2022-03-21
LIVE from NYPL
Georgette F. Bennett and Shadi Martini with George Rupp: Confronting Crisis In Syria


>> Tony Marx: Good afternoon everybody. I'm Tony Marx and I'm the President of the New York Public Library. And it's my honor and pleasure to welcome you to this live event with Dr. Georgette Bennett, the author of the amazing recent book Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By, the story of how Georgette forged a series of unprecedented partnerships across the national tribal and religious boundaries that impact the overwhelming refugee crisis in Syria against nearly impossible odds. Georgette's story is not just inspiring about what one person can do to make a difference in other people's lives. But it is a riveting story of how to get things done in a difficult, incredibly difficult setting. So I urge everyone to read it, but you're going to, if you haven't already after today's conversation, I know that you will. Georgette is the President and Founder of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, spent the last 25 years advancing those relations across the globe. In 2013 she founded the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees [inaudible] war victims. Amongst her many honors, Dr. Bennett has been recognized by the Syrian American Medical Society for her work on behalf of those refugees. Georgette is always someone who has pushed against the odds, and put herself fully in to all of her incredible works from academe and social policy, sociology and criminology, to amazing author, philanthropist, friend. She is joined today by Shadi Martini, the Executive Director of the Multifaith Alliance, whose organization has been providing humanitarian aid programs and bringing critical awareness across the globe the crisis in Syria. They'll both be speaking together with George Rupp who served as President of the International Rescue Committee from 2002 to 13 leading a staff of more than 12,000 colleagues in over 40 countries also helping to settle refugees here in 22 cities in the United States. Dr. Rupp also served as nine years as the President of Columbia University where he will always remain my president from my time on the faculty then. Look, the simple fact is we live in crazy times that require enormous efforts of the sort that Georgette has demonstrated and will be talking to us about and the efforts that that IRC and Dr. Rupp and the Multifaith Alliance has been doing. We all need to be doing more and events in the Ukraine just bring this home to us and also obviously make the resonance the Syrian story and pre-staging what would happen with the Russians might do with tragic, terrifying consequences only makes today's topic more important and more timely. The book itself can be purchased through the library shop. Or, of course, you're welcome to come in and borrow it from the library or do so digitally. You'll find the links to borrow and buy in the chat for today's session. At the end of the conversation, Georgette and Shadi will be glad to answer a few of our questions. You can use the chat function for that or by emailing public programs, one word plural, publicprograms@nypl.org. Thank you all for being with us and special thanks to our guests and for their amazing global service. Thank you all for watching. Please join me in welcoming George Rupp, Shadi Martini, and Dr Georgette Bennet.

[ Silence ]

>> George Rupp: I'm pleased to [inaudible] my word of welcome to all of you who are joining us for this occasion. Georgette and Shadi. I suggested since Tony just gave the very generous introduction to all of us. I will not introduce each of you but I'd like to give you the opportunity to add nuance to his very gracious introduction. And Georgette, I'll begin with you and then Shadi. What would you like to add that you want to make sure we all know about you?

>> Georgette F. Bennett: Well, I want to add a very important nuance. Tony, as you said, George, was very generous in that introduction and he talked about what one person can do. I want to make it clear. Maybe one person was the catalyst, but it was not one person who did this. George, it actually began with you. It began with IRC. And let me say that. I could not have achieved what was achieved, what is still being achieved by the Multifaith Alliance without Shadi as my partner. So that's the nuance that I want to add [chuckle]. Well, thank you very much. We'll have a chance to learn more about you as we have our conversation, but very generous of you to add words about Shadi and me rather than about yourself. Shadi, you can do the same now with Georgette and you.

>> Shadi Martini: Well, thank you, Georgette. That's too generous of you. One thing I would love to add is that I actually was living in Syria in 2011, when events started unfolding in Syria, and I was forced to leave my hometown and my apartment in mid-2012. But I continued to go back and forth in Syria for all these years. This is a very important thing to understand. The backdrop of how after a year or something of leaving Syria, I encountered something, a life-changing event. That probably was the start of all this initiative and all this work that happened in the Multifaith Alliance. And in my life and in Georgette's life for the last eight plus years.

