Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 2013, Pages 42-43
Southern California Chronicle
Plight of Syrian Refugees Hopeless, Observe Human Rights Attorney, Filmmaker
By Pat and Samir Twair
“THE SITUATION [in Syria] won’t get better. The U.S. gives just enough weapons to the Free Syrian Army to maintain the status quo,” stated human rights attorney Reem Salahi at an Aug. 22 report on internally displaced people in camps in Syria. Also appearing on the Levantine Cultural Center program was USC film student Faisal Attrache, newly returned from the Za’atari Camp in Jordan.
Salahi said the country she visited in her early summer trip to camps in rebel-controlled Syria was scarcely recognizable from the one she’d known in August 2010. Thanks to her Syrian parentage, Salahi conversed in Arabic with internally displaced inhabitants of Idlib Province.
Kafranbel Camp stands out for its colorful and creative murals and posters calling for U.S. assistance. A prevalent motif is “rEVOLUTION,” seen on signs carried in weekly protests of aerial bombing by government aircraft. The Atmeh Camp, with more than 20,000 people, has no water or electric service and no schools. The Qah Camp’s 10,000 refugees identify the Assad regime as the problem but complain they receive no help from the rebels.
“The rebels don’t offer government institutions in the liberated areas,” Salahi noted. “They definitely look forward to liberation when ‘foreign fighters’ will be expelled. They object to calling the revolution a civil war, which is between two sides, and say it is a life and death struggle against oppression. All refer to life as before the revolution and now.”
Attrache was part of a four-student film crew who arrived in Jordan in early August to shoot a documentary, “Walk-ins Welcome: Stories of Syrian Barbers in Za’atari Camp.” He selected barbers, he explained, because they’re an integral part of society, privy to gossip and the mood of the people. Attrache, who was born in Suwayda, Syria, originally planned to interview barbers in Syrian camps in Lebanon, but there are no such designated camps in that country.
With a mushrooming population of 200,000 near the Syrian border, Za’atari Camp’s population makes it Jordan’s fourth largest city. The residents, primarily from the Syrian cities of Daraa and Homs, are obliged to turn in their identity cards upon arrival. This makes it all but impossible to re-enter Syria, Attrache said, and causes disgruntlement among the men who are anxious to resume fighting the Assad regime once they’ve settled their families.
The camp is operated by the Jordanian government, with NGOs acting as administrators. Doctors are scarce, and people complain that the food supplied by the World Food Program is sub-standard. Those who can afford to, buy groceries at small markets within the camp. Most live in tents, with the lucky ones assigned to caravans. Schools have been established. Deep trenches have been dug demarcating the camp’s perimeters. These are patrolled to prevent any breakouts.
Determined Filmmaker
Elana Golden is a writing coach who in 2010 began to interact via Skype from her Los Angeles studio with students from Gaza. As she continued to mentor the young Gazans on a volunteer basis, Golden, who has a bachelor’s degree in film directing from New York University and has worked on more than 30 films, began to write a fictional script for a feature film inspired by young people like her students.
Golden, who is single, takes a motherly pride in her students’ writing progress. While she revised and rewrote her script in Los Angeles, word spread in Gaza of her work with the students. Then came an open invitation to conduct writing workshops from Dr. Eyad Sarraj, the director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP).
The intrepid writing coach took her script and proposal to activists and began collecting contributions for a preliminary trip to Gaza to see if her film could be made there. Her dream came true May 28, when Golden flew to Cairo and crossed into Gaza from Egypt via the Rafah Gate.
It was an emotional and joyous time as Golden met her students and their families in Gaza City. The first 10 days of her three-and-a-half week trip were devoted to workshops, house calls with psychologists, meeting the film crew and actors, pre-production meetings, location scouting and rehearsals. Among the four four-hour writing workshops set up by the GCMHP was the Accent School, where she worked with eight adult English-language instructors. A translator was needed at the Assala Association, where she interacted with 13 high school students, and at two more sessions at GCMHP.
