Herb Keinon
Jerusalem Post, July 20, 2025
“Washington, to put it mildly, is not pleased with Israel’s recent actions in Syria. While Jerusalem may have seen the strikes as an act of defense and moral clarity, the Trump administration saw something else: unnecessary interference.”
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria over the past decade, so this week’s attacks on Syrian tanks en route to Sweida and on the country’s military headquarters in Damascus should not have come as a surprise.
Yet they did, because this time was different.
These were not routine operations targeting Iranian arms transfers or Hezbollah positions. They were driven by something else: a sense of responsibility toward the Druze community in Syria.
Dodging missiles and sleeping in shelters: How are Israelis impacted by Iran strikes?
Past strikes typically followed a narrow script: preventing weapons transfers, blocking entrenchment near the border, or responding to provocations. But this latest round marked a clear departure.
While strategic considerations were still in play, the heart of the decision lay in defending the extended family of Israel’s own Druze – a gesture shaped as much by kinship as by security.
Some 152,000 Druze live in Israel, and since a 1956 agreement with community leaders, Druze men have been conscripted into the IDF, fighting and dying alongside their Jewish counterparts in every conflict since.
The phrase Brit damim – a covenant of blood – has become shorthand for a loyalty that has gone well beyond slogans.
And these Druze have brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins in Syria who have come under attack by Sunni Bedouin clans and Syrian government forces. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 1,000 people have been killed over the last week in the Druze mountains area.
Israel’s Druze population say they cannot stand by and watch from sidelines
Israel’s Druze, who feel as deep a connection to their co-religionists in Syria as Jews do to their brethren abroad, say they cannot stand by and watch from the sidelines. They are both urging Israel to act and preparing to take up arms themselves to defend their kin across the border. …SOURCE