More than 5,000 killed and over 7,400 young people have been abducted, forced to convert to Islam and sold as sex slaves
TORONTO — In a display of street theatre designed to grab the attention of passersby, Renanah Goldhar donned the chador-like garb forced on Yazidi slave women and lamented the fate such women have endured at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS).
Standing across the street from the U.S. Consulate on University Avenue in Toronto, Goldhar spoke in the first person and told the stories they are unable to tell, describing being raped, tortured and immolated at the hands of Islamic warriors fighting for ISIS.
Goldhar, a Jewish woman who said she could not sit silently while Yazidis experienced genocide, was one of several speakers to address a Sept. 9 rally in solidarity with Yazidis, a Middle Eastern people that traces its heritage back 6,700 years, and to support a rabbis’ march in Washington, D.C., the same day that protested the Iran nuclear deal.
About 40 to 50 people, largely from the Jewish and Yazidi communities, took part in the rally, many carrying posters with a photo of a young Yazidi girl being sold in a market as a sex slave.
ISIS and Iran are two sides of the same coin in which Jews, Yazidis, Christians and other minorities are under attack by radical Islamists, organizers said.
After telling the story of Yazidi women forced to convert to Islam, sold into slavery and murdered, Goldhar said, “They won’t get their pictures on the front pages as refugees.” That was a reference to the outpouring of sympathy for a Syrian toddler, Alan Kurdi, who drowned off the coast of Turkey when the small boat he and his family were on, trying to get to Greece, capsized.
Similar frustration at the short shrift being given Yazidis was voiced by Mirza Ismail, a spokesman for the group Yezidi Human Rights Organization International. “More than 5,000 Yazidis have been killed, beheaded, slaughtered, buried alive, but the media doesn’t care,” he told The CJN.
“We know we don’t have equal rights in the Middle East and equal rights [in] the international community, as well as the international media,” he added.
Addressing the rally, Ismail said more than 7,400 young Yazidis have been abducted, forced to convert to Islam and sold as sex slaves. Others are being trained as suicide bombers, “and the international community is silent.”
He called on the government of Canada and the international community to intervene by creating a protected autonomous region where Yazidis can be safe.
Steve Maman, the Montreal businessman who gained international attention as a modern-day Oskar Schindler, said he was merely “a guy from Montreal who decided to do something.”
To date, he said, he has helped rescue 130 Yazidis from the hands of ISIS sympathizers.
He pointed to Morocco, the land of his birth, as a place where Jews and Muslims have lived peacefully together.
He said his Jewish, Moroccan and Canadian heritage prompted him to found CYCI – The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq. He likened the situation facing Yazidis to the crisis that Jews faced 70 years ago in Europe. But today, he said, no one can say they didn’t know. With instant information through social media, “there are no delays in the information. The excuses that let six million Jews die cannot be used today.”
The Yazidis, he said, are being treated horribly. Referring to those killed and made into slaves, he said, “They’re being treated like cattle. They’re being killed every day without their souls leaving their bodies.”
Maman praised Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defence and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney for “standing for truth” and supporting the Yazidi people with $140 million in humanitarian aid.
Goldhar criticized the Jewish community for failing to adequately respond to the Yazidi crisis.
“We the Jewish People have stood by while a genocide has happened and shame on us. The heroes are young Yazidi girls who have nothing but their hearts and souls. They’ve said kill us, rather than succumb to ISIS. We don’t have one ounce of their dignity or honour. Shame on us in the Jewish community,” Goldhar said.
The rally was sponsored by Yezidi Human Rights Organization-International, the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, and Canadian Jews and Friends for Yazidis.