Who are the Druze? A religious group helping Syrian members attacked by Islamists

Wednesday, Israel increased air strikes in Syria following reports that members of the Druze religious minority were massacred by militant Islamists, highlighting a single community that has lived in the region for more than a thousand years and remains closely connected despite their dispersion through international borders.

About 150,000 Druze live in northern Israel and Golan Heights, but there are also large communities in Syria and Lebanon – neighboring countries that have been technically at war against Israel for decades – and a smaller group in Jordan.

An esoteric and monotheistic religion which incorporates elements of other Abrahamic religions, as well as several other philosophies, the Druze, an Arabic -speaking population, considers themselves a single people despite the hostile borders which divide them.

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A young man signals the Druze flag as he looks at the fights between the forces faithful to the Syrian President Bashar Assad and the rebels in the village of Druze in Khader in Syria, from the Golan Heights to Israeli command on June 17, 2015. (AP photo / Ariel Schalit)

While their religion dictates loyalty to the country in which they live, most of those who live in Israel are proud citizens, with 83% of the men who enlist in the Israeli army. About 5% of all the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces are Druze, and these are some of the most ferocious warriors in the country.

In addition, the Druze represent around 20% of the prison guards of Israel and around 6.5% of the country’s police officers.

This dedication has earned them a special place in Israeli society, pushing Israeli political and military leaders to promise an action if the Druze community in Syria is threatened in any way.

While the reports have surfaced according to which the Islamists and loyalists supported by the regime clashed on Tuesday with the Druze militia in southern Syria, more than a thousand young Israeli citizens of Druze rushed through the border with the aim of saving their brothers, the Israeli media reported.

Reports have shown hundreds of people, including certain armies, breaking down the border fence and rushing into the villages of Druze nearby in Syria.

Israeli Druze in the mass of Golan Heights along the Syrian border on July 16, 2025. Many violated the border in order to help their Syrian brothers, who were locked up in days of ethnic violence. (Eitan elhadez-barak / tps-il)

On Wednesday, in a briefing, an Israeli military official explained that many members of the Druze community of Israel have close relatives living in Syria, but that Israel was now working to bring them home.

“The FDI is attached to the deep alliance with the Druze community,” said the chief of staff of the TDI Eyal Zamir.

Professor Eyal Zisser, one of the main Israeli university experts in Syria and the Druze community, told Fox News Digital that it was a “unique” situation.

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Walid Jumblatt, Druze’s political leader in Lebanon, Central Center, is held with clerics shortly after a meeting of the religious direction of the community in Beirut, Lebanon, June 12, 2015. (AP photo / bilal Hussein)

“The Druze community of Israel exerts pressure on the government, therefore for domestic reasons, Israel faces this,” he said, adding that the current Israeli government “believes in using force to appease its base and show that it is strong and using power, or all that is necessary”.

This is not the first time that the Druze of Israel has rushed to protect their community in Syria. In 2015, when Druze was threatened with Islamic State and the local affiliate of Al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nura, Druze in Israel work To collect funds and weapons for their brothers on the other side of the border.

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In April, months after the fall of the longtime Syrian sovereign Bashar al-Assad in December, hundreds of Clerics of Syrians Druze crossed the border by making a rare trip to Israel to celebrate the holidays of the Ziyara community at the Saint Nabi Shuaib site, just west of the Galileo Sea.