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Aug. 27, 2025 - Epoch Times
23:11
I Met the Syrian President, and Here’s What I Learned | Rabbi Abraham Cooper
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How do we know we can trust you and how do we know that you can deliver?
That was and is and should be in the front of our minds.
Recently, Rabbi Abraham Cooper was invited to the presidential palace in Damascus alongside fellow religious freedom advocate Johnny Moore, where they had an intimate meeting with the controversial new president of Syria, Ahmed Al-Shara.
Of the two hours that we spent together, a full 40 minutes dealt with Israel.
And I thought that his main message was, we're not enemies.
Cooper was chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and is currently director of global social action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
How might Syria's relationship with the U.S. evolve?
Is peace between Syria and Israel attainable in the near future?
There's a term in Hebrew, kabdehu, techashdehu.
Show respect and verify.
This is not a kumbaya moment.
This is a moment where there's great leverage created by a president who thinks out of the box in many ways as a contrarian.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellek.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Great to see you again.
You're a dear friend, and being out here in California, it's always refreshing to be with people who are promoting thought.
Thank you for that.
Well, you know, you just had a truly incredible meeting.
You met the president of Syria, Ahmed Al-Sharraq.
I mean, this is someone who's a former official of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
On the other hand, he seems to be bringing some sort of stability as well as openness, or at least that's what certain people are saying.
You're one of the people that I'd be really interested in knowing what you think here.
Tell me about the meeting.
Right.
So just before we get to the meeting, I want to acknowledge and thank my close friend, Reverend Johnny Moore, who was originally contacted by their foreign minister when the sanctions were still in place.
We had an hour meeting across the street from the UN.
And I remember Pastor Moore's first two questions, because they're still totally relevant.
How do we know we can trust you?
And how do we know that you can deliver?
That was and is and should be in the front of our minds.
I know it is Secretary of State, who knows a great deal about the history of Syria.
And I'm sure it's a factor also for the president.
I would say about the person that I met together with Reverend Moore for two hours in the presidential palace in Damascus, kind of out-of-body experience, if you will.
I walked away from that meeting convinced that we're really looking at a unicorn.
I think despite his historic footprint, which is almost all terrorism, he is someone who understands the task ahead if the nation of Syria is going to have a future that it needs an extreme makeover in terms of its infrastructure and everything else associated with growing a proper country.
And I also think that right now, the country is in no shape to sort of taking any sort of active or leading role in fighting any of the, if you will, the big boys in the bloc.
And that includes, obviously, Turkey, which is close, the Iranians still, which is still dangerous.
Israel, which the term he kept using was deconflicting.
Israel is not an enemy.
Wants to deconflict.
The leader that we met was someone who I think is mostly focused on the domestic realities.
He's been in now for at least about a half a year plus.
And everyone is waiting to see: okay, what are you going to do for the people?
What are you going to do for the nation?
And do you have the wherewithal to actually stitch together a country which right now is totally a fraction?
The other issue, especially after we met the next day with a group of around 20 leading Christian leaders from around Syria who came to meet with us in Damascus, and we're even one or two people from Beirut, is how many of his allies, the people who came with him to Syria, and that lightning, quick,
amazing shocking, if you will, development, how many of them share his broader vision?
And I think that is almost as important as: is this guy really serious or pulling our chain?
I happened to be in New York the day of the meeting and I joined in that meeting, but I had a previously scheduled meeting at the UN's US mission just around the corner.
And when I went afterwards, I said, well, I came to discuss a couple of issues.
Let me tell you what happened in the past hour with the foreign minister of Syria.
And the reaction of three of the U.S. diplomats in the room was quite interesting, including one very seasoned diplomat, which was, are you kidding us?
Do you see what the Taliban did to us?
We took off the sanctions.
They made all sorts of promises.
And a few weeks later, girls couldn't go back to school.
I'm sure they represented the kind of advice that President Trump was getting across the board.
And I think that, you know, President Trump's taking a chance, wants to change the game.
And there is no doubt that if the sanctions stay in place, I don't know if a united Syria would actually ever be possible.
And also, on the other hand, some of the basic questions that the Christians posed to us.
They have schools, Christian schools in Syria among the best.
And the people there were wondering: will an Islamist curriculum be forced upon those schools?
Now, if that happens, I think you'll see even faster brain drain.
I think you'll see probably many Christians leaving.
And that meeting took place just a few days before the horrific terrorist bombing of Christians of Prayer in Damascus.
So I was hoping to be able to also visit with the Druze community in Syria.
I had spoken to a key leader in Israel some weeks before, together with the Reverend Moore.
