict military and psychological damage on Israel. Indeed, following Asad’s speech, a Syrian Baath Party member announced that the state-authorized Front for the Liberation of the Golan will fight against Israel using Hizballah’s tactics. Asad’s speech and the formation of such an organization illustrate how deeply Hizballah’s success has become a new model for confrontation with Israel.
In backing Nasrallah, Asad has found a way to take up the program of his father. Throughout the 1970s, Hafiz al-Asad attempted to unify the Arab Levant via his patronage of the Palestinians, involvement in Lebanon, and attempts to bring Jordan into his orbit. In the 1990s, Asad replaced his pan-Arabism with pan-Islamism, using Damascus as a haven for groups such as Hizballah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. With the rise of Hizballah and its message of Arab resistance against Israel and the West, Bashar al-Asad hopes to ride Hizballah’s coattails to reassert pan-Arabist themes. By saying that resistance and peace “constitute the same pillar,” Asad created a new Syrian pan-Arab rhetoric that contrasts the Arab failures of the past with the success of a new movement with Hizballah and Syria in the vanguard.
In recent weeks, Asad has projected a stronger position vis-à-vis Israel, rejecting Israeli demands for the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon to be deployed on the Syria-Lebanon border in order to prevent the smuggling of weapons to Hizballah. Calling it harmful to Lebanese autonomy, Asad refused any initiative that would declare a border between Syria and Lebanon without settling the dispute over Israel’s control of Shebaa Farms. In rejecting a UN presence on the Syrian-Lebanese border, wholeheartedly supporting Hizballah’s attacks on Israel, and explicitly saying that peace and resistance go hand in hand, Syria is at least rhetorically moving toward a new stage in its confrontation with Israel.
Conclusion
Hizballah’s successes in the war with Israel appear to have emboldened Asad, raising the specter that Damascus may consider violating the 1974 ceasefire in the Golan. At the same time, however, he has isolated himself in the Arab world. After calling Arab leaders who did not support Hizballah “half-men,” newspapers in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia unleashed a flurry of personal attacks on Asad. Despite the Syrian leader’s critical rhetoric and his ongoing efforts to unruffle Arab feathers, Asad remains the most powerful Arab patron of Hizballah. This alliance will be the key to determining Hizballah’s place in Lebanon and among its sovereign Arab neighbors and Syria’s next steps vis-à-vis Israel.

Seth Wikas will be a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute starting this autumn.

Guests of the Ayatollah Was this the first clash between the United States and militant
Book Review
by Amir Taheri


Earlier this year the State Department in Washington singled out the Islamic Republic of Iran as the number-one challenge that the United States faces in the international arena. Since then several events have proved that analysis right. Tehran has thumbed its nose at Washington over the nuclear issue while intensifying efforts to secure greater influence in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has also reactivated its support networks among Shi'ite minorities in several Arab countries allied to the US. The mini-war fought between Israel and Hezballah also helped underline the Islamic Republic's determination to remain on the offensive against the US and its regional allies.
In his new book, star-reporter Mark Bowden argues hat the Islamic Republic has effectively been at war against the US since 4 November 1979 when a group of "students" raided the American embassy compound in Tehran, held its 66 diplomats hostage, and continued their defiance for 444 days. Under international law, an embassy compound is part of a foreign nation's territory. Thus invading it is a casus belli (act of war). What is remarkable, as Bowden shows in this fascinating book, is that President Jimmy Carter decided not to treat the occupation of his embassy as an act of war, thus encouraging the late Ayatollah Khomeini to come out with his notorious dictum: American Cannot Do a Damn Thing!
Bowden sees the invasion of the US embassy as America's first battle "in the war against militant Islamism", and the diplomats who were captured as the fist victims of the same terrorist war that reached its zenith with the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington.
The interest of Bowden's book, however, is not in such controversial assertions.
The book deserves attention as a human-interest story, telling the story of men and women whose lives were altered, and in some cases practically destroyed, by the experience. To write this book, Bowden has talked to more than a dozen of the former hostages and quite a few of their Khomeinist jailers. Bowden has also spent time in Tehran trying to gauge the atmosphere of the city in the feverish season that led to then attack on the embassy. The result is a hugely readable yarn, almost deliberately written as the basis for a putative film-script. This is not surprising as Bowden's previous book "Black Hawk Down", about the murder of US Marines in Mogadishu, was made into a film.
