Why Oct. 7 has bound Israeli Druze and Jews even more tightly
ALIYAT AL-KARMEL AND BEIT JANN, ISRAEL
The events of Oct. 7 are imprinted on Salih’s body and mind.
As he sits outside his former training base in central Israel on a crisp mid-January day, the 20-year-old Israeli Druze soldier recounts carefully the day his unit was deployed to repel a surprise Hamas attack.
That day saw Hamas militants kill 1,200 people, mostly civilians, as they rampaged through southern Israeli towns and kibbutzim, igniting the devastating Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The day ended with Salih being seriously wounded in combat. He refuses to discuss certain details. But a single glance from his distant eyes offers a glimpse into the death he saw.
Hamas “did not differentiate between Jewish or Druze, Muslim, Bedouin, or Christian; young or old; men, women, children,” Salih recounts, as if still processing the violence. “They didn’t care.
“This was something monstrous, barbaric, against human nature,” he says. “Go to the root definition of ‘terrorism,’ and all of its derivatives, and they all align in this organization.”
For Israeli Druze, the Israel-Hamas war is becoming increasingly personal.