A septuagenarian grand-grandfather from New York, Rabbi Abraham Cooper is known for breaking ground internationally. A director of the Jewish human rights organisation Simon Wiesenthal Centre, he helped smooth the way for Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to normalise relations with Israel back in 2020, laying the groundwork years earlier.
Long before then, in the 1980s, he opened the first Jewish cultural centre in Moscow after visiting the Soviet Refuseniks in the 1970s. In 1995, he flew to Cairo to ask Sheikh Tantawi, the then Grand Mufti of Egypt, to meet Israel’s Chief Rabbi Lau (a Holocaust survivor) to improve Jewish-Muslim relations (they eventually met four years later). In 2004, he travelled to Khartoum to become the first Jewish leader to meet Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir. In short, he opens doors, some for the first time.
Back in 2017, during US President Donald Trump’s first term, Cooper hosted the King of Bahrain, helping to pave the way for normalised relations between his country and Israel that became known as the Abraham Accords. It was therefore of interest that, along with American Christian leader and religious freedom campaigner Pastor Johnnie Moore, Cooper visited Damascus in June, meeting Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa, having met Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani in April.
Al Majalla spoke to Rabbi Cooper afterwards about the Damascus talks, his role, his perceptions of Syria’s future, and relations between Damascus and Tel Aviv. He clearly sees Trump as key to rapid progress, and left the Syrian capital impressed with al-Sharaa, who he said “holds a vision for Syria that accommodates all its citizens”. Cooper said the Syrian leader, a former Islamist, “looks at things with a strategic and practical mindset”. This is the conversation.
Do you think the war between Iran and Israel will have any effect on your efforts in Syria?
The total defeat of the Ayatollahs’ tyranny will be great for the people of Iran, for the people of Israel, for Syria’s future, for greater stability, and for the future of our grandchildren. Great things are possible. For Syria, it can give an injection of hope that life will improve and the brain drain will end. Let’s start with people of different faiths working together towards a real peace.
How was your trip to Damascus?
Full of surprises and too short! Each meeting was invigorating, as was walking through the Christian Quarter, seeing people out again in the street. The most important time of all was the two hours we spent with the president (Ahmed al-Sharaa), an Islamist who also has a vision for an inclusive new Syria for all its citizens. He looks at things with a strategic and practical mindset, with a view to removing Syria from countries’ lists of enemies, with the hope of building on peace.
Read more: Ahmed al-Sharaa – the Syrian president with much to prove
He went into more depth than our meeting with the foreign minister a few weeks ago at the United Nations. I happened to be in New York that day. We have come a very long way in a very short period. We also had a lengthy meeting with 15-20 Christian leaders from across Syria, plus some who work in Lebanon. They wanted to know what would happen to the Christians, just as we asked, what would happen to the Jews. The hope is that there will be a unified Syria, with one army, and everyone in equal citizenship.
I’m particularly sensitive to that topic. I chaired the US Commission on International Religious Freedom last year and have been an activist for half a century. As a Jewish American, I look at human rights through the lens of religious freedom, as a kind of litmus test for the health of a society. I hope you (Syria) can combine the leader’s vision with the more practical concerns over the quality of life for Syrian citizens. It would be arrogant for someone who spent maybe 35 hours in Syria to start giving all sorts of ideas, but I think there is hope.
What is the main message you have for the Syrian president?
I represent no government, I’m no spy, I’m just a Jewish guy with an American passport, but my approach is very simple: try to help by communicating with government officials on a practical basis, and supporting sustainable humanitarian projects, the kinds of projects that involve people from different countries and cultures. I raised two at the meeting.