Video summary
Twelve years have passed since ISIS launched a devastating assault on the Yazidi community in Iraqi Kurdistan, an event that resulted in thousands of deaths, mass abductions, and sexual enslavement primarily targeting women and children. While atrocities committed by ISIS against the Yazidis have been formally recognized as genocide by the United Nations and numerous nations including Germany, Israel has not yet made a similar official declaration despite never disputing the scale or nature of these crimes. A new initiative led by Kurdish Jewish activist Elelliana Elellan aims to place this issue back on the national agenda in Israel, urging the government and Knesset to pass legislation that officially acknowledges the Yazidi genocide as a moral obligation rather than merely a political consideration.
The discussion highlights significant parallels between the 2014 Yazidi genocide and recent events involving Hamas following October 7th, emphasizing that both groups share an extremist ideology that dehumanizes victims for terroristic purposes. Survivors like Foa Minto reveal how ISIS maintained hidden networks even after losing territorial control in Syria, trafficking hostages through Turkey to Gaza where they remained trapped for years under the protection of affiliated jihadi regimes. This continuity demonstrates that defeating ISIS militarily was only part of the solution; a political and moral recognition of these crimes is essential to dismantle the shared ideology that treats religious minorities as commodities rather than human beings worthy of protection.
Proponents argue that formal Israeli recognition would serve not just as an act of remembrance but as a powerful stance against genocidal extremism across the region, reinforcing solidarity between Jewish survivors and Kurdish Yazidi victims who stand on the same front line against such threats. Although previous attempts to introduce genocide recognition bills in 2017 were hindered by complex geopolitical realities involving relations with Turkey, activists believe that the current political landscape offers a unique opportunity for change as global attention shifts toward confronting all forms of ideological violence without exception. The movement seeks to ensure that "never again" applies universally to every victim regardless of their background or location.
Ultimately, achieving official recognition in Israel is framed as an ethical imperative rooted in Jewish teachings and universal human values rather than diplomatic strategy alone. By joining other Western nations like Germany and the United States in acknowledging these atrocities, Israel would affirm its commitment to preserving memory and standing with victims who have suffered unimaginable trauma for over a decade. This collective moral action aims to expose ongoing threats from extremist networks that continue to operate across borders while empowering survivors to rebuild their lives free from fear of further persecution or exploitation by those who view them as prizes rather than people.
Read the full video transcript
This Monday marked 12 years since ISIS
launched its assault on the Azidi
community in Iraqi Kurdistan, killing
thousands and abducting and enslaving
thousands more, mainly women and
children. The atrocities have been
recognized as genocide by the United
Nations and a growing number of
countries, including the United States,
the United Kingdom, and most recently
Germany. But Israel has yet to formally
recognize the Yazidi genocide, even
though Israeli officials have never
disputed the scale or nature of the
crimes committed by ISIS. Well, now a
Kurdish Jewish activist is launching a
new effort to change that. She joins me
in studio now, Elelliana Elellan, a
Kurdish Jewish political analyst based
in Tel Aviv. Elelliana, thank you so
much for being with me here in the i24
News studio today.
>> Thank you. We're also joined to enhance
this discussion as well from Germany by
Aramakon, a Kurdish minority rights
expert, witness to the Yazidi genocide
as well as a survivor who was held
hostage by ISIS. Alana, thank you both
for being with us today. A lot for us to
discuss, but Alana, I do want to begin
with you. Before we even discuss
Israel's position, can you take us back
to August 2014? What exactly did ISIS do
to the Yazidi community? On August 3rd,
2014, ISIS launched an attack from Mosul
to Shanga, the historic homeland of the
Yazidis. Hundreds of thousands of people
escaped to the Sinjar mountains to try
to get to safety. Uh they were stuck for
10 days without food or water in 45°
summer heat. Many of them died. Many
more had to leave their family members
behind to keep climbing to safety.
Meanwhile, thousands of Yazidis were
murdered. more than 5,000 Yazidi men and
elderly women. And the women and the
young girls were kidnapped and sold into
sexual slavery. ISIS set up formal slave
markets where they sold girls as young
as 5 years old. And uh they suffered
tremendously as uh as slaves being sold
and sold again. Until today, more than
2,500
Yazidi girls and women are still
missing.
