‘ISIS is Hamas’: Call for Israel to recognize Yazidi genocide

A Kurdish-Jewish political analyst and a Yazidi witness to the atrocities committed by ISIS are calling on Israel to formally recognize the Yazidi genocide, twelve years after the terrorist organization attacked the community’s historic homeland in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Speaking to i24NEWS, Tel Aviv-based analyst Elyana Elyan said the issue should be returned to Israel’s national agenda and brought before the Knesset once again.

“I believe that it is a moral obligation and that it is time to start discussing and putting this back on the agenda,” she said.

On August 3, 2014, ISIS launched its assault on the Sinjar region—known to Yazidis as Shingal—forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

Elyan described how families became stranded on the mountain for days without food or water in extreme summer heat. 5,000 Yazidis were killed, while 6,800 women and girls were abducted, enslaved and sold through markets established by ISIS.

“Girls as young as five years old” were subjected to sexual slavery, Elyan said, adding that more than 2,500 Yazidi women and girls remain missing.

The atrocities have been recognized as genocide by UN investigative bodies and countries including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. The German Bundestag unanimously recognized the Yazidi genocide in January 2023.

Israel has never disputed the scale of ISIS’s crimes but has yet to issue formal recognition.

A bill proposed by then-Zionist Union MK Ksenia Svetlova was introduced in 2017 but stalled for more than a year. When it finally reached a preliminary Knesset vote in November 2018, it was defeated by 58 votes to 38.

Elyan said Israel’s political circumstances have changed significantly since the proposal was first introduced, particularly following the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023.

“We are in a different reality. We are in the post-October 7 world,” she said.

While Israel has often had to balance moral questions with diplomatic considerations, Elyan argued that genocide recognition should not be determined by politics.

She pointed to Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s recent push for Israeli recognition of the Armenian genocide, quoting his statement that “it is never too late to do the right thing.”

Elyan said she believes lawmakers who have supported Kurdish and other minority communities could help put Yazidi recognition back on the agenda.

‘The same frontline’

Joining the discussion from Germany, Kurdish minority rights expert Aram Aqil said Israelis and Yazidis face a shared threat from jihadist movements.

Aqil witnessed the Yazidi genocide while documenting the atrocities, providing emergency assistance and searching for missing people. He was also held hostage by ISIS in Syria for nine months.

“Israelis have to know that we stand on the same frontline against jihadist movements such as al-Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas,” he said.

Aqil argued that ISIS and Hamas share an ideology that dehumanizes those who are different and uses violence against civilians as a political and religious tool.

“ISIS is Hamas,” he said. “They may have different names, but they share the same poisoned ideology.”

Drawing parallels between the Yazidi genocide and October 7, Aqil pointed to the deliberate killing, sexual assault and kidnapping of civilians, including women and children.

“Recognizing the Yazidi genocide and standing with the victims of October 7 are not separate causes,” he said. “They are part of the same struggle against genocidal extremism.”

Yazidi woman rescued from Gaza

Aqil also discussed his recent meeting with Fawzia Amin Sido, a Yazidi woman kidnapped by ISIS in Iraq at the age of 11 and later trafficked to the Gaza Strip.

Sido remained in Gaza for approximately a decade before being evacuated in October 2024 in an operation led by the IDF, in cooperation with the US Embassy and other international actors.

According to the IDF, she had been held by a Hamas operative affiliated with ISIS. After her captor was killed during the war, she escaped to a hiding place and was eventually brought out of Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing. She then traveled through Israel and Jordan before reuniting with her family in Iraq.

Aqil said Sido’s experience demonstrated that the networks responsible for trafficking and imprisoning Yazidis survived long after ISIS lost control of its territorial strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

“Her story demonstrates that the ISIS network didn’t disappear when ISIS lost its geographical territory,” he said.

Now living in Germany, Sido is using her experience to advocate for other women and girls targeted by jihadist groups, Aqil added.

‘The Jewish state has to follow this’

Elyan said Israeli recognition would help preserve the memory of the victims, acknowledge the experiences of survivors and send a broader message against the ideology behind the atrocities.

“These are forces that see Kurdish women, Yazidi women and Jewish women as prizes to be taken and sold,” she said. “They don’t see us as humans worth protecting.”

She argued that the experience of October 7 should give Israelis a deeper understanding of what it means for victims of mass atrocities to feel abandoned—or to see their suffering questioned.

“One of the ways that we can stand against this is to stand morally and humanely with the victims,” Elyan said.

Quoting the Torah’s command not to stand idly by the blood of one’s neighbor, she concluded: “The Jewish state has to follow this.”