Bowden's reporting talents enable him to bring the hostages and some of their captives to life in pen portrayals that are both sympathetic and critical.
When it comes to historical context and political analysis, however, Bowden falls short of the aims he sets for himself and, in the process, makes numerous errors.
For example he claims that on the eve of the embassy raid the US had little real intelligence about Iran.
"For years, little intelligence was collected from Iran that did not originate with the shah's own regime," Bowden writes. "Now, with Iran suddenly under new masters and the situation in constant, confusing flux, the agency was . . . pathetically far from being able to influence events, despite the overblown fears of most Iranians, who saw the CIA as omnipotent and omnipresent."
But what about the tonnes of material that the raiders seized at the embassy? To be sure much of the material seized was mere routine and not of much interest, if only because the really "top secret" stuff had been destroyed by the embassy staff weeks before the raid. Nevertheless, the remaining material, if studied carefully, shows that the US had a pretty good idea of what was happening in Iran under the Shah. The CIA and other American intelligence services had more than 5000 " sources" or "informants" throughout Iran and at all levels of society. The problem was that the intelligence gathered was seldom properly analysed and almost never used by high-level policymakers in a serious way.
The failure of the US to foresee the Iranian revolution and thus prepare top cope with it was political, not intelligence based.
Bowden also claims that the US contingent in Iran had "virtually no one familiar with the local language and culture." As a result, he claims the legation resembled an isolated fortress with little contact with the world surrounding it. But then Bowden introduces us to people like John Limbert, Barry Rosen and Michael Metrinko who were as conversant with Iranian culture and spoke Persian as fluently as any man in downtown Tehran. The list of contacts that Metrinko, to cite just one example, had established was quite impressive. It included Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, then Khomeini's number-two, Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleqani, a left-wing mullah, Admiral Ahmad Madani, Khomeini's first Minister of Defence, and Ayatollah Muhammad Beheshti, who became Chief Justice under Khomeini.
Several of the American diplomats had spent years in Iran as members of the Peace Corps, often serving in remote parts of the country and getting to know Iranian society first hand. At least four had Iranian spouses.
Bowden repeats the standard charge that the Carter administration had no clue of what was happening in Iran. But he himself sows that this was not the case. The administration included men like National Security Advisor Zbigniew Bzrezinski and Captain Gary Sick the man in charge of the Iran desk, who knew perfectly well what was going on.
The problem was with President Carter himself and his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Carter misunderstood the aims of the Khomeinist revolution for which he had undoubted sympathy. He also believed that nations were motivated by self-interest and would do nothing to undermine their own security for purely ideological reasons. He did not realise the duality of Iran, as state and as revolution, which continues to this day. Iran as a nation was itself a hostage to the revolution.
Carter's misreading of the Iranian situation was not entirely due to his supposed naiveté. He believed the claim of the revolutionaries that they had rise in revolt against the Shah's tyranny and in the name of freedom and human rights. Carter was also misled by other facts. The first Cabinet formed by Khomeini, with Mehdi Bazargan as Prime Minister, included five ministers with dual Iranian and American citizenship. The revolutionary regime had also helped the US withdraw 27000 Americans, most of them military personnel, from Iran without any incident. An attempt by an Islamist Marxist group, the Mujahedin Khalq (People's Combatants), to seize some of those Americans hostage in the early days of the revolution had been foiled by gunmen loyal to Khomeini. Carter had also established contact with Khomeini before the latter's return to Iran in February 1979, and received assurances about future relations. Those assurances were later repeated by Bazargan during is meetings with Bzerzinski in Algiers just two days before the raid on the embassy. Thus, Carter tended to see the Khomeinist revolution as a success for his own "human rights" agenda that had been at the centre of his presidential campaign in 1976.
The way Carter saw it, an Islamic Iran could emerge as the central part of a "Green Belt" of Islamic states, initially dreamed of by Bzerzinski, with which to contain the Soviet Union.
Four months after the seizure of he embassy, Carter still kept saying: "We have no quarrel with the Islamic Revolution." He did not realise that although the US had no quarrel with Iran as a nation, it precisely had a quarrel with Iran as the embodiment of the Khomeinist revolution.
