Meet the Syria-born Journalist Telling Israelis’ Stories

November 19, 2024

by: Smadar Perry ~ Ynetnews

Tuesday, 19 November 2024 | “Let’s start from the end,” I say to veteran Kurdish–Syrian journalist, Hayvi Bouzo who, for fear of the authorities, has moved to Washington. Let’s focus on the here and now. For her Yalla website, each week she interviews Israelis—mainly those who lost family members in the October 7 massacre, but there are also other Israelis she feels it’s important to let the Arab world know about. She’s the only Arab journalist who has made this her life’s mission. The numbers show she has somewhere between 750 thousand and one million followers on Yalla.

Which Israeli most touched you?

Without hesitating, she answers, “Yifat Ziller, cousin to Yarden Bibas, held hostage in Gaza. It was so hard. I cried through the whole interview as she talked about Shiri, Yarden and their two wonderful little red-haired children.

“I can’t forget Ariel, who was four when kidnapped, and his brother Kfir who was only nine months old. Before the interview, I looked at some pictures and decided I’d be strong, but my conversation with Yifat broke me. I thought of my own two children, Gino (11) and Talia (8). I told my husband Hans that I couldn’t imagine how I’d keep it together if a disaster as horrific as that ever happened to us.”

Bouzo, 41, was born in Damascus into what she describes as an “unusual” family. “In our home,” she says “when Hafez el Assad, Bashar’s father, was in power, and the dictatorship took the liberty of listening in on its citizens, nabbing them off the street, interrogating and torturing them, sometimes to death—my family behaved differently.

“Our home was always open and I always wanted to be a journalist. I’ve been curious about people ever since I can remember, and I fought to break down barriers in the closed environment in which I was raised. At home, I could talk about anything. Outside, I learned to be quiet.”

Weren’t you afraid?

“Obviously. We didn’t take to the streets to demonstrate against the government and we didn’t have political conversations with people we didn’t know we could trust. Amongst ourselves, however, and with close friends we talked about everything.

“I was born in Damascus at a time when the state ran its citizens’ lives by brainwashing them, mainly the young people. This means that each and every citizen was destined to be a tool of the regime, and it continues to this day. “

“People who live in democracies don’t understand the life of a small individual in a dictatorship. I keep thinking about the young people in Syria whose lives are run under enormous fear, and it breaks my heart.

“What would have happened to me if I’d carried on living in Damascus right under the noses of security and intelligence agencies? I’d have either been arrested as I wouldn’t have been able to keep my mouth shut about the regime’s injustices, or I’d have gone underground like lots of my friends did, until they got caught.”

What does “got caught” mean?

“They take you for violent interrogations. The girls, many of whom are virgins, they rape as part of the ‘absorption process’ and ruin their lives. And they beat up and torture the men. If they’re lucky, they’ll be released a couple of days later. In other cases, they’ll be transferred to detention and trial, accusing them of God knows what. It’s just terrible.”

The Jewish Butcher in Damascus

Bouzo was raised with stories of her parents’ Jewish neighbors. “My father would buy the meat from the Jewish butchers in Damascus—because of the meat’s quality, and the shop’s cleanliness,” she recalls.

“Everything was very calm and normal and until the Ba’ath party took over, and the Jews in the neighborhood started disappearing. My mother was wandering around in tears knowing she’d never see her Jewish neighbors again. They left everything behind. Very few managed to sell their homes. Some, from what I realized much later, went to the US, others to the ‘Zionist state’.”

Bouzo also moved to the US with her family, but the family returned to Syria because “we weren’t afraid.” She started working as a TV presenter for a Syrian state TV channel, relocated to Dubai following a job offer from Orient TV, and returned to Syria to work for El Sham TV, that she describes as “the first, failed, attempt to set up a private TV channel in Syria. We were forced to closed due to government pressure, because we were disrupting them.”

While working at a state radio station in Syria, on one show she mentioned “totally innocuously, that Jerry Seinfeld’s mother was a Jew born in Aleppo. Out of nowhere, I was flooded with phone calls” she says.

“They shouted ‘Shame on you’ and ‘How can you even think of mentioning the Jewish woman?’. They said horrific things about Israel and cursed me. I explained that I hadn’t meant to bring politics into the show, that I was just stating a fact. It was hinted to me that it was Bashar el Assad’s people who had called to scare me. I was fired from the show two days later. Simply because of Jerry Seinfeld’s mother.”

When did you start taking an interest in the Jewish-Arab conflict?

“From a very young age. Around the end of grade school. At our school, they talked about politics a lot, as well as about Jews and the State of Israel.”

What does the State of Israel look like from Syria?

“The Syrians look at Israel with an inferiority complex. On official state-run TV channels, there are no representations of Israel apart from it being an enemy country, soldiers, wars, hatred and hostility. There’s no chance of seeing daily life in Israel or of broadcasting a piece by a foreign journalist visiting Israel giving his impression from the street, like you guys do for Syria.

“The regime in Damascus wants Syrians to hate you. And Iran fans the flames. Even coming across the name ‘Israel’ rather than the ‘Zionist entity’ would be a step forward.” 

And the young people?

“They’re afraid to go out to demonstrate. There’s no ‘fighting spirit’ among the young people in Damascus like there is in Tehran.”

