Representatives of Syria’s Druze, Christian and Alawite communities warned members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on Thursday about the systematic targeting, persecution and atrocities their communities have endured under the new Syrian government led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa.

They urged the U.S. to condition the removal of remaining sanctions on Syria and its evolving partnership with the Syrian government on the government’s efforts to protect religious minorities and prevent further atrocities. Members of the commission, an independent body created by Congress, likewise expressed alarm about the pattern of violations against Syria’s minorities.

The Trump administration is currently urging Congress to fully repeal the remaining sanctions on Syria under the Caesar Civilian Protection Act, but some key players on Capitol Hill remain reticent given the human rights situation for minorities and other concerns inside Syria. The Senate passed legislation repealing the sanctions in its version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, and the provision could be included in the final bill.

Rita Khairbek, a Syrian Alawite therapist and activist, said that the Alawite community has faced discrimination in various aspects of public life, as well as disappearances, abductions, beatings, murder, rape and executions and frequent incitement to violence against them.

During an attack on Alawite communities earlier this year, Khairbek said that more than 5,000 people were killed in two days, including 300 children, a figure that could not be independently verified by Jewish Insider and is higher than other documented estimates that place the toll at around 1,500.

She described the attacks as a “genocide,” going on to describe a range of other violations —  “dehumanization, discrimination. … [We are] isolated … massacres, the long destruction of our community life. Women abducted, children orphaned and shrines destroyed.”

“As a therapist, I see the after image: chronic fear, sleepless children, maps where our presence is rubbed out,” she continued. “Genocide is not only by body, it’s by symbol and by the slow destruction of our name.”

Khairbek urged the United States to condition its future work with the Syrian government on its protection of minorities, support an independent investigation of the attack on the Alawite community, protect survivors and work to support Alawite civil society.

Nuri Kino, a Syriac Orthodox Christian investigative journalist, emphasized that the Syrian Christian community has shrunk dramatically since the start of the country’s civil war, a situation faced by other minority groups in Syria as well, and that the shrinking of minority communities has not stopped since the fall of the Assad regime.

Kino said that churches have been attacked and burned, families kidnapped, their homes destroyed and grave sites desecrated. And he said that the international community has responded with sympathy but no action.

“What is happening now is ethno-religious cleansing, a slow, systematic removal of indigenous minorities through fear, violence and dispossession,” Kino said. “Yet the international community has largely responded with silence. Sanctions were eased without guarantees for minority protection.”

He said that the U.S. must put pressure on the Syrian government, including conditioning aid and sanctions relief, on “clear measurable religious freedom benchmarks” to be verified by an independent international monitor, secure guarantees that the government will protect religious sites, fund Syrian aid and human rights groups led by minorities and establish a U.S. special envoy for religious freedom in Syria reporting directly to the secretary of state.

Jamil Ammar, a Druze activist, said that the campaign of violence against the Druze community in the southern Syrian city of Suweida was deliberate, planned and even rehearsed in a smaller Druze community. 

The attacks began, Ammar said, with a disinformation campaign to incite hatred against the Druze community, followed quickly by an assault by armed forces from both the government and Bedouin tribes. The massacres, he added, have come immediately after disarmament operations by state forces. And he accused al-Sharaa of publicly thanking and supporting those responsible for the massacres.

Ammar said that the attacks have included an ISIS-style campaign of psychological warfare, where fighters have raped and killed victims and left their bodies in public places to intimidate the Druze and attempt to chase them off the land.

He characterized the current U.S. approach to the Syrian government as “wishful thinking” that was ultimately “transactional” and would create a “security risk.”

He urged the U.S. to monitor the new school curricula in Syria — through which he accused the government of attempting to indoctrinate a new generation of extremists — to consult with the entire array of the Druze community and to work to empower moderate Syrian Sunnis at the expense of the Sunni extremists he said currently control the Syrian government.

The witnesses differed in their recommendations to the commission on whether the U.S. should support a program of decentralization in Syria, in which local sectarian groups would be empowered at the expense of the central government and would be armed to maintain their own security.

Some argued that would be the only way to ensure the safety and protection of the minority communities, while others said that decentralization is not a viable solution and might only further exacerbate the existing problems and create more conflict.

Commissioners Meir Soloveichik and Steven Schneck also expressed concerns about the situation for religious minorities in Syria.

Soloveichick said he was “alarmed” by the Syrian government’s “lack of will or ability” to stop the attacks against a range of religious minorities, and noted that reports indicate that the Syrian government authorities were involved in and exacerbated the violence.

He also highlighted that HTS, the rebel group which al-Sharaa formerly led, has long been a cause for concern for the commission given its violations of religious freedom in the territory it controlled.

