Israeli Druse leader calls for action to prevent ‘Druse Holocaust’ in Syria/Nusra Front Tries to Reassure Druze after Shoot-out/ Jumblat Calls for Confronting Plots after Deadly Syria Raid on Druze

Israeli Druse leader calls for action to prevent ‘Druse Holocaust’ in Syria 
KARINE ROZKOVSKY, REUTERS/06/14/2015
Thousands of Israeli Druse demonstrated in the North on Saturday night in protest of the slaughter of their kin by al-Qaida-linked rebels in embattled Syria. The al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front acknowledged on Saturday that its members were involved in the killing of Druse villagers in northwestern Syria this week, saying they had violated orders and would face justice. Twenty Druse villagers were reportedly killed in the village of Qalb Loze in Idlib province on Wednesday when Nusra Front members opened fire in an incident that spiraled from their attempt to confiscate a house. Protests by member of the Druse community in Israel occurred particularly in the northern towns of Kfar Rameh, Kfar Sumei and in the Golan Heights. Jaber Hamed, the head of the Sajur Council and Chairman of the Forum of the Druse and Circassian Authority, said the Druse community intended on taking action and making a strong statement against the “massacre of our brothers in Syria.””Our streets are boiling with fury, and we are afraid things have spiraled out of control,” he said. Hamed called for an urgent convening of senior Israeli officials to assess the situation in Syria, and help avert the “Druse Holocaust.””We are in immediate danger, without reason. Therefore, we call on all leaders, including our Muslim brothers, to unite in joining our call for all factions in Syria to stop the massacre of Druse and others,” he stressed. “Who more than the Jewish people should understand what we are going through these days, as a minority in the world,” Hamed added. The Druse community practices a religion viewed as heretical by the puritanical brand of Sunni Islamism espoused by al-Qaida and Islamic State, the two most powerful insurgent groups in Syria. The Druse faith, related to Islam, Christianity and Judaism, is practiced by around 1.5 million people, mostly in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Nusra Front Tries to Reassure Druze after Shoot-out
Naharnet/May 14/15
Al-Qaida’s Syria affiliate said on Saturday it would prosecute members involved in an shoot-out in northwest Idlib province that killed at least 20 members of the country’s Druze minority. In an official statement published on Twitter, Al-Nusra Front sought to allay fears of further attacks on minorities, saying that some of its members acted “in clear violation of the leadership’s views”.
On Thursday, residents of the village of Qalb Lawzah protested after a Tunisian Al-Nusra leader tried to seize a Druze man’s home, accusing him of being loyal to the Syrian regime, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. “The Tunisian leader gathered his men and accused the Druze residents of the village of blasphemy and opened fire on them killing at least 20 people, among them elderly people and at least one child,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. In its statement, Al-Nusra said it had immediately dispatched a committee to Qalb Lawzah to “reassure the residents that what happened was unjustifiable”. “This village and its people are still safe under our protection and in areas under our control. Everyone who was involved in this incident will be referred to an Islamic court and will be held accountable,” the jihadist group said. A vast majority of Idlib province is under the control of a rebel alliance that includes Al-Nusra. The shoot-out comes less than a month after Al-Nusra’s chief tried to play down fears that it would target minorities. Abu Mohamed al-Jolani said in a televised interview that his group would protect minorities who “leave their religion and leave (Syrian President) Bashar Assad”. Extremist groups in Syria, including Al-Nusra and its jihadist rival the Islamic State group, have been accused of targeting minorities and civilians. Agence France Presse

