00:07 - 00:51
Young: We were talking at this point about this question of commercial restrictions. I was saying one of the concrete rules about internal travel, with respect to these commercial things, there isn't a specific rule that says 'This is a situation for Jews' and 'This is a situation for non-Jews.' Nevertheless, there may be a great deal of de facto restriction and discrimination, where because they will know this person is Jewish, due to the identity card and so on. There may be a non-similarity of treatment, not because of a rule that says one thing to one group and one thing to another group, but simply this is the way it works out.

00:51 - 01:11
Young: In any case, by way of conclusion on this point, I would say my guess is that there are significant problems around commercial activity, but I at least feel much less confident in making firm, specific statements than I would on a number of these other areas.

01:11 - 02:09
Young: Now if we move on to a couple of other things, still relatively specific here. We might just say a word in this connection of interference of one kind or another with the mail and forms of communication, since I do think this is a serious question. I think the most general formulation of this is to say that we know, pretty much with certainty, that censorship is a generalized phenomenon, though in fact it may not be the case that every single letter that you send is opened, you must assume that there is a substantial probability that this will be the case. You must assume that whatever you write or communicate by telegram or other forms of communication will be subject to inspection or reading on the part of the authorities.

02:09 - 02:20
Young: Now, one thing I’m a little unclear about here is the extent to which this problem is a special problem in the Jewish community as opposed to other communities.

02:20 - 03:23
Chammah: My impression of that is that whenever they want to have something sent from the outside into Syria, and they want to be sure — not to be sure — they want be less likely to be censored, they will send it through a non-Jew. They will send it from the outside to a non-Jew to bring it in. There seems to be much more of a — well the security office — anything channeled to Jews gets handled by the security office. They are in charge of the Jewish question. While, for other people, there may be a censorship place, where things are censored but it doesn’t have to pass through the security office department related to Jews.

03:23 - 04:00
Young: So perhaps what we can say is that there is some real measure of censorship on a large-scale basis in Syrian society, but we have reason to believe with some confidence that this is a much more thorough-going process in the case of things coming from or going to members of the Jewish community. In any case, I think we can say that this is a pervasive — the expectation of censorship is pervasive with respect to all means of communication on the part of members of the community.

04:00 - 04:31
Young: Now there is one other point that is a little different in kind than some of the others we’ve been mentioning, but I think deserves discussion in this list of concrete, tangible problems. That is the problem that the Jewish community has with respect to this question of the young, unmarried women in the community. I think perhaps before we move on to other things, this would be wise to bring up at this time.

04:35 - 05:19
Chammah: Whenever they think of anything that we could help with — not that we could help much in this kind of situation — but one of the things they are very anxious about, and they keep repeating all the time, and everybody repeats that, is the problem of the young, unmarried women. The young women are usually married quite young, and many of the young men have left by some means before, so that there is a surplus of young women, and they are afraid that these young women will not be able to get married.

05:19 - 06:05
Chammah: Also, of the young men who remain, there seems to be recently, they have a much more difficult time in securing a place to live, because the inflation has been so high that it’s been very difficult to have — inflation and also work situations, possibly because of restrictions, possibly because of the situation in Syria itself. Anyway, the problem is they have difficulty in getting married, primarily because there aren’t enough young men, and that therefore, they need very strongly, they would like, some of these young women to be able to emigrate so that they can get married. And this is —

06:05 - 06:51
Young: We should perhaps say in this context that it is a little bit difficult to pin down with precision the numbers involved. We asked this question I think of various people and there is some ambiguity, at least in my mind, concerning how many persons, individuals are involved. It must be several hundred, but we have also heard a figure as high as five hundred, and given what we know of the population, that sounds — it’s hard to compute how you could have a number as high as that. But it is possible I think in terms of —

06:51 - 06:55
Chammah: Perhaps they are talking about both Damascus and Aleppo.

06:55 - 06:56
Young: But even with Damascus and Aleppo —

06:56 - 06:57
Chammah: That would be high.

06:58 - 07:52
Young: It’s hard to see exactly how that could be the case. So it’s a problem and nobody knows for sure exactly how many. Maybe there’s some question as to who they would include. You could take girls as young as age ten and say that, well, in eight years time they will be in this position, that would inflate the number you’re talking about, so that the question of the procedure of computation. But what we do know is that this a substantial number, probably hundreds, and a problem that is uppermost in the minds of the leaders of the Damascus and Aleppo communities, a pragmatic, concrete policy problem they are facing, and which at the moment they have difficulty seeing any solutions for.

07:52 - 08:37
Young: And so while this is not a restriction, in the sense of a travel restriction, or a rule saying you must carry an ID, this is nevertheless a de facto restriction in the sense of something that significantly affects in a negative way the quality of life of many members of this community. Both the young women themselves, who are having their prospects severely affected, and also their families, who obviously are made unhappy by the difficulties facing the women in these families.

