Itai Engel in the heart of the Syrian capital

No Israeli journalist has arrived at the heart of Damascus after the fall of the Assad regime – to this day. At the end of 53 years of cruel rule, who murdered hundreds of thousands, Itai Engel comes to the heart of the Syrian capital, where no one knows he is Jewish – surely not Israeli. Between the Iranian Embassy structure, which was the Shiite axis nervous center, and the drug industry factories that funded the regime, it meets the fighters “Maya Tahrir a-Sham”, the jihadist organization that released Syria and promises, on paper, another future.

The missing square

One of the most arguable places in Damascus is the Marja Square, from the city’s symbols. To which relatives of missing from all over Syria come, are looking for their loved ones among the photos, follow the information collected about it about those who are in life and who is not. “It’s my cousin,” one of the Square tells the square. “He has been absent for 16 years. They said the prisons were empty and people were released, to this day we have not seen him.”

Inside the square, someone indicates a character who is suspected of belonging to the old regime. In these reasons, there will be no room to find out who he really was. The crowd wants to do little, now, in anyone who shared the regime he murdered, the eye and the leaves hundreds of thousands of citizens of which are still absent.

For Israelis, the square is bundled in painful memory. 60 years ago, Eli Cohen, who operated for Israel, hung not far from the square. After he was executed, his body was taken to an unknown place. Since then, we have been waiting for answers, and maybe now, after the fall of the Assad regime and the arrival of the new regime, new information will come to know something, about its burial place.

The focus of power, completely breaking

The Iranian embassy in Damascus, from which Iran managed the Shiite axis – and operated Hezbollah, was one of the most reserved places in the Middle East. Israel bombed the nearby building in April, eliminating Muhammad Raza Zahidi, commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Syria and Lebanon, and with him other senior officials. In response – Iran’s first missile attack on Israel arrived. In the embassy itself, the Shiite axis nerve center, it was impossible to touch, the strongest focus of power in the Middle East.

Now, Engel has come in. Inside the building, which remains empty of man-remains a lot of material, completely outbreak: quantities of documents that Iranians were overlooked before escaped, drives and servers, including classified files, personal photo albums and passports of spies and activists in Iran.

The Embassy, ​​painful family members from around Syria also arrive, whose loved ones were murdered or raised by the Iranian regime and its metastasis. “This is the Hassan dog, the devil supporter,” a father cries, who was murdered by the Iranian regime in Syria, while stepping on a picture of Hezbollah secretary of Hezan Hassan Nasrallah.

Half a million people were killed in the terrible civil war in Syria, most of them in bombings from the air. The military transport helicopters, the battle helicopters and the remaining fighter jets at the base of the abandoned Syrian Air soldier to which Angel comes, and full of assault signs of the Israeli Air Force-were mainly the nightmare of Syria’s citizens. Inside the remaining hangers are open to all, you can find more battle leaders, completely normal, of helicopters and planes.

“These are the missiles that bombed Idlib. They bombed us on missiles, murdered children and women,” says Agel a fighter “Tahrir a-Sham” who originally, and for the first time, also gives his religious teachings to the Middle East: The Flag of ‘There is no Allah and Muhammad is an Allah’ messenger ‘. ”

Cocaine to the poor

Where did the money come from the death machine that the Assad regime operated? The answer was tried to hide between mountains and tunnels, away from the city centers. There, Engel comes following an industry that yielded more than $ 5 billion a year, the number one export industry of Assad – drugs.

The captain to which it comes was once a chips factory, until Mahr al-Assad, Bashar’s brother, welcomed him. Now instead of potatoes, it has millions of balls – captain pills, which were also called “ISIS courage drug” or “cocaine to the poor.” Jihadists all over the world took the drug produced in these factories, including Hamas ropes. They were also reportedly used by the Nachbaebus on October 7.

These are historical days in Damascus, and every corner reveals another part of the dark regime living alongside us in recent decades. In Palestine Prison, Engel meets those who survived years of torture after being imprisoned for demonstrations, such as tens of thousands who were banned and disappeared at that prison. On the outskirts of Damascus, he meets Syrians who are looking for their loved ones in mass graves hoping to find out what has gone up and try to bring them to a proper grave.

On a journey around Damascus, Engel meets the Assad regime darkness who have suffered from him and are now trying to build something new. On the ruins of a neighborhood that the regime jailed in the bombings, he meets a person standing on the ruins of his home – and provides a rare human moment: “You are a Jew, me and you have God, right?”, He explains with a smile. “Religious should not change, it is important for us to live. A Jew and I am Muslim, so we will not sit together?

The surprising encounter, in the heart of Damascus

One of the last Jews left in Damascus, certainly the youngest of them, is “Eid”, or by its original name: Bat Symantov. “All people love me, everyone knows I’m Jewish. When Israel was a bomb in Syria, everyone would tell me: ‘We come to you, because you are safer. We will hide with you because you are Jews, and no one will hurt you.'”

Even with Hezbollah’s Shiites, he said: “What problems? Problems are only on the news. We would sit in the neighborhood together. The Shiites are all my friends, and we always talk about politics, there is no problem. I protect Israel and they protect Hezbollah.” In the short round with him throughout the Old City, Engel also fulfills a small dream, to sit together to hummus in Damascus. Who knows, maybe from here, from Syria, will you go out in the Middle East? Apparently it is against all odds, but something new is starting here.