Damascus and What's Happened to the Jews and Israel's Golan Heights

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

 Bashar al Assad, President, born September 11, 1965, Bashar Hafez al-Assad is a Syrian politician who is the 19th president of Syria, since 17 July 2000. In addition, he is the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and the Secretary-General of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party.   The withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon in 2005, the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war and Hezbollah’s role in the Syrian civil war since 2012 turned the Lebanese proxy into a strategic partner and earned the Party of God a seat at the grownups’ table (according to Iran).  

Right now there is much political instability going on in Lebanon because of Hezbollah terrorism.  If war breaks out, and my sources this morning, analyzers,  did not think it would happen, but there is always the possibility that they would shoot 2,000 missiles a day into Israel.   Hezbollah has really taken over Lebanon, and are the people behind the president, and Iran is behind them both. Lebanon is next door to Syria, and people had gone back and forth, like attending college,  or even jobs. 

Update:10/19/2021: ILTV just announced that there are 100,000 Hezbollah fighters ready in Lebanon, at least that's what Hezbollah is sayingl. Beirut is on fire over the judge that is being held back by Hezbollah to not investigate the 2020 explosion in the port.  Question has come up about a possible Lebanon Civil War now.  

.  

  https://www.facebook.com/StandWithUs/videos/962639684465414

                                                        

                       View of Damascus with the Umayyad Mosque in center, with a population of 2,439,814

I have a friend, Jack,  that I thought was a Jewish New Yorker, and he turned out to be a Damascus, Syrian Jew through his Syrian Jewish mother, he thought.  He was raised by his father's wife, but was told otherwise about his birth-mother.  It could happen.  He said that he went to school with Assad's daughter.  His father died young from cancer.  His paternal uncle stole the money left to him.  My quest became looking for his birth mother.  

There were 10,000 Jews living in Damascus in 1940.  Some 3,000 remained by 1990, and he was born in 1980.  By then, things were terrible for Jews, and according to the story, her parents were diamond dealers. At this time, she was able to leave her home and associate with his father, a very handsome man.  To this man, who had 4 daughters by his wife, the boy was a god-send.  

The government closed in on the Jews and kept them locked up in terrible conditions but still in their homes.  They had no freedom. They were living in impoverished materially and intellectually and subject to many restrictions.                       

Judith Feld Carr, a Jewish Canadian woman, managed to get almost all the Jews out of Syria and into the USA, anywhere but Israel according to the dictator. Feld Carr facilitated the escape of at least 3,228 Syrian Jews. In addition, she provided money to assist families of those imprisoned. She also was able to smuggle out of that country many rare Jewish religious articles, including the famous Damascus Codex, known as a "Keter" (Crown), which had been written in the 12th Century in Italy, found its way to Castile, Constantinople, and eventually Damascus, where it had been kept in secret for some 500 years. It now rests in the Hebrew National Library on the campus of Hebrew University, Jerusalem.  

“I started a communication with Syria at the end of 1972. I took my first person out of Syria by ransom – a rabbi from Aleppo – in 1977; I finished the morning of September 11, 2001, an hour before the Trade Center tragedy happened,” Judith explains, matter of- factly.  “I was involved with [rescuing] 3,228 Jews out of a population of 4,500 when I started. Slowly, slowly, slowly, with a great deal of difficulty; it was not an easy thing to do, and I am not from Syria – I am an Ashkenazi from northern Canada originally – I figured out the system.”

Possibly then, my friend's mother was able to leave when he was a year old, but without her son.  That father would raise him with his step-mother.   It was when he was in college that he found out about his real mother and that she was a Jew.  According to Halachah, that made my friend a Jew, for the honor is passed down from mother to children. 

He wanted to study Judaism but could not find any information in Syria.  Jews were the cause of all problems there, the rain, the wars, the lack of whatever was needed.   Along came the Syrian Civil War and that's where I came into the picture.  