Bruce Laingen, the US Charge d'Affaire at the time of the embassy raid, writes in his memoirs that almost every day he asked himself: Why, to what end? He did not see why revolutionary Iran pick up a quarrel with a US which, under Carter, sympathized with the revolution an wanted to help consolidate its hold on Iran.
Laingen wrote in his diary: "Why? To what end? What purpose is served? We have tried by every available means over the past months to demonstrate, by word and deed, that we accept the Iranian revolution . . . . we wish it well and hope it can strengthen Iran's integrity and independence."
That "Why, to what end?" moment, known as "The Laingen Paradox" continues to haunt American policymakers to this day.
Bowden is right in pointing out that the hostage-takers had acted without the prior knowledge of Ayatollah Khomeini. But then he tries to associate some of Khomeini's closest aides at the time with the embassy plot. Among them, he mentions Ali Khamenehi, a junior mullah who was to become "Supreme Guide" after Khomeini's death in 1989, and Ali-Akbar Hashemi, a businessman-cum-mullah who later became President of the Islamic republic. The fact, however, is that Khamenehi and Rafsanjani knew nothing of the embassy plot and were in Mecca, on a Hajj pilgrimage, when the embassy was seized.
Bowden is also wrong to place Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current President of the Islamic Republic, among the leaders of the hostage-holders. "Without any doubt," Bowden writes, "Ahmadinejad was one of the central players in the group that seized the embassy and held hostages." All sources, however, concord that Ahmadinejad, although contacted on the subject, refused to take part and was in no way involved at any stage of the operation.
Curiously, Bowden does not mention Habiballah Peyman, a dentist, who was the ultimate political guru of the hostage-holders. Nor does he probe into the links that existed between Peyman and the Soviet KGB office in Tehran.
Bowden says that a certain Mashallah Kashani, described as a gangster heading a protection racket, had helped prevent the seizure of the US embassy on previous occasions in exchange for monthly payments by the Americans. But we are not told why that protection was no longer there when the hostage-takers struck. Was it because Kashani, the protection racket chief, had close ties to the Fedayeen People, a Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla outfit?
Another fact that Bowden does not even touch is the cost of the operation that must have ran into millions of dollars. Over 600 "students" were involved in the 444-day event. Who paid their wages, the cost of feeding them and the hostages, and the inevitable upkeep cost of the vast embassy compound?
The portrait gallery of the hostage-takers, as presented by Bowden, includes a variety of types. There were idealists such as Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, Mohsen Mirdamadi, and Muhammad Naiimipour, who had been brainwashed into believing that the US embassy was a centre for plotting a counter-revolution. There were also opportunists like Muhammad Hashemi, who was to become a business tycoon later on, and Habiballah Bitaraf, who became Minister of Energy, who wanted to secure revolutionary credentials for themselves. Others, like Muhammad Reza Khatami, who was to transform himself into a reformist years later, and Abbas Abdi believed that the Khomeinist movement needed to establish a militant anti-American credentials to ward off competition from the Marxist-Leninist left which was then in the ascendancy.
The group also included individuals presented by Bowden as sadists seeking a political cover for venting their own frustrations. Among them was Hussein Sheikh al-Islam, known as "Gap Tooth" and "Rat Face", who took an evident pleasure in the sufferings of his captives.
But the top prize for nastiness goes to one Ma'asoumeh Ebtekar who served the criminal groups spokesperson under the code-name of "Sister Mary" who took evident pleasure in insulting, bullying and demeaning the captives while filming the whole proceedings. Ebtekar had changed her name from "Nilufar", which is a flower in Persian, to Ma'asoumeh, a popular Shi'ite name to underline her Islamic credentials. She also made a point of specially humiliating the women hostages. For example, she could not understand how Anne Swift, a "mere woman", could be the senior political officer at the US Embassy, and not "a mere secretary"
Richard Moorefield, one of the hostages, had this to say to Ebtekar: "Nothing we could have done to you in our wildest dreams is half as bad as what you have done to yourselves. Your children and your grandchildren are going to curse your name."
Metrinko was even bitterer about Ebtekar who later became President Muhammad Khatami's assistant for environmental affairs. "If she is on fire in the street," Metrinko said. "I wouldn't piss on her to put it out."