Jumblat Calls for Confronting Plots after Deadly Syria Raid on Druze
Naharnet/May 14/15
Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat stressed on Saturday that the Druze sect would confront “plots,” urging his community to overcome the current “ordeal.” “We will confront the ordeal for the sake of national unity,” Jumblat said following talks with al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc leader MP Fouad Saniora and an accompanying delegation. “We will confront plots that are shredding the Arab and Islamic world,” he said at his residence in Beirut’s Clemenceau area. On Friday, Jumblat tried to calm members of Syria’s minority sect after a deadly raid there killed as many as 20 Druze villagers. He said the attack earlier this week on Qalb al-Lawzah village in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province was an “individual” incident. Syria’s al-Qaida branch, al-Nusra Front, killed at least 20 Druze members there on Wednesday. The Idlib killings were the deadliest since Syria’s civil war started in March 2011 against the minority Druze sect, which has been split between supporters and opponents of President Bashar Assad — but has largely stayed out of the fighting. Saniora, who visited Jumblat on Saturday to extend his condolences to the PSP chief on behalf of al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri said: “We should stand side by side.”He called for an end to “behaviors that expand the fires of strife.”“We are seeking to avoid them,” the MP stressed. On Thursday, Wiam Wahab, a former minister and Druze politician close to Assad, called on all the Druze in the southern Syrian province of Sweida to carry arms and defend their villages, as opposition fighters reached the region that has been spared Syria’s four-year civil war. Wahab urged Assad’s government to supply the residents with weapons. He also warned of retaliatory attacks against al-Nusra Front members in Lebanon in retaliation for the killings in Qalb al-Lawzah.

‘Israel conspired in massacre of Syrian Druse,’ Lebanese officials say
J.Post/May13/15
Walid Jumblatt, the prominent Lebanese Druse leader, said on Friday that Israel’s intervention was not needed to help his community in Syria just days after a massacre by Nusra Front gunmen claimed the lives of 25 Druse villagers in Idlib. The leader of Lebanon’s Druse said the incident was an isolated one. “Until this moment, numbers say that more than 350,000 were killed in Syria by the Syrian regime and there are more than seven million refugees displaced inside Syria as well as three million outside Syria, between Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey,” said Jumblatt, who is also a member of Lebanon’s parliament and the head of the Progressive Socialist Party. “This was an individual incident and I will deal with it politically through my local and international calls,” he said. Jumblatt, for decades a fierce critic of the Assad regime, went on to accuse Israel and the Syrian government of collaborating to perpetuate the sectarianism and divisions within the war-torn country. Another Druse official in Lebanon, Sheikh Naim Hasan, condemned the killings. He was quoted by the Lebanese newspaper Daily Star as saying that the continued divisions in Syria would serve to benefit “the Zionist regime.” Hasan and Jumblatt were responding to Lebanese Druse who have traditionally supported the government of President Bashar Assad. One of them is Democratic Party leader MP Talal Arslan, who said that Israel had conspired with Islamist terrorists to carry out the Idlib killings. “There is a conspiracy in the Arab media, supported by Israel and the West, to distort the image of Druse in Syria and say that they are weak and fearful,” Arslan said. “I cannot but link what happened with the Druze in Idlib to the joint Israeli-takfiri plan to undermine Syria,” he said. Israeli Druse expressed their anxiety last week, saying they are very concerned about the fate of their brethren across the border in Syria. “We are worried about the Syrian Druse and demand that the world not stand by and do nothing,” said Druse and Circassian Local Councils Forum head Jaber Hamoud. Hamoud, who served 25 years in the army and is also the head of the municipality of Sajur, a Druse town in the Galilee, said that if the world would arm the Druse, they would be able to defend themselves and help prevent Islamic State from reaching Israel and Jordan. “The Druse love peace, but they know how to defend themselves. They need the means, not knives and axes,” he added. President Reuven Rivlin expressed his concern to the United States on Wednesday about the fate of the Druse minority in Syria, saying around 500,000 of them were under threat from Islamist militants in an area near the Israeli border. Israel’s Druse, some of whom have reached the senior echelons of Israel’s military and the government, have been calling for help on behalf of their brethren in Syria, both at home and abroad. “What is going on just now is intimidation and threat to the very existence of half a million Druse on the Mount of Druse which is very close to the Israeli border,” President Reuven Rivlin said after a meeting with General Martin Dempsey, the US military’s top officer. Ariel Ben Solomon and Reuters contributed to this report.