 Cairo, Egypt, but they lived outside in an apartment complex for refugees.  The picture looks like Portland, Oregon, the Willamette River instead of the Nile.  

Jack left at that time with his step-mother and drove to Egypt.  He found work there, managing a restaurant.  He even tried to change the menu so as to not mix meat and milk together.   Finally, they returned to Damascus.                               

      Syrian missiles all lined up, aimed for Israel-have been known about for years.  

By July 2011, Army defectors declared the formation of the Free Syrian Army and began forming fighting units. The opposition is dominated by Sunni Muslims, whereas the leading government figures are generally associated with Alawites of which the president is one. The war also involves rebel groups (IS and al-Nusra) and various foreign countries, leading to claims of a proxy war in Syria.

By January 2012, clashes between the regular army and rebels reached the outskirts of Damascus, reportedly preventing people from leaving or reaching their houses, especially when security operations there intensified from the end of January into February.

By June 2012, bullets and shrapnel shells smashed into homes in Damascus overnight as troops battled the Free Syrian Army in the streets. At least three tank shells slammed into residential areas in the central Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun, according to activists. Intense exchanges of assault-rifle fire marked the clash, according to residents and amateur video posted online.

I published my  book about Jack in 2014.  He had already gone to Egypt for safety and back, and in a  little while would be roaming the world, looking for ways to make money and get to the USA legally. He had education for an engineer and talent, especially with computers, and had spent time translating Arabic into other languages.  

The Damascus suburb of Ghouta suffered heavy bombing in December 2017 and a further wave of bombing started in February 2018, also known as Rif Dimashq Offensive.

On 20 May 2018, Damascus and the entire Rif Dimashq Governorate came fully under government control for the first time in 7 years after the evacuation of IS from Yarmouk Camp.  In September 2019, Damascus entered the Guinness World Records as the least liveable city, scoring 30.7 points on the Economist's Global Liveability Index in 2019, based on factors such as: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. However, the trend of being the least liveable city on Earth started in 2017, and continued as of 2021.

                                                  

Midhat as-Saleh with Syrian President Bashar Assad (Kan Public Broadcaster screenshot).  Saleh was born in the Druze village of Majdal Shams in 1967. He was arrested by Israeli intelligence agents in 1985, along with other Druze officials from the occupied Golan villages, and convicted. In 1997, after his release, he went to Syria, where he was elected to Parliament. After representing the Golan in Syria’s legislature, he was appointed head of the country’s Golan Office and an adviser to President Bashar al-Assad, Press TV added.  His problem was the fact that On December 14, 1981, the Knesset voted to annex the Golan Heights. The statute extended Israeli civilian law and administration to the residents of the Golan, replacing the military authority that had ruled the area since 1967. The Druze and others were not Syrians;  they then were Israelis.

As the peace process faltered in 1996-97, Syria began to renew threats of war with Israel and to make threatening troop movements. Some Israeli analysts warned of the possibility of a lightning strike by Syrian forces aimed at retaking the Golan. The Israeli Defense Forces have countered the Syrian moves; however, and – to this point – preserved the peace.

Speaking at the first ever Cabinet meeting to be held in the territory, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on April 17, 2016, that Israel will never give up the Golan Heights. “It’s time that the international community finally recognize that the Golan will remain forever under Israel’s sovereignty.”

                              The Golan Heights Today

                             Druze sector

There are approximately 22,000 Arabs, including at least 17,000 Druze, living in the Golan Heights today. In contrast to 1948-1967, when civilian infrastructure and services were almost completely neglected by successive Syrian governments, Israel has invested substantial sums in either installing or upgrading electric and water systems, in agricultural improvements and job training, and in building health clinics, where none had existed previously. The inhabitants also enjoy the benefits of Israel's welfare and social security programs. Israel has built or refurbished schools and classrooms, extended compulsory education from seven years to ten, and made secondary education available to girls for the first time. The Golan's Druze residents enjoy complete freedom of worship; the Israeli authorities have made financial contributions and tax and customs rebates to the local religious establishments.