Barbara Tim, another hostage, went further by shouting at Ebtekar:" You are full of shit."
"Sister Mary", also known as "Screaming Mary", had a nasty habit of opening letters and parcels sent to the hostages and purloining whatever she thought they should not see. On one occasion, Ebtekar threatened one hostage that they would kidnap his son from school bus in US, chop him into pieces and send the pieces to his mother.
Another hostage had this remark: "You think you are civilized because you had civilization 3000 years ago? Well, there is no trace of it anymore. You are nothing but animals."
In contrast with sadists like "Screaming Mary", there were also some good-hearted men and women among the hostage-holders. One such was Akbar Husseini, nicknamed "The Courteous", who forged a genuine bond of sympathy with his captives. During the 444 days of the ordeal some hostage-holders, like Feroz Rajaeefar, dropped out, finding the whole situation unbearable.
Only the hard-core of sadists and opportunists remained to the end, and later managed to capture senior posts in the Khomeinist regimes. Many of the idealists went to the battlefront against Iraq in the 1980s, where many died.
Bowden's book includes a number of intriguing assertions that he does not develop. For example, he claims that Carter wanted to poison the Shah Panama, in the hope that the monarch's death would satisfy the Tehran hostage-holders.
Bowden also claims that Khamenehi, who became Deputy Defence Minister a year after the seizure of the embassy, wanted to negotiate the purchase of US arms with the American military attaché who was among the captives. The claim that two of Ayatollah Taleqani's sons worked for the Americans is also intriguing as is the assertion attributed to them that Taleqani had been murdered on Khomeini's orders.
The most intriguing revelation, however, concerns Ayatollah Beheshti, whom Bowden reveals as a key American "contact" and the figure that Washington regarded as the new regime's strongman.
The book contains numerous errors that more eagle-eyed fact-checkers could have spotted. Reza Shah was not a self-appointed king and did not seize power in a coup d'etat in 1925. The coup had happened in 1921 under the leadership of Sayyed Ziaeddin Tabatabai. Reza Khan was elected Shah by a Constituent Assembly in 1925.
Muhammad Mussadeq was not elected Prime Minister in 1951 but was appointed by the Shah. Iranian oil had already been nationalized when Mussadeq assumed the premiership.
The change of the Iranian calendar from an Islamic one to a nationalist one took place in 1975, not 1925.
In 1945 Tehran was something more than "a mere village". In fact, it was a major city with almost one million inhabitants.
Khomeini spent only four moths in France, not "many years."
Simon Farzami, the Jewish journalist who was executed on Khomeini's orders, was a born and bred Iranian, and not a foreigner who had acquired Iranian citizenship.
The CIA contacted Abbas Amir-Entezam, deputy premier in the fist cabinet formed by Khomeini, when he was ambassador to Sweden in the 1980s, not before the revolution. Amir-Entezam had not been involved in setting up a Swiss based newspaper to fight the Khomeinist regime.
Admiral Madani was not poisoned by Khomeini's agents in Paris in 1986. In fact, he died of heart attack in the US in 2004.
Sadegh Tabatabai was not a "veteran diplomat" and had never worked for any diplomatic service; His sole claim to power was that he was a brother-in-law of Khomeini's son Ahmad.
In 1979 Iran's population was 38 million, not 46 million.
Bowden interviewed more than a dozen of he hostage-holders and, curiously, found almost all of them changed for the better. They all tried to explain the event as a result of youthful ardour, misunderstanding, and what the French call l'air du temps. (The mood of the moment.) The only two that the found to be unrepentant were Ebtekar and Sheikh al-Islam.
In interviews with Bowden, some former hostage-holders made intriguing remarks.
For example, Mirdamadi told Bowden: "None of us in the revolution believed that Iran would ever have an autocratic regime again. Yet, here we are."
Naiimipour insisted that h was an enthusiastic supporter of US action in Iraq.
"The vast majority of Iraqis are certainly happy that Americans have come and saved them," the former leader of the hostage-holders said.
Even more intriguing was a remark made by a Revolutionary Guards officer who commanded the unit protecting the embassy compound.
"We love America and thank George Bush for toppling Saddam Hussein," he said.
Well, who said Iranian politics was simple?