Days after Hezbollah attacked the Druze village of Majdal Shams, killing 12 young people, Eman Safady is still in acute shock. “I am hurting,” she says. “When the event occurred, I called my contacts in the Golan who were at the scene, and I heard the screams of the mothers, women, and men. This still does not leave my mind.”

Eman and I first met in Israel in May, when I travelled there as part of a press delegation. Like most British Jews, I knew virtually nothing about the Druze, and was keen to find out more. As I learned about her own extraordinary achievements, I asked if I could interview her about her life and her culture for this paper. That interview took place last Friday. The very next day, Hezbollah attacked, unexpectedly thrusting the Druze and – as a spokesperson for that community – Eman, herself, into the international spotlight. “I would have liked for us to be known under happier circumstances,” she acknowledges.

Eman lives in Haifa but grew up in the Druze village of Abu-Snan in the north of Israel as one of five children, her mother a primary school teacher and her father, a businessman. They spoke Arabic at home but Eman considers Hebrew to be her first language. She learned English at school and, later, studied English and American culture.

From early on, it was clear she wasn’t a typical Druze girl. “I am a minority within a minority,” she says. “Although we have a lot of educated women – doctors, judges, a Knesset member – it’s not usual for a Druze woman to become a journalist.”

In 1995, aged eight, dreaming of becoming a journalist

The Druze are a unique minority Arabic, ethno-religious group, scattered around the world but found mainly in the Middle East, with communities in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. There are 160,000 Druze in Israel (27,000 in the Golan Heights) living in 16 villages in the north of the country because they are “mountain people”. They are fiercely loyal to the Israeli state, regarding themselves as Israeli as well as Druze.

Like Jews, they have faced frequent persecution and, also like Jews, they have no interest in converting other people to their religion, and frown on marrying out, to protect the survival of their community. Women have rights and can divorce their husbands. Jews and Druze are also linked historically – the Druze believe the two peoples were together in Egypt: “One of our five prophets is Jethro – Zipporah’s father and Moses’s father-in-law,” Eman explains. “We have lived together with good relations and politics ever since then.”

As for the mystical 1008-year-old Druze religion, which began as an offshoot of Islam, but also has influences from Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism and Buddhism, among other belief systems, it is shrouded in secrecy, with little known about its practices beyond the community. Its holy book, the Epistles of Wisdom, teaches unity, peace and support. One festival celebrates the story of Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of his son Isaac. “We believe that we have to sacrifice our money, our bad habits, our egos, to become very good humans – wise and modest,” says Eman.

The Druze also believe in reincarnation, which Eman says will help her community to deal with the tragic loss of their children in the Hezbollah attack: “It is the most important thing that can help us all in the aftermath of this tragic event, especially for the families who believe that the souls of their children have moved to another incarnation. It will help them cope, comfort them, and give them hope that they will meet their children in the next life.”

Eman knew from a very early age that she wanted to be a journalist. She believed she was the reincarnated soul of a leader, and saw journalism as her destiny. She was inspired by Lebanese journalist Nidalee Ahmadieh, and by Oprah Winfrey.

“I loved politics and to write,” she recalls. “My mother always supported me but my wider family and the community, they worried about what people think of journalists: that they are losers, that they work hard but they don’t have enough money. Nobody believed in me. They didn’t believe I could succeed because I didn’t have the connections. But I didn’t care. I just believed in myself. So I did it alone.”

She began, aged seven, by practising news-reporting in the mirror, using a hairbrush as a microphone. After leaving school, she studied journalism at university in Netanyah, graduating to work on local newspapers and presenting her own political programme for the local radio station. After that, she got a job as a researcher for investigative journalist Ilana Dyan, before going freelance.

At 23, she decided she wanted to serve in the IDF – something no other Druze woman had ever done. Although the majority of Druze men serve (Druze leaders requested mandatory conscription, in 1956), Druze women are exempt.

