How an Israeli Druze Doctor, with Israeli Help, Is Rescuing the Druze in Syria

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the “jihadist in a suit,” has convinced Donald Trump that he is now a “moderate” who has severed all ties with Al Qaeda, the terror group to which he once belonged and caused the American government to offer $10 million for his capture. Now this “moderate” Muslim has allowed, and even encouraged, Syrian soldiers to attack Druze in their stronghold of the Sweida governorate. In response, Dr. Osama Shekh, an Israeli Druze physician, has created his own medical system to treat the Druze in Syria who are refused treatment at the hospitals that al-Sharaa’s government runs. It’s a remarkable story, and one in which Israel has had a chance to pay back the Druze for standing with the Jews, and fighting by their side, since 1948.

More about Dr. Osama Shekh, the medical system he built, and the role of Israel in helping the Druze to survive, can be found here: “Israeli Druze doctor builds secret medical lifeline for besieged Sweida – exclusive,” by Darcie Grunblatt, Jerusalem Post, December 4, 2025:

As Sweida’s Druze continue to be ravaged by Islamist extremists under the watch of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, Dr. Osama Shekh built an entire medical system to treat the ethno-religious community while government-backed hospitals refused them care.

By day, Shekh is an anesthesiologist at the Galilee Medical Center. In his free time, he coordinates smuggling of pharmaceuticals, drug therapies, and medical equipment from Damascus to any of the four hospitals he runs in Sweida from Julis in northern Israel through WhatsApp.

Sweida, in Syria’s south, is approximately 132 km from Julis, where The Jerusalem Post met with Sheikh Mowafak Tarif, the spiritual head of Israel’s Druze community, and other volunteers at the Druze Emergency Operations Room.

On July 13, news of fighting between Syria’s Druze and Sunni Bedouin broke out. The United Nations in late August said that its experts sounded the alarm over what it described as armed attacks on local Druze communities, “with reports of killings, enforced disappearances, abductions, looting, destruction of property, and sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls.

“The scale of violence reported – including massacres, looting of homes, shops and livestock, and use of stolen phones for extortion – points to a targeted campaign against the Druze minority, exacerbated by incitement to hatred on media and social media platforms portraying them as Israeli allies.”

The Israeli Druze leaders the Post met with in Julis described the attacks as a genocide, orchestrated by the Syrian president, whom they referred to as a terrorist in a suit.

The Post also spoke with Israeli Druze Safwan Marich, director of the Security and Emergency Response Division for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), and Syrian Druze Rashad Abou Sada, the director of the Al Mishkat Center for Research and Documentation in Sweida.

Just over a week after July 13, the Sweida National Hospital was targeted, where staff said that government forces killed patients in their beds. This attack made the hospital nearly inoperable.

In Sweida, “the health system has collapsed,” Sada said. “A large part of the ambulance and emergency response network was destroyed,” he added, referring to the attack on the national hospital. “Hospitals have turned patients away – not due to discrimination, but because they lack electricity, ICU capacity, medicines, and even oxygen.”…

It’s true: there is admittedly a scarcity of supplies in Syria’s government-run hospitals. But the Druze are being denied treatment in those hospitals before all others precisely because they are Druze. With a lack of medicines, oxygen, and ICU space in the hospitals, the Druze, as non-Muslims, are the last to be accommodated.

According to Sada, the World Food Program has sent flour and occasional food baskets in irregular deliveries; a US-based Druze charity, SAS, has supported some medical and humanitarian needs; and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent has carried out basic emergency relief. A onetime shipment of food baskets in July was also sent by the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center in Saudi Arabia.

How pitiful, that with all their hundreds of millions of dollars in annual oil revenues, the Saudis chose to deliver last July only some food baskets to the terrified Druze — and did so only once.

Sada said that despite these contributions, the most significant and consistent support has come from Sheikh Tarif, the Druze community in Israel, the Israeli government, and the IFCJ. He added that Druze abroad have also contributed significantly, funding medications, ambulance fuel, and clinic operations, aid that often arrives faster and more reliably than institutional aid.

Sada, the Syrian Druze based in Sweida, knows that the most important aid to arrive for the Druze has come from Israel — that is, from Israeli Druze, from the Israeli government, and from the Israel-based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. No country, other than Israel, has stepped forward to help the threatened Druze in Syria.

Notably, Doctors Without Borders has not operated in the Sweida province, according to its website, though it operates in 11 other provinces in Syria, out of the 14 total. The other provinces it does not operate in, in addition to Sweida, are Latakia and Quneitra. Located in the Golan Heights, Quneitra includes sections that are part of the buffer zone. Latakia is where Alawites were massacred in March of this year….

DWB is apparently afraid of angering the Syrian government by conducting its samaritan operations either in Latakia, for the Alawites, or in Sweida, for the Druze, and so it has stayed out of those two provinces. It also fails to treat those people who live on the Golan Heights, which largely means Druze.