Schneck said he was also concerned about the “pronounced deterioration” of conditions for religious minorities in Syria. He further noted that, as of 2024, the commission found that nonstate actors like HTS had been, prior to the Assad regime’s fall, worse violators of religious liberties than the regime itself.

Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who also testified before the commission, painted a more complex picture of the situation, arguing that some incidents should be seen as political or acts of vigilantism targeting those involved with the Assad regime rather than sectarian violence, though he also acknowledged there have been real and serious massacres and other incidents.

“This goes to a fundamental issue related to Syria’s transition thus far, the incomplete and slow transitional justice process,” Zelin said. “The biggest issue today now in Syria is a lack of trust amongst many communities, and therefore a lack of transparency is undermining all of this. It’s worth noting, because there is no process to deal with bringing people involved in war crimes during the war to justice.”

Zelin also said that al-Sharaa has expressed a commitment to the rule of law and its equal application to all groups and that the Syrian government has attempted to engage at some levels with minority communities. But he acknowledged al-Sharaa himself has not met with the Alawite community.

Zelin said the the U.S. should urge the Syrian government to limit access to weapons and decommission nonstate forces, be more transparent about transitional justice processes and implement a long-term national and local dialogue project among majority and minority communities — rather than the brief, one-time dialogue convened by the new government.

Amid clashes between Druze residents of Syria, Bedouins, militias supporting Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and Syrian government forces in recent weeks, videos and eyewitness testimony has emerged of brutal executions, torture and rape in Sweida, a Druze town in southern Syria. 

A group of Israelis has been working together to provide medical aid to Syrian Druze women who were allegedly sexually assaulted, an Israeli Druze source who is part of the initiative told Jewish Insider on Wednesday. There have been reports of rape of Druze girls and women, including the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl, though the number of victims is still unknown. 

Israel began transferring NIS 2 million (over $600,000) in humanitarian aid to the Sweida area in recent days, including food, first aid kits and other medical equipment. Hundreds of Israelis donated blood to be sent to Syria. On Sunday, four Israeli Air Force helicopters reportedly reached the hospital in Sweida, which was attacked in last week’s clashes.

In addition to the official aid packages, Druze Israeli women attempted to smuggle emergency contraception delaying or preventing ovulation, to minimize the likelihood of pregnancy among women reportedly raped in the clashes. However, those packages were intercepted.

The Druze Israeli women are continuing their effort to send other kinds of medical aid to victims of rape in the attacks, the source said.

Laila Khalife, an Israeli Druze activist, said that pro-government militias and Bedouin in the area have “targeted aid for the Druze community, whether it’s food or medicine, it’s been stolen. Even medical crews were killed so they can’t help.” 

The IDF declined to comment on the matter.

One widely circulated video showed a reporter from the Qatar-backed Al-Araby channel interviewing a Bedouin man who claimed to have kidnapped the Druze women and children in his car. A woman in the car confirmed that she was Druze and that she and her family had hid in their home for a week before being taken captive. Reports indicated that 97 Druze women were missing on Tuesday, though Druze sources in Israel put the number as high as 1,000. 

Khalife, a resident of Maghar in northern Israel, is part of a small group of Israelis — Druze and Jewish — who have been in constant contact with the Druze community in Syria and are working to provide them with aid.

She said that “almost 1,000 women were abducted and many more were murdered, some were raped before they were murdered and many were brutally violated. Their husbands and sons were murdered in front of them … There is no one left to fight for [the abducted women].”

Khalife expressed concern that the missing women would be “forced to convert to Islam, violated and used for sex trafficking.”

The women who remain in Sweida are “struggling with emotional and physical scars,” Khalife said.

Attacking Druze women is particularly painful for the community, Khalife added, because “in the Druze religion, [women] are sacred and protected. They are symbols of honor, of dignity.”

Khalife said that a fatwa, the Islamic religious ruling, calling to attack Sweida permitted the sexual violence: “It’s a vile war tactic that existed hundreds and thousands of years ago. It has no place in today’s world … The human conscience cannot comprehend it.”

Khalife called on women worldwide “to raise protests in every street, every city and every country. Women should not remain silent.”

“It’s like Oct. 7,” she added, referring to the 2023 Hamas attacks on southern Israel. “The world still doesn’t believe and doesn’t condemn all of the war crimes. The women’s organizations did not condemn the rape and violation of women on Oct. 7. And that was only one day — this has been more than a week [in Sweida].” 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported earlier this week that 634 Druze were killed in the clashes in Sweida, about half of whom were combatants, and 194 of whom were executed, including a U.S. citizen, 35-year-old Hosam Saraya. In addition, 342 members of government-affiliated militias were killed, as well as 21 members of Bedouin tribes in the region.  

Though U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who is also serving as the Trump administration’s Syria envoy, claimed that “these atrocities that are happening … are not by Syrian regime troops,” the Syrian Observatory said it documented the massacre of 12 members of one family by Syrian Defense Ministry forces.