>> George Rupp: Well, as Tony indicated, we're here to have a discussion of this book and just want all of you to see it. It's very attractive volume, and as both Georgette and Tony said, the title of it is, "Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By," a quote from Leviticus which show, Georgette certainly knows very well but all of us should realize. And it has a subtitle which also should get our attention how one woman confronted the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time. Now Georgette has already indicated it's not one woman alone, one woman working with others, but I hope all of you gets inspired by this discussion to go and purchase the book and read all of the really incredibly, carefully captured details of this multi-year effort. Now the heart of the book is how sworn enemies, Syrians and the Israelis, joined together to provide urgently needed aid to Syrian victims. And I would like to begin our discussion first with you, Georgette, and then with your Shadi. Georgette, how did you as a Jew, as an American Jew with broad world experience get involved in this process of forming a partnership between Israelis and Syrians?

>> Georgette F. Bennett: Well, as I said, I got involved because of the International Rescue Committee. In January 2013, IRC issued a report on the Syrian crisis, and being a typical overextended New Yorker, that report sat on my desk for, I don't know, four or five months before I had a chance to open it. But when I finally read it, I was absolutely stunned by the magnitude of this crisis and equally stunned by the silence of the world in the face of this crisis. Because I'm a child of the Holocaust, because I was a refugee myself, I resonated very powerfully to the plight of the Syrian people. And I felt I had to do something. But what could I do? The first thing that came to mind was that Syria shares of border with Israel. And Israel is extremely well-resourced to deal with emergency situations. It's well-resourced in search and rescue. It has very successful agriculture technology. And it seemed to me that one could both alleviate terrible suffering in Syria, and at the same time build bridges between enemies. So the first person I went to was Ido Aharoni, who at that time was the Israeli Consul General, to see could Israel be mobilized in this way, in a reactive way not a proactive way. It was already providing medical aid to Syrians who came to the border. And then the second person I went to was you, George, because I thought that given the fact that IRC had boots on the ground in Jordan that perhaps Israeli expertise in trauma might work very well with what IRC was doing. My other focus was mobilizing a Jewish communal response. And at that time I was working closely with the Jordanian permanent representative to the UN Prince Zeid. And he suggested why not scale this up to be a multi-faith response. And that's how the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees was born with the Jewish group of communal organization at its core, that we had at first mobilized through the joint distribution committee. That's how I got involved and how the Israelis and Syrians finally got together. That story begins with Shadi.

>> George Rupp: Shadi, why don't you tell us about that? How did you as a Syrian how did your first meetings with Israelis go, how did the whole Multifaith Alliance get launched? What was your role in it?

