Amid loss of highest-ranking Israeli casualty in Gaza war, Druze ‘bond of blood’ with Jews deepens

Druze men have a conscription rate of more than 80%, which is roughly 10 percentage points higher than that of the general male population in Israel, many serving in combat roles.

By Canaan Lidor, JNS

In the grieving Druze town of Daliyat al-Karmel, on Mount Carmel southeast of Haifa, Sabura Abu Hamad closed her empty café early on Monday to attend the funeral of the highest-ranking Israeli casualty in the current war.

“It’s a huge loss, but we remain strong,” Abu Hamad, 53, said of the death of Col. Ehsan Daxa, a 41-year-old father of three who died fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza on Sunday.

His death reminded Abu Hamad of her family’s own sacrifices for Israel.

Her father was murdered and his body mutilated by terrorists in Lebanon while serving in the Israel Defense Forces when she, the youngest of four siblings, was in her mother’s womb. Her father’s head was never recovered. Her mother has been wearing black since her husband’s death and rarely smiles, said Abu Hamad.

Her mix of personal, communal and national grief is shared by many Israeli Druze, a 150,000-strong ethno-religious minority with a rich military tradition. Their alliance with the Jews predates the state’s establishment and is often described as a fraternal bond of shared fate.

In several places along the main street of this town of some 20,000 residents, giant television screens showed pictures of Daxa. Admired as a local success story, he was also a trailblazer and role model for having climbed the ranks in the IDF Armored Corps, where relatively few Druze serve.

The streets of Daliyat al-Karmel (Arabic for “Vineyards of the Carmel”) were congested with traffic for the funeral, which drew thousands of Druze and Jews from across the country to this hilly tourist spot that visitors normally frequent for its excellent restaurants and shops.

In her eulogy, Daxa’s widow, Hudah, spoke of how her husband, a decorated war hero, managed to always be present at his home and his community despite his long absences as a career officer during wartime.

“I want to ask that the journey that he had made, that he chose, not be in vain,” she said, explaining that she wants others to follow in his footsteps to ensure a better future for all Israelis.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement called Daxa “an Israeli hero, a fighter and a commander—a model for the lifelong alliance with the Druze minority.”

Although Druze women are exempt from mandatory military service, Druze men are mandatorily conscripted along with Jewish ones. The men have a conscription rate of more than 80%, which is roughly 10 percentage points higher than that of the general male population in Israel. And many, many serve in combat roles.

The conflict that broke out on Oct. 7, 2023, has taken a heavy toll on Israel’s Druze. Among the hundreds of IDF casualties, 12 Druze soldiers have been killed in action. In addition to Col. Daxa, two lieutenant colonels, two majors and two captains have also died, along with five additional combatants. Twelve Druze children were murdered in August in the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan by terrorists in Lebanon who fired a rocket at the local soccer pitch.

It was the deadliest attack on an Israeli target since the massacres of October 2023, in which thousands of Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people in Israel and abducted another 251 into Gaza. Hezbollah and other terrorists in Lebanon began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023. Israel has been fighting Hamas and Hezbollah and exchanging fire with Iran in an ongoing regional conflict that has been one of the longest in the state’s history.

The war has hit the Druze minority disproportionately not only because of the casualties but also because it has suspended tourism in Israel’s north, where the community is concentrated and where the livelihood of whole towns depends largely on outside visitors.

Abu Hamad is “hanging in there financially,” she said at her centrally located Shafiq café, which is known for its knafeh, a Middle Eastern cheesy dessert.

Hiba Halabi, a restaurant owner who specializes in Druze cuisine, including stuffed cabbage and so-called Druze pita, can barely make ends meet, she said.

Several interviewees in Daliyat al-Karmel said that despite the hardships it has created, the war only cemented the Druze-Jewish partnership.

In the Golan especially, “the war crystalized integration processes that have been underway for decades,” said former Communications Minister Ayoob Kara, a prominent Druze politician in the Likud party who had served until 2019 as a cabinet minister under Netanyahu.

It was a reference to how about 20,000 Golan Druze had for many years presented themselves as Syrians under Israeli occupation amid fears that Israel would return the Golan to Syria. That country’s Druze had been allies of the regime of President Bashar Assad. As part of that narrative, the vast majority of Golan Druze had refrained from voting in local elections or taking up the Israeli citizenship to which they’re entitled.

That started changing following the de facto breakup of Syria in its civil war that began in 2011. This year, the four Golan Druze communities had more than 1,400 Israeli citizens, compared to only about 200 in 2006. In the local elections, more than 3,000 Golan Druze voted, compared to 277 in 2009.

Syrian flags, which were once commonplace in the Golan Druze communities, have all but disappeared there, Yusri Hazran, a lecturer on Druze culture at Shalem College in Jerusalem, told Globes in August.

Following the rocket strike in Majdal Shams, this reporter heard locals expressing themselves in public in ways that had been unthinkable. One told the media under his real name that “Israel should burn Lebanon.” Another said that Israel should “destroy Hezbollah.”

Back in Daliyat al-Karmel, the continuation of the war is subject to the same debates taking place across the rest of Israeli society. Abu Hamad, who has in her café a large picture of Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein smoking cigarettes together, thinks it’s time to end hostilities. “Enough blood has been shed,” she told JNS.

Radi Mishilah, a retired postman and poet in his 70s, thinks the IDF should pull out of Gaza to retrieve the hostages in a deal, but keep fighting against Hezbollah in Lebanon and retaliate against Iran.

Kara believes Israel must keep fighting on all fronts “until the collapse of all of its enemies, which is within sight.”

This is imperative for Israel’s survival, he said, “but also that of the Druze because we have no alternatives: Only a strong Jewish Israel will ensure a free Druze community. Otherwise, we’re condemning ourselves to the ruthless oppression that has been the sorry fate of each and every religious minority in this region.”

Yet some locals feel discriminated against. Mishilah said he feels like a “third-rate citizen” because of the authorities’ refusal to connect one of his homes to the electricity grid or give him building permits— a common issue in Druze-majority municipalities, where many feel subject to unjust land policies.

“Every time one of us dies defending Israel, there’s talk for a week about the sacred Jewish-Druze alliance of blood, and then we’re again treated like dirt,” he complained.

These long-simmering issues have resurfaced following the passing in 2018 of Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, which critics say marginalized the Druze. In November, Netanyahu’s coalition said it would amend the law to enshrine the status of Druze Israelis.

Some community leaders, including Kara, disagree that the law needs amending or that it disenfranchised the Druze. “The left has taken some Druze for a ride, using them in their identity politics to shoot down processes and legislation that can only benefit the community,” he told JNS.

Ultimately, Kara said, “the war has sidelined these made-up divisions, and underlined the undying alliance between the Druze and the Jewish and democratic State of Israel and its society.”

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