Kurdish human rights activist meets Israeli officials to request support for Syria’s minorities

Kamal Sido, in his capacity as a consultant with the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), visited Israel to meet with representatives from the Israeli Foreign Ministry to advocate on behalf of all the minorities who are now very much in danger under Syria’s new regime. After giving a lecture on the subject in Jerusalem, Sido sat down with ALL ISRAEL NEWS to share more about his visit and his motivations. 

Sido is a Kurdish Muslim, born in northern Syria but now living in Germany. He came to Israel following a trip back to his homeland to assess the situation. 

Speaking about the new government under Ahmed al-Sharaa, he said they were planning to "Islamicize" the whole country, threatening minority groups like the Druze, Alawites, Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, Christians, Yazidis and women.

“Step by step, they have support and they are very driven, they want to make Syria an Islamic state, but maybe in 10 to 20 years,” Sido warned.

When he arrived at the border of Syria from Jordan a couple of weeks ago, Sido gave the officials his message about the importance of freedom, telling them what he was planning to do, and insisting on the right to do it. “I am a German citizen. I have the right to travel. Let me in!” he said.

Sido documented his trip and relayed what was happening on the ground under the new government, made up of radical Sunni groups. 

“I was in the foreign ministry in Jerusalem. I informed them about my trip to Syria, visiting the Druze in the southern area, Damascus, Alawites in the West, Aleppo, Kurdish groups in the north, in Afrin,” he said.

He showed pictures of meetings with community leaders and of graves that were broken and desecrated, just because they bore inscriptions in Kurdish rather than Arabic. Serious atrocities have been carried out against Druze, Alawite, and Christian communities already, and Sido reported what he had seen and heard, urging Israel to intervene.

“The Druze and the Kurds can resist by themselves,” he said, referring to Turkey, Qatar, Malaysia and the Balkans. Sido encouraged Israel to act in its own interests to secure a more stable and safe Syria just across the border.

Sido explained how he began working with STP and what led him to become an activist. 

“I arrived in Germany in 1990, and since this time I have been fighting for this cause,” he said. “I became a human rights activist because I believe in the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to change religion. It’s normal. Everyone can’t be Muslim."

“If I cannot change my religion, I’m not free. Freedom of religion means the right to change religion, but a lot of people don’t think so,” he added. “It’s an important part of freedom. Normality is to have the right to change religion, we have to fight for this issue now because freedom of religion means the right to change it.”

When asked how long he had held these views and what had influenced his thinking, Sido reflected on the formative role of his early reading.

"As a young man, when I started to believe this, I read a lot about human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and about the history of Islam, and came to this opinion,” he said, adding that the Declaration of Human Rights had been a particular influence. “It’s an important document."

During a previous visit to Qamishli, near the northeastern tip of Syria, Sido’s passion for supporting minorities was revealed in a surprising act late on a Friday afternoon.

“I symbolically carried the Torah scroll in Qamishli, Kurdish region of Syria, and announced the start of Shabbat in the empty synagogue. I did this to commemorate Jewish life in Qamishli. The last Jew left Qamishli in 2011. After the symbolic ceremony, I called the last Jew from Qamishli, who now lives in Israel, north of Tel Aviv, and told him about the state of the synagogue,” he said.

This captures the essence of Sido and his life’s work. His 35 years of dedication to minority groups – advocating for their freedom and safety – shone through in the impassioned lecture he recently gave at Christ Church in Jerusalem.

When asked what he would say to U.S. President Donald Trump if given two minutes, he said, “Mr. President, you are saying about conservative values. You want freedom. You cannot support radical Muslims in Syria and Turkey. You cannot. Because radical Muslims – and I am a Muslim – but radical Muslims are hating everything Jewish, Christian, they hate freedom. You cannot support radical Muslims. Please don't support them. Please help freedom – peace in Syria, with all peoples. People in Syria want to live in peace and freedom with each other.”