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| Iraq |
| Masada On Mount Sinjar - A bit of Kurdish memory hole perspective |
| 2019-10-10 |
| [Barely A Blog - 2014 article] The year was A.D. 70 Jerusalem had been sacked, the Temple destroyed. In revolt against the Romans, the Jewish Zealots fled to Masada, a fortress "located atop an isolated rock cliff at the western end of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea." From there they prepared to resist the Romans. Masada, "a place of gaunt and majestic beauty," writes the Jewish Virtual Library, "has become one of the Jewish people’s greatest symbols as the place where the last Jewish stronghold against Roman invasion stood." Remarkably, the Zealots held out for three years. But the 1,000 men, women and children were no match for the Roman legion, its battering rams and catapults. "It is still in our power to die bravely, and in a state of freedom," said leader Elazar ben Yair, in a moving address to his people. The Jewish Zealots’ last stand was to kill one another; the last Jew standing fell on his sword. The Zealots had spared themselves "a crueler fate." Fearing the same in 2014, the Iraqi Yazidis, by Foreign Policy’s telling, have on occasion thrown their children off the Sinjar Mountains or shot them. The sight of the Yazidis driven up the arid, exposed mountain range, chased by the militant Sunni of the Islamic State (ISIS), conjures Masada, where Jews chose to die on their own terms. We will "never be servants to the Romans, nor to any other than to God Himself." So spoke Elazar ben Yair in A.D. 73. Ethnic Kurds, the Yazidis are members of an ancient sect whose beliefs and practices predate Masada, and can be traced to "Nineveh and Babylon." They fled their hardscrabble lives when "the Islamic State marched into northwestern Iraq, leaving a wake of bodies behind." According to FP’s Gerard Russell, ISIS had already "driven the Christians who live there out of their homes. It has destroyed the crosses on their churches and demanded that they pay a tax or face the penalty of death. It has in the meantime offered the Yazidis a simpler choice: Convert to Islam or die." But mostly, the choice presented to the Yazidis has been to convert ... and die. For the Islamic State considers this non-Arabic people to be almost as bad infidels. Purportedly, 40,000 refugees, among them 25,000 children, were said to be stranded on the parched terrains of the Sinjar, in scorching heat, without sustenance. That is until Barack Obama broke up the gathering. Overnight. "That’s enough, Yazidis. Go home, now. The crisis is over." Yes, the president and his minions have pronounced the catastrophe on the Sinjar Mountains over. However, just because the Obama machine declares it so, does not make it so. I would point BHO believers to Channel 4 veteran reporter Jonathan Rugman, who questions‐even mocks‐the administration’s rapid, fact-finding methodology: |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 administration’s rapid, fact-finding methodology: Oh ho ho ho, that's generous. A cynic might think that the ISIS dog broke off McCain and Obama's leash and started raping and pillaging and rolling up the supposedly stable and US troops evicted Iraq - and here in the US covered for until it stank so bad with the Yzidis it couldn't be ignored. That gal who went to the Iraqi government probably saved thousands by simply bringing attention to the plight. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2019-10-10 18:21 |