From Cairo and Damascus

...From the way you behave," he says, "one would think that it's only the Jews who are oppressed here...

...The similarity in language, architecture and costume is superficial...

...The picture protests too much...

...Let them know that their actions cast them into disrepute...

...it is the voice of my first teacher, and of my parents, it is the voice of our transmission system, God to Moses, Moses to Joshua, and so on through the rebbe of Oifn Pripitchik and to that nameless teacher in a forlorn Jewish school in Damascus, and my daughter's teacher in Newton, Massachusetts...

...This is a very different place...

...No one—not even a visiting Jewish journalist—averts his face in disgust...

...Yet it is obviously difficult to imagine that the Syrians actually believe that what they do, or fail to do, will determine Soviet policy, or even affect it at the margins...

...The standard explanation—that Syria does not want to contribute to Israel's military capability—is wildly implausible, given the size and age and sex distribution of Syrian Jewry...

...I don't care, frankly, whether we become a petit bourgeois society, or a communist society, or whatever it is we may become...

...He said some other things as well, to prove that his fear was based on fact...

...Hundreds of thousands of people assembled, marched, chanted...

...But on my last day in Syria, chatting with someone I had come to feel close to, I mentioned that I had taped some of my conversations...

...The regime is—everyone agrees—shaky...

...Still, the opportunity to visit with these people, to get a sense of their condition, to determine for myself whether Mike Wallace's twin efforts at exonerating the Syrian regime were in any measure accurate, was most welcome...

...My trip to Syria had been planned before the Sadat initiative...

...They do not perceive themselves as sinister, nor are they so perceived by those with whom they interact, chiefly officials of other governments, interactions governed by the proprieties of diplomatic intercourse...

...I listen, stunned...

...What to do...

...So it was that I spent much of my time in Syria with the Jews of Damascus, and devoted much of my conversation with Syrian—and American—government officials to the Jewish condition...

...But, they resent Sadat for having asserted Egyptian preeminence, and they are offended by his dramatic style, which is so very different from their own plodding manner...

...I recorded a part of that class, and, listening to it now, I hear things I did not hear in the excitement of the moment...

...So, I suspect, the authorities lose consciousness of the fact that their policies are disgusting...

...The central contribution of Anwar Sadat has been to divert discussion from the sterile back-and-forth of one legal formulation or another, and to get on with a discussion of peace itself...

...Here, there is no sense of that...

...Naturally, he asks that he not be quoted...

...I am bound to say, in this regard, how pleased and how proud I am that the current American commitment to human rights is so energetically and capably pursued by American government personnel in Damascus, whose concern for the Jews of Syria is no secret at all...

...The plains are riddled with tank traps and missile batteries, the roads are clogged with military traffic...

...In the morning, released from school and from work, you demonstrate against Sadat...

...In Damascus itself, the military are joined by the "secret" police...

...It is one thing to sit here at home and take comfort from the fact that others are dealing with the problem...

...There are two schools...

...I had been taken from class to class, given the chance to see the students at their studies...

...I gather that it is as much a sign of status to have such bodyguards as it is a protection against Iraqi or other potential assassins...

...Damascus came alive for me in an especially powerful way some two weeks after I had returned home...

...I say "we" because the task here belongs properly to world Jewry...

...As one intellectual told me, "We have newspapers that are not newspapers, political parties that are not political parties, a middle class that is not a middle class...

...There are people—I have met some—in the Syrian government who are obviously cultured and sophisticated...

...There are 5,000 Jews in Syria, 3,500 of them in Damascus, and there is no way in which they can escape the awareness that they are hostages...

...Wallace's pollyannaish view was, as might have been expected, quickly exploited by the Syrian government, which prepared a rather handsome brochure whose text is almost entirely drawn from the Wallace effort, and whose purpose is to exonerate the Syrian regime with regard to its treatment of the Jews...

...I just want us to be what we say we are...

...Fear...

...Accordingly, I come away from Syria persuaded that we are bound to engage in a vocal policy of seeking to shame the Syrian government into behaving properly...

...And there were, and are, those in the United States who have assumed that Jewish communal criticism of Wallace was simply another instance of Jewish hysterical over-reaction...

...But Syria's dismal politics, which hug the ground like a sullen fog, are not engraved in stone...

...The fact is that the regime survives because it governs under martial law, and martial law gets justified by the continuing Middle East crisis—for Syria, a two-front crisis: Israel, and also Iraq...

...Then you drive north some two hundred kilometers...

...In the formal Syrian view, there is no room for negotiation regarding the intended scope of Israeli withdrawal...

...It is not Israel's task any more than it is ours, and there is a clear political advantage to our taking the leadership on this one...

...In French, also an official UN language, the withdrawal is to be from "les terri-toires"—which, translated back into English, can be read either with or without the definite article...

...The prospect is hardly imminent, but the potential is there...

