The Knesset has voted down a proposal to recognize the Yazidi genocide.
The measure proposed by Zionist Union MK Ksenia Svetlova was voted down 58-38.
In August 2014, two months after sweeping across Iraq’s Sunni heartland, IS jihadists made a second push into an area that had been under Kurdish security control. Thousands of Yazidi men were massacred when the fighters attacked the town of Sinjar and thousands of women and girls were kidnapped and enslaved, Murad among them. Mass graves have since been unearthed in the region.
According to the religious affairs ministry of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, IS has abducted more than 6,400 Yazidis. Around half have been rescued or managed to escape. The fate of the others is unknown, although IS has lost most of the territory it seized in Iraq, including Sinjar.
Of the 550,000 Yazidis living in Iraq before the jihadists’ 2014 assault, nearly 100,000 have left the country.
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