The Knesset voted down a bill on Wednesday that would have recognized that the Yazidi people, a Kurdish religious minority with a presence in Iraq and Syria and the surrounding region, had been victims of genocide.

Fifty-eight Knesset members voted against the bill, which was sponsored by Zionist Union Knesset member Ksenia Svetlova, while 38 voted in favor. In addition to conferring official Israeli recognition that the Yazidis had been victims of genocide, the legislation would have established a memorial day to the Yazidis and would have mandated that their case be made part of the country’s school curriculums.

Lis, Jonathan (November 22, 2018). Israel Votes Down Recognition of Yazidi Genocide, Citing UN.  Haaretz English Edition.

SATIRE:

Dear Reader, If you stay with the fantastic mix up of names that follows you will certainly get the point that our Israel is now a leader in denials of other peoples’ genocides (e.g., the Yazidi – the Knesset just turned down a resolution to recognize the Yazidi genocide, and the long-standing denial of the Armenian Genocide.) Here goes:

There are continuing reports of Jews being rounded up in communities in Russia immediately after the arrival of troops from Nazi Germany.  According to some sources, Jews have been marched out of town to nearby forests and ravines where they have been ordered to undress and then were systematically shot and fell into mass graves.

Nazi atrocities and killing of Jews have been mounting over the several last years particularly since a night that has been designated “Kristallnacht” on November 1938 when seemingly spontaneous mobs throughout Germany descended on Jewish places of business and Jewish people, beating them and murdering nearly 100.  The authorities then dispatched many of them to concentration camps.

The governments of Armenia and Yazidi land have introduced a resolution in the United Nations to identify the Nazi mass murder of Jews as a genocide.  However, unexpectedly, the resolution has encountered considerable resistance including an announcement by the State of Israel that they would not recognize the genocide by Nazi Germany.It has been noted that Israel has a very profitable economic and political relationship with Germany. For many Jews Israel’s failure to recognize the genocide of the Jews is deeply disappointing.  End of irony.

Comment

One writer for an Anglo-Jewish press, jewishpress.com, has concluded that there are many Israelis and Jews “who would like Israel to show the same leadership on the issue of genocide-prevention that it displays in its responses to humanitarian disasters around the world. (“Knesset confused on Yazidi genocide, Ben Cohen, November 27, 2018)