But on that day, at least, our safety could not be guaranteed on the road between Damascus and the enclave, one of the two big enclaves of the Druze.
So huge questions are there.
On the other hand, the leader that we met with was open.
You could discuss.
You can debate.
You can try to get a change in approach.
And I would say that of the two hours that we spent together, a full 40 minutes, one way or the other, also dealt with Israel.
And I thought that his main message was: we're not enemies, not enemies anymore.
We need to deconflict.
And then he went into some detail about the list of things they want, you know, and expect or demand in return for further normalization.
And so my personal view is the following: that the step-by-step discussions are already underway, and they're going to be plowing through a lot of issues.
That might be the best way to approach this whole thing.
However, do not underestimate the X factor of Donald Trump.
I think Bibi Netanyahu asked the president to be involved with the issue.
I think the Syrians are shocked that he made the move that they desperately needed.
So he's got huge leverage.
And you get the feeling that if he took Bibi, he took those two guys into the Oval Office or Camp Davids for a couple of hours, who knows what will come out at the other end.
But from a practical point of view, I know that a lot of us are hoping that the Abraham Accords will be expanded.
I'm not sure that in each case, it's going to exactly fit that structure of a warm peace, a la Bahrain, UAE, and Morocco.
But certainly, no one in Israel is interested in any more cold pieces.
So if the president sort of elevates this and wants to put it on a fast track, anything is possible.
Having said that, as far as I know, in the months leading up to these developments, it was only one prominent Israeli who said we should talk to the guy.
Happens to be a close friend, someone I respect.
He's a senior scholar also at the Washington Institute and on Israel's Channel 12.
When he speaks, Eyud Yahari speaks, everyone in government down to the taxi drivers listen.
He actually wrote an essay in which he said, well, we know who this guy is, but he is the president.
And let's talk to him because we still have needs in terms of our northern border.
We should at least speak.
Ayyud is the type of thinker, researcher, journalist, essayist.
When he writes something, everyone listens.
When he wrote this essay, it was crickets.
So I actually handed, with permission, a copy of his essay to the foreign minister in New York.
I said, here, read it.
When we spoke with the president in the palace, I mentioned him by name.
I said, you know, Mr. President, if you want to talk directly to the people of Israel, most of whom, obviously, when they think of Syria, think of very, very difficult and even desperate times, there's your guy.
I mean, if you want to fast-track it, but I think that this is a leader or whomever would be the leader in Damascus.
You've got a lot of big players, China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, US, Israel.
I think he's got to try to figure out a way how to move forward in terms of foreign policy and foreign aid and all the rest, while at the same time, really giving special attention domestically.
And I'm sure that you know that his public involvement of his wife in a number of meetings.
When I saw that, I said, you know, what's going on here?
And then he was also seen, you ready for this?
Holding her hand on the way to dinner.
So, and I mentioned this in the meeting, I said, you know, in the world we live in today, everything local is global and everything global is local.
When you brought your wife to those meetings, the ripple effect continues throughout the region and throughout the world.
So I was convinced that this is someone who's worth having a serious ongoing conversation with, of taking chances towards peace.
And I think especially because the perception and the reality is that Israel is strong and that the United States and this president has Israel's back.
Syria right now is weak.
The people are exhausted from decades of the Assads and civil war and everything else that's transpired.
And every group is also fearful, like what actually is going to happen to us.
So that means that with the emphasis on domestic, with the need to rebuild, this is actually a good time.
I put forward two suggestions for humanitarian projects.
One is I would call the DNA project.
I've already spoken to my great friend, it's one of my heroes, Father Patrick Dubois, who represents the Vatican in Paris.
And he did over the decades.
He went to the Ukraine as a Catholic priest to many of the places where Jews were mass murdered and buried in mass graves.
He was in Central America on the disappeared.
He was back in Iraq.
The idea is very simple.
You know, where all the Jewish people are united in trying to get back the remains of Elie Cohen, the famous Israeli spy, and Syria thanking him for getting his goodbye letter to now his widow and other things returned.
That's for one person.
There are thousands upon thousands of people in Syria who have no idea what happened to their loved ones.
They're presumed dead.
But the idea would be is to bring in experts on a volunteer basis, anyone who wants to give their DNA, and then have teams working with someone like Father Dubois to do the match and try to help people get closure.
And I said, this is a project that every family in Syria will appreciate if you decide to launch.
And if you want to do it, we're available.
The other one is more basic, beyond you would have done it.
Anyone would have done it.
When you were flying in from Doha, you know, watching the map, it's all desert.
You're talking about, you know, just hundreds, maybe thousands or more square kilometers of desert.
I said, look, this is a no-brainer.
