Yazidis visit Yad Vashem

YAZIDI WATCH: ‘How could something like this happen in the 21st century?’ Yazidi and Kurdish delegation visits Yad Vashem and finds parallels with persecution by Islamic State (SETH J. FRANTZMAN, Jerusalem Post).

For the six visitors, the traumatic experience on Sunday of walking through the cement-shrouded museum seeing displays of Nazi brutality was jarring. The group had come to take part in a multiday conference this week at the capital’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim hosted by the Spring of Hope Foundation and dedicated to providing a platform for the voices of persecuted religious and ethnic minorities. The delegation included Sherzad Mamsani, the director of Jewish affairs for the Kurdistan Regional Government, Saeed Khudeda Alo, a lecturer at the University of Duhok, and Khaleel al-Dakhi, a Yazidi lawyer and activist who has helped rescue people from ISIS slavery.

Yazidis are an ancient religious group who live mostly in northern Iraq and were targeted for extermination by ISIS in 2014. In the last year 22 mass graves of Yazidi men and elderly women executed by the terrorist group have been found, and several thousand Yazidi women remain enslaved by ISIS.

“The Yazidis are concerned with their day-to-day needs and their lives. They lost everything,” says Mizra Dinnayi, who runs Luftbrücke Irak, a German humanitarian organization.

For the many past posts on the Yazidis, their Gnosticism-themed religion, and their tragic fate in the hands of ISIS, see here and here and many links.