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Israel and the Trump Administration I hope, seem to have the end goal of saving innocent lives from ISIS and IRAN.
Basically, besides protecting ourselves by being proactive before the evil gets to our territory, we are engaged in fighting unadulterated evil, those who defy the 7 Noahide Laws by engaging in atrocities and crimes against humanity.
It seems like the Kurds and Turks have their own agenda which sometimes kills the bad guys. However, anyone that empowers them must make it clear that the goal is eradicating evil and atrocities. If they too are complicit and engage in human war crimes themselves, they too must be held accountable.
The Yazidi people of the Middle East deserve justice and respect, not just sympathy or pity, for fighting so valiantly with the West, writes Convivium contributor Susan Korah.
“She has a poetic sadness about her like a pre-Raphaelite painting,” Geoffrey Clarfield says with no hint of sarcasm or disrespect. He is referring to Nadia Murad, the reluctant poster girl of Yazidi suffering in the aftermath of the brutal ISIS attack on this minority religious group on their home territory of Sinjar, Northern Iraq on Aug. 3, 2014.
Clarfield is a Canadian anthropologist who advocates for justice for Yazidis, an ancient faith community in the Middle East that ISIS extremists seek to exterminate along with Christians and others they consider to be infidels. His comment brings to mind The Roman Widow and other paintings by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, the famous British artist of the 19thcentury school of art, of women with hauntingly melancholy faces.
An independent consultant for the non-partisan advocacy group, the Canadian Coalition Against Terror, Clarfield spoke recently at a gathering in Ottawa of the Canadian Chapter of the Philos Project, an international organization striving to transform the Middle East into a place of justice and equity for all religious and ethnic groups.
With the added lustre of support from Amal Clooney, the glamorous, brilliantly articulate international human rights lawyer (who has taken on the cause of Yazidi women victims of human trafficking) and her own Nobel prize win, Murad has an undeniable star quality, Clarfield said. Other Yazidi women have suffered just as much, but she has become, in the world’s eyes, the face and symbol of the Yazidis’ continuing ordeal, he added.
Yanked from her simple pastoral life and modest aspirations in rural Iraq, she has been suddenly thrust on the world stage and given the heavy burden of pleading for justice for her people in the assembly halls and corridors of power. The girl from the village of Sinjar in Northern Iraq who had never – until her dramatic escape from ISIS three months after her agonizing capture – spoken to more than a few people, suddenly became a media star. Microphone in hand, she is constantly standing behind podiums in the world’s most important meeting rooms. Hordes of international journalists relay her words and flash her image to billions around the world.
Seeking justice for the Yazidi people is also Clarfield’s mission. His perspective, though, is different from the message the world tends to receive from the image that Murad projects. She is the suffering face of a victim who has survived the most horrific of experiences including sex slavery, brutal beatings and torture. Clarfield reveals a side of the Yazidi story that has not been heard from Murad.
“Canada and the allied forces that defeated ISIS in their so-called caliphate in 2017 are obligated to help the Yazidi people, not because we need to pity them, but because we owe it to them,” he says firmly.
“Yazidis are not just victims (of the ISIS genocide),” he says. “They are our allies and partners in the war against terror.”
If the international community has come to their aid at all, it is perhaps because they are moved by images of Yazidi suffering and victimhood that the world tends to associate with the face of Murad, he added.
“But bringing them justice, giving them humanitarian assistance only because they are victims, is doing them a disservice.”
Yazidis were part of the fighting force when a major military campaign led by Iraqi and Kurdish forces, and assisted by a U.S.-led coalition, culminated in the liberation of Mosul from Isis in 2017. The coalition included members of Canada’s armed forces.
Before that, Yazidis had fought and had provided invaluable auxiliary services in the 1990 Gulf War in which Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s then-leader, invaded Kuwait. This war was fought by a U.S.-led coalition of countries including Canada that went to war in Kuwait’s defence.
Putting a human face on Yazidi contributions to Western alliances in wars fought in the Middle East, Clarfield relates the story of a Yazidi who now lives somewhere in the U.S. and is known as Alex, although that is not his real name. Clarfield learned the story of Alex when he met and worked with him on a project on Iraq.
“His story is typical of that of many Yazidi men and women who risked their own and their families’ lives to act as translators from Kurdish and Arabic to English and vice versa.
In 2003, during the second Gulf War, Alex and his brother got jobs as translators for the coalition forces. While working for them for almost five years, Alex observed that the Yazidi were essential partners of the coalition forces in northern Iraq.
“I do know that over the last 10 years many of our Yazidi translators were targeted and killed by ISIS in Iraq. It’s a tough job and not for the fainthearted,” Alex told Clarfield.
Alex is now an American citizen, and, like Clarfield, lobbies for the rights of Yazidis.
