New Syrian regime could wipe out the Druze

A Druze by birth, Khalid Mazher later turned to Christianity and became the pastor of Good Shepherd Evangelical Church, a small house church in Sweida, Syria. The Druze are an ethnic minority in the Middle East whose traditional religion incorporates elements of Islam and other faiths. The community does not harass or threaten its Christian converts. Mazher lived among his people for many years, preaching the gospel.

On July 19, Syrian fighters murdered Mazher, his wife and children, his siblings, their children, and his father and mother. “May their memory be eternal,” said a Facebook post quoting the church’s website.

Syrian militants attacked Sweida’s Druze population earlier this month, killing hundreds of people. In response, Israel conducted airstrikes against Syrian targets before the two countries agreed to a ceasefire days later.

The new Syrian president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has yet to express his condemnation of the killings. The Druze in Syria feel unsafe and fear living under Islamic law that the Sunni Muslim government has started to impose on the rest of the country. In the wake of the attacks, Israeli Druze have collected money and aid and sent teams across the border to help.

Druze have a religious responsibility to support each other, said Einav Halabi, an Israeli Druze journalist. Members of the minority group mainly reside in Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, with the largest number residing in Syria. In Israel, the Druze have supported the government and complete compulsory military service the same as Israeli Jews. As a result, the Israeli government has given the Druze a degree of autonomy in courts and schools.

During this month’s attacks, thousands of jihadists arrived, both government soldiers and foreign fighters. The Druze were overwhelmed. The fighters murdered and brutalized civilians, women, children, and religious figures. Halabi said that militants kidnapped more than 80 women and raped more than 500 girls and women in the initial raid. “We will come back in nine months to collect the babies,” some social media posts threatened.

Even after the ceasefire went into effect, tensions remained high, said Halabi. Sweida is reportedly under a military siege by the Syrian government forces; there is no internet, electricity, food, water, or medicine. The Druze are essentially shunned from participating in the Syrian economy and public life. The watchdog group CyberWell said last week that anti-Druze hate posts on X received 45 million views in just one week.

Halabi said Druze members in Israel appreciate how Israel has been the first and only country that stood up for their Syrian brothers. Since Israel’s compassionate response to last year’s Hezbollah rocket attack on Majdal Shams, where 12 Druze children were killed while playing soccer, the Druze feel that the Israeli government sees and supports them.

That support has motivated many Druze in Golan Heights—an area bordering Syria that Israel began occupying after the 1967 Six-Day War—to become official Israelis. During the first half of this year, the number of Druze in Golan Heights applying for Israeli citizenship has nearly doubled over last year’s total. Druze represent just 2% of Israel’s population, but they are well-integrated into Israeli society—serving in high positions in the army and in politics and represented in health, education, and technology.

Dan Burmawi, a Middle East scholar who grew up as a Muslim, explained that the majority of Muslims believe that the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided the Middle East between the British and French colonial powers, was a Western plot against Islam and that modern-day nation-states are temporary. “Al-Sharaa is waiting to reestablish a Sunni caliphate that includes Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel,” Burmawi said. “In his eyes, any non-Muslim self-governance is unacceptable.”

Burmawi says that the new al-Sharaa government is responsible for the attacks on the Druze. He showed me a page from a graduate school curriculum in Idlib, Syria, containing a fatwa by the 13th-century imam, Ibn Taymiyyah. The fatwa states that the Druze are worse than the Christians and the Jews and that they must be killed.

The area between Israel and Sweida is populated by Bedouin tribesmen, and the Druze have largely enjoyed peaceful relationships with them. The Bedouin are known to have a high ethical code of honor—even when they wage war or raid enemy villages, they do not commit the atrocities that other groups commit, Burmawi said. Local activists allege that the government bribed the poverty-stricken Bedouin in the area to participate in the attacks on the Druze.

Lorena Khateeb, an Israeli Druze activist, said the world must open its eyes and understand this is not a local conflict, but an ethnic cleansing. “The new Syrian regime is a sick regime,” she said. “How can a terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head become a president?”

Khateeb said she received thousands of messages from Syrian Druze begging her to help them after the attacks. She is trying to raise funds and collect equipment and supplies to airlift them to the Druze community in Syria. “We want to help them as much as we can,” she said. Khateeb quoted a Druze proverb: “The Druze are like a copper pot. When it is hit in one place, the pain reverberates through all of it.”