08:37 - 08:48
Young: This was the list of concrete, tangible things I had at this point. There may have been others I didn’t think of.

08:49 - 08:51
Chammah: I can’t think, offhand, of anything else.

08:51 - 08:55
Young: Since we have a limited amount of time, I think why don’t we push on.

08:55 - 08:58
Chammah: We can come back to that.

08:58 - 09:22
Young: I thought that the third thing I had as a general sort of problem was to make at least some brief statement about what kinds of intangible factors affecting the position of the Jewish community as we observed in Aleppo. We’d been talking about a list of concrete, specific things like rules saying you have to do this or that.

09:22 - 10:23
Young: My own impression is — and it is an impression of course — is that a significant part of the problem or difficulty of the situation for this community is not confined just to specific rules saying you can’t do this or you can’t do that, but it extends to a whole series of more intangible characteristics of the position in the broader Syrian society, which makes their life precarious, uncertain, chancy, vulnerable, and fearful. Not a matter of a specific rule saying this or that, but of the way in which they get treated.

10:23 - 11:20
Young: It’s a little bit like the severely discriminated-against minority in some other societies, where the formal, legal structure is set up in such a way to say that these people are equal, when everyone knows, de facto, in point of actual fact, there is not equality of treatment even though there may be pro forma equality. It seems to me that we encountered a series of examples in the area of asymmetrical applications of the legal system, in such a way as to create difficulties, or in effect to create harassments, or to make life relatively more difficult for members of the Jewish community.

11:20 - 11:40
Young: Perhaps we might want to think of a couple of examples to make this more concrete. Not to leave it at the level of — Try to give a concrete example.

11:40 - 12:28
Chammah: A concrete example would be the situation, for example, people who have — for example, my mother who is living now in the house that belongs to my sister and myself. Presumably the sequestration has happened in 1960, and presumably also — Not presumably, because the sequestration has happened in 1960. Then the government, there is an office who takes the rent, and since the owners are not in the country, supposedly they take this money and keep it for the owners as safekeeping.

12:28 - 13:37
Chammah: But then when you point to them, and you can point out to them, that we can’t have power of attorney, and then they say alright, begin power of attorney. When you try to go and have a power of attorney validated by one of the ministries, I forgot the name of the official— when you go to do it, he does not do it. He would not validate — which means you cannot get power of attorney. Therefore the money has to be put in safekeeping. But if you can go ahead and bribe this person in the government and have the power of attorney done — Then when my mother goes back and she has it in her hand, they say, “Oh, but it was not okayed by the foreign ministry, or by the higher committee that relates to Jews, that talks about Jews.”

13:37 - 13:41
Young: This is to receive the rent money.

13:41 - 13:42
Chammah: Yes.

13:42 - 14:07
Young: It seems to me also an equally dramatic illustration of this small problem with respect to their efforts to prevent your mother from continuing even to live in one of their apartments and the legal efforts she has made to retain the right to —

14:07 - 14:24
Chammah: Yeah, this is for both. This is for rent money and for her staying, this is the situation I was just mentioning. As far as I remember this is for both. Incidentally, maybe we should say here that higher committee we’ve been talking about.

14:24 - 14:25
Young: Yes.

14:25 - 14:31
Chammah: There’s supposed to be a committee in Damascus which is made up of —

14:31 - 14:38
Young: Which is an interdepartmental, special committee to deal with Jewish affairs.

14:38 - 14:48
Chammah: Yes. The higher committee for Jewish affairs, which is composed of various ministries and has on it also members of the PLO.

14:48 - 14:50
Young: A Palestinian.

14:50 - 14:52
Chammah: A Palestinian on it.

14:52 - 14:56
Young: I’m not sure if we know the relationship to the PLO.

14:56 - 14:58
Chammah: No, but a Palestinian is on it.

14:58 - 15:00
Young: [unclear] It might not be…

15:00 - 15:24
Chammah: I think I was told a member of the PLO, but anyway. What else do we know about this committee? This is a committee where all affairs that relates to Jews have to be cleared with. There’s always one last thing that one has to clear. If they want to make harassments, they can always bring that as the last resort you have to pass through.

15:24 - 15:29
Young: Well, it’s off now.

15:29 - 15:30
Chammah: It’s on.

15:30 - 15:52
Young: Oh I see. Well I thought that there might be on the remainder of the tape two things we might do. One is there are several more general comments about our period in Aleppo that we should include, and the other is a brief discussion about the termination of our trip and return to Damascus and leaving Syria.

15:52 - 16:09
Young: Taking up this question of a few more general comments about Aleppo, one thing that occurs to me that we haven’t mentioned so far is the activities of the security office and how they related to us and how they dealt with us.