“Maybe 20 years ago I would have said the reasons were chauvinistic,” she says. “But now I understand it’s because we are a minority. If the men are serving, who will protect the community and traditions while they’re away? Who will be at home and raise the children? The community was also worried about the way women are sometimes treated in the IDF, worried a Druze woman wouldn’t be respected.”

For Eman, the desire to serve was about about deepening her relationship with Israeli society: “The idea came about when I was working for a radio station. One day, I interviewed the IDF spokesman. Afterwards, he asked me what I thought about coming to serve in the spokesperson unit, where I would be particularly useful with my fluent Arabic. I told him I liked the idea, but I was Druze, and he said, ‘You are a journalist – you can be whatever you want to be.’”

Her father supported her plans, but the wider community disapproved. “When I tried to join, a Druze major, who is responsible for minorities in the IDF, called my community leader and told him about me. The news quickly spread around all the 16 Druze villages, and they came together to convince me to quit.”

In the studio of Kan 11 Israeli governmental channel, in 2019

Despite her strength of character, she could not stand up to an entire community. “One day, after a committee meeting, 25 leaders turned up at my family house. It was very hard for me – I was angry and upset. I cried that they wanted to stop me doing something I loved and wanted to do, to serve my country. In the end, the pressure was too much, and I quit.”

But Eman did not give up. It took several more years, but in 2019, by which time she was 32, the Druze leadership and the IDF agreed she could join up as part of the IDF radio station, Galatz. There she covered stories about Israeli Arabs and other minorities within Israel.

She agreed not to wear an IDF uniform. “They wanted to protect me. But it was also helpful to me because of the nature of my work with the Arab communities – I couldn’t visit them wearing an IDF uniform or I might be attacked.”

Since leaving the IDF, Eman has completed her master’s and worked as a journalist, researcher and analyst. She now plans to start a doctorate in Israeli maritime strategy. She is a member of the Devorah Forum, a non-partisan, non-profit NGO with an active network of professional women in fields relating to Israel’s national security and foreign policy. In May 2024, she joined the JPC, a non-governmental, non-political media organisation, which connects international journalists with experts in Israel. She says it is particularly important to her to talk to Arab journalists and tell them the truth about Israel.

Eman also mentors girls and women in the Druze community, helping them to balance the traditional and modern in their lives, as she has done. “I am not a feminist,” she states. “I’m an assertive, balanced woman.” At 38, she is not married, which she puts down to the high price of being a busy, successful journalist.

Safady talking to a group of international journalists in the Pkien Druze village about politics in Israel, in 2023

In London at an Ambraham Initiatives event with journalist colleagues, in 2019

Although, like her siblings, she has left her home village (many young people do so because of a lack of opportunities), she retains a strong connection with her Druze heritage: “I like to visit the north and I have lots of contacts and friends in my community,” she says.

“Even though I chose a different way with my career, I am very proud of being Druze.”

Since October 7  the bond between the Druze and the Jews in Israel has grown stronger. Several Druze soldiers have died in Gaza and, even before the attack on Majdal Shams, many people have been injured in drone attacks on Druze villages.

Safady lecturing at the University of Haifa about maritime strategy in Israel, in 2023

Unlike the Jewish residents of the north, who have largely been evacuated, the Druze refuse to leave their homes. “We can’t leave,” explains Eman. “The religion teaches us that even if there is a war, you don’t escape. You stay and fight for your land, for your home.”

Eman says the Druze in the Golan and the Galilee are very close. “Despite the geographical distance, our connection with the Druze in Syria and Lebanon is also strong and unified. Hezbollah attacks the Druze because it sees them as allies of the Jews and as part of the strength of the Jewish people in the State of Israel.

"It retaliates against the Druze because it views them as pro-Israel.”

Her hope is for peace in the Middle East, for safe lives for her community. But, unlike most people who blindly express that wish, with her skills, determination and knowledge, Eman is someone who might actually be able to help achieve that goal.