>> Shadi Martini: Well, for me it was a totally different experience. And we're having this discussion now and backdrop of what [inaudible] things happening to Ukraine and the Russian invasion of this peaceful country. And there are some differences and lots of similarities between the two. So I'm going to talk about Syria and probably it would reflect on a lot of people what they're watching today in the news in look past three weeks. For me, specifically, things just happened on my doorstep. Like I didn't want to be a refugee. I didn't want to be in this position. I didn't want to risk my life. But all of a sudden I was seeing a brutal regime dictatorship you know shooting at people, killing them, not giving them the ability even to treat their wounds. At that time, I was a position of general manager of a hospital. I saw that it was upon me that to help these folks, that's the only thing I saw that that was the right thing at that moment in history. Of course, for Syrians, it was a little bit different because our government was attacking its own people, killing its own people, not allowing anyone to come and show support for them. So for Syrians like me we felt alone. We felt like no one cared. Like no one was there to help us because no one had access to us. So it took me a while until I was forced out of my country in mid-2012. And when I went out, I saw some you know some sympathy, some help, but not as much as I wished it could, we could have as Syrians. And in 2013, a group came to me and said you know we want you to meet friends actually and said we want you to meet with people who are willing to help Syrians and sent aid to Syrians. And I was like, of course, you know we want all the help we get, but well they said there is a problem with that because they're from Israel. And for me, now as a Syrian who was brought up in Syria [inaudible] as a Muslim, all these teachings that I have been told throughout my life in Syria came flashing back like why do the enemy want to help me? Why do they care? Aren't they're happy that we are being killed and our country is being destroyed. But somehow this feeling of being left alone. I was very intrigued and I was very like willing to meet. And from this meeting something new happened to me. Like I started you know this moment I started to see like who is my enemy? I started questioning who's my enemy, who's my friend. You know my enemy is now offering to help me, my friend, my countrymen, my government is killing me and destroying my home. That was a new world for me. and a new perspective that I never thought I would come to face. So that was the start, from there you know a new journey just happened.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: So just to pick up the story. I was then introduced to Shadi by a mutual colleague. And it seemed to me that what had begun with Shadi and this one Israeli NGO was something that we should really be building on. So we started a series of secret meetings that went on for two years between a small but influential group of Syrians and a small but influential group of Israelis. And we would have the secret meetings in various European capitals to see how we can actually provide aid. And we started doing that in a relatively inaccessible part of Syria, Southwest Syria. And it was inaccessible because it was entirely surrounded by regime-held areas. And as I think people are aware, the regime does not allow humanitarian aid to go into any area it doesn't control. So while Southwest Syria was very difficult to access in general, it was very easy to access through the Golan Heights, through Israel. So, eventually, it became Israel government policy to open the border to deliver massive amounts of outbound international humanitarian aid directly into Syria. And this is the real 'man bites dog story' here because the very first organizations to take advantage of the Golan Channel were Syrian organizations. And starting in 2016, you would have enormous cargo containers of aid which we would source which we would ship. Those cargo containers and the goods in there often contained the logos of Syrian organizations. Those containers would be delivered to these two Israeli ports, Haifa and Ashdod. And the Israeli defense forces would pick up those goods and port, trans shipped them through Israel to the Golan Heights. And then at the Golan Heights, our partners on the ground in Syria would pick up the goods and distribute them in an area that had a population of 1.3 million people. So that's how the Israeli-Syrian engagement was operationalized. And for the two years that that was going on, we were able to deliver $120 million of aid directly into Syria. We were able to support three medical facilities and a bakery that produced 15,000 pitas a day. But just as important, that work helped to stabilize that entire region because while that work was going on, and we refer to that as humanitarian diplomacy, extremists were not able to get hold because our work was helping to support a rudimentary economy. People were getting the services and the goods that they needed. And, in fact, an article was written about it saying that that was the only part of Syria that was working at the time, but that all unfortunately had to come to an end in 2018. And Shadi can talk about that. But, George, we're not giving you much of a chance to ask your questions. [Chuckle].

>> George Rupp: No, you're asking exactly, your commenting exactly the way in which my questions would have tried to prod you to comment. So I thank you very much. You might say a word or two about how you came to call this project Operation Good Neighbor.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: That was actually the name that Israel gave it, because Israel is Syria's neighbor. Because of that border that they share. And that's what made it possible to deliver the aid that we delivered there.

>> George Rupp: Well, you threw the ball to Shadi. Let's hear your comments on that. And then I'll go ask another question. Shadi.

>> Shadi Martini: Well, actually, I started at 2013 I was starting up this relationship. I've never imagined where this relationship with my organization, the people I work with and this is really NGO that will change the dynamics in Syrian's heart. You know until then we've seen in the middle east like Arab countries have peace treaties is with Israel, but it's usually governments signing something, you know, accord. But the people to people relationship stayed sour. And it was always like leaders trying for beneficials to themselves, or their economy, or whatever to get this treaty with Israel. But I didn't realize that what we were starting was a grassroots people engagement. You know most of the leaders in Syria didn't agree with me working with [inaudible]. So of course the government hated me for doing that, but I mean a lot of the people started realizing like having Israel as a neighbor is not a negative thing. It's a positive thing. And especially the Israelis you know they, it's a start-up nation, so they have such initiatives [inaudible] that the Syrian people, the normal folks started realizing what a benefit it is. And I can talk about one incident that happened even before Good Neighbors started and everything. I had a call from of mine who was in Aleppo and he was desperate. He called me and said Shadi, I need you to find me a place where I can get an operation for my son's heart. He's dying. He's dying in my arms. I can't, like he can't even walk. He can't two steps he can make, and I don't know what to do. And I'd looked everywhere. I tried, you know, I couldn't help him because I couldn't obtain a visa for him. He couldn't cross the border with a Syrian passports, he's on Syrian passport, no one would accept. And at the end of the day I thought you know I know these Israelis let me call them. And I called them, and I said I have this issue. Can you help us? They said yes we can. And we started this magnificent operation of getting a child through wars, from a war zones, through these borders, through these checkpoints, to get them into another country, got them a visa, fly them all the way to Israel, staying there for more than a month and a half. And this life of this child has changed tremendously. His life was saved. He's living now his, he's now like 12 or 13 years old. It's an amazing thing that happened. And this is the kind of things that started happening between Syrians and Israelis. Something unique that never happened between Arab societies in the long conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

