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World Jewish Groups Commemorate Seventh Anniversary of Yazidi Genocide by ISIS
by Dion J. Pierre
Displaced Iraqi women from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled the Iraqi town of Sinjar, walk at the Khanki camp on the outskirts of Dohuk province, July 31, 2019. Photo: REUTERS/Ari Jalal.
Jewish groups from around the world commemorated on Tuesday the seventh anniversary of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) genocide of the Yazidi people, a religious minority in northern Iraq.
On August 3, 2014, Islamist militants seized the community of Sinjar, Iraq, kidnapping thousands of Yazidis and murdering thousands more. The barbarity prompted US President Barack Obama to authorize airstrikes against ISIS forces also threatening American officials nearby in Erbil.
The American Jewish Committee called it “one of the most horrific atrocities in recent history.”
“Thousands of Yazidis were killed and taken into sexual slavery by the Islamic State. Thousands more remain missing to this day,” the AJC said. “We will never forget.”
The World Jewish Congress also marked the anniversary on social media, sharing footage of an interview with a survivor of the atrocity.
“The genocide led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis from their ancestral land,” wrote the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS) on Twitter.
The group called the events “part of a sad tradition of exclusion, persecution and genocides against the Yazidi minority in the Middle East.”
“While the men and boys were murdered, the jihadists enslaved and raped Yazidi women and girls. All this was happening right before our eyes,” the EUJS said. “While the West looked away initially, the Kurdish self-defense forces fought bravely against [ISIS], created humanitarian corridors and were able to save thousands of lives as a result.”
https://twitter.com/EUJS/status/1422456891632988167?s=20
EUJS also highlighted the plight of 1,400 Yazidis recently left homeless by a fire that destroyed a displaced persons camp in Sharya, Iraq, in a semiautonomous region under Kurdish control.
There are fewer than 1 million Yazidis worldwide, according to the Washington Post, and some 200,000 still displaced in Iraq.
“Many Yazidis continue to feel abandoned in their collective pain,” EUJS continued. “We stand together in solidarity with the Yazidi people.”
