Freed Palestinian inmates set prison garb ablaze on return to Gaza

DAMASCUS: Syria’s tiny Jewish community and Syrian Jews abroad are trying to build bridges after Bashar Assad’s ouster in the hope of reviving their ancient heritage before the community dies out.
This week, a small number of Jews living in Damascus, along with others from abroad, held a group prayer for the first time in more than three decades, in the Faranj synagogue in Damascus’s Old City.
“There were nine of us Jews (in Syria). Two died recently,” community leader Bakhour Chamntoub told AFP in his home in the Old City’s Jewish quarter.
“I’m the youngest. The rest are elderly people who stay in their homes,” the tailor in his sixties added in a thick Damascus accent.
After Islamist-led rebels finally toppled Assad in December last year after nearly 14 years of conflict, the country’s dwindling community has recently welcomed back several Syrian Jews who had emigrated.
Syria’s millennia-old Jewish community was permitted to practice their faith under Assad’s father, Hafez, and had friendly relations with their fellow countrymen.
But the strongman restricted their movement and prevented them from traveling abroad until 1992. After that, their numbers plummeted from around 5,000 to just a handful of individuals, headed by Chamntoub, who oversees their affairs.
AFP correspondents met with Chamntoub, known to neighbors and friends as “Eid,” after he returned from burying an elderly Jewish woman.
“Now there are seven of us,” he said, adding that a Palestinian neighbor had looked after the woman during her final days.

The 1967 Arab-Israeli war cast a heavy cloud over the Jewish communities in several Arab countries.
Syria lost most of the strategic Golan Heights to Israel, which later annexed them in a move never recognized by the international community as a whole.
Chamntoub said the community did not experience any “harassment” under Bashar Assad’s rule.
He said an official from the new Islamist-led administration had visited him and assured him the community and its properties would not be harmed.
Chamntoub expressed hope of expanding ties between the remaining Jews in Syria and the thousands living abroad to revive their shared heritage and restore places of worship and other properties.
On his Facebook page, he publishes news about the community — usually death notices — as well as images of the Jewish quarter and synagogues in Damascus.
He says nostalgic Syrian Jews abroad often make comments, recalling the district and its surroundings.
At the Faranj synagogue, Syrian-American Rabbi Yusuf Hamra, 77, led what he said was the first group prayer in decades.
“I was the last rabbi to leave Syria,” he said, adding that he had lived in the United States for more than 30 years.
“We love this country,” said Hamra, who arrived days earlier on his first visit since emigrating.
“The day I left Syria with my family, I felt I was a tree that had been uprooted,” he said.

His son Henry, traveling with him, said he was happy to be in the synagogue.
“This synagogue was the home for all Jews — it was the first stop for Jews abroad when they would visit Syria,” the 47-year-old said.
When war erupted in Syria in 2011 with Assad’s brutal suppression of anti-government protests, synagogues shuttered and the number of Jews visiting plummeted.
In the now devastated Damascus suburb of Jobar, a historic synagogue that once drew pilgrims from around the world was ransacked and looted, with a Torah scroll believed to be one of the world’s oldest among the items stolen.
Chamntoub said his joy at publicly worshipping in the Faranj synagogue again was “indescribable.”
He expressed hope that “Jews will return to their neighborhood and their people” in Syria, saying: “I need Jews with me in the neighborhood.”
Hamra said that like many emigrants, he was hesitant about returning permanently.
“My freedom is one thing, my family ties are another,” he said, noting that many in the 100,000-strong diaspora were long established in the West and reluctant to give up their lives and lifestyles there.
Chamntoub said many Jews had told him they regretted leaving Syria but that he doesn’t expect “a full return.”
“Maybe they will come for trips or to do business” but not to stay, he said.
He expressed hope of establishing a museum in Syria to commemorate its Jewish community.
“If they don’t return or get married and have children here, we will end soon,” he said.

BEIRUT: Nearly five months after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike, thousands of supporters of the longtime leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group have flown into Beirut for Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral on Sunday.
Nasrallah was killed on Sept. 27 when Israel’s air force dropped more than 80 bombs on Hezbollah’s main operations room in southern Beirut. It was the biggest and most consequential of Israel’s targeted killings in years.
The death of Nasrallah, one of the Iran-backed Shiite group’s founders and Hezbollah’s leader of more than 30 years, was a huge blow to the group he had transformed into a potent force in the Middle East.
Hezbollah, which the US and some of its allies has designated a terrorist organization, has suffered significant losses in the latest war with Israel, including the killing of several of its most senior military and political figures.
His cousin and successor Hashem Safieddine, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb a few days later, will be laid to rest in his hometown in southern Lebanon. The two had temporarily been buried in secret locations. Hezbollah earlier this month announced plans for their official funerals.
Crowds are expected to gather on Sunday at Beirut’s main sports stadium for a funeral ceremony before Nasrallah’s interment.
Flights from Iraq, where Hezbollah has a huge following among Iraqi Shiites, have been full for days on end. According to an Iraqi transportation ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the flights, up to 6,000 people have flown to Beirut over the past days.
Among those who arrived from overseas was also American commentator Jackson Hinkle, who regularly spreads false information on social media, especially in support of Russia and its war on Ukraine.
“I am honored to be attending the funeral,” Hinkle posted on the social media platform X after arriving this week in Beirut.
Hinkle posted a photo of himself visiting a war-wrecked southern Lebanese border village, waving a Hezbollah flag.
Nasrallah, idolized by his supporters and with large followings among the Shiites and the Islamic world, also held the title of sayyid, an honorific meant to signify the Shiite cleric’s lineage dating back to the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.
However, Lebanese authorities have revoked permission for a passenger plane from Iran, leaving dozens who had wanted to attend the funeral stranded in Tehran and triggering protests by Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon.
The ban came after the Israeli army accused Iran of smuggling cash to Hezbollah by way of civilian flights, leading some in Lebanon to allege that their government had caved in the face of a threat from Israel.
Some of those who were expected to fly in from Iran were now coming to Lebanon via Iraq. Also, members of Iran-backed groups in the region also were traveling to Beirut to attend Nasrallah’s funeral.
Kazim Al-Fartousi, spokesman for the Iran-backed Kataib Sayyid Al-Shuhada group in Iraq, arrived on Friday. He said Nasrallah was “the father, commander and the book that we read every day to learn about freedom.”
US Republican Rep. Joe Wilson criticized Lebanese politicians who were planning to attend the funeral.
“Any Lebanese politician who attends the funeral of the murderous terrorist Hasan Nasrallah is standing with the Iranian Regime,” Wilson said on X.