>> George Rupp: Georgette, in your book, you frequently use what I'll call road metaphors. You talk about a dead end at one point, there's a chapter, there's bumps in the road. Another chapter, land mines in the road. Take your pick about which of those instances you think would be illuminating for all of us. And tell us a little bit about the ways in which it -- it was a, it was a tough journey. And both of you made clear there is a tough journey. But give us give us a couple even more concrete examples.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: So, I'll pick up where I left off which was in 2018. So we had had this very successful operation going which was scaling up beautifully. And as Shadi said, it was changing hearts and minds. It was building bridges as well as providing very important basic needs to people who were suffering terribly. In 2018, a deal was made, a deconfliction agreement which allowed the regime along with its allies, Russia and Iran, to wage an incursion that brought them right up to the Israeli border. They were -- so they took over Southwest Syria. And part of the deal was that Israel had to shut down the Golan Channel. That part of Syria immediately descended into chaos, with assassinations, shortages of everything. And that's still going on now. The Southwest is in a terrible crisis. So after the partnerships that we had developed, and the people we had worked with in Southwest Syria, many of them fled to the north. Others stayed but they felt abandoned by Israel. And we were very interested in finding ways to keep those partnerships going but also to keep providing the life-saving aid that we have been delivering. So we expanded our delivery areas and are now delivering to Northwest Syria and Northeast Syria. And we've also made a few deliveries in Lebanon and Iraq. But our focus is mostly Syria. So, as of today, we have delivered more than $225 million in aid, and that has benefited more than 2 million Syrian war victims. So that was a roadblock that we were able to turn into a positive but we ran into geopolitical roadblocks as well. And electoral roadblocks. Because as you may recall Israel, went through four elections in the space of what two years. And during those two years, critical decisions needed to be made about Southwest Syria, for example. But Israel was in election parameter [chuckle] so there was nobody to make those decisions. And then what we didn't mention is that our early work was much more focused on advocacy than it was on direct delivery of humanitarian aid. And then Donald Trump was elected, and that administration was very hostile to refugees, especially refugees from Muslim majority countries. So for us to continue our advocacy work really would have been spinning wheels. And that's the point of which we made a strategic pivot toward focusing on providing aid in place. But the refugee crisis continues and maybe, George, you want to get into that later on because you were very much a frontline witness to that.

>> George Rupp: Well why don't you continue the train of thought, how you got into the refugee or how the refugee crisis has continued, and how you and your colleagues continue to address it.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: So, while we're very pleased with the impact we've been able to have as a very small organization [chuckle] we're nowhere at the scale of the IRC, George, but you know we operate in the crevices, and that's important also. But even if IRC and the Multifaith Alliance and all those other wonderful international organizations are providing aid, it doesn't address the issue of people being left in limbo because the average time of displacement as you know, George, is between 17 and 27 years. And if people are left in limbo for that amount of time, then they become vulnerable to radicalization, which of course is our greatest fear. And one of the reasons that we use for not admitting Muslim refugees. But that's exactly why we should admit them because by not doing that, we are creating the very circumstance that we fear the most. So as a matter of national security as well as humanity, we need to start bringing in more refugees.