Jewish sector

Today, there are approximately 26,000 Jewish residents in 33 communities (27 kibbutzim and moshavim, 5 communal settlements and the town of Katzrin) on the Golan Heights and the slopes of Mt. Hermon. (Katzrin has its own mayor and local council; the other 32 communities form the Golan Heights Regional Council.)

The latest event happened Saturday night.  The Syrian government on Saturday night condemned Israel for allegedly killing a Syrian intelligence agent, Midhat as-Saleh,  along the border with the Golan Heights.  “The Syrian cabinet stressed, in a statement, that those terrorist acts will only increase the determination of the Syrian Arab people to continue resisting the occupier and liberating the occupied Syrian Golan,” according to the official SANA news agency  No doubt that Hezbollah instigated him to go to the Golan and cause trouble.  

 The Golan Heights was where Syrians dropped bomb on the Israeli civilians, below.  They won't be getting it back.  Midhat as-Saleh must have been up to no good.  He had served time in Israel's prison for 12 years previously for a terrorist act.  In a report the Palestine Chronicle states Al-Saleh (54) was killed by an Israeli sniper and he was the head of Syria’s Golan Affairs Office.  (I don't think he had any business being there.)

The London-based Middle East Eye reports though it was not clear if he was shot from an aircraft or from the ground. Locals told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that there had been a heavy presence of helicopters and drones in Majdal Shams on Saturday the website points out. The Golan Heights had been under Israeli hands  since the 1967 Six Day War. The Golan Heights population since 1985 was 22,500 including the Druze. 

                                                               

This morning, my time, on a station getting news from Israel, Shahar Azani, Israeli of JBS (Jewish Broadcasting Service)  was interviewing Sarit, a high ranking IDF lady who was an analyzer of military information, and she was quite upset about what was going on at the border.  She was 9 miles away at the TV station, but her husband and 5 children were home, evidently closer to the border, as they could hear the ammunition.   

Hezbollah’s relationship with Syria has long been characterized by periods of mutual distrust and conflicting goals. Both sides pursue their own political priorities with little regard for the other’s interests. Hezbollah and its patron, Iran, intervened in Syria to save President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but they built a power base in Syria independent from state institutions. Russia’s military intervention gave the Assad regime an opportunity to reverse its marginalization. Now, as the war comes to a close, Syria hopes to rebalance its relationship with Hezbollah and Iran by exploiting Russia’s presence. Iran wants to be close to Israel so as to destroy her, and holding onto Syria gives Iran this opportunity.  

Update: 10/19/2021: Major Danny Citrinovicz, IDF, was interviewed by ILTV this morning about the death of Saleh, and it seems that he was working for Iran.  Russia is also in the picture, now being embarrassed about Israel's successes, and accusing Israel of hiding behind civilian airlines.   

I wonder how Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria felt if they saw the fly-by practice over Israel today of American, German, India, UK, Italy, France and Greece? Teams  participated  in the fifth biennial Blue Flag exercise, the Israel Defense Forces said. 

Resource:

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/why-assad-s-alliance-with-iran-and-hezbollah-will-endure-2/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Feld_Carr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-the-golan-heights

https://www.jbstv.org/

MESSAGES FROM A SYRIAN JEW TRAPPED IN EGYPT, by Nadene Goldfoot

https://www.timesofisrael.com/air-force-to-kick-off-multi-national-blue-flag-drill-over-israel-next-week/