...And on humanitarian issues, the sophistication or civility of political leaders matters not one whit...

...That double standard is patronizing, and I don't like to be patronized...

...In the absence of any more compelling explanation, I conclude that the leaders of the regime spend too much of their time talking to one another and to like-minded colleagues from comparable societies, and remain unaware of the degree to which they are generally perceived as a collection of primitive ruffians...

...One night, my cornpanion and I engaged in an extended and animated conversation with two Palestinians sitting at an adjoining table in one of the city's better restaurants...

...But there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the impression provided by Mike Wallace in his program on Syrian Jews—an impression he went on to reconfirm in a later broadcast prepared after the first was greeted by a storm of protest—was overwhelmingly inaccurate...

...Several hundred miles away, the Egyptians and the Israelis are wrangling their way to an agreement...

...I really feel rather silly about this cloak and dagger introduction...

...But I do know that a bold and imaginative Syrian leader would— for whatever it might be worth in that repressive context—have the genuinely enthusiastic support of his people were he to sue for peace...

...And the Syrian regime must know that, especially in light of the fact that two of the thirteen Syrian brides who came to the United States under special dispensation last year, and could not make the adjustment to this country, chose to go back to Syria rather than move to Israel...

...Economic development is happening in Syria, and the prospects for sustained and rapid growth are much better there, given natural resources and demographic conditions, than in nearby Egypt...

...Egypt and Syria had just broken off diplomatic relations, which meant that Egyptair was no longer flying the Cairo-Damascus route...

...In the Syrian case, we are no longer talking about a Jewish community...

...The older is in the seventh grade, and I was invited by her teacher to share the story of my trip with the children of the seventh and eighth grades...

...Others suggest that Syria is trying to set an example for the Soviet Union, where the large-scale emigration of Jews would—in the Syrian view—lead to a strengthened Israel...

...The destiny of a handful of people—who, after all, had on more than one occasion had the chance to leave, a chance so many of their countrymen pursued—had been at the periphery of my Jewish concerns...

...This is, I think, a rather important point to make...

...Though no words were spoken, every child in that class now knows what "we are one" means, and why...

...Towards the end, I came to the story of my visit with the students of the Jewish school in Damascus...

...The problem is that in a country of khaki and grey, in a city of prisons and police, the one absolute rule is that you are forbidden to laugh at the joke...

...So I am left with the warning: in Damascus, shalom is a forbidden word...

...Everyone is oppressed...

...So the way to get from sunny Cairo to drizzly Damascus was via Amman...

...The joke, in short, is not funny, so it's easy not to laugh...

...I do not begin to understand why the Syrian regime exposes itself to the negative publicity which its policy towards Jewish emigration generates...

...Happily, the essential fact is both plain and public: the conditions which the regime imposes on Syrian Jewry have improved quite substantially in the last two years, but there are still—this from the mouth of the highest government official with whom I met, as well as from many others—certain restrictions which apply only to Jews...

...It is not that they especially enjoy the company they have thereby come to keep—Libya, Algeria, even, off and on, Iraq...

...And it is true that some Syrian Jews are, from an economic standpoint, quite comfortable...

...I hear, for example, the halting voice of a student approaching the notes ever so tentatively, and the firm voice of his teacher, a step ahead, showing him the way...

...Please," he said with intensity, "do not play your tapes for anyone you don't trust completely...

...The Syrian regime knows of it, and the Syrian Jews know of it, and I am delighted to be able to call it to the attention of Americans who care about such things...

...A regime—even this regime—might yet decide that it can base its claim to legitimacy on its performance in the economic sphere...

...For the powerful learning of a visit to Damascus is that there, too, people are tired, sick of the tedium and the tariff and the tragedy of war...

...The story he told was entirely credible and entirely frightening, and I cannot repeat it, because it was the kind of story one is not supposed to tell, not there...

...I had other battles to fight, and I took comfort from the fact that others, for reasons of their own, were fighting the good fight on behalf of Syria's Jews...

...And then, weighing dream against dream, recognizing that there are choices to be made, the desire for peace might well outweigh the desire for dominion...

...It is exceedingly distressing to have to say—as I do—that Wallace was wrong, his commentary grossly misleading, and yet to feel restrained from pointing out, in print, his specific errors...

...I had not, before this trip, been especially concerned with the remnant of Syrian Jewry...

...Yet the other conclusion, the one which says that this regime permits pockets of dissent, makes no sense at all...

...Instead, I played the tape for them, the tape of children their own age learning to chant the Torah as they themselves are learning to this very year...

...I do not know what the Syrian army wants, or the secret police, or the ruling party—and those are the three pillars of the regime...

...we are talking about a Jewish remnant...

...If he is "well known" for his views, and if this is a police state, why is he permitted to go on expressing them...

...the only concessions to the rules of the game are that you whisper, and you do not laugh...

