Bucking stereotypes and fighting hatred, a Syrian Jewish ex-refugee lights up Instagram
An immigration lawyer by day, New Yorker Abraham Hamra has gained over 59,000 followers using his fluent Hebrew and Arabic to bridge gaps with adversaries and counter misinformation
Reporter at The Times of Israel
NEW YORK — Looking into the camera in one of his recent Instagram posts, Abraham Hamra says, “Arabs, peace be upon you. Many of you are DMing me through Instagram. If you talk to me calmly, if you want to speak with me like a human being, I am ready and I’ll treat you to a cup of coffee… If you insult me, I’ll insult you. I’m not a polite American Jew.”
The rest of the message, the translation of which is NSFW, is even louder and more outspoken — because, as Hamra describes himself, he’s a “Loud and Outspoken Syrian Jewish ex-Refugee.”
“Syrians are loud people in general. If you come to my family home for Shabbat, you think we’re going to murder each other. Like, straight out, going to kill each other. And it’s in Arabic so it might sound a little scary to people. But this is how we talk,” Hamra told The Times of Israel, sitting in the conference room of his law firm just a block from the New York Stock Exchange.
Hamra, who fled Damascus with his parents and two siblings in 1994, is an attorney and managing partner at Cohen, Tucker & Ades, an immigration law firm on Wall Street. His day job revolves around helping people obtain visas, but with 59,000 followers and counting, he’s also become something of a social media star, working to combat antisemitism and misinformation about the Middle East.
To be sure, countless Jewish advocates have emerged on social media since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror onslaught in southern Israel. Yet Hamra stands out not only for his boldness, but because alongside his English, he speaks fluent Hebrew and Arabic. Although he started posting in 2021 — more on that in a moment — he didn’t post a video in Arabic until after October 7.
“I had pushed to blend in, even among Jews. I didn’t want to be seen as an outsider so I didn’t speak Arabic for a very long time,” he said. “When I posted in Arabic for the first time it surprised a lot of people. My friends called me in shock, saying things like, ‘We always knew you were from Syria, but we didn’t realize you really spoke Arabic.’”
Distant relatives of Hamra’s recently flew to their hometown of Damascus as part of a small delegation seeking to reconnect with their roots following the fall of the Assad regime.
“It was emotional watching them back in the old Jewish quarters,” Hamra said. “I do hope we have real peace one day, to enable us to go back and visit.”
Hamra was 7 when his family left Syria and resettled in Brooklyn. At the time, about 4,500 Jews remained in the country. Hamra has little recollection of the departure itself, save for running up and down the aisles of the airplane eager to reunite with his “cool aunt.”
He does, however, have clear memories of his childhood in Damascus. There was his grandparents’ house in Hashi Basha, Damascus’s Jewish quarter. There was his grandparents’ white refrigerator, the one in which his grandmother stored meat.
“I used to get yelled at a lot about that fridge because I would leave the front door of the house open and stray cats used to come in and try to get at the meat,” he said.
He also has fond memories of Shabbat; of walking to synagogue with his family and going to the mountains for picnics afterwards.
“We sat around, just living, you know,” he said.
He also has his share of not so fond memories, such as not being able to wear his kippa — the traditional Jewish head covering for men — in public because Palestinian neighbors would verbally and physically harass him. That antisemitism, along with systemic persecution by the Assad regime, is largely what drove his family to come to the United States.
Time to take a stand
It was in 2021 while he was walking through Times Square that those memories of persecution resurfaced.
Hamra had just seen a trio of pro-Palestinian men beat up a Jewish man. The man, Joey Borgen, was on his way to a pro-Israel rally while his attackers were on their way to a pro-Palestine demonstration. The three men were later sentenced to prison.
The attack reminded Hamra of a time in Syria when he was around 4 years old and walking with his mother.
“A Palestinian kid picked up a stone and chucked it at my head. My mother ran to the police and told them. They came, they saw me, they saw the terrorist that hit me, and they saw his mother. All they told him was, ‘Hey, don’t do it again. It’s not nice,’” Hamra said.
“And now this same thing was replaying in America — the place where my family allegedly escaped to for a refuge,” he said. “I decided if I didn’t speak out, if I didn’t object, then I’m helping create the same circumstances that led to my displacement. So I decided to post about it.”
Since then, Hamra has made more than 760 posts on everything from antisemitism to confronting anti-Israel and antisemitic campus protests, from recent travels through Israel where he visited the Alawite Muslim village of Ghajar, to his thoughts on a two state-solution — which, for the record, he opposes.
“So you [would] have shared security and shared services, like education,” he said, outlining his vision for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. “It would be decentralized. For example, you break Gaza into different areas, like the Emirates, where each area has its own laws and is semi-autonomous. But it’s one state — Israel.”
He said his opposition to a two-state solution has prompted some people to say he hates Arabs.
“I don’t hate Arabs. First of all, it’s half of my identity. The reason I’m fighting on Instagram, the reason I may sound loud and mean and confrontational is because I give a shit. I care to create the environment in which we can coexist and can live in peace,” Hamra said.
Nevertheless, the fact that he’s “loud and outspoken” has both cost him and rewarded him professionally.
“In November I apologized to my partner after I realized that my talking out sunk our business about 70% in revenue,” Hamra said. “I wanted to see what she wanted to do, and all she said was, ‘Hey, go look at our website.’ She had taken the initiative to put the Israeli flag on the homepage page of our website with the words, ‘We stand with Israel against terrorism.’”
The thing that has surprised him most in his four years on social media is how on occasion some of the most vitriolic exchanges have turned into civil conversations.
“Pro-Palestinians will come at me in my DMs and a lot of them will have all of the worst symbols in their bios, like inverted red triangles. One guy was from Syria and I told him in Arabic, ‘You think you have the grounds to challenge what I say? Look what happened to you in your Syria after you kicked out the Jews.’ I went off,” Hamra said.
“He cursed me, I cursed him. Then we calmed down and we started talking more rationally. I realized I can connect one-on-one with someone, even if he’s cursing me or I’m cursing him, and eventually over time, over laughter, over jokes, maybe we can make peace and live side-by-side,” he said.
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