Israel's top Druze religious figure is publicly crediting Benjamin Netanyahu with rescuing his people from slaughter. Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of Israel's Druze community, spoke out after the prime minister revealed that he talked directly with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa during last year's sectarian bloodshed. Tarif describes the July 2025 violence in Sweida, in the Druze Mountain, as the gravest disaster in the community's modern history, saying thousands were killed or wounded, including children, infants, women, and the elderly. He says the world stayed silent for days, so he personally appealed to Netanyahu to act at once. In his account, Netanyahu's order to strike the Defense Ministry in Damascus and hit thousands of fighters heading toward the Druze Mountain is what finally brought the killing to an end.

Tarif compared the images from Sweida to the horrors of October 7 and says the decision will be remembered permanently in Druze history as an existential turning point. He also credited Netanyahu with ordering civilian and medical aid to villages in the Hermon Crown area and across the border, acting forcefully after the Majdal Shams massacre of children during the Iron Swords War, and ensuring that Druze could stay in their villages in southern Lebanon without harm. The sheikh described the bond between the Druze, the Jewish people, and the State of Israel as a strong and stable alliance that goes beyond borders and political camps. These are Tarif's own claims and his own reading of events, and the Sweida violence remains a deeply contested subject, with the Syrian government having previously framed its troop deployment there as an effort to restore order. Even so, the praise shows just how powerful the Druze community's loyalty to Netanyahu has become, and it raises fresh questions about what really happened behind the scenes during those bloody days.