Israeli warplanes killed one and wounded at least 20 in a series of airstrikes on Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday. Israel claimed the attack was to ‘protect’ the minority Druze community in Syria. But there’s more to the story.

The killing of the 12 Syrian children in the Golan Heights brought the Syrian Druze of Majdal Shams into confrontation with Israeli authorities, after Israel’s attempt to manipulate the tragedy to stoke further confrontation with Hezbollah.

Jonathan Ofir at a family seder in Israel, hearing the old stories of genocide: “You don’t want to throw away everything because some of it is rotten, you don’t want to make a family gathering political, but it’s hard to be part of it and reduce it to mere ‘tradition’. You’re wondering what you are enabling, indirectly, by not speaking out, or by saying too little, or by not opposing things more clearly.”

The Nation-State law, when Israel officially declared itself a Jewish state, was a wakeup call to many in the Druze community, but not to members of Urfod, a group of Druze activists who have refused military conscription. Urfod member Hadiya Kayoof tells Mondoweiss, “The law showed everyone [in the Druze community] that believed in the Israeli democracy, that there is no real democracy in Israel. Its either you are Jewish or non-Jewish, and if you are non-Jewish you won’t get your rights,” she said matter of factly, “it doesn’t matter if you serve in the army or not.”