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Three men in Israel Defense Forces uniforms patrolled on Jan. 8 in Hurfeish, a Druze town of 7,000 in the Galilee, just 1 1/2 miles from the Lebanese border. The trio drove that night not in a military jeep but a Chevy Blazer bearing civilian license plates. They weren’t in active-duty service (18–21 years old) or even in reserves (through age 45), but were far older—the youngest of them being 54. These older Druze men are in another tier of Israeli military service: kitot konenut, first-response teams for security threats. Most Israeli communities have kitot konenut, which are locally run....

The Druze are an Israeli minority community of roughly 150,000 in number, comprising roughly two per cent of the country’s population — and they’re a living counterpoint to the commonly-levelled accusation that Israel is an apartheid state. Ethnically and linguistically Arabic, the Druze are Abrahamic monotheists who first emerged around the 11th century after branching off from Shia Islam. Worldwide, they now total about one million. The Israeli population is quite concentrated, with 98 per cent living in 19 villages in the northern regions. Druze tend to be fiercely loyal to their home states. Speaking to the National Post last...

The body of an 18-year-old Israeli from the Druze town of Daliyat el-Karmel, southeast of Haifa, is being held by armed Palestinian Arabs in the city of Jenin, it was cleared for publication on Tuesday night. The young Israeli man was seriously injured in a car accident in the area and was evacuated by the Red Crescent to a hospital in the city, where he was pronounced dead. When it became known that he was an Israeli citizen, terrorists from the "Jenin Brigade" kidnapped his body and are now holding it. Efforts are currently underway to secure the release of...

Israeli archaeologists have discovered a secret stash of Byzantine-era coins inside a stone wall—where someone may have once tried to hide them.Made of pure gold, the 44 coins are decorated with portraits of Emperors Phocas and Heraclius, who ruled in the first half of the seventh century. Experts believe the treasure, which is dated to 635 C.E., was hidden during the Muslim conquest of the area around the end of Heraclius' reign.The artifacts were unearthed as part of a larger excavation in the ancient city of Banias, now a part of Hermon Stream Nature Reserve in the Golan Heights, an...

More on racist Ahmad Tibi, including anti-black and anti-Druze bigotry the (Arab-Islamic MK) 1999 "אתה דרוזי משתף פעולה; הנעל שלי נקייה יותר מהעדה שלך" - גלובס 29.04.1999 השוטר הדרוזי, הטוען שאחמד טיבי גידף ותקף אותו, העיד היום (ד') בבית המשפט המחוזי בירושלים. "אתה דרוזי משתף פעולה. הנעל שלי נקייה יותר מהעדה שלך" - כך תיאר השוטר הדרוזי על התקרית עם טיבי סמוך למחסום ישראלי באיזור רמאללה. לדברי השוטר, אחמד טיבי לא היה בכלי הרכב שנעצר לביקורת והוא הגיע למקום רק לאחר שהוא הוזעק למקום ע"י נהגו. השוטר ציין בעדותו, כי לאחר הגידופים הראשונים, תקף אותו טיבי במכת אגרוף ואף אמר...

Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday visited the Tomb of Jethro in honor of the Druze festival of Ziyarat al-Nabi Shu'ayb. At the start of the event, President Herzog was welcomed by Shaykh Mowafaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel. Also attending were Justice Minister Gideon Sa'ar (New Hope), Defense Minister Benny Gantz (Blue and White), opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud), Internal Security Minister Omer Barlev (Labor), Welfare Minister Meir Cohen (Yesh Atid), Regional Cooperation Minister Esawi Frej (Meretz), Minister in the Finance Ministry Hamad Amar (Yisrael Beytenu), Deputy Minister in the PMO Abir Kara...

Contrary to Hezbollah's image as an all-powerful organization in Lebanon, the Arab press exposes cracks in the oiled Shiite military machine operating in Lebanon for 40 years under Tehran's order: severe economic crisis, erosion after fighting in Syria, conflicts with other ethnic groups in Lebanon, blood feuds between Shiite and Shiite tribes and more. ... Financial crisis Hezbollah's main financiers in Tehran have suffered severe sanctions in the United States in recent years, as well as an economic boycott of the Gulf and Saudi principalities. Entire areas of Lebanon are out of military control. The poor Palestinian refugee camps in...

A war monitoring group says Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters seized 36 women and children during simultaneous attacks on the southeastern province of Sweida last week. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that 20 women and 16 children were seized from al-Shobki village in Sweida during the Wednesday attacks. The ambush by suspected ISIS militants left at least 221 people dead. Reports on social media suggest ISIS has sent photos of some of the kidnapped women, most of them from the minority Druze sect prevalent in Sweida, to their families in via WhatsApp. The...