UN Scapegoating Israel by BDS With Palestinians and Syrians

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

                                                           Syrian Jewish Woman 
       Since Syria borders Israel, it has also had a big population of Jews.  In the 12th century,  the 3 largest Jewish populations in Syria were in Palmyra with 12,000, Aleppo with 5,000 and Damascus with 3,000.  More Jews came into Syria after 1492's Spanish Inquisition.   Syria became an important center of transit trade between Europe and Asia.  Jews finally received equal rights with the Arabs in Syria under the French mandate of 1920, but these were infringed during WWII under the Vichy regime.  With anti-Jewish feeling reaching a climax in the late 1930s and early 1940s, many Jews considered emigrating. During WWI, between 1942 and 1947, around 4,500 Jews arrived in Palestine from Syria and Lebanon.  From 1945 to 1948, about 1,300 Syrian Jewish children were smuggled into Palestine.  In 1943 many Syrian Jews emigrated to the USA, Israel and Lebanon which reduced Syria's Jewish population from 30,000 to 14,000 by 1947.  By 1973, 4,000 Jews were left in Syria.  

After Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, restrictions were further tightened, and 57 Jews in Qamishli may have been killed in a pogrom. The communities of Damascus, Aleppo, and Qamishli were under house arrest for eight months following the war. Many Jewish workers were laid off following the Six-Day Civil War.                                                           

The Zeibak sisters: Four Syrian-Jewish girls (three sisters and their cousin) who were raped, killed, and mutilated while trying to flee to Israel in 1974

As a result, Syrian Jews began escaping clandestinely, and supporters abroad helped smuggle Jews out of Syria. Syrian Jews already living abroad often bribed officials to help Jews escape. Judith Feld Carr, a Canadian-Jewish activist, helped smuggle 3,228 Jews out of Syria to Israel, the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Carr recalled that Syrian-Jewish parents were "desperate" to get their children out of the country.  Those who were caught attempting to escape faced execution or forced labor. If an escape was successful, family members could be imprisoned and stripped of their property. Often with the help of smugglers, escapees attempted to sneak across the border into Lebanon or Turkey, where they were met and assisted by undercover Israeli agents or local Jewish communities. Most escapees were young and single men. Many single men decided to put off marriage until they escaped, as they wanted to raise their children in freedom. As a result, the ratio of single men and women became heavily imbalanced, and Syrian Jewish women were often unable to find husbands. In 1977, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, as a gesture to US President Jimmy Carter, began allowing limited numbers of young women to leave the country, and some 300 left in total under this program.  As I remember, my facebook friend was born in 1980.  His mother, he had said, was a Jewish Syrian. 

                                                                 

 Judith Feld Carr, a Canadian Jew, managed to get all Jews out of Syria at a time they were ghettoized with the promise to  President Assad that they wouldn't be taken to Israel.  That left very few in Syria.  I had a facebook friend, Jack,  a Syrian, who swore he had found out that his birth mother had been Jewish.  He had been looking for her.  Judith couldn't find a record on her, being he didn't know her name.  She and his father had married secretly, being it was an offense in Syria to marry a Jew.  Today, Israel has 115,000 Syrian Jews; US has 75,000, Argentina has 40,000, Mexico has 16,000 and Panama has 10,000.  

                                                           

Palestinians have always said since 1880 that they were Syrians, and had entered Palestine wanting to work for the Russian Jewish settlers on the 1st Aliyah.   Joan Peters, in her deep research, found this to be true.  A DNA test would probably also attest to their heritage, as well. 

A genetic study from 2000 shows that many Arabs and Jews are closely related. More than 70% of Jewish men and half of the Arab men whose DNA was studied inherited their Y chromosomes from the same paternal ancestors who lived in the region within the last few thousand years.  Geneticist Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona in Tucson found that the Y chromosome in Middle Eastern Arabs was almost indistinguishable from that of Jews.  Geneticist Ariella Oppenheim of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who collaborated on the earlier study, focused on Arab and Jewish men. Her team examined the Y chromosomes of 119 Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews and 143 Israeli and Palestinian Arabs. Many of the Jewish subjects were descended from ancestors who presumably originated in the Levant but dispersed throughout the world before returning to Israel in the past few generations; most of the Arab subjects could trace their ancestry to men who had lived in the region for centuries or longer. The Y chromosomes of many of the men had key segments of DNA that were so similar that they clustered into just three of many groups known as haplogroups. Other short segments of DNA called microsatellites were similar enough to reveal that the men must have had common ancestors within the past several thousand years. The YDNA haplogroup of 520 Syrian Arabs tested showed a 55.7% being J.  The same for 143 Palestinians tested showed 55.2% as J.  This didn't differentiate between J1 or J2.   An autosomal test should show any differences.  We Jews also show this.  J is called the Cohen gene of which Aaron and his brother, Moses also had.  We always said that the Arabs were our distant cousins. it said that in the Torah along with the  genealogical information.  Obviously, we are not kissing cousins.  .                                                                      

