Monia Heno, a Druze-Israeli from the northern village of Junis, has advanced to the semi-finals of the World Kickboxing Championship. She is already a reigning champion, having won the European Junior Championship in 2021 and the European Senior Championship in 2022.
But Heno, 20, says this time it’s different: “This competition has a different meaning for all of us,” she said, a month and a half into Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. “I wanted to bring honor to the country and demonstrate to the world that we remain strong despite it all, each of us in our own area.”
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After defeating her opponent, a contender from Italy, Heno wrapped herself in two flags: the Israeli and the Druze. She invoked the memory of Druze soldiers in the IDF who have been killed in combat following Hamas’s October 7 attack in Israel’s south.
“It was important for me to raise the Druze flag,” she said, “in memory of the sons of our community who have fallen in the war. We will remember them,” Heno vowed, “and the rest of our fallen, forever.”
Druze fight, die alongside Jews in the IDF
Several Druze-Israelis have been killed in combat for Israel since the October 7 attack. First Lieutenant Jamal Abbas, 23, hailed from the tight-knit community of Peki’in in the Upper Galilee. Lt.-Col. Salman Habaka, 33, came from Yanuh-Jat, and was killed in battle in Gaza earlier this month. Habaka left behind a wife and a two-year-old child.
Staff-Sgt. Adi Malik Harb, 19, who fell in battle in October, came from the Druze village of Beit Jann, which has the highest percentage of fallen soldiers of any community in Israel. According to Kan News, 64 soldiers from the Druze town have fallen in battle.
Israel’s Druze community numbers around 140,000, according to 2019 figures from Israel’s Bureau of Statistics. Men from the minority group are required to serve in the IDF, and the majority of them draft at 18. Recently, members of the community and their supporters have put renewed pressure on the Israeli government to amend the controversial ‘Nation-State Law’ passed in 2018, to affirm Druze Israelis’ status as full and equal citizens.
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced last Saturday night that the government plans to introduce a separate law anchoring Druze Israelis' status. The proposed solution has been met with mixed responses.