The number of “Palestinian refugees” in Lebanon has decreased significantly over the past few years and many are leaving for other countries to try to improve their situation. In an interview with the Hamas newspaper Palestine on Thursday, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon Ali Baraka said that some 260,000 “Palestinian refugees” had left the refugee camps in Lebanon to various countries in recent years because of the difficult security and economic conditions. According to him, the figures he cited are based on a poll conducted by the Lebanese authorities and which indicates that there is a deliberate action to bring about...

Golan Heights residents attacked ambulance bringing injured fighters into Israel for medical care Two residents of the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights pleaded guilty Sunday to manslaughter and aggravated assault for their roles in a deadly attack last year on wounded Syrian fighters being treated in Israel. (snip) Munzir Halil was killed and the wounds of another Syrian fighter were exacerbated, in an incident that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed a “lynching” at the time.

A leader of the Druze population of the Golan Heights disputed the assertion of a United Nations committee that accused Israel of imposing economic and social hardships on his community. Dulan abu-Saleh, the mayor of Majdal Shams, the largest Druze town in the Golan, told Makor Rishon that the U.N. Economic and Social Council’s recent statement on the area was “a total joke,” the daily reported Friday. Unlike other Druze populations in Israel serve in the Israel Defense Forces, the Golan’s Druze population of some 20,000 has been careful not to align itself publicly with the Jewish state, which annexed...

EXCLUSIVE - Lebanese Official Claims To Breitbart: NATO 'Okayed' Turkey's Downing Of Russian Jet. [ Full title ]. Turkey could only have shot down a Russian Su-24 military jet after securing permission from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), charged Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt in an exclusive interview with Breitbart. The Turks cannot afford to shoot down a Russian plane, being a member of NATO, without asking the permission of NATO. They have to ask NATO. It's NATO, said Jumblatt, a member of parliament and leader of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party. Jumblatt is considered the leader of Lebanon's historic...

The best way to fight ISIS, according to Druze MK Ayoub Kara (Likud), is for Israel to ally itself with other countries in the area that are trying to keep the Islamist terror movement at bay. And the best country in the region to ally with, said Kara, is Jordan. This, despite the ongoing anti-Israel comments, resolutions, praise of terrorists and other actions taken by Jordanian government officials against Israelis in recent months. “Strengthening ties with Jordan is the best answer to the ISIS threat,” said Kara on Tuesday at a conference discussing opening a new direct route in the...

An Israeli court charged two Druze from the Golan Heights with murder Monday in the mob killing of a Syrian rebel who was being taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment. The grisly attack in June highlighted the anger and suspicion among Israel’s Druze that Israeli hospitals may be treating Islamists ...

Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday confirmed a one-year jail sentence handed down to a Druze former MP for visiting Syria, an “enemy country”. ... He went in 2007 to Syria, with which Israel is technically still at war, as part of a delegation of 300 Druze religious leaders. ...

BEIRUT — During four years of civil war, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could count on the country’s Druze to keep quiet. Like other religious minorities, the Druze community tended to back the strongman, fearing their fate could be worse under the rebels, who are mostly Sunni Muslims. Recently, however, the Druze have been defying Assad's government. Many are refusing compulsory military service. Increasingly, Druze spiritual leaders are criticizing the embattled president and urging their community to adopt a neutral stance in the conflict. The Druze are a tiny group in Syria — about 700,000 people in a country with a...

Computer hackers likely working for the Syrian regime and Hezbollah have managed to penetrate the computers of Israeli and American activists working with the Syrian opposition, exposing sensitive contacts between the sides. Al-Akhbar, a newspaper serving as Hezbollah’s mouthpiece in Lebanon, published a series of articles over the weekend purporting to divulge correspondence between Mendi Safadi, a Druze Israeli and former political adviser to Deputy Regional Cooperation Minister Ayoub Kara, with members of the Syrian opposition around the world, taken from taken from Safadi’s computer. The article also contains screenshots of word documents and text message exchanges saved on Safadi’s...

Unlike most other places in Syria, the southern city of Sweida, a Druze stronghold, has remained intact and safe, until now. Rebel fighters have advanced close by, battling the soldiers of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, who have the support of most of the country's 700,000-strong Druze population. The Druze are an ancient Arab tribe and their faith is mixed with elements of Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. The community in Syria is one of the oldest Druze communities in the world. Nahla Um Fadi lives in Thaala village just behind the Al-Thaala airbase in the Sweida countryside - the scene...

<p>U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday the world should be ashamed that three years after major powers approved a blueprint in Geneva to bring peace to Syria the suffering of its people is reaching new depths and the country is "on the brink of falling apart."</p>

An indictment filed last week in the Nazareth District Court against a resident of the town of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights for espionage and assisting the enemy during wartime portrays Sudki Makat, a Druze supporter of the Assad regime in Syria, as the first Facebook spy caught in Israel..... claims in the indictment relate to things Makat posted on his Facebook page. The Israeli media also broadcast the recordings of interviews he gave from the Golan to Syrian television. The main claim against him in the indictment is that the information he posted — on the Internet and...