>> George Rupp: Well, let me ask Shadi. You just talked a little bit about -- well, I was struck by one, by many of the Syrian refugee Americans in your book, but one in particular, I think people would be interested in learning about it because it illustrates wonderfully what Georgette has just said. Tell us a little bit about Dr Yahya Basha [assumed spelling].

>> Shadi Martini: Oh. Dr Basha, he's actually -- I, after I left Syria, I came to Michigan where I had family, and this was where I met Dr Basha who had left Syria from a city called Hama which was actually brutally destroyed. And about 40,000 people were killed by the current Assad, his father back in early 80's. And Dr Basha brought most of his family out of Syria, and they all live here, extensive family. And he was one of the people who knew what Syria would face because his hometown faced similar destruction in the 80s. So he was one of the amazing people who was very generous in his donation. And actually he was a pioneer also in trying to work with interface groups here in the US. So he was in natural ally for the Multifaith Alliance, and a big supporters of what we were trying to do between Israelis and Syrian. He visited Israel with me and Georgette. And he after that, he had visited several times. So that's one of the Syrians who knew what benefits Israel could bring to being a Syrian neighbor instead of having to fight together, probably working together. And especially when Syria is coming totally destroyed. That's going to be a huge benefit for our people and our development in the future.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: And just to build on what Shadi said. You know there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation that drives our policy toward refugee admissions. And when it comes to Syrian refugees, there are three great fears that drive that policy. One has fear of negative economic impact. And Dr Basha is a perfect example of what the, there are about 90,000 Syrians in the US. They came here prior to the current crisis, and they tend to be on average more highly educated than native born Americans. A majority of them work in high-skill occupation. They have the highest average income of any foreign born group in the US. And Dr Basha is a perfect illustration of that. The second greatest fear is fear of terrorism. But research that has been done by the Cato Institute, for example, shows that the odds of being killed in a terrorist incident by a foreign-born person carrying a refugee visa are hundreds of times less than the odds of being killed by our American-born next door neighbor. They are infinitesimal. Almost immeasurable. And the third grade fear is Islamophobia. And I think we all understand what that's about. So I don't need to expand on that.

>> Shadi Martini: And can I just expand on a little bit on the resettlements? In Syria, there is most of that 6 million refugees, and there is more than 14 million people who are displaced. That's out of a population of 22 million. So we can imagine the scale and the severity of it. And the United States, in the whole 11 years that it has resettled refugees, actually it only have like 23 - 24,000 refugees from Syria resettled. And that was during the last year of the Obama administration. We all know what happened during the Trump administration, and with the Muslim ban, and everything. And until now, unfortunately there is 29,000 Syrian refugees who were in the pipeline, and are vetted, and are waiting, and still until now we had the last year of the Trump administration, 480 resettled. In the first year of the Biden's administration, 430 resettled. So there is a lot to be done on this front. In comparison Canada or Europe, Canada accepted like over 50,000. And Europe, of course, more than a one and a half million. And the brunt is upon neighboring countries, in the region neighboring Syria.

>> George Rupp: Well, both of you and Tony Marx, as well, have referred to the similarities or at least the echoes. I won't say similarities, because there are a lot of differences, too, but the echoes the current Ukraine crisis and what you've all lived through years earlier in Syria. I think we should go back to that for a minute because it's all of us have all are saturated with news about Ukraine. And I'm struck by -- there are there are lots of constants, Vladimir Putin, for one, but there are also some differences. So, Shadi, why don't you start with what you see as similarities and differences and the challenges you face.