Since the beginning of the Civil War of Syria that has lasted for 9 years,  3,400 Palestinians were killed in Syria from the bombings, artillery strikes, prison tortures, disease and starvation.  It has been 9 years, 10 months, 3 weeks and 3 days since the Syrian Day of Rage protests were gathered on 15 March 2011, and 8 years, 6 months, 3 weeks and 3 days since the Red Cross declared the situation to be a civil war.

Palestinians have now taken their place as refugee camps have been installed in Syria to hold them.  The Yarmouk Refugee Camp near Damascus  held 150,000.   By 2017, less than 18,000 lived there.   It was reported that people were foraging for leaves, cats and dogs for food, trying to live without electricity or water.  Yarmouk is an "unofficial" refugee camp; It was home to the largest Palestinian refugee community in Syria. ... After intense fighting in April/May 2018, Syrian government forces took the camp, its population now reduced to 100-200.

Since the beginning of the Civil War of Syria that has lasted for 9 years,  3,400 Palestinians were killed in Syria from the bombings, artillery strikes, prison tortures, disease and starvation.  

The UN and the BDS movement have been smearing Israel's great reputation from the 1967 days of their miraculous win against the barrage of Muslim countries who had attacked them.  BDS is led by a Palestinian movement against Israel for its very existence.                                                                    

Bob Horenstein of Portland, Oregon visited the Ziv Medical Center in Safed on or before 2017  which had been my hospital while living in Safed from 1980 to the end of 1985.  Since 2013, Ziv had treated over 700 Syrians including 121 children.  They had treated many earlier when I lived there.  Helicopters brought the wounded in, landing on the roof of the hospital.  My students could hear them come in and worried if they were bringing in their fathers or uncles or brothers-or the enemy.    Most of those  injured were suffering from severe blast wounds from mines or rocket fire.  Many of the children had lost at least one limb.  During the battle in 1981, my 9th grade students had been translators for the doctors as they had patients that were the enemy being treated there.  Our junior high where I taught was right across the street from this hospital.  They told me they saw things they shouldn't have been able to see.  I guess some were in some gruesome conditions.                                                                

         By resolution 2334 (2016)  the Council demanded that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities.

Assad had been massacring his own people in his Civil War.  However, the UN only saw Israel as a culprit with their December 2016 Security Council 2334 with 20 resolutions condemning Israeli settlement activity. etc,  that was drafted by Syria, rebuking Israel for repressive measures against the population of "occupied Syrian Golan."  Israel had received 20 out of the 24 sanctions and Syria had received one!   As a geopolitical region, the Golan Heights refers to the area captured from Syria and occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War, territory which has been administered as part of Israel since 1981.  The Golan was under military administration until the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law in 1981, which applied Israeli law to the territory; a move that has been described as an annexation. In response, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed UNSC Resolution 497 which condemned the Israeli actions to change the status of the territory declaring them "null and void and without international legal effect", and that the Golan remained an occupied territory. In 2019 under Trump,  the United States became the only state to recognize the Golan Heights as Israeli sovereign territory, while the rest of the international community continues to consider the territory Syrian held under Israeli military occupation.  The Golan Heights Law is the Israeli law which applies Israel's government and laws to the Golan Heights. It was ratified by the Knesset by a vote of 63―21, on December 14, 1981. ... The law was passed half a year after the peace treaty with Egypt which included Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula.                                                

Citing a passage from Leviticus she said her late husband often quoted, “Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor,” Georgette Bennett met with the CEO of a major Jewish aid group and quickly got him to agree to head a Jewish effort for the refugees. Bennett, a former professor, journalist and philanthropist, supplied the first $100,000.  

