The Big Druze News You Didn't Hear About
And why it is so important to the Middle East, even as their story is continuously buried by mainstream Western media.
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This is a guest essay written by Sally Prag, a freelance writer and editor.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
A few days ago, a number of Druze villages in the Syrian Golan Heights announced that they wanted Israel to annex the area of Syria in which they are located, so that they will be under Israeli rule and thus have their rights protected by Israel.
This is big news.
Yet it seems the story is being suppressed by Western media. And there’s great significance here.
You see, the stories we are seeing being covered by mainstream news channels are of Israel’s bombing of areas of Syria, with a very specific angle — one that prefers to at best question Israel’s “real” motives — and, at worst, paints Israel as a brutal, oppressive, power-hungry, land-thieving state.
This is in line with the current narrative surrounding the plight of the Palestinians, which was also perpetuated during Israel’s offensive in Lebanon to diminish the military capabilities of Hezbollah. And thus the dialogue that continues to dominate the social media conversations echoes this very narrative.
But the calls of the Druze themselves tell a different story — one that is inconvenient to the black-and-white “Palestinians = victims and Israel = brutal oppressor” narrative. But it tells a story that comes from the very heart of the conflict, one that reflects a significant part of what happened in 1948, that the “Palestine” story has continually tried to refute and that Israel has continually been accused of lying about.
It is a part of the still highly disputed story of why so many Arabs left the war zone of the First Arab-Israeli War (also known as Israel’s War of Independence) in 1948. The story of what was coined “The Nakba,” Arabic for “The Catastrophe,” that left 700,000 Arabs displaced from what had once been their homes.
The Story of the Druze
At a guess, the majority of the world has never heard of the Druze. Or at the very least had never heard of them before the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7th, 2023.
Even then, they were probably rarely mentioned on any remotely mainstream news channels. Not until Hezbollah launched a rocket that landed in Israel’s Druze village of Majdal Shams and killed 12 children while they were playing football.
Personally, as a British-Israeli Jew who has only spent short periods of time in Israel, they were a minority I’d heard of, yet knew little about. But now I’m so glad I know their history and, more importantly, their allegiance to Israel.
A little of the Druze history: They are Arabs who once lived side-by-side in the Turkish mountains with the Ashkenazi Jews before the latter left for Europe and the Druze moved down to Egypt. Their religion was one of acceptance to all religions. In the beginning, they were accepted in Egypt until the Muslim population increasingly viewed their beliefs as a threat to Islam and began slaughtering them. Out of protection, they made their religion a secret and closed it to all outsiders.
Primarily, theirs is a peaceful religion. Since it is closed, there is no possibility to convert anyone to the religion, so evangelism is not even a notion. Their main belief is simply “live and let live.” And contrary to the prevailing narrative around the world, it’s one they have in common with Jewish philosophy.
Prior to the declaration of independence by the State of Israel, the Druze lived in pockets of the British Mandate for Palestine.
Like all Arabs, it is believed among the pro-Israel groups that they were told by the Arab leaders in 1948 to leave their homes (though this remains a disputed claim, with not enough reliable evidence to either back it or refute it) — merely for the militia from the five Arab nations surrounding “Palestine” to carry out their plan to push the Jews into the sea, so the land would remain purely Arab, with all the Jews ethnically cleansed. Then they could return and live their lives.
Meanwhile, according to some sources, the Jewish leaders were urging them not to leave, telling them that they wished to build a state in which Arabs and Jews could live together.
Many Druze, concerned for the safety of their families, did leave, but not all. Some, like a small number of Muslim Arabs, decided to listen to the Jewish leaders and stay in their homes. When the war ended with Israel having claimed victory over areas previously designated to the Arabs for an Arab state within the original mandate, which they had declined on the grounds that they wanted the entirety of the mandate to remain Arab, those Arabs who had remained in their homes became Israeli citizens, while those who left became Palestinian refugees.
A few months ago, I saw a fascinating interview with an Israeli Druze in which I learnt much more about them — specifically, how grateful the Druze who became citizens of Israel were to have the opportunity to live under the protection of the Jewish state. As people who recognised kinship for what it was, they became fiercely loyal to the country and, though not required to serve in the Israel Defence Forces, would voluntarily sign up.
Because of their physical and mental strength and intelligence, many Druze would be promoted to the highest ranks and had Jewish Israelis under their command. This again contradicts many of the widespread beliefs held about how the Israeli state treats its Arab minorities.