Over 150,000 Israelis are members of the Druze religious and ethnic minority. The population is deeply integrated in Israel — most of the men serve in the IDF, including at very high ranks. Israel has committed to protecting the Druze in Syria, and the IDF launched airstrikes in Syria last week, aiming to stop the attacks in Sweida, some 25 miles from the border. As many as 1,000 Israeli Druze illegally crossed into Syria to try to defend their brethren. 

Khalife said that the attacks are “a horrifying act of ethnic cleansing, not just fighting in a war zone. We are witnessing hell on earth in real time, entire villages being invaded and crushed.”

She said that the names and photos of some Druze university students in Damascus have been published on social media with calls to rape, abduct and kill them.

Druze in Israel continue to be in contact with their Syrian counterparts to try to help.

“For the Druze community, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, we are very connected,” Khalife said. “People don’t understand the bond we share. It’s like having a twin, and you can feel their pain.”

Israel struck the Syrian Defense Ministry’s headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday in response to violence against the country’s Druze minority, a week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in the White House of the “opportunity for stability, security and eventually peace” with Syria.

The strikes came after clashes between Druze and Bedouin groups that began on Sunday, leaving as many as 250 dead over four days in Sweida, some 25 miles from the border with Israel and in the area of Syria that Israel seeks to have demilitarized. 

Syrian government forces entered the fray on Tuesday, saying they aimed to stop the fighting and bring about a ceasefire, which they said they had reached on Wednesday. Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly the head of the Syrian branch of Al Qaida, seeks to disarm Druze and other militias and have them integrate under the new government.

Israeli Druze called for Israel to intervene from the outset of the violence on Sunday, saying that their Syrian counterparts were being massacred, raped and tortured by forces aligned with al-Sharaa. In Israel, videos and images circulated of Druze religious figures’ mustaches being forcibly shaved off by men in military fatigues.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday afternoon that Washington has “engaged all the parties involved in the clashes in Syria. We have agreed on specific steps that will bring this troubling and horrifying situation to an end tonight. This will require all parties to deliver on the commitments they have made and this is what we fully expect them to do.”

An Israeli official said that the U.S. had been in talks to stop the violence in Syria since Monday. 

Reda Mansour, a Middle Eastern Studies professor at Reichman University, former Israeli ambassador to Brazil and a member of Israel’s Druze community, told Jewish Insider that “there is not really one Syrian army; it’s different armed groups that do what they think. It will take time until everyone is convinced to hold their fire.” 

Mansour expressed hope that the Israeli strikes convinced al-Sharaa to “stop the rampage.” 

The former ambassador compared the violence against the Druze in Syria to the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and said that the Druze in Syria had not faced such violence since the 1925 rebellion against the French Mandate.

“In the rebellion against the French, it was mostly between soldiers,” Mansour said. “This ISIS and Al Qaida-style attack is a massacre, rape, burning of holy sites, torture of the elderly and religious leaders.” 

Mansour also said the community has not had electricity in three days and is running out of food and medical supplies, after attacks on the city’s hospital and its medical staff.

Syrian Druze “are in distress and they are asking [Israel] for help all of the time,” Mansour said, and argued that “al-Sharaa wants to get rid of the Druze.” 

“If he wanted to stop the attack, it wouldn’t have happened,” Mansour said. “His people said they are coming to Sweida to defend the Druze from the Bedouin, and then they conquered Druze villages. The people murdering and torturing the elderly are wearing his military’s uniforms.” 

On Tuesday, dozens of Israeli Druze men began crossing into Syria, breaching a border fence near the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights. 

Netanyahu called on the Israeli Druze to remain in Israel: “You could be murdered, you could be taken hostage, and you are impeding the efforts of the IDF,” he said. 

Yet, on Wednesday, the number of Israeli Druze in Syria rose to at least 1,000. The IDF also used tear gas and other crowd control methods to stop Syrian Druze from crossing into Israel.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir said that Israel is “acting with determination to prevent hostile elements from establishing a presence beyond the border, to protect the citizens of the State of Israel, and to prevent the harming of Druze civilians … We will not allow southern Syria to become a terror stronghold.”

Zamir called on Druze Israelis to “uphold the law and preserve your lives. We are committed to you and your security and are doing everything possible to support you. I have ordered a further reinforcement of intelligence and strike capabilities in order to increase the pace of strikes and halt the assaults against the Druze in Syria as needed.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who has held a hard line on al-Sharaa since the fall of the Assad regime last year, called on the new Syrian government “to come to its senses and to restore order,” lest it lose control of the country and risk the economic engagement it has sought with the West. 

Sa’ar called on the international community to speak out against the violence against minorities in Syria, asking rhetorically, “What else needs to happen? What are they still waiting for?”

