When the world is silent: Personal stories of Christians ministering to Druze in Israel and Syria

In a wide-ranging interview, Galya Hall and Venera Orozalieva of Christian Friends of Israel (CFI) joined Christian journalist Paul Calvert to share their firsthand experiences supporting grieving Druze and Jewish communities in northern Israel – and why their ministry insists on showing up when the world goes silent.

Hall opened the conversation with reflections from a recent family trip to the Golan Heights, where she visited Majdal Shams and Mas’ade following a massacre of more than 1,400 Druze civilians in Suwayda, Syria. She described the decision to visit not as a sightseeing detour, but as a deliberate act of Christian solidarity. “Even though the world is silent, while their people are being brutally massacred and slaughtered, we see and we care and we speak up against it…” she said.

The visit struck a nerve. According to Galya, the Druze community responded “with hugs… with tears… and almost shocked silence” after seeing so few in the international community acknowledge what had happened. She spoke about Druze in Israel attempting to cross into Syria to defend family members, and how the IDF intervened.

“Please, don't do this. You risk getting kidnapped or killed yourselves. Let us, the IDF, we are going to support your brothers and sisters in Suwayda.”

Hall also highlighted CFI’s outreach in Ma’ale Yosef, near the Lebanese border, where families displaced by Hezbollah rocket attacks are returning to damaged homes. While CFI is helping with essentials like electrical appliances, Hall emphasized that long-term friendship matters more.

“It's about visiting them in the hotels when they were displaced for a year and a half. Yes, providing them with practical needs, but also just sitting together, drinking a coffee together, not even talking, just listening, just being there for them, being friends.”

Orozalieva, who has been visiting families in Majdal Shams for the past year, offered a heartbreaking testimony on the anniversary of a Hezbollah rocket strike that killed 12 children. Orozalieva explained the horrific bodily condition of many of the victims. One of them was Jivaro. “Jivaro is a very special boy… in Jivaro’s home I went a couple of times to visit…there's pictures of him. You see like jerseys, shoes…Jivaro is there, but he's not there. Because Jivaro is completely gone.”

She shared how families still keep their children's clothes and photos displayed – mourning not only their loss, but also the ongoing pain of relatives suffering in Syria. “They feel double pain now because of the situation in Syria and Suwayda.”

The interview closed with a bold, emotional appeal from Hall, who compared the Druze massacre in Syria to Oct. 7 for the Jewish people.

“There’s no protests for the Druze… There’s no protest for the Christians in Nigeria…there’s no protests about the actual starvation and famine that takes place and is taking place in Yemen. Nobody talks about it. Why? Why is there selective outrage always against Israel?” 

She insisted that CFI is committed to standing in the gap: “We pray that the Prince of Peace would visit all these broken communities and that they would experience a touch from the King, the King of the Universe, that He would visit with them and that they would experience freedom, they would experience healing, they would experience life and life more abundantly.”

Click below to listen to the full interview.