A Yazidi survivor lauds freedom of religion in Israel

Religious minorities see Israel as paradise on earth. What say you, Temple Mount Waqf?
By Giulio Meotti, INN

Do you know of this most extraordinary girl, Nadia Murad? The Islamic State’s henchmen kidnapped her when they decimated the Yazidi, they raped her and sold her. She escaped. Today she travels the world to make it aware of the genocide of her people at the hands of those horrendous Islamic predators. Nadia Murad was recently in Israel and said incredible things.

She praised “the ability of Jews to remain strong and preserve their culture”, she called the Jews “an example” and asked Israel for support. This girl did not study at Harvard and does not write for the Western mainstream media, but she has more courage and moral clarity than all those clumsy intellectuals and journalists who love to demonize Israel.

Nadia is right. Israel has been a sanctuary not only for the Jews endangered all over, from Baghdad to Yemen, but also for the non-Jewish religious minorities.

I saw what Israel did for the Druze, the Bahai in Haifa, the Bedouin, Samaritans, Alawites, and the Christians who fled the Lebanese civil war, for the Circassians and the Ahmadi Muslims. The Jewish state and the Jewish people have created a paradise not only for the Jews, but for the persecuted minorities of the Middle East.

Menachem Begin’s first act as Israel’s prime minister was to offer asylum to Vietnamese refugees who had fled the Communist takeover. From 1977-79, Israel welcomed over 300 Vietnamese refugees.

The West, which uses only words to show how it cares so much about religious freedom, should see Israel as a global example of integration and protection of religious minorities. Only in Israel are mosques protected from the vandalism of Muslim fundamentalists. Only in Israel are the churches filled with the faithful. Only in Israel can Arabs enjoy freedom and prosperity. Only in Israel do you find such a mosaic of religious differences.

At the same time, the West might ask the Arab-Islamic regimes: Where are your Jews? Where are the Jews of Algeria, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon?

For hundreds of thousands of people, not the Jews but the Gentiles of many communities, the creation of the State of Israel was not a “nakba”, a catastrophe, but a blessing. That is what that extraordinary Yazidi young woman understood.