MIAMI GARDENS, FLA. (WSVN) - Feeling that the horrors in their home country have gone on for far too long, many members of the Syrian community in South Florida praised President Trump, Friday, for his decision to use missile strikes against Syrian air bases.
The U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian air base came in response to the Syrian government’s chemical attack on its own citizens earlier in the week.
Dr. Doured Daghistani, a member of the Syrian American Council, called the president’s decision necessary, given the way the Syrian government has treated its own citizens.
“I’ve been really waiting for this for a long time,” Daghistani said. “I call it the Holocaust of our century.”
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Daghistani said Trump sent a message to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
“He’s telling them, ‘You guys need to behave, and if you don’t I’ll slap you on your finger right now, but I’m ready to cut off your head in the future if I have to,'” Daghistani said.
Images of the horrific chemical attack’s aftermath shook the world.
“I can tell you people give up,” Daghistani added. “I’m talking about the Syrian American community here. After seven years of killing and nothing happening, people just give up.”
Imam Abdul Hamid Samra of the Islamic Center of Greater Miami led Friday’s prayer service at his Miami Gardens mosque, just hours after the U.S. strike in Syria.
“We feel that the good Lord has failed us Syrians,” Hamid Samra said. “And who’s losing? Only the Syrian people, the innocent people.”
“I’m very disturbed, of course,” he added, “but I tell you this is going on for the last six years, over six years. I mean people are killed every day.”
Hamid Samra and many Syrian Americans feel a new sense of hope following the president’s decision.
“We want people to go back, and I hope that there will be some work to end the crisis and let people go back to their home,” Hamid Samra said.
Daghistani said the message from Trump to Assad could change Syria.
“A message of accountability and strength for United States,” he said. “After eight years, people say nothing’s going to happen, and there’s something happening right now.”
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