>> Shadi Martini: Well, the difference mainly, the main difference in this is that Syria wasn't -- the government in Sarah was attacking its own population. So, once it couldn't destroy the people who are against it like by itself, it engaged with other countries and other militias including Hezbollah, Iran, and after that, the Russian Federation itself. That's the main difference. In Ukraine, it was a sovereign territory invaded by a neighboring country which is Russia. Now the similarities, unfortunately, it's the same tactics that is being used by the Russian Federation and the Putin regime against Syria and against Ukraine. While it wants a quick victory when it doesn't have and sees the population resists it, it start bombing it, and bombing it, and making the flood of refugees going outside the country, destroyed the country's economy, destroys its infrastructure, and actually take over land that is destroyed, forcing millions of people to flee. And that was the case in Syria. And the problem -- and also the other thing that they did is try weapons in Syria. Like the Minister of Defense of Russia was bragging after -- we tried 3000 different weapons on Syria -- for, for what? They're trying it for other wars. And now we see in Ukraine what they have been trying. So every weapon that you see, every tactic that we see in being used in Ukraine today have been tried in Syria. And this is why I'm very worried about them using also chemical weapons in Ukraine as they did in Syria. And one thing that the world needs to understand, when the Syrian refugee crisis happened, they said oh, Syria is in middle east. It's not going to have a major effect on countries. But it actually did. It's created huge crisis in the European Union. It brought some of the most extreme right-wing parties to get into parliament. I believe that it got us Brexit, and it has a huge effect on the politics here in the United States. So this is a similarity that we have with Ukraine. Ukraine's situation is unbelievable. In the matter of 22 days, we have over 3 million, 3 1/2 million. It's a country of 44 million. I mean it's terrible what's going on. And the reason why you didn't have more than like a 4 1/2 million, sorry 6 million refugees right now from Syria is because all the countries closed its borders. I'm worried, would we do the same thing to the Ukrainian? After the initial compassionate statement, what will we do if Russia continues destroying these cities of 44 million, can we sustain 10 million? Can we sustain 12 million? This is the question we need to ask ourself before saying it's a problem that we don't want to deal with or engage with. This is a very, very, very important question to ask ourself and look at ourselves in the mirror after 10 years. How did we, what did we do to this country like they did to Syria.

>> George Rupp: Okay. Georgette, your thoughts about the Syria-Ukraine similarities and differences?

>> Shadi Martini: Well, I think that Shadi outlined the similarities very, very well. I would add that the Syrian crisis also change the geopolitics of the region. Turkey for example, Turkey has accepted the most Syrian refugees of any other country, but those refugees have actually been used as a pawn to get the European Union to support Turkey and some of the moves that it wanted to make. Because those refugees have been used as a kind of blackmail. If you don't support what we want to do, we will open the flood gates and let all of those refugees into Europe. So I don't think we can underestimate that. The Syrian crisis also made Russia a player. And that's because I think of the Obama administration made a very serious foreign policy mistake in terms of not intervening militarily when that red line was crossed. What was done at that, when the red line with chemical weapons was crossed. Because at that point, and I can understand why the administration wanted to avoid getting into another war. So it looked for a diplomatic solution. And what was the diplomatic solution? The diplomatic solution was to hand Syria to Russia. And let Russia dispose of the chemical weapons. Well, at that point Russia was a marginalized has-been power. But at that moment, Russia again became a player. And now we see the consequences of that. At the same time there are some very real differences between what went on in Syria and what's going on in Ukraine. For one thing, and this hasn't been discussed much. There is a very strong religious element in terms of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's very consistent with the concept of [foreign phrase] or Holy Russia. And the idea that it is religiously ordained, that there is a world of Russia that includes Ukraine, sometimes Moldavia and Belarus. And that it's kind of the Russian equivalent of 'manifest destiny.' And that's the reason that the Russian Patriarch Kirill has not condemned this while so many of the other Orthodox churches have condemned this invasion. And this policy really gained steam after Patriarch Kirill was installed in 2009. And we really cannot discount that element because that is the religious ideology that is driving this invasion.

>> George Rupp: You may give Putin more credit for religious devotion when it could also be explained as using religion to manipulate his own interests, but in either case --

>> Georgette F. Bennett: He's got, he's very much supported by Patriarch Kirill.

