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A Jewish expert on monuments on what Philly’s famous Rocky Balboa statue can teach us about memory
(JTA) — Paul Farber was shocked when he first watched “Rocky” and saw a Star of David on the grave of Rocky Balboa’s coach, Mickey Goldmill.
As a Jew and as the founder of the Philadelphia-based Monument Lab, which has explored collective memory through art installations across the country for over a decade, Farber was well positioned to think about the deeper meaning of that brief shot.
“Anytime I see a Jewish funeral in a film, there’s some kind of call to attention. And I always want to know what that means, especially for a Hollywood production, especially when it may not be branded as a Jewish story,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“We’re not there in a prolonged series of mourning, but in a split second, seeing a Jewish site of a memory is really fascinating,” he added.
That outlook lies behind Farber’s work as the host of the new NPR podcast “The Statue,” a deep dive into Philadelphia’s famed statue of Rocky Balboa, the fictional prizefighter at the center of “Rocky.” The series delves into what sports and society can convey about memory, and in his research, Farber discovered a few Jewish nuggets found in the film series — including the fact that Rocky’s love interest was originally supposed to be Jewish.
“They made an actual gravestone [for her character] and it’s in Philadelphia’s most famous cemetery, Laurel Hill. And you can go there and see this gravestone where a movie character is ‘buried,’” he said. “People leave offerings on the gravestone, including small pebbles as if it’s a Jewish site of memory.”
In an interview with JTA, Farber shared his inspiration for the series, how his Jewish upbringing informed his life’s work and the role statues — such as that of Jewish baseball legend Sandy Koufax — do, and should, play.
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: To start off, I’d love to hear about how you first got interested in studying monuments.
Paul Farber: I’m really interested in the ways that, in cities, we innovate toward the future, and also come to terms with our past, and it happens often in the same exact places. That could be a statue, a street, a corner store. And so that’s a big part for me.
What really inspired this project is a conversation I had with my mother, quite a few years ago. My mother is a lifelong Philadelphian. Her parents were Jewish immigrants in South Philadelphia. And when I told her I was teaching a class at the University of Pennsylvania about Philly neighborhoods, she asked me if I was covering Rocky. When I said, “Oh, it’s not on the syllabus” — and I may have said it in a way that felt dismissive — she gave me this look that I think a lot of us know: “How could you.” So for her birthday, we watched “Rocky” and we went to see “Creed.” My grandfather went to South Philly High and was in the boxing club. He shared stories in our family about what it meant to have sport and culture and belonging go together in South Philly. I started to see that across generations, from long before “Rocky” to this moment now, almost 50 years after the release of the film, many people’s family stories could be channeled through this statue, including my own, and that was enough of a prompt to go dive in.
“Rocky” is obviously not a Jewish story, but there are some nuggets. There’s the funeral scene, and you mentioned something about Adrian almost being Jewish. I’m curious what you think about the little Jewish pieces you can pull out of this famous story, and what those mean to you as a Philly sports fan.
It blew me away that Rocky’s coach, Mick, passes away and the character Rocky goes to his funeral, and you see a Star of David. Anytime I see a Jewish funeral in a film, there’s some kind of call to attention. And I always want to know what that means, especially for a Hollywood production, especially when it may not be branded as a Jewish story. And it just opened up a whole set of questions for me that blurred between art and life, between the film series and the city of Philadelphia.
In episode two, we showcase this monumental art book that Sylvester Stallone [who played Rocky] created. There was this passage in it that just blew me away, about the first draft of “Rocky,” where he says, “As for Adrian, she was Jewish in the first draft.” And he got feedback and cut that character. We never hear about Mickey’s Judaism. We never hear about Rocky’s bond across culture. But the fact that the first scene in the “Rocky” series is in a place called Resurrection Gym — that is obvious Christian iconography — and to put Jewish characters in is really fascinating to me.
There is another famous grave that is involved in the series. The character Adrian eventually passes away, and like the statue, which was made as a bronze sculpture, for the “Rocky” film series they made an actual gravestone and it’s in Philadelphia’s most famous cemetery, Laurel Hill. And you can go there and see this gravestone where a movie character is “buried.” People leave offerings on the gravestone, including small pebbles as if it’s a Jewish site of memory.