16:09 - 16:44
Young: We should say something about that. I will say, as an initial generalization, which we can then flesh out, that it would be fair to say that the security office placed us under very substantial surveillance, but nevertheless we were not subjected to severe harassment. On the one hand, they kept very close track of us, and in fact did create some inconvenience, but I don’t think one could argue that there was severe harassment.

16:44 - 16:45
Chammah: No.

16:45 - 16:58
Young: We might say a few things about the specifics, about our contacts with the head of the security agency for Aleppo.

16:58 - 17:46
Chammah: Well, even before that, he sent one of his men in the morning, the first day we arrived and he wanted to ask questions to both of us. He ended up not asking you any questions, but he wanted to. One of the things he wanted to know from me is, would I like to come back and live in Syria? Also, in what way, which is a better country, the United States or Syria? Which do I think is a better country? The United States or Syria? And where would I be more happy to live in?

17:46 - 18:42
Chammah: Later on, the head of the security office was a little more subtle, although not that much. He would come in the morning and have coffee. Under some pretext or another he saw us practically every morning. At one point, we were asking for directions to go to the Great Mosque and he said — We were standing and he passed by and he said hello and he asked us where we were going, and we said to the great mosque and then he was telling us how to get to the great mosque. And in the discussion of how to get there, he told us, well, you go by that route, from this point to that point, where you went yesterday. Meaning he already knew where we were the day before.

18:42 - 19:16
Chammah: By and large, I guess, for the people of Aleppo, they kept repeating to me — maybe I should really say this — that I should be careful in not giving the impression that life is really a good one for them. As a matter of fact, several of them have told me specifically that they feel like prisoners, and they feel they have been prisoners and they really would like to get out of the prison.

19:16 - 20:35
Young: There is some fear on their part that we might go away and in some way indicate a more favorable or positive view of the situation than they believe is warranted by the facts. They were worried we might go and say things are really basically alright whereas in fact they feel like things basically are not alright. Which is, this phrase, we’re essentially prisoners in this society, came up over and over again and I think is a symbol, really, of how they feel about things. Not so much that this should be a story about the literal meaning, but this is indicative of the most basic attitudes that I acquired during my stay there. They have this feeling in a very real sense that for them, anyway, Syria is a prison and they are prisoners within it, not free to come and go as they choose, and also subjected to a variety of restrictions and restraints and unpleasantnesses while they are in this so-called prison.

20:35 - 20:39
Chammah: They have psychological mechanisms to cope with this.

20:39 - 20:40
Young: Another interesting point —

20:40 - 21:20
Chammah: Psychological mechanisms. One mechanism is the usual one, which is to convince themselves that they are better than they, whoever ‘they’ are, than the tormentors. That they are better, and therefore they can feel comfortable because they are more intelligent, better people, all the necessary usual — I guess this is simply one psychological way of escaping. And another —

21:20 - 21:26
Young: A strange phenomenon of people, on the surface, frequently referring —

21:26 - 21:28
Chammah: I was just going to say that, yeah.

21:28 - 21:30
Young: — to members of the government or these agencies as 'my friend.'

21:30 - 
Chammah: Yes, especially the security office. Another psychological [mechanism] is to refer to people who are not oppressors, but essentially, 'my friend.' For example when the security officer was in the house, and the mother of a Muslim friend of mine was there, he was — after the security man left, my brother was telling her — she said, 'What is he doing here?' And then he told her, 'Oh, he’s my friend. He's our friend.' And I had to tell him, 'No, he’s not your friend.' There’s also —

22:22 - 22:27
Young: But this seems to be, as you say, a psychological defense mechanism of some kind.

22:27 - 22:30
Young: They believe it’s a friend.

22:30 - 23:17
Young: Haim doesn’t believe a member of the security forces is a friend, but the situation is such that unless you deceive yourself at least on a superficial level, almost deceive yourself, it would be an unsupportable — the prison would be even more horrible than it otherwise is, so it’s almost like playing a game with yourself. You say to yourself and to others that this person who everybody knows is not a friend is my friend — It’s a way of getting oneself not to think about the true character of the situation, at least on a momentary basis.

23:17 - 23:41
Chammah: Another person who said that is the jeweler, after we had been to his place for half an hour or so, the next day when we saw the jeweler he said that the security office was in there. They were asking questions. I said, 'What do they want?' He said, 'Oh, they are my friends. They were there just stopping for some coffee.' It’s the same idea also.

23:41 - 23:49
Young: I think we may not have the time right now, but one could pursue this question of pathological responses to oppression —

23:49 - 23:50
Chammah: To oppression, yes.

