Israel’s Debt to the Druze

About 150,000 Druze live in Israel, 700,000 in Syria, and 250,000 in Lebanon, and there are large communities as well in the United States, Venezuela, and Colombia. They are not Muslims, which means they are constantly under threat from Muslims who regard them, as they do all Infidels, as “the most vile of created beings.” When the Bedouin in Sweida fought the Druze last week, and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa began to move his Sunni troops into Sweida, where many of his soldiers, instead of being peacekeepers, joined the Bedouin in attacking Druze, the IDF went into action. It bombed 160 sites inside Sweida, where those who threatened the Druze, that is, both Syrian soldiers and Bedouin tribesmen, were located. In addition, the IDF bombed Syrian army headquarters in Damascus, and as a further warning to al-Sharaa that he must withdraw his troops from Sweida, Israeli fighter jets also hit near the presidential palace just outside the capital. He did so, but now his army is back in Sweida, this time with Israel’s permission, to oversee the withdrawal of Bedouin from the Druze city.

More on Israel’s decision to protect the Druze of Syria can be found here: “Israel’s message in defending the Druze goes beyond borders, wanting to correct history – analysis,” by Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, July 20, 2025:

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria over the past decade, so this week’s attacks on Syrian tanks en route to Sweida and on the country’s military headquarters in Damascus should not have come as a surprise.

Yet they did, because this time was different.

These were not routine operations targeting Iranian arms transfers or Hezbollah positions. They were driven by something else: a sense of responsibility toward the Druze community in Syria.

Past strikes typically followed a narrow script: preventing weapons transfers, blocking entrenchment near the border, or responding to provocations. But this latest round marked a clear departure.

While strategic considerations were still in play, the heart of the decision lay in defending the extended family of Israel’s own Druze – a gesture shaped as much by kinship as by security.

The bond between Israel and its Druze population is one of the most unique relationships in the country’s complex mosaic of communities.

Some 152,000 Druze live in Israel, and since a 1956 agreement with community leaders, Druze men have been conscripted into the IDF, fighting and dying alongside their Jewish counterparts in every conflict since.

In fact, Druze fought alongside Jews in the 1948 war as well. They are the only non-Jewish community in Israel that is drafted to serve in the military, where they have acquired a reputation as fierce fighters. Some have risen high in the IDF’s officer corps. Major General Ghassan Allian, who directs COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories), is a Druze.

The phrase Brit damim – a covenant of blood – has become shorthand for a loyalty that has gone well beyond slogans.

And these Druze have brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins in Syria who have come under attack by Sunni Bedouin clans and Syrian government forces. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 1,000 people have been killed over the last week in the Druze mountains area.

Israel’s Druze, who feel as deep a connection to their co-religionists in Syria as Jews do to their brethren abroad, say they cannot stand by and watch from the sidelines. They are both urging Israel to act and preparing to take up arms themselves to defend their kin across the border….

More than 1,000 Israeli Druze did enter Syria to fight in Sweida, but the Israeli government persuaded them to return, noting that their presence would complicate the IDF’s own efforts to protect Syrian Druze, and warned that inside Syria they might be kidnapped or killed.

As Israelis constantly insist, the Druze everywhere “are the brothers of our brothers.”

Israel defends the Syrian Druze because Israeli Druze have proven to be loyal to the Jewish state, and have fought for it in every war.

Washington, to put it mildly, is not pleased with Israel’s recent actions in Syria. While Jerusalem may have seen the strikes as an act of defense and moral clarity, the Trump administration saw something else: unnecessary interference.

The administration is interested in propping up the regime of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa as a way of creating stability in the region and has not hidden its desire to broker some kind of non-aggression pact between Israel and Syria. Just last month, Trump lifted long-standing sanctions against Damascus.

On Thursday, the US said it didn’t support the Israeli strikes, and State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Trump and the State Department have “been very clear about our displeasure.”

On Sunday, Axios quoted one US official as saying that Trump “doesn’t like turning on the television and seeing bombs dropped in a country he is seeking peace in and made a monumental announcement to help rebuild.”

Trump trusts al-Sharaa’s claim of having abandoned his jihadist sympathies — as he was a leader of Al Qaeda, the American government had once put a $10 million bounty on his head. But the Israelis, who know more than the Americans do about Muslim Arabs, are not convinced. They note that al-Sharaa did nothing to stop the Sunnis, including men from his own Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), who slaughtered 1,500 Alawites in Latakia in March; nor has he punished anyone since for participating in the massacre. Nor has al-Sharaa yet spoken up in support of the Christians, after dozens of them have been killed by Muslims in Damascus and Aleppo, and are especially alarmed after the suicide bombing of the Mar Elias church, in which 25 Christians were killed and 63 wounded. Finally, his own soldiers in Sweida initially sided with the Bedouin in the slaughter of many hundreds of Druze civilians. Despite all this, the Americans appear wedded to the idea that Syria needs to be stabilized, and that the only one who can do that is Ahmad Al-Sharaa. They are angry with Israel for bombing the Syrian soldiers in Sweida and, especially, for Israel’s humiliating bombing of Syrian army headquarters in the middle of Damascus.

The IDF has now yielded, reluctantly, to the American insistence that the IDF stay out of Sweida. Al-Sharaa has now insisted that the Bedouin, including those who arrived from all parts of Syria to fight the Druze, leave Sweida, and by July 20 they apparently had done so. The fighting has died down. Israel and Syria are committed to a ceasefire. It may hold. But if it does not, Druze reservists in Israel will undoubtedly try to travel to Sweida to fight, and in the skies over Sweida, the Israelis are likely to risk American displeasure by honoring their “bond of blood,”striking those who harm “the brothers of our brothers.”