People talk about representation on screen, and I’m not sure a Jewish funeral necessarily does that, but I would imagine for some people, seeing Rocky Balboa say the “Mourner’s Kaddish“ was maybe their first interaction with Judaism in some way. What do you make of that?
Every shot is deliberate. And it’s actually that kind of attitude and outlook that created the Rocky statue, because Sylvester Stallone was the director of that film, and they could have made a styrofoam version or a temporary one, but they spent over a year making a bronze version so that when the camera faced it, it would make contact. I think very similarly, this is part of the artistry of Stallone that plays out in our podcast series. We’re not with him when he sits shiva. We’re not there in a prolonged series of mourning, but in a split second, seeing a Jewish site of a memory is really fascinating. And to see the coach Mickey, to have his Wikipedia page say he’s Jewish, all that we have is mourning.
I think about how for immigrant Jewish communities, there are gaps in our narratives. Throughout the series, and one of the reasons I wanted to share my perspective as a queer Jewish person who grew up loving sports in Philly, I’ve been informed by my own family’s history, and what we’re able to recall and what gaps there are. And I see that being echoed for so many people in the Rocky story.
It’s clearly a very personal story for you. Why did you think it was important to start the podcast with your own identity, and to include your Jewish mother?
I think it’s important that when we talk about sites of memory, we understand that there are shared and collective ways that we bring the past forward, and there are others that are incredibly personal. My hope was to find, in this case, to spotlight, a significant site of memory in the city, but ask questions about it. And I think it was important to note what position I would take, because I don’t believe there’s one story to the Rocky statue. To tell a biography of a statue, you actually have to tell it of the people who make meaning from it. So in the series, we do a lot of work where we want to know other people’s stories and backgrounds, whether they are refugees from Afghanistan, or community organizers in Kensington [a neighborhood of Philadelphia]. My hope was by positioning this from my perspective, almost as a memoir in a way, that it opened up space for others to have their experiences be valued and made meaning of.
The official artwork for Farber’s podcast. (Courtesy)
Both with the podcast and in your work with the Monument Lab, how do you feel that your Jewish identity informs what you do? Do you see overlap between your Jewish values and the values you work on in your organization?
I absolutely think so. I grew up in a Jewish community in Philadelphia, and tikkun olam was a constant refrain. The work of tikkun olam meant a worldview that necessitated building coalitions and understanding across divides, to not diminish or under-emphasize them, but to appreciate how we work in solidarity, whether that’s around racial justice, gender justice, in various struggles. I am a co-founder and director of an organization that focuses on memory, and that I really get from the stories of growing up in a Jewish household, in a Jewish community, where memory lived in different ways. We were always aware of the stories of trauma and loss, as well as reconciliation and transformation, and how you work with the gaps that you have, and you listen, and you learn and you carry the story with you. Because that is the way to bond generations. Jewish memory really grounds what I do, and I seek to use it as a tool to learn more and to feed connection across divides.
Rocky takes on this almost mythical, godlike status, and his statue in Philadelphia is a bit of a pilgrimage site. Do you see any tension there as a Jew, given the prohibition against idol worship?
I think about the importance of memory, against forces of violence and erasure. I also understand that, in a world that is full of pain and difficulty and loss, we seek places to release that. And so I understand the pull to monuments. What I would like to see, and what we try to do through this series, “The Statue,” and also with the work of Monument Lab, is to look on and off the pedestal, and really think about how history lives with us. As we say in the series and other places, history doesn’t live inside of statues, it lives with people who steward them, who create other kinds of sites of memory, who are vigilant in their modes of commemoration. What I try to do in this work is understand the ambivalence around monuments, the pull to try to remember and be enduring through time, and just that constant reminder that whenever you try to freeze the past, or freeze an image of power, you cut out the potential to find connection and empowerment, and thus forms of survival.
In sports, there are so many ways to honor people, especially different ways that, like a statue, take on the idea of permanence. When Bill Russell died, the NBA retired his number 6 across the league. On Jackie Robinson Day, every April 15, the whole MLB honors Jackie Robinson by wearing his uniform number. But statues just have a different level of oomph. Sandy Koufax has a new statue in Los Angeles that was unveiled last year; Hank Greenberg has one. What do you think it should take for an athlete to reach that status?
