The Syrian Druze October 7

"This is our Oct. 7." 

"Life froze. We keep watching the videos that the terrorists took of themselves butchering our families, feeling angry, anxious and completely destabilized."

Sari Halabi, Majdal Shams, Syria

 

"[The Druze attachment to Syria] is an asset to Israel, not a liability."

"This attachment opens the path to many things, which I think the terrible massacre has brought closer, including a Druze autonomy fighting and flourishing alongside Israel [on the Syrian side of the border]."

"The massacre will help settle an internal debate within the Druze community in Syria, and it will lead to more support for autonomy and self-reliance; [autonomy means deepening the alliance with Israel, which is the only major power interested in a Druze buffer zone along its northeastern border]."

"I was just sitting there watching the horror videos, one by one. Just like we all did on Oct. 7 [Hamas atrocities in southern Israel]."

Mr. Halabi, Druze citizen, Majdal Shams, Syria

 

"[The Syrian regime, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist who rose to power in December], sent an army south of Damascus, into the area that should be demilitarized, and it began to massacre the Druze."

"We could not accept this in any way."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  

Syrian Druze protest near the Israeli-Syrian border, as seen from the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights on Wednesday amid the ongoing clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze armed groups in the southern Syrian city of Sweida. Photo by Leo Correa /AP

  

"We saw the pictures [massacres, beheadings and rapes, including of women and children allegedly carried out by state-sponsored militias]."

"I think Israel needs to understand: Once a jihadist, always a jihadist [al-Sharaa, a leading figure in Al-Qaeda before founding Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the overthrow of the Assad regime in December 2024]."

"I embrace our Druze brothers—they’re our brothers in every way."

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir  

 

"The past few terrible days followed a very difficult year."

"But it led to an act of brotherly courage that, even though it came too late, will be remembered for generations and saved many lives [Israeli strikes in Damascus, including on the Syrian army’s general staff headquarters]."

"[The strikes in Damascus were indeed meant to protect the Druze in Syria, and as such were] an unprecedented act of solidarity that will usher in a new level of integration and fraternity between Jews and Druze." 

"I’m optimistic. Just like Israel emerged from Oct 7. much stronger than it was before, so too will the Druze — and their eternal alliance with Israel." 

Abdulla Rabah, Majdal Shams, Syria 

Members of the Druze community in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights gather for a rally in solidarity with the Druze community in Syria in the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan on July 19, 2025. Photo by JALAA MAREY /AFP via Getty Images

 

What began a week ago as a disagreement between the Druze and the Bedouin communities over a single incident between a single member of each side, rapidly grew to a hostile event with the eruption of violence between the two communities' militias.  All too soon matters deteriorated to a horrifying degree with a July 13 massacre when hundreds of Druze Syrians were murdered. The government forces of Syria's interim president had been dispatched in the face of the unfolding violence, but rather than a stance of neutral separation of the two belligerents, the Syrian military took up with the Bedouin and joined their sectarian-tribal assaults against the Druze.

 

A massacre ensued, with both the Bedouin militias and the government forces (Sunnis both, as opposed to the Shia-offshoot Druze) in an unrestrained assault against the Druze began butchering civilians. Videos surfaced of men forced to leap from the top of buildings to their deaths. Of rapes, decapitations, mutilations and blood-curdling atrocities where women and children were relentlessly butchered in Sweida, the Druze holy places desecrated, Druze religious figures humiliated, elderly Druze men being forcefully shaved of their beards.

 

Young men from the Israeli Druze community crossed the border into Syria toward Sweida to help their brethren in Syria fend off the savagery. Syrian Druze in a bid to flee the violence threatening their lives, crossed the border into Israel to seek haven there, on July15. And Israel sent its warplanes into Syria to bomb a number of critical regime sites, after Israeli Druze -- some 150,000 of whom are Israeli citizens -- demanded that Israel respond to the situation in support of the Syrian Druze community in southern Syria. 

 

After the December ouster of Alawite Syrian dictatorialPresident Bashar al-Assad who had persecuted the Syrian Sunni majority and turned a protest into a 14-year civil war, where the regime bombed, strafed, used poison gas and artillery and barrel bombs against Sunni Syrian communities, the Syrian regime changed with its head, a former al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist, Ahmed al-Sharaa, taking the helm of government. Under this government, minorities -- Syrian Christians, Druze, Kurds and Alawites, feared for their security. A massacre took place previously, when Sunni militias linked to the al-Sharaa government attacked the Alawite community.

 

A massacre of Druze in Syria has shaken their kin living in Israel's Golan Heights, prompting grief, protests and a rare IDF strike in Syria. Photo by Leo Correa /AP