Clarfield said he has spoken, through a translator, to another Yazidi, a woman called Nidal who lives in London, Ont. Nidal’s tone and manner are, again, very different to that of Murad, he says.
Nidal is clearly angry, he added, and her demands from the Canadian government are very specific and focused on the practical needs of her community. They include a program to help reunite scattered members of Yazidi families, and opportunities for resettled Yazidis to go to refugee camps and identify their own people (since many are afraid to disclose their true identity for fear of being attacked by former ISIS fighters who have found a safe haven in the same UNHCR- run camp).
Bearing in mind that most Canadian Yazidis are recent arrivals in this country and do not have the literacy skills to complete the mind-boggling paperwork required to sponsor their families, Nidal would like her people to receive help with the application process. She has stated the urgent need for aid for her people – many of whom live in Iraq in makeshift camps for internally displaced people – from the World Food Program.
“Yazidis want justice and have a natural sense of justice, not necessarily through the Nuremberg style trials at the International Criminal Court that Amal Clooney has been demanding,” says Clarfield.
In his opinion, the world, including Canada, has a moral obligation to make amends to the Yazidis. This is what keeps him walking the corridors of Parliament Hill and knocking on every door until parliamentarians, political pundits and policymakers take action to serve justice and humanitarian assistance to these dispossessed and traumatized people.
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FIFTH ANNIVERSARY YEZIDI GENOCIDE; "WE NEED ACTION, NOT JUST WORDS"; IRWIN COTLER, FORMER MINISTER OF JUSTICE. By Doris Strub Epstein
Hundreds gathered together in front of Queens Park under a blazing sun, on Sunday, August 4th, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Yezidi genocide. Many of the participants were themselves survivors of ISIS's genocidal attack on this non Muslim, ancient people , indigenous to northern Iraq. ISIS shot, beheaded and burned alive over 10,000 men and boys. Approximately seven thousand women and girls were taken captive and used as sex slaves, bought and sold in slave markets. Young boys were trained to be jihadis and suicide bombers. In just three months, more than 800,000 people from millennia-old communities were forced from their homes. All Yezidis were targeted. Of those that fled, hundreds died of starvation and dehydration on Mount Sinjar.The KRG (Kurdistan Regional government) peshmergas, the Kurdish forces that promised to protect them, stood aside and allowed ISIS entry. They refused to give weapons to the Yezidis to defend themselves, and, said Sheikh Mirza Ismail, Chair, Yezidi Human Rights Organization International, many were killed by Kurds. According to Ismail, the Yezidi genocide was preplanned by the KRG, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. He claims there was an agreement between the ISIS leaders and President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region – Masoud Barzani. The KRG was to hand over the Yezidis to ISIS and in return they would not attack Kirkuk or the complicit Arab states. ISIS agreed to accept an Islamic State of Kurdistan under Barzani.Currently, wrote Geoffrey Clarfield in the National Post, former members of ISIS in Iraq have recently joined the KRG as an armed fighting group .Although the Trudeau government has brought in more than fifty thousand Syrians, less than 1200 Yezidis have come with government assistance. Ismail, has given documented, detailed evidence numerous times to government officials in both Ottawa and Washington, but Ahmed Hussen, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister, has ignored repeated requests for a face to face meeting. Despite publicly declaring that one of his top priorities is to bring the Yezidi survivors to Canada, Mr. Hussen has committed to bringing in only 1200 of these most vulnerable refugees – Syrian Christians, Mandaen, Bahai, and only a portion of that number are Yezidis.The persecution and suffering of the Yezidi people continues , even after the defeat of ISIS. More than 400,000 are currently languishing in camps in Northern Iraq, where they are abused by the Muslim authorities in charge, denied food and medicine. Daily they risk their lives fleeing to Greece via the Aegian Sea on tube boats. Since December more than 40 have drowned. Majid Abdal who lives now in Toronto, lost his cousins; five children and their parents."They cannot go home because their houses were destroyed and or booby trapped", said Ismail. If there was any justice within the UN international community, they would have ordered Barzani and his KRG officials to the International Criminal Court for tactical betrayal of the Yezidi people."Although ISIS is defeated and holds no territory, they continue their terror attacks on the Yezidi communities. Presently they are waging a campaign of burning their farms so that the few remaining Yezids still in their homeland, will have nothing to eat. The KRG claim they have been unable to stop them, nor have they arrested the perpetrators.The enslavement of Yazidi women by ISIS members continues in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, reports Clarfield. There are still 3,000 missing. He writes, "Yezidi girls and boys have been trafficked and sold to slave traders in Turkey, who