The pinnacle in sports is to have a statue dedicated to you outside of the stadium. And I do believe the cultures of social media have amplified that, because we grew up with the story of Sandy Koufax not pitching in the World Series during the High Holy Days, and that wasn’t because we learned it from a statue or a plaque. We learned it because it was carried forward and put into different forms of remembering and recalling its importance. I went to several Maccabi Games in the U.S. — I used to be a sprinter. And the culture of memory and sport, they were one in the same.
In professional sports, the pinnacle is the statue, but I think you brought up other really important ways of remembering that operate in non-statue forms that feel like they are living memorials. The idea of retiring someone’s number, and keeping their number up, is a way to acknowledge, in this really public of all public spaces, an intimacy and a care, and especially when an athlete passes away, how that transcends the lines of city geography. Jackie Robinson Day is something that did not occur immediately after Jackie Robinson was the first Black player to play in the major leagues, but was a product of a later moment when people around Major League Baseball sought to activate his memory. So yes, a statue outside of a stadium is like a particular kind of professional accolade. But the other forms are really meaningful.
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Iran Expands Child Soldier Recruitment, Cracks Down on Dissent Amid Escalating US-Israeli Strikes
A blaze after Israel’s Fire and Rescue Service said that an industrial building and a fuel tanker at Israel’s Oil Refineries were hit by debris from an intercepted Iranian missile, amid the US-Israel conflict with Iran, in Haifa, Israel, March 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Shlush
As US and Israeli strikes pound Iranian military sites, Iran is lowering the enlistment age for security roles to 12 and threating civilians with death for photographing war damage, fueling international outrage.
Last week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced a campaign recruiting children as young as 12 to serve as “Homeland Defending Combatants for Iran,” assisting with patrols, checkpoints, and logistics.
With the minimum age for war roles officially lowered to 12, human rights groups are now condemning the move, demanding that Iranian authorities immediately halt the campaign while imposing a complete ban on enlisting children under 18 in all military and paramilitary forces.
“There is no excuse for a military recruitment drive that targets children to sign up, much less 12-year-olds,” Bill Van Esveld, associate director for children’s rights at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “What this boils down to is that Iranian authorities are apparently willing to risk children’s lives for some extra manpower.”
“The officials involved in this reprehensible policy are putting children at risk of serious and irreversible harm and themselves at risk of criminal liability,” Van Esveld continued. “Senior leaders who fail to put a stop to this can make no claim to care for Iran’s children.”
For years, Iran has drafted children under 18 into the Basij militia, with Human Rights Watch documenting boys as young as 14 years old killed in combat, revealing a brutal pattern of exploiting children on the battlefield.
In the past, widely circulated social media images and videos have repeatedly shown children and teenagers in military-style uniforms cracking down on protests, including during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, which erupted nationwide after Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in a Tehran police station following her arrest for allegedly violating hijab rules.
Under international law, Iran’s latest initiative flagrantly violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which explicitly prohibits the use of children in military activities, marking a dramatic breach of its global obligations.
Human Rights Watch also uncovered multiple other war crimes, including the Iranian government’s relentless use of cluster munitions delivered by ballistic missiles at Israel since the conflict erupted last month. At least four civilians have been killed in these strikes, which constitute clear violations of international humanitarian law.
“Iran’s use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Israel pose a foreseeable and long-lasting danger to civilians,” Patrick Thompson, a researcher in HRW’s Crisis, Conflict, and Arms Division, said in a statement. “Cluster munition bomblets are dispersed over a wide area, making them unlawfully indiscriminate in violation of the laws of war.”
Fired from rockets, missiles, or aircraft, cluster munitions spread dozens of explosive bomblets across large areas, leaving many unexploded and posing a long-term, landmine-like danger to civilians for years or even decades.
Amid relentless US and Israeli attacks and mounting international pressure, the regime is also intensifying its domestic crackdown, now warning that photographing war-damaged areas could carry the death penalty.
Under this newly enacted policy, people accused of spying or cooperating with “hostile states” could face the death penalty and have all their assets confiscated.