>> Wow. and you believe that Israel should
formally recognize these atrocities as
genocide. What would you like to see
from the Israeli government and the
Israeli Knesset?
>> I would like to see this to be put back
on the national agenda for a bill to be
put forth to recognize this officially
as a genocide. As foreign minister
Gideon Sa recently said, it is never too
late to do the right thing. Uh I believe
that there are many people in the
government in the Knesset there that are
longtime friends and supporters of
courts and also advocates for human
rights and for indigenous minorities in
the Middle East. I believe that it is a
moral obligation and that it is time to
start discussing and putting this back
on the agenda.
>> You mentioned what Gideon Sar said and
that was in reference to the Armenian
genocide which was recently put back on
the Israeli Knessets agenda. still not
formalized yet. But when it comes to
recognizing the Yazidi genocide, Israel
has never disputed what happened and it
was on the agenda back in 2017. It was
brought up in the Knesset, but it it
failed to go through. So why do you
believe that Israel still after this
time has not formally recognized the
genocide?
>> The conditions of 2017 were of course
different. Israel often unfortunately
has to balance moral obligations with
political realities and considerations
and uh recognizing the Yazidi genocide
would have perhaps opens the floodgates
for the recognition of other genocides
as you also mentioned and uh Israel of
course was taking into consideration is
its relations with Turkey. However, now
we are in a different reality. We are in
the post October 7th world. Turkey not
only houses and funds Hamas terrorists,
but continuously calls out Israel for a
genocide that it isn't committing and
cons constantly delegitimizes Israel's
right to exist. We are definitely in a
very different political reality. In any
case, genocide recognition should not be
about politics. It should be about
morality. But I do believe that now uh
the conditions are different and
hopefully the conditions will present an
opportunity to bring this back onto the
table and finally recognize it and uh
right or wrong.
>> You're certainly doing a fantastic job
of bringing it back to the spotlight. I
want to bring in Aram to this
conversation now as well because you
bring some fascinating insight. You were
held hostage by ISIS in Syria for 9
months. You witnessed the Yazidi
genocide firsthand yourself. What do you
want people here in Israel then to
understand about what ISIS did to the
Azidi people?
>> Thank you, Nicole, and thanks for
covering this important topic and for
remembering the victims. First of all,
as someone who witnessed the whole
genocide and documented it visually and
provided emergency aid and searched for
the missing people there, Israelis have
to know that we stand on the same front
line against jihadi movements such as
al-Qaeda,
ISIS and Hamas. Elana has already
mentioned in details what happened in
2014 during the genocide time. I want to
emphasize one message very short and
simple message that ISIS is Hamas and
they may have different names but they
share the same poisoned ideology in the
region of attacking those who are
different than them. So any defeat of
ISIS in the region of Kurdistan is also
a defeat of the ideology that fuels
Hamas. So the threat is one that's why
the political recognition of the Yaziti
genocide is so important for all of us.
We have to be loud in confronting the
ideology this extremist ideology that is
still threatening us today. So the
Kurdish people and especially the Yazidi
religious minority have long been an
impenetrable barrier against jihadists
despite having very limited means and
sources to defend themselves. So we need
really a strong regional coalition
against that.
>> You said ISIS is Hamas. Can you expand
on that? What parallels do you see
between the Azidi experience and the
Hamas October 7th attack and then the
following hostage crisis here in Israel?
>> Well, many painful points and there are
a lot of similarities. In both cases of
of of October 7 and the Ziti genocide,
civilians were deliberately targeted,
attacked, uh killed, sexually assaulted
and kidnapped. Uh young women, children
were easily kidnapped by ISIS and Hamas.
And all these atrocities were justified
by extremist propaganda led by Qatari
and Turkish media outlets back then and
even on the day of October 7. So, we saw
how Hamas was exactly using the the same
methods of ISIS and al-Qaeda. They seek
to dehumanize their victims and they
celebrate terror as a political and
religious tool. And that's why
solidarity between survivors and between
the Kurds and the Jews is important and
it matters. When we say never again,
those words must apply to everyone.
