MENA Minorities

Interview in German with Swiss public radio (SRF) providing some background on the situation of the Druze in the occupied Golan Heights against the backdrop of the tragic rocket attack on Majdal Shams. Last month I was also cited in a piece on Middle East Eye  by Madeline Edwards about Walid Junblat's rhetoric towards Israel's Druze community: ...And though images of Sultan al-Atrash are common among Druze Israelis, Lang said, “I think what triggered Jumblatt was the usage of the pictures of his father. This is quite unusual. Memory is always selective - Kamal Jumblatt can be seen as a symbol of the Lebanese and pro-Palestinian left, and as a Druze leader, too."  But for Druze citizens of Israel, according to Lang, Kamal Jumblatt’s image is “not widely used.” ...

German daily Tagesspiegel (+) featured an inside article about the Druze community in Israel and the complex dialectic of loyalty vis a vis the state against the background of the war in Gaza, the nation state law and the Kaminitz law. Your's truly is cited as well. „Natürlich bin ich Araber. Aber zuallererst bin ich Israeli“ : Die Minderheit der Drusen und ihr besonderes Verhältnis zum Jüdischen Staat von Tristan Fiedler Mehr als jeder Vierte Israeli ist kein Jude. Neben muslimischen und christlichen Arabern gibt es Armenier, Beduinen, Bahai’i, Samaritaner, Aramäer und viele andere in dem Land. Eine der kleineren Minderheiten sind die Drusen. Die gut 140.000 Menschen machen wenige r als zwei Prozent der Bevölkerung des Landes aus . Doch das Verhältnis zwischen ihnen und dem Staat Israel ist ein ganz besonderes (....) Heute gilt das Drusentum als eigene Religion. Doch entstanden ist es im 11. Jahrhundert aus einer Abspaltung des schiitischen Islams...

Just came accross an older report from Deutschlandradio (in German) about Israel's only mostly Maronite village of Jish including some even older quotes by yours truly. Maroniten in Israel Vertriebene Christen kämpfen um ihr Dorf

Jordan based journalist Madeline Edwards has a nice article at Middle East Eye about the mere chaotic situation in Suwaida, I am briefly cited as well. ' Security chaos': Kidnappings and clashes threaten relative peace in Syria's Sweida   by  Madeline Edwards, Middle East Eye "... When protests broke out across Syria in 2011, they appeared too in Sweida.  Like elsewhere, citizen journalists and activists took to social media to tell the story of the war as it soon began to unfold. Opposition militias also sprang up.  And yet the Syrian government has largely spared Sweida the kind of mass arrests and bombing campaigns it waged elsewhere, seeing the province’s Druze as a politically sensitive minority group with whom it didn’t want to sour relations.  “Even though there was violence in Sweida too, the crackdown of the regime was not on the same scale of brutality as in other parts of the country,” says Tobias Lang, an analyst who has focused on Druze ...

Bellow you find some citations of myself from this summer, mostly in regard to the crucial attack on the Druze population of Suwaida' by ISIS which took place on July 25. Remember that about 30 woman and children are still hold captive by ISIS and no one seems to care. Syria's Druze minority: walking a war-time tightrope , Agence France Press (...) Syria's Druze have been split by the uprising that erupted in 2011 against President Bashar al-Assad, who had long portrayed himself as a protector of the country's minorities. Druze should not be seen "as being neutral in this war -- it's more multifaceted and the Druze are not a monolithic bloc," said Tobias Lang, an analyst focused on Druze populations in the Middle East. One of the first soldiers to defect from Syria's army in protest at its handling of demonstrations was Druze officer Khaldun Zeineddine, who later died in clashes against regime forces. Others remained firmly loyal, like Gene...

Very insightful piece about Samir Quntar and the Golan Druze by Nour Samaha, I am briefly cited as well. Blurred Future by Nour Samaha, Newsweek Middle East (...) Who was Kantar and What Was He Doing in Syria? At the age of 16, Kantar, a Lebanese Druze, was sentenced by an Israeli court to five life terms plus 47 years for his role in a 1979 military operation in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. He was eventually released in a prisoner exchange deal between Hezbollah and Israel in 2008.  He joined Hezbollah’s ranks soon after. Following the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, Kantar was tasked with heading up the Popular Syrian Resistance (PSR), an obscure group that was created in 2013. Backed by the Syrian government, and supervised and equipped by Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the PSR’s aim was to recruit local Syrians from the southern Quneitra province, near the Golan Heights. The recruits were tasked with carrying out operations ag...

