“Welcome—come see for yourself”

I spent the day in Majdal Shams, a red‑roofed Druze community of 12,000 tucked beneath the snow‑capped slopes of Mount Hermon. ¹* “I always assumed Druze villages were tense, maybe even hostile,” I confessed in last night’s livestream. “I was wrong.” Within minutes of parking, shop‑owners waved us inside for coffee; teenagers practiced English on my cameraman; older men insisted on walking us to the border fence so we could film safely.

“Hey, where are you from? We’re glad you’re here!” —multiple residents, Majdal Shams

That hospitality masks a raw wound. On 27 July 2024 a Hezbollah missile exploded on the town’s soccer field, killing twelve children under 12. Their photos—sun‑bleached but meticulously tended—still hang on the chain‑link. Every local I interviewed knew at least one victim.

The fence and the phones 

From our live position you can see two layers of 12‑foot anti‑climb fencing, razor‑wire and an IDF patrol road. Mobile coverage was so poor I “hyper‑threaded” four Israeli SIM cards to push the stream out—a reminder that these high mountain villages sit literally at the end of the line. Just beyond the wire lies Hadar, the first Syrian Druze village. That’s where an estimated 1,000 Israeli Druze men crossed last week, illegally, carrying supplies and the conviction that “if the IDF can’t protect our cousins, we will.”

One of those men—a newly minted Israeli citizen in his mid‑20s—told me what he saw:

“I reached Hadar and finally met family I’d only known on WhatsApp. Their homes are third‑world. They have no power or medicine. The road to Suwayda is sniper alley—ISIS towns everywhere. They want to kill every Druze.”