Relieving suffering among Syrian refugees, and one-by-one nurturing peace - some ask is this type of practice activity a worthwhile enterprise? Here is an article in a larger series that asks the question, is this sort of serving activity "Like Advil For Cancer ... Does it matter?" Or more specifically, "is (it), at the end of the day, adding to the hideous total of suffering in Syria: Western governments are providing political and diplomatic cover to the Syrian regime and its allies, while at the same time they piously offer aspirin and tents to the refugees fleeing the carnage that they are sponsoring?"

A report from the front lines of the Syrian refugees and others in southern Europe:

"...The patient sat on a gray plastic chair and tried to warm himself by placing a heating bag on his stomach. He said he is 66 years old and that he comes from a ruined neighborhood of Damascus, the capital of Syria. His street was leveled by the Air Force of his own country. The bombs that fell on people’s houses, he said, were paid for with their tax money. “All these years we gave them our money, and we complained that no one knows what the government was doing with it. Now we finally found out,” he said with a wide grin. Hearing it the way he told it, I had no choice but to laugh.

The conversation took place at a small clinic—basically, a caravan 16 square meters large—in a transit camp for Syrian refugees escaping to Europe. The camp is located on the border between Serbia and Macedonia and is one of many stops on the refugees’ long journey to Western Europe. Two weeks ago, I published here at Tablet an article based on conversations with dozens of Syrian refugees I met at this camp, who described the horrors currently taking place in Syria. But the refugees weren’t the only people I met during my five-day visit to the place. I also got to spend time with the people who I’ve come to call “the painkillers”—doctors, nurses, social workers, aid workers, and others who come to places like this transit camp in order to offer help to those who’ve been betrayed by the entire world.

What they can offer doesn’t seem like much. As one aid worker told me, “What we’re doing is like giving Advil to a person with cancer.” In fact, some of the “painkillers” I met have come to the sad conclusion that what they’re doing is, at the end of the day, adding to the hideous total of suffering in Syria: Western governments are providing political and diplomatic cover to the Syrian regime and its allies, while at the same time they piously offer aspirin and tents to the refugees fleeing the carnage that they are sponsoring. It’s a cruel business, but when a nurse in the transit camp is standing in front of a mother who is asking for help because her baby is sick, the debate over “what are we really doing here?” seems secondary.

The man with the dark sense of humor, who laughed about his taxes, came to the clinic complaining about strong headaches, a bad cough, and outbursts of dizziness. The doctor who examined him said he had a fever and that the best thing for him would be to lie down for two days and get some rest. The transit camp includes a number of large, heated tents where refugees can stay for a night or two, but very few of them choose to do so: They want to keep going, toward Germany, always afraid that the borders will shut down because of political pressures. This is also what this man’s family wanted to do. The doctor, realizing there was no way to change his mind, said he would give him some pills for pain relief, and something for his cough.

While waiting for his medicine, the 66-year-old patient talked with a social worker present at the clinic. The conversation was in Arabic. They discussed his plans for a new life in Germany and how his grandchildren were coping with the difficult journey. At some point, he asked the social worker, a green-eyed woman in her early 30s, where she’s from. “You have a Jordanian accent,” he noted.

“I’m Arab ’48,” she replied, using a popular term in the Arab world for describing the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel—those who were left within the Hebrew state’s territory after the war of 1948. There was a moment of quiet, during which the old Syrian man realized the meaning of what he just heard: not only that the social worker, to whom he had opened his heart, was a citizen of an enemy country, but also that the doctor who treated him was an Israeli Jew. (“I suddenly understood what language the social worker and the doctor were speaking between themselves,” he later told me. “It sounded a bit like Arabic, but also very different.”) Then he told a story, which caught the social worker, as well as me, by complete surprise.

“My family is originally from Tuba,” he said, referring to a small Bedouin village in northern Israel, near the Sea of Galilee. “I was born in Syria, but as a child, I grew up hearing stories about our village, and the lands around it.” During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, the population of Tuba was split into two “camps”: Most of the residents decided to fight alongside the newborn state of Israel against its Arab enemies; but this man’s family, along with many others in the village, refused to do so and instead left to neighboring Syria. Now, 67 years later, he was here, at the clinic in a small town in southern Serbia, receiving treatment from Israelis.

“For many years, I thought that those who left the village did the right thing,” the man said. “The Arabs did suffer very badly in Israel. But today I think it was a mistake. After what has happened to us in Syria, I have no doubt. Those who stayed in Tuba made a smart decision.”

Here is the links to this article and the previous article in this series:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/198073/like-advil-for-cancer

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/197637/mass-extermination-in-syria