Druze-American Hosam Saraya Executed In Syria

More than a thousand Druze, almost all of them civilians, were killed in Sweida, the Druze heartland, in mid-July. Their killers were both Bedouin tribesmen, and government troops who had been moved into the area, supposedly to stop the fighting, but many of them chose to attack the Druze, whom they correctly regard as non-Muslims and hence, in the Muslim view, are “the most vile of created beings.” A video has appeared, apparently taken by the killers themselves, showing the execution of Syrian-American Hosam Saraya, murdered along with a half-dozen others for the crime of being a Druze. More on his execution, and the silence of the American media about the killing of an American citizen, can be found here: “A Syrian American returned to Syria to aid his ailing father. He was executed in sectarian violence,” by Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, July 26, 2025:

The first video opens with Hosam Saraya, a 35-year-old Syrian American and seven other members of his family, walking in a procession down a street, their hands placed on the shoulders of the person in front of them, escorted by gunmen wearing fatigues and waving assault rifles.

One of the gunmen says, “We gave you safe passage,” while others shout religious slogans.

This sounds more like Syrian government forces — fanatical Muslims — than the Bedouin.

Another video shot on July 16 cuts to Saraya and his relatives kneeling in the middle of a roundabout. One of the gunmen speaks to a family member, his voice becoming more menacing as his anger mounts. Then the shooting starts, and Saraya and the others collapse to the ground.

Saraya, a member of the Druze religious minority, was living in Oklahoma but had returned to the family home in the Druze-majority city of Sweida to take care of his ill father, relatives said.

“His father improved, and Hosam was supposed to come back to Oklahoma in a month. We’re in complete disbelief and shock,” said one U.S.-based relative who refused to be identified, fearing reprisals against her family in Syria. “We just never thought something like this could happen to us.”

Saraya studied finance and accounting at Damascus University before moving to the U.S. in 2014, where he earned an MBA at Oklahoma Christian University. Afterward, he worked as an operations manager at a senior home care company and became a U.S. citizen. He was unmarried.

Saraya was among an estimated 1,380 people killed in a spasm of sectarian violence that swept through Sweida this month, when fighting between Bedouin clansmen and Druze militiamen escalated into armed clashes that drew in Syria’s fledgling government and Israel, which said it intervened to protect the Druze community.

Government forces were supposed to quash any fighting between Bedouins and Druze, residents and Saraya’s neighbors say. Instead they left behind a trail of looting, burning homes and the execution of more than 230 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor.

This week, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said he was “heartbroken” by the death of Saraya, who he said “was an Oklahoman … tragically executed alongside other members of his family in Syria.”

Relatives in the U.S. said they had been interviewed by the FBI. The Syrian government has yet to reach out to the family here, but said it would hold all government forces accountable for violations….

None of that, of course, will help the Druze-American Hosam Soraya, executed in cold blood by soldiers in the army of that “moderate” Ahmad al-Sharaa. But the 750,000 Druze in Syria know that should the Syrian government renege on its promises and again attack them in Sweida, or elsewhere in Syria,  the IDF will come roaring back, in the air and on land, to defend them, because the Israelis know that “the brothers of our brothers are our brothers.”