Recognizing the Yazidi genocide and
standing with the victims of October 7
are not separate causes at all. They are
part of the same struggle against
genocidal extremism.
>> Well, you recently stood next to one of
the victims of the Yazidi genocide. You
met with Faia Minto, a Yazidi woman who
was kidnapped by ISIS as a child and
then later trafficked to Gazin. She
remained there for a decade before she
was rescued by the IDF. As you can see
in these images right here, this was in
2024.
What did she tell you about her
experience and what does her case reveal
about the network that kept Yazidi
hostages long after ISIS lost its
territory?
>> Well, uh, meeting Fosia personally was
deeply emotional because her story
demonstrates that ISIS network didn't
disappear when ISIS lost its
geographical territory. So she endured
10 years of unimaginable terror. And
what struck me the most was she could
have been free much earlier after the
Kurdish forces liberated the last
stronghold of ISIS in the city of De
Azor. She remained trapped because ISIS
women kept her hidden treating treating
her as a prize for their men. So imagine
even inside the the detention camps
these ISIS women threatened her to kill
her children if she tried to escape or
to reveal her real identity. So that
shows the depth of the indoctrination
and cruelty of these jihadi Islamist
groups. So ISIS handed her over to Hamas
through Turkey, then to Egypt, then into
Gaza. But Fia never gave up. She
courageously used social media to reach
outside world. And thanks to the IDF,
her rescue was possible at the end. And
Foia's case actually exposes that ISIS
maintained networks that stretched
outside Syria and including into Gaza.
So Fosia was was not the only Kurdish
Yazidi girl taken there. She mentioned
other similar cases and she was very
disappointed. Unfortunately, uh she was
disappointed of the current events in
Syria and how a jihadi al-Qaeda
affiliated regime came to power and the
international community welcomes them.
So for her that was um a warning sign
that how could these criminals who
kidnapped her remain free and they gain
power and they are committing the same
atrocities against religious minorities
in the region. So it was very
disappointed and very a great
disappointment for her.
>> What is her main message now after her
release then if she is so disappointed
with what's happening here in the
region?
>> Uh she is advocating very loudly. She's
talking very loudly about what happened
with her and she is advocating not for
the Yazidi the Kurdish Yazidi kidnapped
girls even for the kidnapped Drews girls
Alawite girls. She's one of the
prominent voices to to stop against this
jihadis and to she's a I have to say
that she's really a strong voice and she
lives freely in Germany right now since
less than two years and uh she got the
the strength again to build up her new
life and uh she she's keeping the
struggle on.
>> Well, that is incredible to hear.
Elelliana, this brings us back to the
issue of recognition of the genocide.
Germany formally recognized the Yazidi
genocide in 2023, but that was after
years of campaigning from survivors,
from activists. Now, when you turned the
attention towards Israel, what would
formal Israeli recognition of the Yazidi
genocide mean for survivors like Foia?
>> Well, first of all, recognition is about
preserving memory. It is about
acknowledging what has happened. We know
it better than anyone here after October
7th. what it feels like to go through
atrocities and for in the best case
scenario others to stand idally and the
worst case scenario I don't have to even
start talking about it. It is a moral uh
obligation and it's also about standing
against this jihadist mentality, this
ideology that Adam talked about very
clearly. These are forces that see
Kurdish women, Yazidi women, Jewish
women as prizes to be taken and to be
sold. They don't see us as humans that
are worth protecting, preserving, but
rather as as cattle to be sold time and
time again. This is the kind of
mentality that we are facing in the
Middle East. This mentality is
definitely not gone. It still exists.
And one of the ways that we can stand
against this is to stand morally,
humanely with the victims and raise our
voices together with all of the other
western nations that have already
recognized the Yazidi genocide for what
it was, a genocide. Do not stand idally
by the blood of your neighbor. We
learned this from the Torah and the
Jewish state has to follow this.
>> Well, you and Aram are certainly being a
voice for the Yazidis and continuing to
bring recognition right now. Aliana
Alam, thank you both so much for
contributing to this conversation and
giving us and our viewers some insight
into where we still stand 12 years after
this Yazidi genocide. Thank you both.