Haaretz | Opinion
Israel Doesn’t Actually Care About the Fate of the Druze in Syria
A Druze cleric, left, who crossed from Syria to Israel earlier in the day is welcomed by an Israeli soldier at the Nabi Shuaib shrine compound, in northern Israel on Friday.Credit: Leo Correa/AP
Sometimes it’s hard to believe what one is reading: Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is calling on the international community to “fulfill its role in protecting minorities in Syria, specifically the Druze community, from the regime and its terrorist gangs, and to not turn a blind eye to the grave incidents taking place there.”
Israel long ago established a reputation for insolence, but it seems as though it has outdone itself this time around. The foreign minister is calling on the world to intervene and help a minority being oppressed by a government in another country, while other political leaders are already taking action in this matter.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given instructions, Israel Defense Forces’ Eyal Zamir has ordered the army to hit specified targets and Defense Minister Israel Katz has already threatened that Israel will respond “harshly”; the IDF has already bombed. A veritable army of salvation defending the oppressed Druze.
Israel’s foreign minister has no moral right to open his mouth and utter even a single word about the oppression of a nation or minority, certainly not to call on the world to come to their defense. Israel, which is turning a blind eye to Ukraine after doing the same thing during the civil war in Syria, also has no right to call on the world to open its eyes to events in Syria.
Members of the Israel Druze community stand near the border, as they wait for buses carrying Syrian Druze clerics to cross from Syria in the town of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, on Friday.Credit: Maya Alleruzzo/AP
The lack of self-awareness of Israel’s leadership breaks all records. When Gideon Sa’ar talks about an oppressive regime and gangs of terrorists, he should first and foremost talk about his own country. There aren’t many countries in the world in which an oppressive regime and terrorist thugs flourish as they do in Israel, tormenting members of another nation. And how does Israel react to calls for the world to come to the defense of the oppressed nation living here? With howls and cries of antisemitism.
And how would Israel respond to a military intervention by another state or player coming to the aid of the oppressed? This is exactly what Arab countries have said in the past, and what Hezbollah and the Houthis are saying now – they are intervening against Israel in order to protect the Palestinians.
Just as the local Druze are now demanding that Israel come to the help of their brethren in Syria, so the public in Arab countries is demanding that their governments intervene on behalf of their brethren who are under Israeli occupation.
And what about the blood brothers of Israeli Arabs, who were massacred in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon? Has Israel ever even considered coming to their aid?
A man holds a baby saved from under rubble, who survived an airstrike by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo in 2014.Credit: Hosam Katan/Reuters
In Lebanon, Israel set the Phalangists against the Palestinians. When the Haifa-based Palestinian painter Abed Abadi tried to extricate his sister, who had been born in this country, from the besieged Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria in 2014, Israel refused. But in order to “save the Druze,” Israel is ready to bomb.
Imagine the French bombing Israeli settlements in the occupied territories because it sees them as “terrorist bases,” from which terrorists emerge in order to harm Palestinians. What an outcry would erupt here!
The demand is steeped in cynicism. After all, Israel doesn’t really care about the fate of the Druze in Syria, just as it didn’t really care about the victims of the previous Syrian regime. After passing the nation-state law, it’s obvious that the government doesn’t even care about the rights of Israel’s Druze population.
Druze protest against the nation-state law in 2019.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
Mobilizing in the defense of Syria’s Druze is no more than a cynical ruse, another pretext for attacking Syria in its weakness, possibly also a nod to Likud’s Druze voters. Instead of affording the new regime an opportunity, Israel is warmongering. That is the only language it has been employing in recent years: hit, bomb, shell, kill, demolish, as much as possible and in all locations.
If Israel wishes to promote justice anywhere, let it begin at home, where horrific wrongdoing and crimes against humanity are increasingly being perpetrated.
Even Israel’s plea to the world that it send firefighting equipment to help overcome the wildfires near Jerusalem last week, while it has been preventing food and humanitarian aid from entering Gaza for over two months, is an impudent request that should have been rejected. A country that starves two million people is not entitled to help from the international community – yes, even when fires threaten its communities.
