People Who Don't Like Syria are HATERZ

I LOVE SYRIA! I went for the 1st time about a month and a half ago. It was nothing like I expected and it was everything I expected. Here's some context:

Now, I'm living in Lebanon - it's dirty, gentrified, you have to pay to go to the beach, it's in total chaos, and they treat Palestinians like shit. Some people think they are "Western" and walk around in designer brands from newly gentrified shops and malls speaking French, English, and Arabic all in the same sentence while there are people who can't find jobs or get food on the table. The class divide is insane and the capitalist structure is so apparent - just to summarize. Of course, Lebanon is gorgeous and I appreciate and love it in many ways.

But, I have been waiting sooo long and looking forward to my visit to terrorist hub, Syria! OKAY, so it took me 10 hours waiting on the border to finally make it to Damascus ... the US fucks over Arabs and interrogates them when they arrive in the US, so Syria's gonna do it back to US citizens ... which I'm down with in principle - but that's why they shouldn't have held me so long! hahaha (And, just for the record, they were much nicer to me that the American government would be to them ...)

The plan was to stay in Yarmouk refugee camp where some of my friends live and they set up a vacant apartment for my girls and I in the camp. Yarmouk is in Damascus and it's the nicest and biggest refugee camp I've ever seen! Cars can actually fit through all the roads, the buildings aren't so tall because they can build out wide, and there were shops everywhere! There's even a Hattah (aka kuffiyeh) factory owned by a Palestinian in the camp. You can't even tell it's a camp - buses run through the main road. It feels like a lively little city.

The Old City of Damascus is soooo amazing! You don't see any gentrification in Damascus (except one suburb that is just starting - with all the bougie Western shops for the upper class. but there are very few at this point). It's beautiful, clean, all the signs are in Arabic and there is a much much smaller presence of American/Western products in Damascus. Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola, for example, only arrived a few years ago to Syria. Before that it was Syrian-made everything.

They really take care of their citizens and the Palestinians. They have branches of the government and military specifically for Palestinians. The Old City is super tourist-centered but they make it accessible to the local population by having different pricing for the locals. Students pay a very small fee for studying in universities and the grade school education goes through a very comprehensive history of the Arab World from an anti-colonialist framework ... something most education systems, even within the Arab World, fail to do. The infrastructure is amazing and sustainable. And, I repeat, it is clean! Garbage-free, newly-paved roads. They really have amazing upkeep and a great system.

OK, so all men get drafted into the army and I had a hole in the ground for a toilet, and maybe it's a military dictatorship ... but I saw nothing "terroristic" in nature about Syria except that they really have their shit together and their population seems happy and politically aware, and that in and of itself might be the threat that produces a "fear of terrorism" toward Syria. The fear that there actually might be an alternative form of governance or that the one country that really resisted Western Imperialism, is one of the most, if not THE most, well organized countries in the Heart of the Desert. HATERZZZZZZ

~ DON'T BE A HATER - TAKE ME BACK TO DAMASCUS ~ (w/o the 10 hour wait this time)