A group of Jews who fled Syria decades ago are demanding an easing of sanctions on a government with past ties to al-Qaeda, despite wariness from other Jewish groups and Israel.
Henry Hamra left Damascus as a teenager more than 30 years ago and never stopped yearning for home. “It was my dream to go back,” he told lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday.
In February, shortly after the Assad regime was toppled, Mr. Hamra and his father, Rabbi Yosef Hamra, finally returned with other Jews to see the ancient sites that are remnants of centuries of Syrian Jewish history. The new government of President Ahmed al-Shara, a former rebel leader with jihadist roots, helped make the trip possible.
The visit was encouraging, but it was also heartbreaking for Mr. Hamra. Fourteen years of civil war and tight financial restrictions imposed by the U.S. government and others have crippled Syria, both physically and economically. The sites he had longed to see were abandoned or destroyed, including the ancient Jobar synagogue and a cemetery in Damascus where a prominent mystic of the 16th and 17th centuries rests.
“There's a lot of work to be done, and I think the only thing stopping all of this is sanctions,” Mr. Hamra said in a meeting with Representative Jimmy Panetta, a California Democrat.
The Hamra family joined Syrian-American advocacy groups, originally formed in opposition to the government of Bashar al-Assad, in lobbying the United States to lift sanctions on the new government. The family, prominent members of Brooklyn’s large Syrian Jewish community, turned to these groups for help in organizing their visit to Syria and, in turn, were enlisted to help prepare for sanctions relief in a play designed to intrigue American officials.
But Marshall Wittman, a spokesman for the pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said: “Any change in policy must be based on a sustained demonstration of positive behavior by the new Syrian government.”
