Congress must press Syria to allow the 4,000 Jews living there to emigrate, an activist for Syrian Jewry said Wednesday.
“Syria’s Jewish community is a hostage community, living in a climate of fear and fundamental insecurity,” said Alice Sardell Harary, vice president of the Council for the Rescue of Syrian Jewry. She testified at a hearing on Syrian human rights abuses conducted by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.
Coincidentally, the hearing came as Secretary of State James Baker ended nearly 10 hours of talks in Damascus with Syrian President Hafez Assad, in an unsuccessful attempt to get Syrian support for a regional conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), co-chairman of the caucus, expressed concern that the United States would make the same mistake with Assad as it did by ignoring for years the human rights violations of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
“Within the abysmal human rights record which the Syrian government has maintained, it is Syrian Jews who have been singled out for particularly adverse treatment,” Harary said.
She said Jews live under 24-hour surveillance and cannot travel outside the country unless they leave a large sum of money and a family member behind. There are four Jewish men in prison for having tried to leave the country, she said.
The secret police check the attendance records at schools every day and if a child is absent, the child’s home is visited to see if the family tried to escape the country, Harary said.
She added that Syria has refused to allow Jews to leave to join families abroad.
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