The CEO, Alan Gill of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, got more than a dozen Jewish groups to sign on to the campaign, dubbed the Jewish Coalition for Syrian Refugees in Jordan. So far, more than $344,000 has been collected, most of it allocated to groups working with refugees in Jordan.  Only three have posted prominent appeals on their websites. And only one, the JDC, has contributed any money of its own — $50,000, according to a spokesman.  The biggest contributor so far has been Bennett herself, who has now put in a total of $150,000.

In a separate effort, the Israeli group IsraAid has been providing mattresses and food-and-hygiene packages to refugee families in urban areas in northern Jordan for the last year. As with the coalition’s effort, IsraAid is working with locals, but Israeli staffers have been traveling to Jordan every few weeks to coordinate the effort.  Many other groups have now joined in.  “The Jewish community understands tikkun olam:  understands humanitarian responsibility,” said Will Recant, an assistant executive vice president at the JDC. “When they were made aware, they started to step forward just as they did for Darfur, Rwanda and other areas of humanitarian need.”                   

The cost of caring for the Syrians had been about $5 million, paid for almost totally by Israel.  The UN contributed nothing.  This is the entity that denounced Israel for "violations of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons."  The irony of this is that:  within a decade of Israel's founding, the government and its people demonstrated a deep commitment to engage in humanitarian relief efforts and international development programs. In 1958, Israel adopted an official humanitarian aid agenda as a principal element of the country's international cooperation efforts. Over the years, the country has extended international humanitarian aid assistance to more than 140 countries, even to those who do not maintain diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

The UN and others have been scapegoating Israel which is hypocrisy and is obscene.  It appears that now in 2020-2021, things are changing with the peace formed with 4 Islamic countries.  Perhaps one day the UN will stop picking on Israel, whose whole religion of Judaism is centered around morality of which Christianity and Islam have borrowed.  Of all the countries in the world, Israel has a very high standard to live up to of their own, regardless of what others think.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Jews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_2334

The Jerusalem Report, February 6, 2017, p. 9  Robert "Bob" Horenstein, director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland

Messages From A Syrian Jew trapped in Egypt, by Nadene Goldfoot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_populations_of_the_Near_East

https://www.un.org/unispal/data-collection/security-council/

https://www.jta.org/2013/09/11/united-states/jewish-groups-sending-aid-to-syrian-refugees-sort-of

https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/aid/pages/israel_on_frontline_international_aid.aspx

 

ALEPPO, Syrian City For Jews, Muslims, Christians

Nadene Goldfoot

Aleppo, the Sukari district of Aleppo on 13 November, 2014
The Aleppo bombings (April–July 2016) were intense bombardments on both rebel and government-held areas in the city of Aleppo, Syria starting in late April 2016. Some rebel shelling also hit a Kurdish-held part of the city. The bombings decreased in intensity after 55 days when a temporary truce was established. However, the bombings continued through July.

Involved in the Syrian Civil War
flattened by Assad's bombs
Opposition groups are from the East
Government troops come from the West
"Rebel-held areas have been flattened and abandoned after thousands were killed by "barrel bombs" – steel drums full of shrapnel and explosives – dropped by Syrian government aircraft"

Aleppo, a city in Syria, has been hit many times by the recent war going on in Syria. It had been a city full of Jews and was quite the business center with people from all religions.  "Aleppo was the crown of Jewish splendor in the Sephardic world. "
                                                     

