by Richard Ghazal, Juicy Ecumenism
Editor’s note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story from WORLD radio with In Defense of Christians Executive Director Richard Ghazal. Listen to the story at the WORLD website here.
MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 22nd of July.
Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.
NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.
First up, a massacre in Syria.
Syrian government forces are being blamed for a brutal attack last week on the Druze minority in the country’s south. Reports say more than 350 people were killed. Many of them slaughtered inside a local hospital. Gruesome video has come out, apparently showing torture.
REICHARD: It’s the second mass killing of a religious or ethnic group in Syria in just four months.
But so far, the world’s attention has focused less on the victims and more on Israel’s military response, with airstrikes on Syria’s military headquarters in Damascus.
EICHER: Joining us now to talk about the attacks is Richard Ghazal. He’s Executive Director of the nonprofit In Defense of Christians. He is also a retired US Air Force intelligence officer and military lawyer.
REICHARD: Richard, good morning.
RICHARD GHAZAL: Good morning Mary, thanks for having me.
REICHARD: Richard, let’s start with some context. Who are the Druze?
GHAZAL: Well, the Druze are an ethnic minority, a religious minority in Syria. They don’t just live in Syria. They exist historically in southern Syria, southern Lebanon and northern Israel. They’re currently one of the largest ethnic minorities in Syria. They’ve been protected for several decades under the Assad government, the former Assad government. Now that that government is no more, of course, they are subject to retribution and all kinds of atrocities that we currently witness.
REICHARD: Some media outlets say this is primarily a tribal conflict between Bedouins and Druze…but others say rebel fighters now in the Syrian military are the ones carrying out the worst atrocities. Who’s responsible here?
GHAZAL: Well, it certainly is a tribal dispute, or at least that’s how it began. It’s following decades, even centuries, of conflict between these tribes, the Bedouin Sunnis, as well as the Druze, since the fall of the government that kind of held it all together, the civility, so to speak, quote, “civility.” It’s been all out war, you might say, between them taking out years of aggression in recent weeks. In recent days, however, you’ve seen the Syrian transitional government become involved—some say passively, and some say quite actively and aggressively—in this conflict. So it’s really morphed from a tribal tribal matter to one of political and religious violence.