A world indifferent, Israelis understand why the Druze in need have to be supported by Israel in deed.
By David E. Kaplan
Last week I received a call in Israel from my cousin in Australia opening with:
“What’s going on; you guys are now invading Syria; attacking Damascus?”
When I started explaining by mentioning Israel coming to the rescue of “the Druze,” I was interrupted by:
“Yes, I heard mention on our news something about the Druze….Who are they? Never heard of them! What religion are they? Where did they suddenly spring from?”
With well over a 1000-year history, they did not exactly ‘suddenly spring’ out of nowhere. They were a proud people with their own unique religion long before there was an England, a France, a Germany or new kid-on-the-block – Australia. A community of 150,000 with elements of all three religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – the Druze in Israel are an enriching and warm people embedded in this ancient land as its timeless rock. Mainly because of its paucity in number and concentrated largely in northern Israel, not too much is known about this special and endearing people.
BONDED IN BLOOD
It was clear from my conversation with my cousin, there was paltry reportage in Australia – as there was across the world – about the existential threat to Syrian Druze following a massacre of its people, their relationship with Israel’s Druze community or who the Druze are.
Israel’s Druze leader Sheikh Muwafaq Tarif was frank to the press:
“… These are beasts… They talked about a ceasefire and then continued the massacre, the cleansing, going from house to house. … They raped a five-year-old girl, they entered a holy place where women were hiding to avoid being harmed, and they burned them alive. They killed, beheaded, it was pure cleansing. This is only because they are Druze…”
Identifying with what the Jews in southern Israel experienced, Tarif continued:
“We’ve seen this movie with Hamas, they are the same people, let’s not get confused. They didn’t let ambulances pass; the bodies were in the streets.”
For Majd Al-Shaer, a 21-year-old Druze man, “This is not a conflict anymore, this is extermination,” he told the Indian news network NDTV. “They are humiliating our elderly, killing our women and children. This is a campaign to wipe us out. An ethnic cleansing campaign is taking place against the Druze.”
However, on the international news networks, the narrative typically conveyed by the panel of ‘usual experts’ was that Israel was using the Druze as a pretext to attack Syria. What’s more, the global media mostly IGNORED that the Druze – both in Israel and Syria – had appealed to Israel to save them from the same fate that Hamas has for Israelis. This appeal was couched “Israel owes the Druze” and it is true – Israel does. It was brought home to me back in 2007 when reporting for The Jerusalem Post (https://www.jpost.com/features/patriot-games), I visited the largest Druze town in Israel, Daliyat el-Carmel perched on top of the Carmel Mountain range to meet and interview a Druze family, including the legendary Kamal Mansour. Mansour, who subsequently passed away 2023, was an Israel Prize recipient who had been appointment by Israel’s third president, Zalman Shazar, as his Adviser on Minority Communities and continued to serve in this position under presidents Ephraim Katzir, Yitzhak Navon, Chaim Herzog, Ezer Weizman, Moshe Katsav and Shimon Peres.
Mansour enlightened me on history that I was not familiar with – important history that illuminates the special relationship between Jews and Druze. While Most Israelis are familiar with the spectacular escape from Atlit in October 1945, when the Palmach (Israel’s pre-state fighting force), under the command of Yitzhak Rabin (who later became Israel’s Prime Minister), broke into the illegal immigrant detention camp at one o’clock in the morning setting free over 200 Jewish prisoners, what followed next, most do not know.
Bedraggled and exhausted, the escapees – mostly holocaust survivors – dodged the British mandate forces as they fled on foot uphill over the Carmel to Kibbutz Yagur on the northern side of the mountain range. The story made international front-page news. What did not make news was that at the top of the mountain range, some of the fleeing Jews briefly connected with a people equally rooted to the land who helped them elude the pursuing British forces – the Druze. Kamal Mansour was a young boy in 1945 living in the then small village of Isfiyah where his father was mayor when some of those exhausted and hungry Jewish escapees crept cautiously into his village. “It was pitch dark, and my parents welcomed them and offered them tea and cake and a place to rest before guiding them on in their escape to freedom. Not only had my family, but other Druze families as well, opened their homes to these frightened new immigrants. Proudly,” Mansour says, “We acknowledged in deed the Jewish State before there was a Jewish State.”
This hardly known episode in modern Jewish history reflects the characteristically low profile of a unique and special people who chipped in from the start to be a part of the modern state of Israel.
“Whatever the temptations in 1948,” continued Mansour, “the Druze community opted against mainstream Arab nationalism and before the draft was introduced, Druze soldiers served as volunteers in the Israeli army.”
During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, many Druze, mainly from the villages of Shfaram, Usfiya and Daliat El-Carmel joined forces with the Jewish Haganah forging a relationship that led during this war to the creation of the Minorities Unit, which recruited Druze volunteers, mainly from these three towns. “This trend continued and an increasing number of Druze,” says Mansour, “voluntarily joined the Minorities Unit of the IDF right up to 1956, when compulsory service was introduced, a decision by the way, that was initiated by the Druze leadership.”
Mansour proudly says:
“Although I was too old when conscription for Druze was introduced, I nevertheless served in the reserves for 26 years and six days.”
Mansour referred me to the Druze poet, historian and diplomat, Reda Mansour, who wrote:
“We are the only non-Jewish minority that is drafted into the military and we have an even higher percentage in the combat units and as officers than the Jewish members themselves. So, we are considered a very nationalistic, patriotic community.”
Kamal Mansour, who was the first Druze to serve on the Board of Directors of Israel Electric Corporation (IEC), the Board of Governors of both Haifa University and Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and to be a member of the plenum of the Israel Broadcasting Authority chuckled as he recalled his service on the Committee to investigate the proposal to introduce TV to Israel. “It is hard today to envisage the debate at that time. Both Golda [Meir] and Ben Gurion were dead against it. Ben Gurion thought people would stay away from work to watch TV.”
However, for Mansour who was presented in 2010 with the Israel Prize in recognition of the enormous service he had rendered to the State of Israel, said “I had no such misgivings.”
And Israel should have no misgivings of supporting the Druze community in Syria. As Catherine Perez-Shakdam writes in The Jerusalem Post (‘The Druze and the great betrayal’ July 21,2025), “It is Israel that stands, quite literally, between the Druze and the abyss.”
How can Israel do otherwise as the world ignores the plight of the Syrian Druze. This writer is left with the words of Kamal Mansour:
“We acknowledged in deed the Jewish State before there was a Jewish State.”
Feature picture: Separation and Solidarity. A community divided, in this pre-war photo, Druze gather to contact their relatives on the Syrian side of the border from the Israeli Golan Heights. (Photo: Amnar Awad/Reuters).
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Yasher koach Dave-excellent,educational on profound Druze role in our history.
A thoroughly moving and passionately written article. An enlightening perspective on the historical and close relationship between Druze and Jews and the strengthening of their eternal alliance with Israel focusing on their inner goodness and highlighting their compassion for their fellow man.