Anyone caught photographing damaged sites could be accused of espionage, potentially providing intelligence to coalition forces, and face execution.
“People who take photos or videos of damaged sites and share them are effectively confirming whether strikes hit their targets,” Iran’s judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said on Tuesday, describing the action as the equivalent of cooperating with and providing intelligence to the enemy.
According to Iranian media and watchdog groups, more than 1,000 people have been arrested this month for filming sensitive locations, sharing anti-government content online, or allegedly “cooperating with the enemy.”
Against the backdrop of large-scale US and Israeli strikes pounding key regime strongholds in Shiraz and Isfahan — where critical military infrastructure has been repeatedly hit — tensions have surged to a boiling point as the pressure campaign intensifies
On Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force launched another sustained wave of precision airstrikes against Iranian weapons production and research facilities around Tehran, seeking to disrupt and dismantle the missile supply and manufacturing networks that support Tehran’s military arsenal.
Meanwhile, the IRGC this week threatened 18 American multinational technology and industrial companies, accusing them of involvement in “terrorist operations” and labeling them as “legitimate targets.”
“We advise the employees of these institutions to immediately distance themselves from their workplaces to preserve their lives,” the statement published on Tuesday said. “These companies should expect the destruction of their respective units in exchange for each terror act in Iran, starting from 8 PM Tehran time on Wednesday, April 1st.”
Among the companies mentioned were major corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Tesla, and Boeing.
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Jews paused Indiana’s abortion ban — by turning a religious freedom law against the evangelical right
When Elly Cohen chose to terminate her pregnancy in 2022, it aligned with her understanding of Jewish law that life begins at birth, not conception.
Cohen and her husband were eager to give their then 4-year-old daughter a sibling. But her fetus had been diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a severe chromosomal disorder that, in most cases, leads to death before birth or within the first year of life. She decided to end the pregnancy.
Had she gotten pregnant just a few months later, she might not have had that choice. She lives in Indiana, one of 13 states that enacted near-total bans on abortion following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
Indiana’s law does allow abortion for for lethal fetal anomalies up to 22 weeks, but doctors bear legal risk in determining whether a particular diagnosis meets the statute’s definition — a gray area that can lead to delays or reluctance to provide care.
That reality stirred Cohen into action. She co-founded Hoosier Jews for Choice, a Jewish group that advocates for abortion access, which joined five anonymous women of multiple faiths in a lawsuit backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Their argument relied on a religious freedom law — the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA — signed by former Indiana governor Mike Pence in 2015. It was one of many such state laws passed amid calls from some evangelical Christians to establish their right not to do business that violated their beliefs, such as baking a wedding cake for a gay wedding.
Hoosier Jews for Choice saw an opening for Jews to exercise their religious freedom under the same law, but for a purpose at odds with evangelical Christianity: to gain access to abortion. Earlier this month, Judge Christina Klineman of Marion County Superior Court agreed, permanently blocking enforcement of the state’s abortion ban for plaintiffs with sincere religious objections.
Hoosier Jews for Choice is celebrating the ruling as the biggest legal win to date in support of the argument that abortion bans violate Jews’ religious freedom. The group is hopeful that similar cases can build on the Indiana case’s success nationwide.
The ruling could still be reversed: Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has appealed the decision, and the case is headed to the Indiana Supreme Court, where all five justices are Republican appointees. Meanwhile, Klineman, elected to the bench in 2014 after winning a Democratic primary, has faced calls for her impeachment over her decision, in what U.S. Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) called “one of the most ridiculous rulings I’ve seen in a long time.”
But for Amalia Shifriss, who testified on behalf of Hoosier Jews for Choice in the lawsuit, the latest ruling is a positive sign that the law will be applied consistently. If religious freedom applies to Christians objecting to baking a same-sex wedding cake, she said, then it must apply to liberal Jews, too.
“RFRA should not just be for what some lawmakers see as the religious right,” Shifriss told the Forward. “It should be for all religions.”
‘Perversion of the law’s intent’
In winning the right to an abortion, Hoosier Jews for Choice relied on a law passed by Pence, who would become Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate on the strength of his reputation as a stalwart advocate for evangelical Christians. Pence rose to national prominence based on his unwavering opposition to abortion — and his conservative leadership as Indiana governor.
