For the 150,000-strong member Druze community, attacks against their brethren across the border cause concern and a commitment to strengthen their rights as Israeli citizens The post ‘Maybe God put Druze in Israel to save the Druze there’: Minority fights for Syrian cousins appeared first on The Times of Israel.

Israel has used attacks on religious minority by forces loyal to Syria's new government to justify strikes across the border

Four days of clashes between pro-government gunmen and members of a minority sect in Syria have left nearly 100 people dead and raised fears of deadly sectarian violence.

Nawaf Nasr, 78, sits at home in Syria's Sweida district and recalls details of what he says was his past life before he died and was later reincarnated. Nasr says in his previous life, he was a university student, the son of a landowner, when he was thrown from a horse and died at the age of 25 in the 1940s.

The religious leader denied the recording was in his voice, and an investigation by Syria’s Ministry of the Interior has concurred. But it mattered little, as fighting between local armed Druze ...

Hijri has harshly criticized Syria’s government for what he called an “unjustified genocidal attack” during deadly sectarian fighting in Druze-majority areas south of Damascus this week.

In Syria’s large Druze minority, a belief in reincarnation binds the community together. NPR’s Jane Arraf reports. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Pained by deadly clashes between Islamist and Druze gunmen in Syria in recent weeks, leaders of Israel's own Druze minority say the Israeli military was right to intervene to defend the Druze and should do so again if violence restarts.

When the leader of Syria shook hands with U.S. President Donald Trump, it was a striking moment for a man who was an al-Qaida fighter in Iraq and was detained by the American military.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict did not have to be the way it has been. And perhaps this means it does not have to be this way forever.

Five months after its liberation from the police state of Bashar al-Assad, Syria sometimes looks like a country in civil war. Sectarian clashes have turned into street battles with rockets and mortars.