>> George Rupp: Well, I I'm going to end our beginning discussion here with a quote. Georgette, from your book, kind of a summary quote that puts us on a very positive trajectory. And then I remind our listeners, viewers, that we'll be glad to take questions from any of you to our speakers. The summary sentence I'm going to read is very short but very poignant. "In short we had changed hearts and minds, built bridges of trust, and nurtured formerly unthinkable partnerships." That's what you two have managed to do with all those others whom you've influenced. I thank you very much for doing that. It's been extremely important, and we look forward now to the questions that come from our audience. Okay. I'll take some of these from the chat. First question, there must have been many moments of despair in your work. How do you get past them. And Georgette, we'll start with you. And we'll then go to Shadi.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: How do you get past them? You get past them by keeping your eyes on the prize. And, in my case, I followed a three-step process which helped me get past the moments of despair. The first was to find an entry point in terms of addressing this crisis. And for me that entry point was creating a multifaith response because this is the only multifaith response focused exclusively on Syria. The second was to identify a gap. And in our case the gap was hard to access parts of Syria. And the third was to find something doable with which to fill that gap. And for us, initially, the doable part was to send goods through Israel which nobody else was doing. When you stay tightly focused like that, it keeps you from getting confused about what you're doing. So then it just becomes a matter of identifying the obstacles and trying to figure out if it won't work one way how will it work the other way?

>> Shadi Martini: I don't know how I got -- Syria, for me, is very personal. That's my family. That's my friends. That's my memories. So sometimes it was, I was sometimes better. I was sometimes angry but the most thing that kept me going on is my, the people around me, including Georgette, like when I'm frustrated that I would reach out to her. She's always a calming presence. My life for the last eight years, my family here in the US, I would talk to them. And also trying to work harder because I kept reminding myself that there's so much suffering that you just can't be frustrated only, you have to focus on the bigger picture. So this is how I got past this things. It's really your people that you love around you. The people that know who you are, they can they have empathy and sympathy towards you, and working harder.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: And I want to add one more thing that helped me get past moments of despair. So I want to do a shout out to my husband, Dr Leonard Polonsky, who has been so extraordinarily supportive through all of this.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: Did we lose George Rupp? George, there you are.

>> George Rupp: I'm not sure whether I alone was cut off or we're we all closed down.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: [Inaudible]. We're all here. We're all here.

>> George Rupp: Shadi.

>> Shadi Martini: I'm here. Yes, I'm here. I don't know exactly when I lost connection with you. Could you summarize your last comments? I think that everyone, what was there, did anyone hear my last comment?

>> Georgette F. Bennett: Yes, Shadi, you were fine. I think we --

>> George Rupp: So it was just a break in my connection. Okay. I'll find out what I missed. [Laughing].

>> Georgette F. Bennett: The question was well answered, George. So you can [inaudible] confidence going to the next question.

>> George Rupp: Okay. Well, the next question is what is the state of American policy toward Syrian refugees now in the Biden administration?

>> Shadi Martini: Shall I talk the frustrating one and you, Georgette, go the diplomatic way. So I'm more of an activist on the ground person. You know, I've been in the trenches in Syria, you know got bombed at, and in Greece, where the refugees went also, so I'm a passionate person. This is how I am, you know, I feel the people when I go on -- I'm one of them you know, I had to leave with one bag. I left all my life in Syria. So, for me, it's frustrating. I understand where the current administration and the challenges they're facing because the previous administration has dismantled the refugee resettlement system. And a lot of these agencies had to release staff. But I think we could do more. I think after a year, we should do more. I think these 29,000 Syrians should -- their files should, they're already vetted. Most of them is already processed. They should come here. It's somehow we come into a new problem. And then we forget about the old problem that is still there. It didn't finish. We need to help these people. So I think we need to do more, there needs to be more resources. It's just unfair to these folks that are living in refugee camps and mainly in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey for the past six years waiting for their files to be processed. You know, I don't think it's a justified, and I think more can be. I'll live the diplomatic stuff for you, Georgette.

