Right now, the Druze community of southern Syria – our neighbors just across the border – is being massacred by the new ISIS/Taliban leadership running Syria. It is heart-wrenching to witness.
Once again, we hear the same tired, empty rhetoric from Israeli leaders: “We call on the international community to intervene…”
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar stood at the President’s Residence and said: “I call on the international community to fulfill its duty to protect minorities in Syria, and specifically the Druze, from the regime and its terror militias, and not to turn a blind eye to the horrors taking place in Syria in recent months.”
This is not leadership. This is outsourcing morality.
It is also a death sentence for the Druze and every other minority in Syria.
The so-called “international community” that Sa’ar is appealing to is busy legitimizing the Taliban-like terrorist regime that now runs Syria – an ISIS-style leadership that has taken over that country under the nose of the West and is being quietly embraced by Europe and Arab states desperate for stability at any price.
We in Israel should know better.
We have the history. We have the military capability. And we have the moral clarity – if only we choose to use it.
We must stop pleading for international action. Israel is the regional power.
We are the only force in the region with both the military strength and the moral conscience to stop the bloodshed and protect the innocent.
The only way to truly protect the Druze and other minorities in Syria is for Israel to secure control over southern Syria, up to Damascus.
Not for colonial conquest. Not for empire. But for life. For stability. For justice.
Just as we have a right, and a duty, to destroy Hamas in Gaza, we have a moral obligation not to stand by while our neighbors are butchered just beyond our northern border.
This is not about altruism. It is about moral realism.
The same jihadist terror that slaughters Druze today will come for us tomorrow.
The same regime that butchers minorities in the Syrian city of Sweida would happily unleash terror in the Golan.
And if Israel does not step up and shape the future of Syria’s southern region, Iran, Hezbollah, ISIS, and other terror entities will.
We can no longer afford to be prisoners of the old way of thinking – waiting for America, Europe, or the UN to “save” anyone in this region. That world no longer exists, if it ever did.
Israel must now embrace its responsibility, and we must make it clear to our leadership: The future of this region will either be shaped by Israel, or it will be shaped against us.
Let’s stop calling for others to act. Let’s be who we already are: a moral superpower with the strength to change the course of history.
For the Druze. For the region. For Israel. And for the world.
The writer is the host of the “Pulse of Israel” daily video/podcast and the CEO of 12Tribe Films Foundation.