“We are seeing a recurring phenomenon of persecution of minorities to the point of murder and pogroms in Syria,” Sa’ar said in a briefing to reporters on Wednesday. “Sometimes it is the regime’s forces. Sometimes it is Jihadist militias that are the basis of the regime. And usually, it is both.”

Sa’ar pointed to violence against the Syrian Alawite community, the burning and bombing of churches in recent weeks and repeated waves of violence against Druze in Syria. 

The foreign minister said that Israel will act to keep regime forces out of southern Syria and protect its border, and to protect the Druze minority.

Sa’ar also took aim at Western leaders looking to engage with al-Sharaa. “This is not a democratically elected regime,” he said. “Because sometimes, when I am in political meetings [with foreign counterparts], people talk to me about the ‘transition.’ This is not an elected regime at all. This is a regime that … took control by force.”

Sa’ar later spoke to his counterparts in the EU, Germany and Greece, pointing out that the EU set the protection of minority rights as a condition for lifting sanctions on Syria. Sa’ar said there is a “consistent pattern of exploiting these riots [against minorities] for the regime’s interests.” He also called the Syrian government’s claim that there would be an independent investigation of the events a “farce,” noting that al-Sharaa made a similar statement about the massacre of Alawites in March, and no results have materialized.

However, IDF Lt.-Col. (res.) Sarit Zehavi, founder and president of the Alma Research and Education Center focusing on the security of Israel’s northern border, argued to JI that “Israel really had no choice.”

“It had to send a sharp and clear message of defense to the Druze in Syria because it committed to defending them, because the Druze in Israel are real partners,” she said.

In addition, Zehavi said that “whoever doesn’t protect minorities in Syria, especially those on the border [with Israel], will end up being attacked by the same jihadis.”

That being said, Zehavi doubted that the strike on the Syrian Defense Ministry would be effective and said that Israel should focus on targets that are relevant specifically to stopping the attacks on Syrian Druze.

Michael Doran, director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute, questioned whether Israel was certain al-Sharaa was behind the violence in Sweida. Doran wrote that he is not convinced that al-Sharaa “traveled to Baku and met with Israelis there, [and] then chose to provoke a conflict with [Israel] over the Druze,” referring to a meeting between Syrian and Israeli officials over the weekend.

“A policy that holds al-Sharaa responsible for forces he doesn’t control won’t strengthen him—it will weaken him,” Doran wrote on X. “In practice, it becomes a tacit, perhaps unwitting, vote for a disintegrated Syria. But a disintegrated Syria serves Iran more than it serves Israel. And it won’t help with Turkey either.” 

Last week, Netanyahu praised President Donald Trump in the White House for having “opened up a channel” with the Syrian regime for negotiations. Talks were underway, with Israeli representatives reportedly meeting with al-Sharaa in the UAE and Azerbaijan last week, for a non-aggression pact between the countries, though not for normalization.

An Israeli official speaking about the future of Israel-Syria talks on condition of anonymity said on Wednesday that Israeli “policy is not based on illusions, but on reality. We want security first.” 

Recently, Israel was willing to engage more with the regime in Syria because “things stabilized a bit,” the official said, “but we are not deluding ourselves. They are talking nicely … but there is a difference between what they say and what they do. As their neighbors, we cannot ignore what they do. We send messages [to Western countries] that reflect these things.”

Mansour, who is an expert on modern Syrian history, was skeptical that negotiations between Israel and Syria can be fruitful, saying, “There is not much hope for a political culture that will create stability … There is an inability of the Sunnis, the majority, to understand and accept that there are many minorities, over 30% of the population.”

The former ambassador said that regime-affiliated forces have been harassing minorities on a daily basis. “They enter Christian areas and call on loudspeakers to convert to Islam,” he said. “They check couples to see if they’re married and if not they harass them. There is daily pressure on the Druze, Christians, Alawites and Kurds, and it cannot continue. When they are threatened, they will react.”

Al-Sharaa, Mansour said, “does not look like he’s capable or wants to change it. He wears a suit and tie, but he was in Al Qaida from age 16 … He hinted he’s willing to let Israel keep the Golan Heights and that he wants peace, but on the ground the signs are not encouraging. He speaks nicely, but on the ground he wants to get rid of the Druze — and if he succeeds, he’ll attack the Kurds next.” 

“The problem,” Mansour lamented, “is that the Americans believed his show.” 

Zehavi said that Israel is likely to return to talks but will be better informed about where the al-Sharaa regime is headed after recent events.

“The first question is whether [al-Sharaa] controls his forces so they won’t massacre minorities, whether he really controls Syria,” she said. 

This week also clarified Israel’s red lines for al-Sharaa, she said: “It’s clear why it is important for southern Syria to be demilitarized. You cannot mix Druze and jihadi militias.”