An Aleppo legend, told by both Jews and Muslims, was that the patriarch Abraham had settled down for a while and lived in Aleppo during his wanderings from his native city of Ur (today in Iraq).  He is believe to have milked his cows there.  Halab is the Arabic name for Aleppo.  It is the Aramaic and Hebrew word for "milked." 
                                                    

 Lebanon in the beginning was a part of Syria.  "Lebanon-Syria relations were officially established in October 2008 when Syrian President Bashar Assad issued a decree to establish diplomatic relations with Lebanon for the first time since both countries gained independence from France in 1943 (Lebanon) and 1946 (Syria). Lebanon had traditionally been seen by Syria as part of Greater Syria"
                                                    

Aleppo's Jewish people in Syria goes back to Biblical days and is intertwined with the history and politics of Jerusalem.

There was THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE in Aleppo, with the foundation constructed by King David's General, Joab ben Seruya from about 950 BCE.   Joab conquered the city told in 2 Sam 8:3-8, is still sometimes referred to as Joab's Synagogue.  The design is influenced by Muslim mosques with the ark being an exact copy of a mosque's mihrab, so must have been completed after the Muslim conquest of Syria.  
                                                     

It was called Aram-Zobah by the Jews.  It's listed in Psalms 60:2.  Written by King David at the outset of his campaign against Israel's enemies, David expressed his faith in G-d's assurances that his reign would be consolidated from within and feared from without, so he wrote:  When he made war against Aram-naharaim and Aram-tzobah, and Joab returned and smote Edom." Joab had left his campaign against Aram to attack Edom, which was en route to assist Aram, and killed 12,000 of the enemy.  Joab was born in the 10th century BCE, was David's nephew and commander-in-chief, appointed to head the army.  Joab had supported Adonjah's (4th son of David and elder brother of Solomon) claim to succeed David, and was put to death by King Solomon.  

The Jewish community of Aleppo was one of the oldest in the world.  The Great Synagogue must be what was a synagogue and was converted into the AL-HAYYAT MOSQUE that dated from the 6th century.  1500 Jews were there, found by Benjamin of Tudela.  Later during the Middle Ages the community became known as the home of many men of learning.  
                                                   

Spanish Jews settled there after 1492's Spanish Inquisition, adding spice to the community.  14,000 Jews lived in Aleppo before 1914-the beginning of WWI.  Many then emigrated to England and the USA.  Riots took place in Aleppo and Jews fled after November 1947 with the UN partitioning Palestine.  By 1991, 400 Jews lived in Aleppo.  Most were traders and peddlers.  The Jewish neighborhood, called the Jewish Quarter, contained many ancient synagogues, the oldest being the Mustaribah that was destroyed in the 1947 riots.  The main part had dated back to the 4th century.  It was here that a very famous Masoretic Codex of the Bible was preserved and edited by Ben Asher.  It's now in Israel.                                          

                                      OTTOMAN EMPIRE-400 Year Rule
                                              Jew of the period
                                 Palestine-part of the empire in 1517

The Ottoman Empire encompassed today's Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and other territories, but fell after WWI by 1917.  Mandates were given to France and Great Britain to rule.  Britain's was good for 30 years.  The French took control over Aleppo and it and Damascus became a French mandate.  One traveled on a French passport or travel papers.  Massive emigration from Syria happened again after WWI and continued until about 1925 when the GREAT DEPRESSION began.  These people who left then made up the Syrian Jewish communities of Brooklyn and New Jersey.  

The Ottoman Empire's condition for Jews was good compared to other times and places, but they were kept as Dhimmis or 2nd class citizens with many things they were not allowed to do.  They wanted you to believe that they favored the Jews compared to other people because Jews did contribute to a good economy and they were good in commerce.  However, no one wants to be held down as they were.  