I was quoted by Laure Stephan in Le Monde regarding the assassination of Samir Quntar : La mort en Syrie d’un symbole du Hezbollah Par Laure Stephan, Le Monde (...) Avec l’entrée du Hezbollah en Syrie – officiellement, à partir de 2013 – aux côtés du régime, Samir Kantar fait de nouveau parler de lui. Selon une source druze syrienne proche de l’opposition, il sillonne les villages druzes de la région de Kuneitra et du mont Hermon pour y recruter des combattants pro-Assad et jouit d’un « pouvoir de décision ». Les miliciens participent à des attaques contre les rebelles et les djihadistes syriens, en guerre contre le régime. Le chercheur Tobias Lang affirme que Samir Kantar recrute également des candidats pour des « activités contre Israël ». La zone constitue, pour le Hezbollah, un nouveau front potentiel avec l’Etat hébreu, moins direct que le Liban. (...)

Syria's Druze reject calls for anti-government uprising by Nour Samaha, Al Jazeera English On September 5, Balous, a popular anti-government Druze leader, had just finished eating lunch in a village in Syria's southern Sweida governorate. A short time later, an explosion hit the convoy Balous was travelling in - killing him, his right-hand man, and several others.   As the victims were arriving at the government hospital, there was another blast at the hospital's entrance. More than 25 people were killed and several dozen more were wounded in both bomb explosions. According to SANA, a Syrian state news agency, someone has since confessed to being responsible for the explosions and to belonging to the Nusra Front, one of the rebel groups fighting to end the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.(...)   According to Tobias Long, a researcher and analyst on minorities in the Middle East, the Druze have limited options moving forward. "It's too early to tel...

I'm cited in the leading French daily Le Monde about the situation in Suweida : Le dilemme de la minorité druze de Syrie Par Laure Stephan et Piotr Smolar Mais pour le journaliste et opposant Fadi Dahouk, réfugié à Beyrouth, cet alignement sur le régime pourrait changer, avec l’essor des Cheikhs de la dignité, une autre milice, formée en 2014 par un religieux druze, cheikh Ouadih Al-Bal’ous.  « Nous sommes contre tous ceux qui nous attaquent.  (…)  Si l’Etat nous attaque, il sera notre ennemi »,  affirme le cheikh, qui a pourtant combattu aux côtés du pouvoir. A Soueida, il a obtenu le retrait de points de contrôle militaires. Il a aussi réclamé le retour de prisonniers.  « Le fait qu’il ait eu gain de cause et qu’il puisse ouvertement critiquer la corruption ou les services de renseignements indique  qu’il a acquis une certaine notoriété, et que le régime ne veut pas se mettre à dos les forces druzes » , analyse le politolog...

I'm cited in a report about the Druze in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights featured on Qantara.de, the great online magazine run by Germany's international broadcaster. Squeezed between occupation and civil war   Ylenia Gostoli, Qantara.de (...)Apart from the protest mentioned above, however, most Golanese Druze have distanced themselves from the position of their co-religionists inside Israel. "Over the last decades, the relationships between the Druze in Israel and those in the Golan has been very cold and distant," said Tobias Lang, a political scientist who wrote a book about the Druze minority (...) "The majority of the Druze in Israel serve in the army and accepted a particularistic Israeli-Druze identity, whilst Golani Druze stayed loyal to the motherland." "We don't share most of their demands," said Salman Fakhr Edeen, a resident and researcher at a local human rights NGO. "I myself am against the war. To increase killi...

Last week I was cited by a couple of media about the current situation between Israel and the Syrian Druze (in English, French & German): Syrian Druze plight tests Israel’s policy of avoiding involvement in civil war Sean Savage, Jewish News Service “The Druze in Idlib and in the Golan/Hermon-region are in a very precarious situation and such a possibility [of massacres] exists, especially in Idlib. Here the Druze are totally at the mercy of Nusra, even though they have already twice declared their conversion to Islam,” Tobias Lang, an Austria-based political analyst and author of the book “Die Drusen in Libanon und Israel” (“The Druze in Lebanon and Israel”), told  JNS.org . (...)   “With the recent dynamic [of the] the massacre in Idlib, the growing Islamic State activity in eastern Sweida, the pushing of other rebels towards Sweida from the west, and the siege of the Druze town of Hader [in the Golan Heights], the Israeli Druze started to get involved on a...