(RNS) — On Saturday (July 27), a barrage of rockets fell on a soccer field in Majdal Shams, a town in the Golan Heights, killing 12 children and wounding over a dozen more.
It was the latest bloody day in the war that began some 300 days ago between Israel, Hamas and its allies in the Middle East.
Israeli and U.S. intelligence have both linked Saturday’s attack to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. that has rained thousands of rockets down on northern Israel since the outbreak of the war, displacing tens of thousands of Israeli citizens from the country’s north. Hezbollah has denied involvement in the attack.
Israel has since struck back at Lebanon and killed Hezbollah targets including Fuad Shuker, a commander who was responsible for the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 U.S. soldiers. The week culminated with the assassination of one of Israel’s archrivals, the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. The back-and-forth has renewed fears of a new front opening on the Israel-Lebanon border.
But the dead of Majdal Shams were neither Jews nor Palestinians, but Druze, a small religious sect native to the Levant and spread across northern Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
So who are the Druze, whose murdered children were the catalyst for one of the most historic weeks in the history of the modern Middle East?
Members of the Druze community mourn during the funeral of their relatives at the village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, July 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
The group began in the 11th century, as a breakaway from Ismaili-Islam, but today identifies as a fully distinct religion. Its adherents honor prophets from all three of the major Abrahamic religions, including Muhammad, Moses and Jesus, but also figures from Zoroastrianism and Greek philosophy. Chief among the Druze prophets, however, is Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses.
Druze is an exonym, derived from one of the community’s early leaders, Muhammad ibn Isma’il al-Darazi. Among themselves they are known as al-Muwaḥḥidūn, meaning simply, monotheists.
Today, around 1 million Druze live across the Levant, with around 80% of them in Lebanon and Syria, and just under 10% in Israel.
In modern history, the Druze have not advocated for independence, as other groups in the region have, but have contributed significantly to politics in the countries where they live.
While only under 10% of the global Druze population lives in Israel (over 120,000), it is often joked in Israel that the Druze are more Israeli than Jews, Anan Kheir, an Israeli Druze lawyer and community activist, told Religion News Service.
Unlike Christian and Muslim Israeli Arabs, who are not obligated for conscription to the Israel Defense Forces, the Druze community in Israel took on the burden of mandatory military service in 1957, less than 10 years after the founding of the state. Since then, Druze have been disproportionately represented in the IDF’s combat units and officer corps. In the early weeks of the war in Gaza, it was noted that a disproportionate amount of Israel’s combat deaths were Druze soldiers and officers.
However, that is not true of the Druze community of Majdal Shams, which is the largest city in the Golan Heights, an area taken from Syria by Israel in their 1967 war and annexed in the 1980s.
The U.S. recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights during the Trump administration, which the Biden administration recently reaffirmed, but most countries still consider the region disputed.
Druze make up about half the population of the Golan Heights. Since 1981, they have been offered Israeli citizenship, but only about 20% of them have accepted it. The rest have retained their Syrian citizenship.
Nonetheless, according to Kheir, there still remains a strong sense of kinship between the Druze of Israel’s north, known as the Galilee, and those of the Golan.
An Israeli man from the Druze community participates in a rally against Israel’s Jewish Nation bill in Tel Aviv, on Aug. 4, 2018. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)
“For the Druze, for us, we’re the same community, we have the same leadership,” Kheir told RNS.
In the days after the attack, he explained, Druze communities across the Galilee mobilized to support their co-religionists in Majdal Shams.
“The way that the community is reacting is trying to do whatever they can do for the poor families who lost their dearest children,” Kheir said.
Over the past week, with the help of Israeli and international Jewish organizations, more than half a million dollars has been raised for the grieving families of Majdal Shams.
Shortly after the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Sheikh Muafak Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze in Israel, promising that Hezbollah would pay “a heavy price” for the attack.
The sentiment has been largely supported by the Galilee Druze, according to Kheir.
“We feel that Hezbollah needs to pay a heavy price for this action, because it targeted civilians,” he said. “These were children playing in a field. We ask Israel to do what has to be done, first of all, to take care of our security, the security of the people in the north, and secondly, to fire back.”
Former Knesset member and Israeli Druze Ayoob Kara posted similar support on X.
“The hands soaked in the blood of innocent Druze children compel us to embark on an uncompromising campaign of revenge against Hezbollah and its emissaries from Tehran,” Kara wrote on the platform. “Hezbollah’s fear of the Israeli response must be taken advantage of and scorched earth left in the capitals, otherwise it will be a cry for generations.”
The Druze of Majdal Shams, however, called for more restraint.
In a statement put out by the city’s leaders, they rejected the “attempt to exploit the name of Majdal Shams as a political platform at the expense of the blood of our children,” according to France 24. The statement noted that the Druze religion “forbids killing and revenge in any form.”
“We reject the shedding of even a single drop of blood under the pretext of avenging our children,” the statement said.
Dolan Abu Saleh, the head of the Majdal Shams City Council, told the Israeli outlet Ynet that the Golan Druze simply want the war to stop.
“We want there to be peace in the north and in the entire state of Israel,” Saleh said. “There is no way we will live in uncertainty all this time. We are very much in favor of an agreement.”
He believes reactions and each war bring escalation to the entire region.
“If this is really the concept that will continue, that they shoot and we react and eliminate, etc., we will only continue the escalation, and I think it will exact even heavier prices,” he said.
Saleh also said that he personally pleaded with Netanyahu to seek peace when the prime minister visited the town this week.
“We want peace. If our children, they will be the message for peace, then we are really satisfied with that,” he said. “The prime minister’s response was that we will exact a heavy price. I don’t know how much this will really guarantee strategic peace for the residents of the north, but again, I say, terrorists need to be dealt with, but we must already as a government come to an agreement.”