...They say about Assad—Kissinger has said it, and Carter and Vance are alleged to believe it— that he is the brightest of the Middle East rulers...

...The bustling maitre d' blanched, and pulling us aside, whispered urgently, "My friends, for your own safety, please, please do not use that word in this city...

...it is quite another to be given the chance to become directly involved...

...If I were to relate what they told me in a manner which would permit their identification, their safety might be jeopardized...

...Syria wants many things...

...In the world of upper-level diplomacy, protocol reigns...

...The military are everywhere...

...You fly up the Mediterranean (since Egyptair cannot traverse Israeli air space), turn right over Beirut, right again over Damascus, and back down to Amman...

...There was more than enough to fill the time we'd been allotted, and the children were reassuringly responsive...

...Is he a kind of token dissident, trotted out to impress liberal foreigners...

...So, shame on the Syrian leadership...

...Israel's acceptance of the resolution is based on the English version, which is purposely ambiguous regarding the extent of territorial withdrawal contemplated by the resolution...

...I cannot name names, or even cite detail...

...Here I must confess to a modest heresy...

...When pressed on this point, the people with whom I spoke stared off into space and mumbled their replies, as if the long-term question were so far-fetched that they had never given it any thought...

...There is only one criterion for judgement, and that is behavior...

...They have friendly allies in the Soviet Union and other East European governments, and they are treated "correctly" by the French, the British, and the West in general...

...And here again I am stymied...

...Oh yes," I am told, "he is well known for his outspoken views...

...I cannot say that they fear peace, but it is clear that they do not view it with any sense of urgency...

...And that, apparently, is why the Syrians are so very angry with Sadat...

...The teacher's voice is every Jewish teacher's voice...

...Israel's prominent involvement in the struggle for Syria's Jews would inevitably boil the waters, would surely be self-defeating...

...the mood and manner set it dramatically apart...

...I can sketch the atmosphere of the place, which is both more and less sinister than I had been led to expect, and I can make some assertions regarding aspects of Syrian life that derive from my conversations, asking—what a Leonard Fein's report on Cairo appeared in January/February MOMENT...

...It does not appear to have accomplished very much in the case of South Africa, where international condemnation has been so very vocal...

...Nothing here is what it is supposed to be or what it is called...

...Not that the reminder would necessarily help...

...In any case, I made no effort to keep my activities in Damascus a secret...

...But, at the same time, it is possible to talk with Palestinians, and Syrians, and to hear astonishing candor...

...And therefore I do not know whether Assad could play Sadat and survive...

...Syrian acceptance of 242 is explicitly based on the French version, with the understanding that Israel is required to withdraw from "the territories" occupied in 1967—hence, from all such territories...

...The one thing that seems clear is that a policy of silence, of politesse, has no chance at all of achieving freedom for Syria's Jews...

...Although their policies are barbaric, they are assuredly not barbarians...

...Why does the regime allow itself to become the object of such negative publicity when, at trivial cost, it could be done with the problem and even earn a modest public relations victory...

...As it surely is, since Israel will not accept the French version of the resolution...

...Accordingly, no one is free to emigrate—not Jews, not Moslems, no one...

...Here, for obvious reasons, I arrive at the most delicate part of the story...

...On rising to leave, and fully in keeping with the quality of the conversations we'd been having, we said "shalom" to our new friends...

...This report on Damascus concludes his article...

...I had been warned that I would likely be watched during my days there, and while I was entirely unaware of any such surveillance, I cannot know for sure whether I was or was not followed...

...My two younger daughters attend the Solomon Schechter Day School here in Newton...

...Happily, this allowed me to spend more time examining the condition and circumstances of Syria's 5,000 Jews...

...But they do say that Uganda is doing somewhat better these days, so it's hard to know...

...Not a very well-kept secret...

...Even so, I cannot understand his candor...

...Thus I, too, become a victim of the system...

...And if I lecture a hundred times this year, nothing I shall say will have the impact on my audience that that tape had on Naomi's class...

...But 242, which was passed after the 1967 war, was based on an ingenious compromise which alone enabled the UN to accept it back then, and which today has returned to plague the parties to the Arab-Israeli dispute...

...And the most important restriction remains, as it has been for some years, the refusal of the regime to let this tiny community leave, if it has a mind to...

...One morning, there was a mass demonstration against the Sadat peace initiative...

...Again and again, Syrian officials have reminded me that Syria is a developing country that cannot afford to lose the manpower that unrestricted emigration would surely produce...

...And not only laughter...

...This interpretation makes it possible for the Syrians to claim that they are acting wholly within the scope of the UN resolution, and that it is Israel's persistent refusal to acknowledge the principle of total withdrawal that prevents peace negotiations...

