On the Hebrew calendar, Saturday was the 100th anniversary of the battle of Tel Ḥai, a Jewish farming village in the Galilee that was attacked and overrun by Arabs. The date is usually associated with the heroic stand made there by Joseph Trumpeldor, whose remarkable life was the subject of a recent essay in Mosaic. But among the other Jewish fighters who fell in battle was Dvorah Drechler, who in prior years had campaigned for the Zionist self-defense organization Hashomer (“The Watchman”) to allow women to participate in its patrols. Amit Naor writes:

Drechler was born in the Ukraine in 1896. Though hers was the only Jewish family in her village, they nevertheless maintained Jewish traditions and were sympathetic to the “Love of Zion” pre-Herzlian Zionist movement in Russia. In 1913, Drechler arrived in the Land of Israel to join her sister, Ḥayah, who had immigrated several years before and married Eliezer Kroll, a member of Hashomer (“The Watchman”), the Jewish defense organization. Because of her sister and brother-in-law, Dvorah also joined a group of Hashomer members who settled that year in the northern community of Tel Adash, known today as Tel Adashim.

During World War I, despite the fear imposed [on Palestinian Jewry] by the Ottoman regime, [Drechler] made daily visits to Hashomer’s prisoners in Nazareth, bringing them food and information. She also did not hesitate when the group sent her as reinforcement to [the Galilean village of] Kfar Giladi, from which she and Trumpeldor were sent to defend Tel Ḥai.

This was how Drechler came to be at Tel Ḥai and how she found herself assigned to a defensive position on the top floor of the courtyard’s main building. . . . In that top-floor room with Drechler was another woman—Sarah Chizik. According to legend, their bodies were found in an embrace, alongside the three other members of the group who were killed in the room.

In a momentous meeting with the Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh, President Trump announced that he is lifting sanctions on the beleaguered and war-torn country. On the one hand, Sharaa is an alumnus of Islamic State and al-Qaeda, who came to power as commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which itself began life as al-Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot; he also seems to enjoy the support of Qatar. On the other hand, he overthrew the Assad regime—a feat made possible by the battering Israel delivered to Hizballah—greatly improving Jerusalem’s strategic position, and ending one of the world’s most atrocious and brutal tyrannies. President Trump also announced that he hopes Syria will join the Abraham Accords.

This analysis by Eran Lerman was published a few days ago, and in some respects is already out of date, but more than anything else I’ve read it helps to make sense of Israel’s strategic position vis-à-vis Syria.

Israel’s primary security interest lies in defending against worst-case scenarios, particularly the potential collapse of the Syrian state or its transformation into an actively hostile force backed by a significant Turkish presence (considering that the Turkish military is the second largest in NATO) with all that this would imply. Hence the need to bolster the new buffer zone—not for territorial gain, but as a vital shield and guarantee against dangerous developments. Continued airstrikes aimed at diminishing the residual components of strategic military capabilities inherited from the Assad regime are essential.

At the same time, there is a need to create conditions that would enable those in Damascus who wish to reject the reduction of their once-proud country into a Turkish satrapy. Sharaa’s efforts to establish his legitimacy, including his visit to Paris and outreach to the U.S., other European nations, and key Gulf countries, may generate positive leverage in this regard. Israel’s role is to demonstrate through daily actions the severe costs of acceding to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions and accepting Turkish hegemony.

Israel should also assist those in Syria (and beyond: this may have an effect in Lebanon as well) who look to it as a strategic anchor in the region. The Druze in Syria—backed by their brethren in Israel—have openly expressed this expectation, breaking decades of loyalty to the central power in Damascus over their obligation to their kith and kin.