Itongadol.- Members of Israel\’s Druze community are increasingly concerned about their brethren in Syria, Sheikh Muwafaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel told President Shimon Peres on Sunday.
In June this year, Druze leaders, following a meeting on the Golan Heights, sent a letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with the request that their co-religionists in Syria be given a haven in Israel, especially those who as students left the Golan Heights to continue their studies in Syria.
Numerous Syrians, including children injured in the course of civil unrest in Syria have been and are being treated in Israeli hospitals.
Peres visited Sheikh Tarif in his home in the village of Julis to convey greetings on the festival of Eid al Adha. (The feast of the sacrifice) commemorating the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his first born son Ishmael at the command of Allah.. He was greeted not only by Tarif, but by the whole of the Druze leadership and many Druze admirers of lesser rank.
Nearly all the presidents of Israel have had a Druze, Kamal Mansour, advising them on his own community and other minorities, but Peres is the first to appoint a Druze, Brigadier General Hasson Hasson, to be his military aide. Kamal Mansour, who was awarded the Israel Prize in 2010, is the son of Sheikh Najeeb Mansour who was the mayor of .Isfiya during the British Mandate period and in the early years of Israeli statehood, and who even prior to the Declaration of Independence, exhorted the Druze to align themselves with the Zionist state in the making.
Druze soldiers have distinguished themselves in the Israel Defense Forces, Druze have been members of Israel\’s diplomatic corps, and Druze legislators have served in the Knesset. Three of the most prominent were Ayoub Kara, Likud a former deputy minister for regional development, Saleh Tarif Labor, a former minister without portfolio and Mahali Wahabi, who as a member of Kadima, served as deputy foreign minister and deputy speaker of the Knesset.