Life was held to be very strict for men and women of Syria, even for the Jews.  They were separated so that women got together and played cards. Girls didn't get any formal education until the middle of the 20th century, though a few attended Alliance Israelite Universelle schools.  Marriages were generally arranged after a girl had her 1st menstrual cycle, often as young as 13 or 14. I imagine this was true also in earlier days.  Tradition was that teenage girls and even married women wore gold bangle bracelets, and that is also a very old tradition.   Few women ever worked and rarely shopped!  In the Middle East the husband arranged for a stock of staple items and to market because he was the better negotiator and this was important.  Women were highly respected and honored because being a mother and homemaker was important.  Women kept their heads covered, and if  out in public, also covered their faces.  In other words, they followed the Muslim customs.  

The Ottoman government didn't keep birth records for the Jewish communities, so people depended on the individual rabbis to keep records of the brit milahs, marriages and deaths of the Jewish communities.  From about 1850 on, the Ottoman government appointed a chief rabbi (hakham bashi).  rabbis often came form families which had a long tradition for providing the community with hakhamim, like the Kassins and the Labatons.  Aleppan rabbis were learned in Kabbalah and Talmudic legal traditional.  Aleppan Jews had a well-known reputation for respecting rabbinic authority.  

In the early 1800s European powers called for equal treatment for Christians and Jews.  Jewish contractual positions with the government disappeared, but civil service positions were created.   The jizha tax was a substitution for military service and was eliminated.  By 1908 the Young Turks began conscripting Jews into their army, and this caused mass emigration of Jews to North and South America.  

Before WWI, the Ottomans lost control of their empire.  Jewish men had to serve in the army and fight in the Balkan Wars.  They didn't want to fight in this war.  Syrian Jews moved to Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Argentina, New York, Chicago though most went to New York.  

By then President Assad has virtually made all Jews prisoners.  They could not leave the city nor even have telephones.  Judith Feld Carr of Canada heard about this situation and managed to talk the president into allowing her to take out all the Jews as long as she didn't take them to Israel.  
                                             

                  2009 Aleppo  before Civil War Destruction                               
February 2012 Aleppo bombings - On 10 February 2012, two large bombs exploded at Syrian security forces buildings in Aleppo. According to the Syrian government and state media, the blasts were caused by two suicide car bombs. It reported that 28 people were killed (24 members of the security forces and four civilians) and 235 wounded. Jabhat 

The Syrian Civil War started: " initial March 2011 Arab Spring protests and the 15 July 2012 declaration by the International Committee of the Red Cross that the fighting had gradually become so widespread that the situation should be regarded as a civil war."

Steven V. Roberts wrote a special to the Washington Post on Sunday, December 20, 2009, and  is quoted as saying, "As a Jew, I never felt unsafe or unwelcome in Syria, but the country's once vibrant Jewish population has been driven away, and the grand synagogue of Aleppo lies decaying and desecrated behind iron gates. Syria has taken a different view of its Christian population, which remains at about 10 percent, 14 centuries after the region's conquest by Arabic-speaking Muslims. The Baath Party, which has ruled since 1963, is decidedly secular. But one of its founders, Michel Aflaq, was Greek Orthodox. Christians have traditionally served in high government posts, and Christian practices and monuments are widely respected. 

In the bazaars of Aleppo, the names on the gold and jewelry stores are still mainly Armenian, reflecting the influx of Armenians who fled Turkey during World War I. The town has the second-largest Christian population in the Middle East." 

                                                       

Aleppo's 2019 population is now estimated at 1,834,093. In 1950, the population of Aleppo was 377,981. Aleppo has grown by 854,628 since 2015, which represents a 16.98% annual change.
                                                   

ISIS

Is ISIS out of Syria today?  "ISIS is a proto-state terrorist network that can be traced back to a group called al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was started by a Jordanian terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and arose in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.  The word is that they are almost beaten.  Can Syria handle it by themselves if the USA pulls out now?  

Resource http://www.jewishgen.rg/sefardsig/aleppojews.htm
The NEw Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/aleppo-once-jewel-syria-now-rebels-last-stand-flattened-by-assads-bombs-1475250
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War