Anti-abortion advocacy organizations — including Indiana Right to Life and SBA Pro-Life America — supported the law.
Back in 2015, the debate over RFRA centered on small-business owners that sought to refuse service to LGBTQ+ people. Eric Miller, a conservative activist who was in the room when Pence signed the law, wrote then that “Christian bakers, florists and photographers should not be punished for refusing to participate in a homosexual marriage!”
Massive backlash against the law — notably by the NCAA the weekend before the Final Four basketball game was slated to occur in Indianapolis — led Pence to sign into law a clarification that businesses could not use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to deny services to people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
But the law itself remained on the books — ripe for abortion-rights groups to wield a decade later.
Now, a little over a decade after Indiana first passed RFRA, organizations that once supported the law’s broad application have changed their tune.
“For the court to rule that taking the life of an unborn child is an exercise of religious freedom is deeply distressing — and a perversion of the law’s intent,” Indiana Right to Life president Mike Fichter said in an online statement following Klineman’s March 5 ruling. Indiana Right to Life did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.
That shift has been part of a larger legal trend: Conservative Christian groups like Alliance Defending Freedom have long argued that the government must have a compelling reason to force someone to act against their religious beliefs — whether mandating vaccines, serving LGBTQ clients, or covering contraception in employee health care plans.
But when it came to religious plaintiffs who support abortion access, some on the Christian right didn’t think the same expansive view of religious freedom applied.
“Indiana’s religious freedom laws were passed for the purpose of protecting religious practice, not to protect the ending of a human life,”Indiana’s religious freedom laws were passed for the purpose of protecting religious practice, not to protect the ending of a human life,” Alexander Mingus, executive director of the Indiana Catholic Conference, said in an online statement after Klineman’s ruling. “Religions that preach violence are not protected by religious freedom claims.”
Mingus did not respond to the Forward’s request for an interview.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit that has made its name arguing religious freedom cases in front of the Supreme Court, also objected to the Jewish plaintiffs’ interpretation of RFRA. In 2014, Becket successfully argued in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. that employers could refuse to cover contraception on religious grounds. Meanwhile, in the Indiana case, Becket filed a brief questioning the sincerity of the Jewish plaintiffs’ religious beliefs.
“The case fails RFRA’s test for multiple reasons, including allowing people to join Hoosier Jews for Choice by filling out an anonymous Google form with zero requirement to actually agree with Jewish religious teachings,” Lori Windham, senior counsel for Becket, said in a statement to the Forward.
Cohen disputed that characterization. She said that all members of Hoosier Jews for Choice were required to share their name and contact information, which it did not make public in order to protect members’ confidentiality. She added that group members who joined the lawsuit were asked to indicate whether they could connect their view on the abortion ban to their Jewish values and beliefs, and the vast majority of members did.
David Schraub, an assistant professor at Lewis & Clark Law School who has written about the Indiana case, said that courts do assess whether a religious belief seems genuine. But according to Schraub, the bar for establishing sincerity is low — typically an issue only in cases clearly brought in bad faith. For instance, Schraub recalled a case in which a defendant, trying to avoid paying taxes, cycled through various legal arguments before ultimately inventing “the Church of Ayn Rand.”
The Indiana case is fundamentally different, Schraub said, given the long-standing religious grounding for more permissive Jewish views on abortion.
“They tried to argue that this was not a sincerely held religious belief, which I think was really quite disrespectful, because it flies in the face of a lot of evidence about what we know about how Jews conceptualize the relationship to reproductive freedom,” Schraub said. “They’re just not willing to accept that there is such a thing as a sincere and genuine liberal religious tradition.”
Jewish beliefs, Jewish practices
A 2014 Pew Research poll found an estimated 83% of American Jews believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That’s likely because Jews across denominations largely agree that life begins at birth, not conception. Sources in the Talmud say that in the first 40 days of pregnancy, the fetus is considered “mere water.” Jews value the fetus as “potential life,” gaining the legal status of nefesh, or personhood, at birth.
Still, Jews do not have monolithic views on abortion. Orthodox groups are divided, though couples generally consult rabbis on the matter and believe the choice to get an abortion should be governed by Jewish law, not personal choice.