There was another reason they were immensely grateful for living within the borders of Israel. Many of them were now living separated from their uncles, aunts, and cousins because they had chosen to flee to either Lebanon or Syria, and then couldn’t return due to the Israeli government closing the borders.
Mansur Ashkar, the Israeli Druze being interviewed on the podcast, described how they would go to a hill known as the “Shouting Hill” where they would shout to their relatives to give them news, and their relatives would shout their news back. He also spoke of how he was tasked by his mother to help relatives to escape Lebanon and Syria because they were being tortured and killed by the oppressive regimes that had taken over those lands.
He spoke of how the Syrian army used the Druze as cannon fodder because their lives as a minority who refused to subscribe to the Sunni Muslim beliefs were cheap and useless in a country that was being ruled by an Islamist regime. So while the Druze were being put in the line of fire to be killed off by Syria, they were being honoured and protected for their value in Israel.
The Ongoing Plight of the Druze in 2024
When the news broke of the attack on Majdal Shams by Hezbollah, what we saw in response by Israel was heartwarming, tear-jerking, and immensely affirming.
The village is located right on the border between the region known by some as the buffer zone, by others as the Occupied Golan Heights, claiming Israel is occupying it illegally, and by Israel as simply part of the Jewish democratic state, won legally during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Many of the Druze of Majdal Shams themselves, unsure of their political future, had no great allegiance with Israel. At least not until this horrific incident.
Treating it as Israeli territory, the State mourned the loss of these Druze lives as it would any Israeli lives. It arranged the funerals for the 12 children who were killed, and many prominent members of Jewish and Arab Israeli society attended the funerals. The Druze community were not only deeply touched, but it cemented their allegiance to their Jewish brothers and sisters all the more.
As Mansur Ashkar said, Israel was prepared to go to war for them. And, indeed, it was said that the pager attack against Hezbollah in September of this year was the retaliation for that.
Now, several months on and after an offensive by Israel that has left the world gasping, Hezbollah has been reduced to shreds. Plus, the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, which has murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands for their dissidence or religious choices, has been overthrown.
Both Hezbollah, who ruled life in Lebanon, and the Assad regime were among the proxies funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran in order to advance its one great mission: to annihilate Israel and the Jews, weakening the Islamic Republic’s capabilities to victimize non-Muslim minorities such as the Druze.
But the future now for them remains decidedly uncertain. Hence the call by the Syrian Druze for leadership they can trust.
It would stand to reason that the Druze villages in the Syrian parts of the Golan1 — who declared they wanted Israel to annex the land and become their rulers — were probably made up of members who would communicate with their relatives on the “Shouting Hill.” They knew the quality of life their relatives had in Israel and deserved the same, rather than the lies, manipulation, and abuse they’d suffered at the hands of Islamists funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
And with Syria now being taken over by more Islamist factions, their rights and lives are at stake.
According to Mansur Ashkar, the Druze — for decades — have been shown respect, love, and equal rights by the government of Israel. They understand Israel to be the only country in the Middle East where they can have their rights honoured and preserved.
That’s why their voices are so important; they testify to their truth of the society in which they live, a view that has been distorted for decades by Palestinian leadership, which is driven by the same Jew-hate that it began with when Hitler endorsed the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem back in 1941.
But of course, they are voices that the mainstream Western media prefers to ignore, for they are inconvenient to the “noble cause” that has swept through society — the twisted “anti-imperialist” and “anti-colonialist” one that intentionally puts the blinkers up to the imperialism of Islamist society throughout the Middle East.
And that of taking down what is, in my and others’ opinions, the only democratic society in the region — one in which the majority of the population only wants what the Druze want: to live and let live, with security and in peace.
A basaltic plateau at the southwest corner of Syria
 | A guest post by
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As a veteran licensed Israeli tour guide and someone who is simply interested in all the different people and religions groups that dot this ancient land (where I have lived over the past 44 years, 30+ as a citizen), I find the Druze probably the most interesting. They are kind, generous, caring, helpful... Their APPLES (grown on the Golan Heights) are the sweetest and crunchiest I've ever eaten, and boy, can they COOK! And they are loyal to Israel, with many of their men serving in the IDF.
An Israeli historian, Eliezer Tauber, wrote a book about the so-called Deir Yassin massacre called The Massacre that Never Was: The Myth of Deer Yassin and the Creation of the Palestine Refugee Problem (The Toby Press, 2021). It debunks the myth of the massacre and much of the "Palestinian" narrative about the "refugee" problem. Here too there are no two sides with equal historical veracity. But then Muslims hold it okay to lie to advance the cause, the religion, and the conquest of the infidels.