The northern Israeli town ravaged by a Hezbollah rocket attack Saturday that killed at least 11 people — mostly children — and injured dozens of others is home to members of the Druze community.
The Druze are an insular Arabic-speaking ethnoreligious minority who originated in Egypt roughly 1,000 years ago as an offshoot of Islam. Its members keep secret the tenets of their faith, which bars converts and frowns upon marrying outside the religion.
The Druze faith was influenced by the Quran and Christianity and Judaism, but also Greek philosophy and Eastern mysticism, according to the American Druze Foundation.
Out of the estimated 1 million Druze living in the world today, roughly 152,000 reside in Israel, making up 1.4% of the nation’s population, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.
Unlike most Arab communities in the Middle East, however, the Druze are known for their support of the Jewish state and are required to enroll in the Israel Defense Forces when they turn 18.
The community’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Muafak Tarif, however, lashed out over the ongoing violence in the north with Hezbollah that led to the “brutal and murderous attack” on a soccer field in Majdal Shams in Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war.
“A proper country cannot allow itself the continued harming of its citizens and residents,” Tarif said, according to the Times of Israel.
“This is the ongoing reality for nine months in northern communities. This evening crossed all possible lines.”
At least 11 people — mostly children and young adults between the ages of 10 and 20 — were killed when a rocket from Iran-backed Hezbollah struck a soccer field in Israel-controlled Golan Heights.
The attack is now the deadliest attack on the Jewish state since the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion.
The shelling by the Lebanese terror group targeted the northern Druze town of Majdal Shams, officials confirmed, adding such an escalation could ramp up the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared that “Hezbollah crossed all red lines” and the Jewish state was now “facing an all-out war” with the Lebanese terrorists.