Who was the first Israeli you interviewed?

“It was even before Yalla. While working on Orient, I asked to meet your ambassador, Danny Dannon who responded immediately.”

How was the interview with Danny Dannon received in Syria?

“Ah. That I can’t forget. They called me a traitor. I then knew I had no chance of going to Syria anymore as I’d be tried for treason. It didn’t me bother though, as I knew that they watched the interview despite my being a ‘traitor’.”

Scenes and Memories

Thomas Hand, father of Emily who was kidnapped to Gaza and returned, was also interviewed by Bouzo. “It was hard. I wasn’t prepared to deal with the story of the little girl whose mother had died, who was kidnapped, and whose fate was unknown” she says.

“I had to be composed with him during the broadcast. It’s not an Israeli audience that identifies with this terrible story. My job is to use the force of the story to convince my audience. They can hit me with thousands of horrific stories on the Palestinian side, but I know that my audience is also shocked by the stories. There are hundreds of TV channels in the Arab world, none of which present the Israeli side. There’s no mention of the hostages or their families.”

What reactions did you get?

Bouzo: “Mainly insults, swearing and cursing. They don’t write me nice things. I understand, but it doesn’t bother me. People in the Arab world haven’t gotten used to looking at Israel objectively. You bring out the fear and very strong emotions, mainly envy.”

Between interviewing hostages’ families, Bouzo also talks to fascinating figures, mainly in the Arab world “to break down the Israeli wall” she explains. “I interviewed a young woman who had fled Egypt, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the son of the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, following his highly publicized visit to Israel. This interview accrued so many views and garnered so much interest that I requested, and was granted, a second interview to talk about Iran today and Pahlavi’s special relationship with Israel.”

“The more I think about it,” says Bouzo, “if I’d have stayed in Syria, I’d have been dead long ago. The Syrian regime has a lot of beef with me, ever since I wrote on Facebook what the regime was doing in the city of Daraa on the Jordanian border. It was a horrific massacre that started off with arresting children and carried on to chopping off hands and feet during interrogations.”

“My family and I started getting death threats. My uncle heard from Mukhabarat (Syrian intelligence) people in Damascus that my name appeared on an arrest list and was taken aback as he knew that if I was arrested, my parents and sister weren’t safe either.

“We decided to leave quickly before they caught us. We flew to the UAE, and from there on to the US. If I’d have missed the flight, I wouldn’t be alive today. After I left, I learned that the Syrian regime had executed journalists like me who had written about the regime’s crimes. I still have nightmares about what could have happened if I would have insisted on staying.”

The Arab–Jewish organization, Sharaka brought her to Israel as a special guest and arranged a trip kicking off in Eilat, visiting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and ending up on the Israeli–Syrian border.

What did you feel when you stood by the border and saw the Lebanese and Syrian sides?

“I cried shamelessly. The Israeli side was in full bloom, flourishing. I looked at the other side and knew nothing there was blossoming or there’s no kind of human thriving. All the houses beyond the border are being used as arsenals and covers for Hezbollah.”

Are you in touch with your family in Syria?

“I was last there in 2011, and I dare not go back as I know exactly what awaits me there. For their own safety, I also don’t initiate contact with my family. Every now and then, I get information about them, but I don’t initiate phone calls.

“As long as Bashar el Assad is in government, under Iran’s thumb, there’s also no chance of changing things in Syria. He’s not a man of peace. He’s a weak leader who the Iranians and Russians are exploiting and doing whatever they want in Syria.”

Bouzo has been following the chain of assassinations in Lebanon with keen interest.

Bouzo wishes to stress that she doesn’t regard the destruction of Hezbollah’s leadership as “assassinations”. “They have so much blood on their hands—the blood of citizens of my homeland in Syria, the blood of Lebanese who tried opposing Hezbollah and the blood of Israelis,” she says.

“I see these operations in Lebanon from the beepers injuring Hezbollah activists, then the walkie-talkies and through to making the Hezbollah leadership disappear, all the way up to Nasrallah—as a just war. I’m willing to say out loud to whoever will listen, that they deserved it and that Israeli struck them in a very sophisticated way. I’m glad that you’re setting Lebanon ablaze to get rid of Hezbollah.”

“I want to tell you and all your readers in Israel how wonderful it was and how happy it made me to see a sigh of relief across Arabic social media. Countries in the Arab world haven’t yet plucked up the courage—as they’re subjects of dictatorships—but I’m sure we’ll soon hear cheers of joys for the fate of Hezbollah leaders. We’ll hear them in Syria, Saudi Arabia and mainly in Lebanon.”

“A new process has started here. Mark my words. A new process that needs to be utilized wisely. You need to think together, at the most senior levels, how to redesign the Middle East. There’s much work to be done, and it won’t be easy, but it needs to be done for the people even for the sake of the wavering regimes, and I’m sure you know which regimes I mean.”

Of Yahiya Sinwar’s assassination, she says, “His assassination conveys a message to anyone seeking to disseminate terror: The regime in Tehran is shaking in its boots and any terrorist organization is feeling the pressure right now. Sinwar’s assassination is a victory for justice and brings the world one step closer to a safer and freer world.”

Posted on November 19, 2024

Source: (Excerpt of an article originally published by Ynetnews on November 18, 2024. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

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