...It wants to restore its glory as of old, it wants, presumably, to resurrect the notion and the borders of "Greater Syria," it wants to be rid of the Israelis—and the Palestinians, I suspect—and it wants, very much, to join the twentieth century before the twenty-first is upon us...

...The accompanying photographs are of students in the Jewish school there, and were taken by the author...

...But the more relevant fact, of course, is that Syria has given no indication that it is prepared to enter into genuine normalization of relations with Israel even if Israel does accept the Syrian version of 242...

...Why does he object...

...In any case, the time to try to prove that a Jewish community can live at ease in an Arab country was twenty or thirty years ago...

...The issue is, and must be perceived as, centrally humanitarian rather than political...

...Religious instruction is restricted to two hours per week, but worship is permitted daily, and it was my good fortune to visit a class in which the students were being prepared for reading from the Torah...

...The peculiar and often charming looseness of the Cairenes is entirely absent, replaced by a sobriety that makes laughter seem subversive...

...Most of all, peace is simply not a priority of this regime...

...The story of the demonstration was front page news in the New York Times...

...As to the present policies of the Syrian regime, I was repeatedly assured that Syria is firm in its acceptance of UN Resolution 338, which, it was pointed out on each occasion, implies as well acceptance of UN Resolution 242...

...A relatively high Syrian government official objects to my intercession on behalf of Syria's Jews...

...One clause of 242 calls for Israeli withdrawal "from territories occupied" during the hostilities...

...Amazing, and confusing...

...Later, I ask an American friend, an expert on Syria...

...I resent the fact that the West takes violations of human rights in Greece or in Spain so seriously, but tolerates worse violations in Uganda or in Syria...

...I did not say all this to my daughter Naomi's class...

...I suspect that his fears are exaggerated, but it is he, not I, who lives in a police state...

...Which brings us back to the central question...

...A police state breeds paranoia...

...Some people explain that the Syrians are trying to prove that Jews can live comfortably in Arab countries, in order to show why Israel is unnecessary...

...Why does he hold high office...

...And the way it promotes such excessive and unrealistic fear is to provide frequent occasion for real fear...

...From the time you cross the Syrian border, you know that you are in a warlike place...

...Amazing, isn't it...

...By the time I reached Damascus, Geneva had become irrelevant, Syria had been upstaged...

...So the politics of the region commanded less of my interest and attention than I had thought they would...

...Assad's picture is everywhere—inside taxicabs, in university corridors, in stores, on the streets at every turn...

...that is one of its instruments of control...

...The maitre d' was a charming man of the old school, urbane and, from all appearances, rather pleased that his establishment was being used for such purpose...

...Perhaps, but his dissidence goes beyond tokenism...

...terrible thing to have to do—that my readers trust me, that they realize that I cannot in conscience provide the evidence that underlies the assertions...

...the people would support it...

...But the consequence of this universal policy is different in the case of the Jews, even if we ignore the fact that non-Jews—so it is alleged—have a relatively easy time of getting out when they want to...

...The Jewish agenda is so very long, and so very pressing, that any hold on sanity requires the assertion of priorities...

...At the time I was planning the trip, it seemed that Syria held the key to the Middle East puzzle, for that puzzle, back then, was widely defined as how to get the Geneva conference re-started...

...Politically, that may be an entirely irrelevant observation, at least for the time being...

...I spent the better part of an afternoon in the larger...

...There is no one to tell them, to remind them...

...In the end, then, Syrian policy towards Jewish emigration is not easily explicable...

...Perhaps the regime requires a condition of no-war and no-peace in order to stay in power...

...But I was there, and people—people in the street as well as government officials—were all agreed that the regime could as easily have turned out just as large and as "enthusiastic" a demonstration on behalf of the Sadat initiative, or, for that matter, on behalf of the moon's being made of green cheese...

...There is a kind of joke—black humor, to be sure—on which the society is structured, and everyone knows it...

...in front of one house or apartment building after another, young men in civilian clothes loll about, submachine guns in their hands...

...And that's simply not true...

...But even the most comfortable know that they are without freedom...

...So, no playing of the tapes, or telling of them, save for people I trust...

...Bright or not, he lacks Sadat's courage...

...The consequence is that the Jews are stuck in an alien environment, one where the memory of persecution is so recent that it cannot be expunged...

...And in the evening, you sit in a restaurant and talk with visiting American Jews, and it could be New York or Paris...

...Not so...

...Perhaps it knows—how can it not know?—that the people of Syria are as eager to improve their lot as are the Egyptian people, that they are quietly rooting for Sadat and peace, that they are sick of the misery of their lives and the mendacity of their rulers...

...Police state...

...it took place at the height of the euphoria which the initiative called forth...

...I had a number of conversations with unusually candid Syrian government officials, and I spent considerable time with understandably reticent Jews...

...In the afternoon, you get lost in the intricate soukhs, the vast and tangled markets that make the city seem so exotic...