[ Inaudible ]

>> George Rupp: That's a very blunt and I think accurate comment of where we are with Syrian refugees -- in fact, we can say with refugees, overall, in the first years of the Biden administration. Although the ugly ways in which the goals were proclaimed in the Trump administration are no longer being trumpeted, the fact remains that very few refugees are getting processed and the official target is 125,000. We're going to be lucky to get to 20,000 at the rate we're going now. So there's a very serious problem, not only for Syrian refugees, but for all others as well. Now that we've really teed it up, Georgette, you're going to do the diplomatic response.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: I don't have a diplomatic response. I completely agree with Shadi. But I'm going to be even more blunt than Shadi was. When I compare the response to Ukraine, and the response to Syria. I see a world of difference. And I think that difference is because they're European. And Syrians are Arabs and Muslims. So I'm going to be even more blunt. Now that doesn't mean that we should not respond to the Ukraine with all compassion and to bring in as many Ukrainians as possible. In fact I was very disappointed to see that the initial resettlement response to Ukraine in the US is just family reunification. That's not enough. But while we're doing that for Ukraine, we need to do that for Syrians, because Syria has dropped out of the headlines, but that crisis is not over. And that is the largest displaced crisis, the largest crisis of displacement in the world. Twenty-five percent of the more than 80 million people who are displaced in the world are Syrians. And let's not forget that. That wasn't diplomatic, was it Shadi?

>> Shadi Martini: No, it wasn't.

>> George Rupp: [Chuckle] But it was accurate. Let me take the next question is in the chat box. Do the multifaith efforts to aid Syria outlined in Georgette's book provide a model for efforts to aid the suffering in Ukraine. Well, we've been on that. But maybe any further brief comments from either of you?

>> Shadi Martini: Well, I can start here by saying, first of all, I want to emphasize one thing. So me or Georgette would not be misunderstood. You know the blame is not, it's not a comparison between the suffering of Syrians and Ukrainians. Both people are suffering a lot and they both should be helped with all means possible. That criticism is for the people, other people who are not responding in the same way or same fashion or have a different standard for different refugees. That shouldn't be the same, you know every refugee suffering is the same, either if it's Syrian, or Somali, or [inaudible] or Ukrainian, or Mexican or anywhere else. Now, in regards to this question about what can be you know similarities. Yes, it does have similarities between Syria, and it does have an effort, especially the interface effort. The interface was very important in approaching the crisis in Syria because as the Russians like the [inaudible] that Georgette had mentioned, it was an element of providing the Russian military cover for targeting hospitals in Syria. And hospitals in Syria gave the UN their coordination so they can pass them to the Russian Air Force so they wouldn't be targeted. When they were passed, the Russian military targeted them intentionally. So this is what happened. And so the interface aspect is very important. Also, Syria used [inaudible] assistance from the Shia community somewhere when there was none to justify Hezbollah and the Iran involvement in killing Syrians. There should be a front line between everyone. And I was a witness to one person from the Russian Orthodox Church who was against what Patriarch Kirill is doing, and there should be a cross religious lines for Muslims, Christians, Orthodox, or Catholics, or Jews, everyone else we should be united together to learn that we don't give them this cover and his cues to killing innocent people and destroying cities like we're witnessing now in Mariupol and Kharkiv, and everything, who are by the way are ethnically Russians and speak Russian, and followers of the same church that is justifying their killing and destruction.

>> George Rupp: Georgette.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: I think, on a practical level and picking up on the theme of religion that Shadi mentioned, 70% of refugee resettlements in the US are done by faith-based organizations. IRC is kind of the exception in terms of the resettlement organizations in the US. And in Canada which has a private sponsorship plan for refugee admissions, there to the churches are very, very active. Religious institutions are in the best possible position to create welcoming committees, to help refugees integrate. And there were five pillars of successful integration -- housing, work education, language, and trauma treatment. And these are all things that volunteers can do. And, George, you can probably speak to that because the IRC provides so much of this and also works with volunteers. And faith-based organizations, are very good sources of volunteers. That doesn't mean they're the only ones that are sources of volunteers. But I just wanted to reinforce the role of religion and religious institutions in all of this.

>> Well, that's a very positive note on which to close our conversation. I thank you very much. Shadi, I thank you very much. I thank all of you who have listened patiently and those of you who supplied questions. And we look forward to continue the conversations in other ways. Thank you.

>> Georgette F. Bennett: And we thank you very much, George.

>> Shadi Martini: Thank you, George, very much.

>> Thank you for joining us. For more information and to register for upcoming programs, visit nypl.org/LIVE.