You have the Arava Institute in Israel.
You've got other water experts.
You've got agricultural experts.
Just call them up and bring them in.
Let them help you.
And if you can't do that yet, we're here.
We did it previously before the Abraham Accords.
Give us the list of people who are involved in this effort in Syria.
We'll invite them.
We're an NGO.
It doesn't have to even be government to government.
Abe, we're going to take a quick break right now.
And folks, we're going to be right back.
And we're back with Abraham Cooper, Director of Global Social Action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the most recent former chair of USERF.
A couple of things I'd like to kind of maybe definitions and things that people might not be aware of.
First of all, like cold peace, warm peace.
What's the difference there?
So the largest, the most important Arab country is Egypt.
It was at war with Israel in 1948, in 1956, in 67, in 1973.
Eventually, finally, it led to a peace treaty.
But it's been a cold peace.
There is virtually no Egyptians who visited Israel over these decades.
They still get their information from the swamp led by Al Jazeera and company.
And that's a terrible tragedy for everyone concerned.
That's a cold peace.
Jordan, King Hussein, who I met numerous times and who was a good friend of our founder, Rabbi Larvin Ayer, he also, in a way, was a unicorn.
And after, you know, joining in the war, decided to invested heavily in peace.
His son is not the same sort of strong leader that his father was.
And as a result, today, Jordan, with the increasing Palestinian population, many of them are open Hamas cheerleaders and supporters.
For someone like me with a kippah, going across the border would be a very unpleasant experience.
I no longer travel through Amman for obvious reasons.
And this is a nation that's technically at peace with Israel, but it is a frigid peace with the possibility of the border, God forbid, also heating up.
Having just spent basically two days, a little less, in Syria, just driving from the international airport to Damascus, if the United States won't lead the way in, of course, trust and verify,
but if we don't lead the way in the rehabilitation of this country, we've got China, you've got others who are lining up with a kind of price tag that doesn't fit the worldview of this president and certainly would make life even tougher for Israel.
So there's a term in Hebrew.
It's called Kabdehu Techashdehu.
Kabdehu means show respect and verify.
So this is not a kumbaya moment.
This is a moment where there's great leverage and timing-wise, created by a president who thinks out of the box in many ways as a contrarian.
Warm peace, as I mentioned to both the foreign minister and to others, there is a profound Jewish history, both in Damascus and Aleppo, with Jewish communities there, Jewish business people who, I think, helped found Damascus.
There is a great deal of nostalgia, but you're also looking at, you know, 50 years later, there's a lot of work that has to be done to, first of all, make sure it's a peaceful country and that I don't know if Jews will ever be coming back, but a part of the rehabilitation and going towards warm peace would be exactly that, allowing families to come to cemeteries to pray over their loved ones.
People like me who are going to come with my phylacteries and prayer shawl and say, okay, where's the nearest synagogue so I can say my prayers?
Those kinds of steps, which I think would also benefit all the religious minorities that are still there, those are the kinds of steps that I think are being contemplated.
I grew up with the children of Syrian Jews who fled Assad Sr.
So I love their subculture.
They're an amazing people, the Syrian Jews.
And they've already, some have visited, some have been in, had meetings with the foreign minister.
And I hope and pray all of that will go well.
But I made clear from the beginning that my connection to this issue is nothing to do with nostalgia.
It's everything to do with looking forward.
You mentioned at the beginning that it's sort of an out-of-body experience to be at the presidential palace in Damascus.
Of course, you know, again, the unspoken thing is that there are no Jews in Syria for very unfortunate reasons.
And I suspect that you didn't expect that you would ever be going there in the near term, right?
Yeah, I never thought I would ever set foot in Damascus.
And also, just for reality check, at every major intersection and some other places too, were young men in uniform with AK-47s with four to six clips on their vests.
So we're not yet talking about a normalized situation.
You'd have to wear triple bifocal rose-colored glasses to be blind to that reality.
But it is at this point worth taking a shot.
But again, very important, especially for the U.S. as it takes the lead.
It needs to verify.
And if things go wobbly, God forbid, we'll snap back.
Remember, some of these sanctions go back, I think, to 2008.
And you had escalating sanctions as the horrific behavior of Assad Jr. and just almost impossible to run a 21st century economy with those sanctions.
So that's a huge leverage.
The fact that the person who holds the key to all of it is the President of the United States, I think is a good thing considering who else might have been holding the leverage.
Well, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
Thank you to see you.
And I hope when I'm in Washington next, we can find a good kosher beer to drink together.
I look forward to that, Rabbi.
Thank you all for joining Rabbi Abraham Cooper and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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