The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly supports the right to choose abortion in cases where “continuation of a pregnancy might cause severe physical or psychological harm, or where the fetus is judged by competent medical opinion as severely defective.”
Reform Judaism emphasizes bodily autonomy, with the view that “the decision to terminate a pregnancy is one that, in all circumstances, should ultimately be made by the individual within whose body the fetus is growing.”
Rabbi Sandy Sasso — one of three rabbis the ACLU asked to give expert testimony in the Indiana case, and the first woman ordained a rabbi in Reconstructionist Judaism — told the Forward that the diversity of opinion within Judaism underscores the argument for challenging abortion bans.
“That actually is just the point — there are different religious views,” Sasso said. “The Constitution does not allow you, since there is separation of church and state, to enshrine one religious view over the other.”
Can religion and abortion coexist?
Shira Zemel, abortion access campaign director at the National Council of Jewish Women, is helping lead a national push to reframe “reproductive freedom as religious freedom.”
Each year since 2021, the Council has organized “Repro Shabbat,” which aligns with the Torah portion from Exodus Parashat Misphatim. The portion says that if a man pushes a pregnant woman, causing her to miscarry, he should pay a fine. But if any other damage results, the punishment should be according to the principle of “eye for an eye.” The portion is often interpreted as evidence that Judaism does not view a fetus as having the same legal status as a person.
The group has also backed that argument in court, filing a brief with 21 other organizations of faith in support of the plaintiffs challenging Indiana’s abortion ban — and hoping similar lawsuits will build on that case’s success nationwide.
The legal pathway exists in many places: 29 states have their own versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, including at least 11 that severely restricted abortion after the Dobbs decision. According to Ken Falk, legal director of the ACLU of Indiana, the same legal reasoning used in Indiana could feasibly be applied in any of those states.
Some legal challenges are already underway, including in Kentucky and South Carolina, where litigation is ongoing. Others have faltered: In Missouri, a judge upheld the state’s abortion ban after a group of interfaith clergy sued on religious grounds. In Florida, a Jewish-led challenge to a ban after six weeks of pregnancy fizzled out after Rabbi Barry Silver, who brought the case on behalf of his synagogue, died of colon cancer in 2024.
Zemel said she hopes the Indiana case can serve as not only a legal blueprint, but also as a sign of a broader cultural shift in how religion is understood in the abortion debate.
“It’s incredible to me to see how this legal argument is bolstering what I like to think is a huge narrative shift,” Zemel said. “For far too long, it’s been weaponized that religion and abortion can’t coexist, but we know that that’s not the case.”
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Syria Will Stay Out of Iran conflict Unless It Faces Aggression, President Says
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa attends the Ministry of Awqaf conference titled “Unity of Islamic Discourse” at the Conference Palace in Damascus, Syria, Feb. 16, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Tuesday that his country will stay out of the US-Israeli war against Iran unless Syria is subject to aggression and has no diplomatic solutions.
“Unless Syria is targeted by any party, Syria will remain outside any conflict,” the Syrian president said at an event hosted by think tank Chatham House in London.
“We do not want Syria to be an arena of war. But unfortunately, today, things are not governed by wise minds. The situation is volatile and random,” the president said.
The month-long conflict has spread across the region, killing thousands, disrupting energy supplies, and threatening to send the global economy into a tailspin.
“We want Syria to have ideal relationships with the entire region, with Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and world powers like the UK, France, Germany, and the US. I think that Syria is qualified to start a strategic relationship network,” he said, responding to a question on whether Syria would stay neutral while the conflict goes on.
Syria has been keen to stay on the sidelines of the regional conflict that has pulled in neighboring countries, including Lebanon, where armed group Hezbollah is locked in fighting with Israeli ground troops, and Iraq, where Iran-aligned factions have launched drone and rocket attacks.
Syria sent thousands of troops to its western border with Lebanon and its eastern border with Iraq earlier this month. Syria‘s defense ministry said the deployment was part of efforts to “protect and control the borders amid the escalating regional conflict.”
“We had enough war. We paid a large bill. We are not ready for another war experience,” Syria‘s president said.