On Saturday, July 27, Baha’a Rabah was standing near a soccer field in the Druze village of Majdal Shams, located in the Golan Heights along the Syrian border. At 6:18 p.m., he received an alert on his phone, warning of incoming rocket fire in Majdal Shams. As he sprinted for cover, he caught sight of a rocket streaking across the sky before it exploded with a deafening blast in a soccer field, a few yards from where he was standing. 

Rushing to the field, he found several of his fellow members from HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed (the Working and Studying Youth, which goes by the English acronym NOAL) movement. Many of them were already lifeless. The 21-year-old Rabah tried to assist those still clinging to life and took off his shirt to cover the bodies of those killed.

“Finis Adham Safadi was in fifth grade. A beautiful girl, full of confidence, who loved to laugh and play soccer. She always came in first place,” Rabah recounted to eJewishPhilanthropy, his voice choking with emotion. “Alma Ayman Fakhr al-Din, also in fifth grade, played basketball and spoke four languages — Hebrew, English, Arabic and German. She loved sports and she loved life. And Johnny,” he paused, “John Wadeea Ibrahim, was in sixth grade. He loved challenges, and he had zest for life.”

The deadly rocket attack shocked the country, and its reverberations are still evident weeks later as Israelis brace for an expected retaliatory attack by Hezbollah after the Israel Defense Forces killed the terrorist group’s military commander. It has also brought to the fore a small subset of an already small Israeli minority community — the Druze population on the Golan Heights, which is deeply connected to Israeli Druze but also politically distinct from it and which has a complex and fraught but improving relationship with the State of Israel. The Golan Druze, which once universally maintained ties to the Syrian government that once controlled the territory and rejected Israeli sovereignty, have grown closer to Israel in recent years. According to official data released in 2022, among the four Druze villages in the Golan Heights, there were 21,215 permanent residents and 4,303 citizens — approximately 20% of the Druze population — who have applied for and received Israeli citizenship; the rest are Syrian nationals. (In 2011, less than 10% had Israeli citizenship.)

Safadim, al-Din and Ibrahim were all members of NOAL, an avowedly Zionist organization that is associated with Dror Israel, who were among the 12 children killed when Hezbollah launched a Falaq-1 rocket, carrying a 53-kilogram warhead, across the border from Lebanon, which detonated on the Majdal Shams soccer field during a weekend match. Thirty-four other children were also injured, some of whom remain hospitalized with critical injuries as of Monday. Rabah, the coordinator of NOAL in Majdal Shams, said he continues to meet with his traumatized youth members, who are struggling to cope with the horrific memories of that day.

“We’ve been holding meetings since the incident,” he said. “Some kids want help, so we send them to the resilience center for treatment, to psychologists. Soon, we will organize sports and activities for them, hold community meetings to give them a way to deal with the situation and the event. I go to the resilience center every other day, and I have a psychologist — it helps a little.”

When Rabah joined NOAL nine years ago, there were just six members and six leaders from Majdal Shams. Today, the Zionist movement has 90 children from the village as members, 40 youth leaders, and nine national service volunteers. Rabah himself completed two years of national service, even though Druze residents in Golan Heights villages are exempt from military or national service due to their unique relationship with the State of Israel. 

This expansion represents a major success for the movement, as Samir Assad, the Druze sector coordinator for NOAL Movement, explained to eJP: “Before the establishment of the State of Israel, the Druze, who belong to a religion formed from revolutionary reforms that began in Egypt in the 11th century, lived in the mountains across the Middle East, then without borders. After the region was divided into states, some Druze found themselves in Israel in the Carmel, Galilee, and Golan Heights, others in Lebanon in the Shouf Mountains, and another group in Syria on the Druze Mountain.

“The division of the Middle East into states also split families,” Assad continued. “Those in the Golan Heights have relatives, even siblings, on the other side in Syria. It’s a complicated relationship. In the past, many in the Golan Heights villages didn’t hold Israeli identity cards, but since the Syrian civil war, that has changed. While people don’t talk about it openly for fear of harming families on the Syrian side, many now have Israeli identity cards and feel connected to Israel, like the Druze in the Galilee and Carmel.”

Since Oct. 7, NOAL has organized many activities with the youth members and leaders from the communities near the Gaza envelope who were affected. 

“Now, we are planning a joint activity to bring together the children from Majdal Shams with those from the Gaza border area,” said Tom Vizel, the director of the youth movement’s education department. “These are children who have experienced things no child should go through, but we hope they can strengthen each other and help heal Israeli society, sharing their pain and learning from each other how to cope in a situation that is different but similar, through an educational approach.”

Unlike most other minority groups in Israel, Israeli Druze are required to enlist in the IDF and do so at a rate higher than that of the Jewish community. Assad himself was a lieutenant colonel. After retiring from a military career in the IDF, he chose to join the NOAL movement. “NOAL is the only youth movement that reflects the mosaic of Israeli society because it includes Jews, Druze, Christians, Muslims and Circassians from all backgrounds. I won’t say that the situation between communities is perfect, but we do everything to connect and expose Jewish children to the Druze community and Druze youth,” he said.

“Our efforts to connect them to Israeli society and integrate them have borne fruit”, Assad continued, “Ten years ago, we began operating NOAL activities in the Golan Heights villages, and today there are four centers in four villages, with 30 national service volunteers and over a thousand youth members and leaders from fourth grade to 12th grade, all wearing the movement’s blue shirt. It’s a dream come true. Today, there isn’t a single NOAL event where participants from the Golan Heights aren’t present, including recent events where we went to the Hostages Square in Tel Aviv to show solidarity with the bereaved families and the families of the hostages.”

The “brotherhood alliance” between Jews and Druze in Israel suffered a significant blow in 2018 when the Knesset passed the so-called Nation-State Law, which declared Israel as the nation-state exclusively of the Jewish people. Many Druze — who have long felt that despite their commitment to the country’s security, they are neglected in civilian matters, particularly regarding infrastructure in Druze villages — felt betrayed, as though they were second-class citizens because of the law. In the wake of the Majdal Shams attacks, some Israeli politicians and commentators have again called for the Nation-State Law to be revoked.

“Since Oct. 7, the Druze community has stood shoulder to shoulder with Jewish Israelis, proved again its loyalty and suffered many losses. Sadly, we now have 12 more children to mourn. For the first time in our history, a Druze leader from Lebanon made an unfortunate statement that cast doubt on Hezbollah’s involvement in the attack and even blamed the IDF. This has caused a rift between us and them, despite our efforts to keep politics out of the Druze community given the sensitivities. It was very moving to see the people of Israel come in large numbers to Majdal Shams to show their support, and to see the leadership of the movement mobilize to provide assistance,” said Assad.

Vizel recounted visiting the scene of the attack in a show of solidarity by the movement with the local community.

“We traveled from the leadership of NOAL to Majdal Shams, and the journey was very tense because the north of the country and the Golan Heights are under heavy shelling,” Vizel said. “But we knew we had to go and meet with our leaders and youth members and share in the families’ grief. We arrived at the soccer field where the massacre happened, and I saw Samir standing with 20 of our youth members, in the same place where they used to hold educational activities, now the site of such a terrible tragedy.”