A memorable experience for Golden was riding in a van with nine GCMHP psychologists to Beit Lahia, near the Israeli border. She accompanied the most fluent English-speaking GCMHP psychologists on three house calls. The most common complaint is post-traumatic stress syndrome resulting from Israeli assaults. This often manifests in bed-wetting by children. Golden recalled one extreme situation involving two adult sisters whose severe brain damage was exacerbated by Israel’s 2008-9 and November 2012 bombing attacks on Gaza. The two women crawled on the floor unable to verbally communicate. Golden hugged and embraced them, unable to fulfill their mother’s pleas to help them.
The final days were given over to filming scenes—with the typical Gaza time-outs for tea and socializing. Dialogue had been translated into Arabic. Back in Los Angeles, Golden dipped into her savings to edit the footage and provide English subtitles for a stunning 10-minute preview she showed to contributors at the Levantine Cultural Center on Aug. 25.
We’re not divulging the title or plot of Golden’s feature film, but she’ll be showing the preview and slides of her Gaza odyssey at forthcoming fund-raisers. For more information, contact Golden via her website, <www.thewritingstudio.biz>.
Focus on Drone Damage
“The drone policy is a continuation of George W. Bush’s war on terrorism. A clear line between the policies of Bush and those of his successor should have been drawn early in the Obama administration.” These were the off-the-cuff comments of Stephen Rohde at a July 31 forum on Yemen, Drones and Spying at the Levantine Cultural Center.
Rohde, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, shared the podium with Jodie Evans, co-founder and co-director of Code Pink, who made a peace mission to Yemen in June.
“This government must be held accountable for the mess in Yemen,” Rohde emphasized.
Interjected Evans: “Yemeni mothers who want their children to behave threaten them to do as she says or she’ll bring on the drones. You can’t imagine the havoc and fear just the unmistakable sound of those drones instills in the people beneath them.”
Rohde noted that 1,128 civilians have been killed in drone attacks, including 228 children; witnesses of these incidents report the aircraft circle the targeted area and shoot rescuers, ambulances and journalists. Evans commented that Yemen’s President Rabbo Mansur al-Hadi isn’t taken seriously, and it’s rumored he directs U.S. drone attacks on his enemies.
Jesuit Missing in Syria
Weeks after he was expelled from Syria in 2012, Jesuit priest Paolo Dall’Oglio enthralled Arab Americans during a whirlwind speaking tour of U.S. cities. Even though he was observing the Ramadan fast, Father Dall’Oglio spoke at three events that August 2012 in Southern California, where he charmed his hosts with his fluency in the Syrian dialect of Arabic.
The Italian-born Dall’Oglio fell in love with Arab culture as a student and studied Arabic in Beirut and Damascus. He joined the Jesuit order in 1975 and later earned international recognition for restoring the ruins of a 6th century monastery, Deir Mar Musa, which he opened as a center for interfaith dialogue. Visitors from around the world made spiritual pilgrimages to the complex some 50 miles north of Damascus. The scholarly theologian was also ordained a priest in the Syriac Catholic rite, and in 1989 received a Ph.D. from the Pontifical Gregorian University for his dissertation, titled “About Hope in Islam.”
After the Syrian uprising began in spring 2011, Father Dall’Oglio spoke and wrote about the need for a “consensual democracy.” He earned the enmity of President Bashar al-Assad for participating in the funeral of filmmaker Bassol Shahade, who presumably was murdered by Syrian government police. Dall’Oglio’s bishop ordered him to leave Syria for his safety and on June 12, 2012 he reluctantly departed from the country he’d adopted 30 years earlier.
Less than two months later, at mid-day on Aug. 1, 2012, Father Dall’Oglio was speaking to student interns at the Los Angeles offices of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. While posing for photos, the priest proudly showed off his T-shirt emblazoned with the Arabic word Mosalahah (Reconciliation). He wore the T-shirt at a talk one hour later at UCLA, as well as that evening during a standing-room-only program at the Mission Viejo mosque.
During the question-and-answer period in the mosque, a woman challenged the priest and asked if he shouldn’t follow the path of Jesus and turn the other cheek. Father Dall’Oglio replied: “I’m sure if Jesus were here today, he’d be nonviolently with the opposition.”
Against the admonitions of his friends, the Jesuit priest, who missed Syria sorely, quietly returned to an area captured by opposition forces. On July 29, he was kidnapped on a street of rebel-held Raqqa, and has not been seen since. It is feared the irrepressible cleric was executed by shadowy assassins.
Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.
