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St George Antiochian Orthodox Church, founded by Syrian immigrants on South Dove Street in 1933, is a microcosm encompassing the nation’s debate over a possible American military strike against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in retaliation for an alleged chemical attack that killed hundreds of civilians outside Damascus last month. Wahid Albert, 52, of Schenectady NY, said, “It’s not our war, and I don’t think we should be in it at all”. He left Syria in 1980, earned a civil engineering degree at the University of Buffalo, and joined St George parish when he settled here in 1984.
The fighting puts Syria’s Christian minority in a vulnerable position, stoking fears among family members who belong to St George. Albert said, “I worry that there’ll be a slaughter of Christians in Damascus by al-Qaeda-led rebels if the USA sends a strike”. His mother and sister live together in a Christian neighbourhood in the Syrian capital, where he said they’re afraid to go outside because of the fighting. Two weeks ago, a rebel-fired mortar round struck 100 yards from their house, killing four people and injuring more than 30. Members of his wife’s family also live in that area, and mortar attacks are common. Albert urged them to flee to the safety of a second home in the mountains.
Since a popular uprising began in March 2011 that was part of the so-called Arab Spring, the conflict between Syrian rebels and the Assad government has been deadlocked. US President Barack Obama is trying to marshal support in Congress and internationally for a strike against the Assad régime for its alleged use of chemical weapons. Fr Gregory DesMarais, the pastor of St George, which has about 140 members, said, “We’re deeply worried about the situation in Syria and the ripple effect an American strike would have throughout the region. Americans are largely ignorant of what’s going on there”. A parishioner who’s on vacation on the border of Syria and Lebanon wrote on the church’s Facebook page recently, “I can hear the bombs at night”. Christians are about 10 percent… compared with about 90 percent Muslims… of Syria’s population of 25 million. However, historically, the Assad régime was tolerant and protective of the Christian minority. In turn, Christians supported the government even in the face of evidence that the régime fired rockets loaded with the nerve agent Sarin/GB to kill his own citizens {here, the reporter repeats stale American black propaganda lies… caveat lector: editor}.
Albert and his family members in Damascus don’t find the chemical weapons evidence credible. He said, “We believe the attack was staged. Assad could’ve lobbed a Scud missile and killed a lot more people than with a chemical weapon. It doesn’t pass the stink test”. Parishioner Fayez Abed of Troy NY has been distraught since he learned that family members witnessed a gruesome killing by rebels at a recent Christian wedding. He says that eyewitnesses told him that rebels raided the ceremony and that they slit the throats of the bride and groom inside the church. Fr Gregory said, “Fayez is outraged and very emotional about it”. On Friday, Fr Gregory will open the church for a daylong programme of prayer and reflection on the crisis in Syria. There will be morning matins, afternoon hours of prayer, and vespers in the evening. The parish will offer a day of prayer and fasting on 14 September for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
Sectarian violence isn’t new in Syria. The St George parish founders fled oppression in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. In Albany, they worked as labourers and settled in the ethnic melting pot of the South End. A dozen or so families first met for worship in each other’s homes just off Second Avenue starting in the 1920s. The men pooled money won at weekly card games and built a little red brick church in 1956 near Bishop Maginn High School. The women got together on Friday nights to prepare communal feasts of baba ghanouj, hummus, tabbouleh, kibbe, lamb kebabs, and other Middle Eastern dishes. For most of its 80-year history, the clergy served liturgy in Arabic, and golden icons of saints decorated the church’s interior.
In recent decades, the congregation diversified to include Lebanese, Ethiopians, Egyptians, and Palestinians. The tangle of regional conflicts in their homelands and the strong pull of nationalism threatened to tear apart the congregation, but the centre held. National flags that once flew in the parish hall during coffee hour after the Sunday liturgy are gone, along with the rancour and clannish hostility the displays fuelled. Fr Gregory said, “It took a long time for this parish to get past that nationalistic behaviour, but we’re a good example of dealing with our differences and coming together as one to worship”. Sunday services are now conducted in English, although parishioners are invited to repeat the Our Father in Arabic or Amharic, a language of Ethiopia. Fr Gregory observed, “It’s a tip of the hat to our ethnic makeup”.
As Albert expressed fear for his family’s safety in Damascus, he recalled a happy childhood spent in the cradle of Christianity where his late father, who lived in the USA and served as an Army Reservist in World War II, had returned because his wife was homesick, saying, “I went to a high school on the road to Damascus where St Paul was converted to Christianity”. Albert’s daughter, one of his three children, all in their 20s, called off plans to live in Syria. He said, “They can’t understand what happened to the beautiful country where we used to spend summers when they were young. They want to know where that Syria went”.
4 September 2013
Paul Grondahl
Albany Times Union
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/A-distant-war-echoes-in-local-church-4787809.php
Editor’s Note:
Where did that Syria go? You can find the answer “inside the Beltway”, on Capitol Hill, in Langley’s marbled halls, and in the boardrooms of rapacious American corporations. The evil in America has to cease… we’ve been a rogue nation long enough.
BMD
Voices from Russia 
10 January 2018. No Comment Necessary Department… Sanity Reigns in Woodstock NY
Tags: humour, New York State, political commentary, politics, satire, spoof, United States, Upstate New York, USA, Woodstock
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Remember Rocky and Bullwinkle? Trust me, all the phoney media frenzy and frenetic accusations about “Russian hacking and interference” makes me think of Boris and Natasha, along with Mr Big and Fearless Leader. “It is lie of Moose and skvirrel”… that’s what all the media and political hype sounds like to me. Kudos to the guy who put up the sign… whatever side his political windsock points to, they’ve got one hell of a sense of humour.
Smile awhile…
Oh, if hacking and interfering in someone else’s elections are culpable, tell me… when will all the directors of the CIA stand trial for crimes against humanity? It seems to me that such interference was one of the main things that they did…
BMD