The Abandoned Synagogue of Qamishlo, Syria, in Photographs

In the city of Qamishlo, located in the Kurdish-ruled enclave of Syria known as Rojava, it is unlikely that more than one Jew remains. But the synagogue still stands, and Philipp Breu was able to visit and take photographs. He writes:

The building is guarded by a Syrian Kurd named Kamiran Hassan and he is keen to show visitors around. . . . Over the past years, the condition of the furniture has worsened and he is currently emptying both the synagogue and the yeshiva [attached to it] to clean and repaint some metal elements. He has asked me not to take too many photos of the courtyard because he feels a bit ashamed that it looks untidy, as three turkeys are currently roaming around the vicinity.

Apart from that, everything seems in dusty, but okay condition, although the books and religious papers lying around should be kept in a more preservative way, but the guard is unable to do so, since he doesn’t have any money. He wasn’t exactly sure of the age of the building, and according to him, the synagogue doesn’t have a name, or he is unaware of it. He also showed me the container for the Torah of the synagogue, which was empty. According to him, the Torah was evacuated already at the end of the 1940s by American Jews.

Breu’s photographs of the synagogue can be found at the link below.

Read more at Philipp Breu

More about: Kurds, Synagogues, Syrian Jewry

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF