A national heritage site to commemorate 400 Druze soldiers killed in the service of Israel will be erected in the Druze village of Daliyat el-Carmel, on Mount Carmel, the Deputy Minister for Development of the Negev and Galilee, Ayoob Kara, has announced. Kara decided to create the site jointly with the head of the Heritage Department in the Prime Minister's Office, Reuven Pinsky, after receiving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's blessing. The Druze heritage site will be erected next to the building of Yad Labanim, the national organization that memorializes fallen soldiers. In Daliyat el-Carmel, the organization is housed in what was the summer home of Naphtali Herz Imber, composer of the lyrics of Hatikva," the Israeli national anthem. Imber came to Israel in 1882 at the invitation of Sir Laurence Oliphant, a Christian British diplomat and Zionist whom he had befriended. Oliphant invited Imber to settle in the Carmel area, and the poet and writer served as Oliphant's secretary and Hebrew teacher. During the winter months, Imber lived with Oliphant in his home in the German Colony in Haifa, and during the summer months Imber lived in his own home in Daliyat el-Carmel. Imber, who wrote the first version of Hatikva several years before he moved to Israel, published a large number of poems, essays and works of satire, and died in New York in 1909. Kara told Israel Hayom that he estimated the cost for the heritage center at several million shekels, and that he hoped to complete the project within six months. Kara said the intention was to turn the site into an international tourist attraction and to tell the story of the cooperation between Jews and Druze in Israel throughout the years. The plans include the construction of a number of auditoriums for screening films and distributing educational materials about the contributions of the Druze to the state of Israel. We intend to build a site that will tell not only Druze stories and their contributions to the defense establishment in Israel since the War of Independence, but will also describe their cooperation in matters of security even before the establishment of the state. The memory of those Druze killed will finally be memorialized, Kara said.