then harvest their organs for illegal transplants to sick patients. the children do not usually survive the operations."Yezids in the UN refugee camps are terrified to identify themselves as Yezidi to the authorities They pretend to be Muslims, because most of their fellow inmates are former ISIS supporters. Also because the staff are either Kurdish or Arab speakers who have a long-time hatred of Yezidis.Speaker after speaker at the memorial, organized by the Mozuud human rights group,, recounted the horrors of the attacks. But no one except Ismail ,mentioned the complicity of the Kurds and other Arab speaking Muslims and that this is the Yezidis' 74th genocide at the hands of their Muslim neighbours.No one mentioned the lack of political will that the Canadian government has shown in the rescue of the non Muslim survivors. Only MP Peter Kent praised the lone vocal support of MP Michelle Rempel. He also criticized the government for not doing enough to combat terrorism.Keynote speaker, Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice, now Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human rights, noted that "not one genocidal perpetrator has been brought to justice." He urged Canada to take the lead in an international tribunal.Although he told the audience "we need action not just words," he too omitted calling out the government's lack of action and identification of the Muslim, non ISIS perpetrators.Sheikh Ismail has these requests for the Canadian government: help find the 3,000 Yezidis hidden by ISIS families in Syria, Iraq and Turkey; bring the perpetrators to justice; help establish an autonomous region for Yezidis and other non Muslims in their homeland in Northern Iraq ; oversee the demining of Yezidi communities and help with reconstruction; rescue the Yezidis stranded in Turkey, Syria and Greece and enable their resettlement in the US, Canada , Australia and Europe.For Jews, these victims of a barbaric genocide, who are abandoned by the world, strikes a painful, familiar chord. They evoke the anguish of the Jews of the thirties threatened by the Nazi terror. Then too, the world was silent. They too were trapped with nowhere to find refuge. Jews were quick to respond, Soon after the initial attack by ISIS, Torontonian, Renanah Gemeiner formed Canadian Jews and Friends of Yezidis.Geoffrey Clarfield: "As Canadians it is our moral responsibility … while determining what more we can do to stop this ongoing annihilation of the Yezidi (people)."
On the 5th year anniversary of the Yezidi Genocide August 3, 2014....
Why are we waiting for a genocide to happen? In all due respect, what is the point of all the Holocaust Memorials when we see a Holocaust in the making?
OBAMA'S GENOCIDES
Five years after the Islamic State's massacre of Yazidis in Sinjar, Iraq, it seems harder than ever to get Western leaders to live up to protecting minority ethnic or religious groups from extinction in the Middle East
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Joe and Renanah Gemeiner<joenadren@gmail.com> Date: Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 12:09 PM Subject: THIS SUNDAY ! Yezidi Genocide 5th. Anniversary Commemoration - 2:00 Queen's Park To: Joe and Renanah Gemeiner <joenadren@gmail.com>
Fifth Anniversary of Mount Sinjar Genocide
FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE YEZIDI GENOCIDE
TO BE REMEMBERED AT QUEEN'S PARK
Sunday, August 4th 2:00 PM Queen's Park Legislature Building, south lawn
Please stand with the Yezidi Community in memory of those who died at the hands of ISIS
(Toronto, July 26th, 2019) The mass murder of more than 10,000 Yezidi people by fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) will be remembered on Sunday, August 4th at Queen's Park. We invite you to stand with members of the Canadian Yezidi community in memory of those who died in the genocide at Mount Sinjar five years ago. On the morning of August 3, 2014, ISIS fighters entered the Yezidi city of Sinjar, bent on total destruction. In the days that followed approximately 10,000 Yezidis were executed in cold blood – shot, beheaded, burned alive. More than 7,000 Yezidi women and girls were taken by ISIS and forced into sex slavery. Holy shrines were desecrated.
As ISIS overran Sinjar, thousands of Yezidis fled to Turkey. Approximately 15,000 Yezidi refugees, mostly women and children, now live in UNHCR camps in Nusaybin, Diyarbakur, and Midyat. There is a word for what the Yezidis have endured. It is genocide.
Five years later, the survivors of this genocide bear wounds that have not healed. Mass executions, the abduction of sons and daughters, the torment of sexual slavery -- these memories are replayed through every waking moment and restless night.
As new mass graves are discovered, hopes are cruelly dashed that missing relatives will be found alive.
On August 4, 2019 at 2:00 PM the Yezidi community living in the Greater Toronto Area and London, Ontario will commemorate the Mount Sinjar Genocide at Queen's Park with the largest gather of Yezidis in Canada. Among them will be survivors of the massacre and sexual slavery that followed.
The broader Canadian community can help the healing of these survivors by standing with them to mark the fifth anniversary of the genocide. A large and compassionate assembly on August 4th will show these men, women, and children that they are not alone.
Karen Goldenberg, C.M. Chair of Project Abraham
Mirza Ismail Founder and Chair of Yezidi Human Rights Organization - International