Opinion | Israeli Incitement to Genocide in Gaza Goes Mainstream
Genocide talk has spread into all TV studios as legitimate talk. From here on, one should say: thou shalt murder. All that remains is to debate who should be murdered and who should be spared
MK Moshe Saada, earlier this year. Proclaimed on Channel 14 TV that he was “interested” in starving an entire nation. “Yes, I’ll starve Gazans, yes, this is our obligation.”Credit: Sraya Diamant
It was only to be expected: The discourse has taken on neo-Nazi attributes. Boundaries have fallen and bloodletting has been legitimized.
Likud lawmaker Moshe Saada proclaimed on Channel 14 TV that he was “interested” in starving an entire nation. “Yes, I’ll starve Gazans, yes, this is our obligation;” a relatively popular singer, Kobi Peretz, is convinced that we are “commanded” to annihilate [the Biblical arch-enemy] Amalek. “I don’t pity any civilian in Gaza, young or old…I have not a shred of pity,” he was quoted as saying on the cover of the daily Yedioth Ahronoth’s weekend magazine.
The two of them, Saada and Peretz, are but minnows, but the pond is replete with such statements, with some people interested in highlighting them in order to pander to the opinion of the masses. A public figure in Europe, whether legislator or singer who uttered such statements would be labeled a neo-Nazi. His career would grind to a halt and from that day on he would be forever ostracized. In Israel, such statements sell newspapers.
One should call this phenomenon by name: This is incitement to genocide. To the credit of Saada and Peretz, one could say that they have taken off all masks and removed all filters. What used to be trash talk often found on social media has become standard media talk, raising questions such as who is for and who is still against genocide.
Saada and Peretz favor mass murder, while others only support the “prevention of humanitarian aid,” which is the same thing, only in more refined wording. It’s the same cruelty, only in polite form; the same monstrosity, only adhering to a supposedly more correct form.
Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, April 24, 2025.Credit: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
It’s true that it’s important to expose the neo-fascist tendencies spreading throughout society and to tear away the masks, but this exposure affords this patently illegitimate talk the legitimacy and normalcy it lacked until recently. From here on, one should say: thou shalt murder. Saada and Peretz say that it’s even a commandment. All that remains is to debate who should be murdered and who should be spared.
Slowly but surely, the long-term damage wrought by the October 7 assault is coming to light. Beyond the horrific personal and national tragedies, that attack totally upended Israeli society. It destroyed, perhaps forever, any vestiges of the camp of peace and humaneness, legitimizing barbarism as a lofty commandment.
There is no more “permitted” and “forbidden” with regard to Israel’s evilness toward the Palestinians. It is permitted to kill dozens of captive detainees and to starve to death an entire people. We used to be ashamed of such actions; the loss of shame is now dismantling any remaining barriers.
Perhaps the worst of all is the thought that it pays a cynical and populist media outlet such as Yedioth Ahronoth, dubbed “the newspaper of the country,” which was always attuned to its readers, to give this genocidal talk prominence. Genocide on the cover page not only legitimizes it, know the editors, it also pleases the readers.
Singer Eyal Golan might be ostracized due to his sexual misconduct, but who will ostracize Kobi Peretz the jihadist? After all, he’s right. “They mutilated our brothers and children,” he said. Now it’s our turn to mutilate.
It’s not only Yedioth Ahronoth and Channel 14 TV. Genocide talk has spread into all TV studios as legitimate talk. Former colonels, past members of the defense establishment, sit on panels and call for genocide without batting an eye. They aren’t important or interesting, but they are shapers of the conversation.
When future historians try one day to understand what happened in Israel during those years, they will find these voices as the voice of the people. This will contribute to their insight: This was what Israel was like then.
This legitimization will end in tears, the tears of the media outlets now promoting this monstrous discourse. Ask anyone wishing to starve two million people, anyone who thinks that a four-year-old toddler deserves to die and that a disabled person in a wheelchair is fair game for being starved, what they think about free press and the freedom of expression, and you’ll find that they are in favor of closing down most outlets and muzzling the media.
The culmination of this pandering to the extremist right will be that things will boomerang and hit back at the media that promoted such conduct. Peretz, Saada and their ilk don’t just hanker after Arab blood. They want us to shut up as well.
Gideon Levy
P.S.
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