The first thing Naela Fakher Eldin sees when she wakes up every morning is a picture of her 11-year-old daughter, Alma, who was killed by a Hezbollah rocket strike two years ago on a soccer field in their Golan Heights village.
“I smile at her,” Eldin said. “Good morning, my princess; it’s another day,” she tells her.
The 41-year-old mathematics teacher and Israeli Druze bereaved mother has become an outspoken public advocate for resilience and unity in Israel since the attack, which killed 12 youngsters aged 10 to 16, using her deep faith to carry on.
“If you have one reason to fall down, you have a thousand to stand up,” she told JNS.
Eldin, whose Druze family took Israeli citizenship after the attack, said she has been comforted by Israelis who have reached out to offer their support.
“I saw the humanity of the Jewish people in their eyes and in their hearts,” she said.
Realignment with Israel
The deadly July 27, 2024, attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams on the slopes of Mount Hermon, and the subsequent violence targeting Druze communities in neighboring Syria the following year by forces loyal to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, have led to a major realignment of the Druze community on the Golan Heights with Israel.
A mystic sect that broke away from Shi’ite Islam in the 11th century, the Druze trace their spiritual lineage and ancestry to the biblical Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law. They are considered heretical by Sunni extremists and have been targeted by radical Islamic groups, most recently in Syria.
More than 150,000 Druze live in Israel, mostly in the Galilee, representing about 1.6% of the population, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
Fiercely loyal to the country in which they live, most Israeli Druze men serve in the IDF, where they have long been known for their high rate of enlistment in combat units.
The Druze on the Golan Heights—which Israel annexed in 1981 and whose sovereignty there was recognized by U.S. President Donald Trump in 2019—had historically maintained closer social and political ties with Syria. But in a seismic shift, they are increasingly embracing Israel following the Majdal Shams tragedy and the subsequent attacks on their brethren in Syria.
About half of the nearly 30,000 Druze residents of the Golan now hold Israeli citizenship.
‘We are still choosing life and light’
For Eldin, everything changed that fateful summer evening.
Her two sons had left the soccer field just a minute before the rocket, carrying about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of explosives, struck. They had just missed their sister, who was killed in the blast, their mother recounted.
“I have a deep faith in God,” she said. “But I chose to keep going, to build a bridge of humanity.”
Over the last two years, strengthened by the support of Israelis and foreign visitors, she has become an outspoken voice for coexistence and unity in Israel, including taking part in the 2026 documentary film Ima, Hebrew for “mother,” about resilience.
The Druze mother was a panelist at a Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund world leadership conference on Wednesday in the Upper Galilee, during a session titled “My North: A Mosaic of Resilience, Action and Hope.”
“The people working on the ground in northern Israel are heroes,” said KKL-JNF World Chairman Eyal Ostrinsky. “Holding a community together through a crisis, amid an ongoing war, and preserving its people’s ability to dream of a better future is one of the most difficult tasks to undertake.”
Despite her loss, Eldin still holds fast to those dreams.
“You planted trees for future generations, to grow strong and take roots,” she told the audience. “We must do the same with our children.”
She still remembers the elderly Israeli man who traveled six hours from his home in southern Israel several months after her daughter’s funeral to pay his respects. He knocked on her door and asked, “Are you Alma’s mother?” She only wishes she had asked his name.
“I saw the heart of the Jewish people,” Eldin said.
“The north—which is the beating heart of Israel—paid a heavy price, but we are still choosing life and light,” she added.