23:50 - 24:50
Young: — in a variety of other ways. For example I think certain of the social customs and patterns of entertainment could be tied into this in some ways. I also think probably some of the religious attitudes and orientations — not just among members of the Jewish community — but certain specific religious practices are related to being a small, oppressed group. This could go on at some lengths, but one general observation is that a fascinating phenomenon is the way in which a community in this extraordinarily difficult situation, or at least a large number have developed over time a variety of behavioral patterns which are explainable largely in terms of trying, at least on the surface, to make life bearable and tolerable even in the face of extreme adversity.

24:50 - 25:06
Chammah: Yeah, I guess there’s no time for it, but there are a number of examples that came out. Like, they became much more religious than what I remember thirty years ago, for example.

25:06 - 25:10
Young: At least in terms of specific practices.

25:10 - 25:16
Chammah: Practices of religion, yeah. Perhaps we should go to the question of Damascus.

25:17 - 25:58
Young: I think we should. Let’s just start with a fact or two by saying that we left Aleppo again by the Karnak bus, early in the morning on Sunday the 18th of July in the company with Salim and two of his children. We arrived back in Damascus early in the afternoon and went then more or less, we went first to Salim's house for lunch and then directly to have a further conversation with people at the American embassy.

25:58 - 26:03
Chammah: We talked primarily with Pelletrow and also with —

26:03 - 26:04
Young: Hooper.

26:04 - 26:10
Chammah: Hooper. We also brought up the issue of the property that I had.

26:10 - 26:26
Young: Yes a relatively large part of that discussion related to a specific discussion of the prospects for rectifying the situation with respect to your property, the details of which now perhaps we shouldn’t go into.

26:26 - 26:27
Chammah: We shouldn’t —

26:27 - 26:56
Young: An interesting though largely separate matter — But we might also point out that particularly, after Bob Pelletrow joined us we had a relatively extensive conversation concerning our observations, in which we in effect conveyed to him, to be conveyed to Ambassador Murphy, our general — a kind of report, our general observations concerning —

26:56 - 27:04
Chammah: Let me backtrack one minute. We should have said, in Aleppo, they were divided about how much we should tell the American Embassy.

27:04 - 27:39
Young: This is an issue on which the members of the community of Aleppo were, I would say, quite severely divided. And also, in addition to being divided, quite fearful. That is, when we said that we might speak to other people, or someone in the embassy, there was a great concern as to whether we should do it, if so what we should say, what our approach should be, what our point of view should be, how much concrete information we should relay.

27:39 - 27:57
Young: It goes back to some of the things we talked about in speaking of Damascus and ambivalences and hesitations and disagreements concerning how to deal with government itself. Some of this came up in how to relate even to the American embassy, or members of the American community.

27:57 - 28:33
Chammah: They were worried very much about — They think that perhaps the American mean well. It's just that they are so naïve about the issues that if we tell them anything, not that they would be willingly or willfully go and hurt them, it's just that they might blurt out something without thinking, they might blurt out something which would be detrimental to them. Because they don’t think the Americans believe the perfidy that is possible.

28:33 - 29:54
Young: Or are just inexperienced. One of the things is that certain kinds of habits of caution and verbal formulation grow up largely in circumstances in which one is continuously exposed to a situation in which what you say can create all kinds of problems. It is widely believed — I think with some justification — that the majority of Americans have never been socialized into a pattern of caution and reticence. It’s not that they’re incapable of this or not smart enough, it’s just that their life experiences are such that they have never, certainly not from an early age, been brought up to be behaviorally and verbally extremely careful and cautious and reticent and to think twice not just about what they’re saying but to whom they say it, and about the impact there was, and what interests of the other person are and so on and so forth. All of which are almost second nature to people in certain other parts of the world and particularly to people, communities which have been in difficult straights for long periods of time.

29:54 - 30:41
Chammah: They gave me the example — I said, 'What could the Americans do?' and they gave me an example of how a few years ago the American Consulate in Aleppo, in response to being asked to send a letter through the diplomatic pouch, the American consul said, 'Why don’t you sent it by regular mail?' And they say, 'Because it’s censored,' and the consul says 'Come on, it’s not censored. I’ll prove it to you. I’ll call the ministry.' And so they were, in other words the American calling the ministry to ask about censorship. And this was given to me as an example of the naiveté of the Americans.

30:40 - 31:22
Young: One side note: it is worth noting, and a hopeful sign perhaps, when we talked to Bob Pellotrow about this — he is the current D.C.M. in the American Embassy — his response was, 'Of course everything is censored in this country.' Which may indicate only that he personally is an exception, but in any case that was a somewhat more hopeful sign that there is at least one senior person in the embassy at this time who seems to indicate some degree of savvy and sophistication about the way the system, the local system works.

31:22 - 32:06
Chammah: Perhaps I should say also in here that part of the way they feel as prisoners too — I forgot to mention this before — there were a tremendous number of request of me for messages, varieties of messages, some of them very complicated messages, from people who don’t know me at all. From various people from the community asking for me to deliver messages for them, both in Europe and in the United States also. Also the way they —