Israel lobby fetes Syrian saviour Judy Feld Carr

With thanks Elsie; Gideon

It's taken decades, but Judy Feld Carr is finally being give the credit she deserves: the prestigious America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) summit recently showed this video to delegates.

The Toronto grandmother kept a secret lifeline going to the hostage Syrian-Jewish community from the 1970s onwards. Mrs Feld Carr raised money to ransom dozens of Jews to safety.

 While the AIPAC video has an undoubted Zionist message, validating Israel for giving refuge to these desperate Jews, the truth is more complex. Comparatively few Syrian Jews resettled in Israel.

In the 1990s the Assad regime eventually allowed the 3,000 remnant to leave for the US on tourist visas on condition that they did not go to Israel. The breakthrough occurred less as a result of Mrs Feld Carr's efforts, and more because the regime wanted to mend fences with the Americans in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The majority of these Jews now live in Brooklyn and New Jersey, USA.

Judy Feld Carr's rescue story becomes a film