© CHRISTOPHE SIMON (AFP/File)Of the world's 1.5 million Yazidis, the largest community was in Iraq where it comprised some 550,000 people before being scattered by the IS offensive
The bill, proposed by Zionist Union MK Ksenia Svetlova, was defeated in a 58-38 vote.
The legislation called for Israel to recognize the massacres as a genocide and mark the event annually on August 3. It also recommended curricula be adopted to teach about the atrocities.
"The coalition just voted against my bill to regognize the genocide of the Yazidi people under the ridiculous pretense that 'the UN did not yet recognize the genocide.' Shameful" Svetlova said in reaction to the vote.
Svetlova tweeted her frustration with the right wing of the government who voted down the bill, saying "there is no reason for the right-wing coalition not to recognize the terrible genocide of [Islamic State] against this small and miserable group. They voted in hypocrisy and nationalist egoism."
"I feel ashamed, but had no choice," Knesset member Yehuda Glick on his no vote. Glick said Wednesday he had wanted to vote for the bill, but as a member of the ruling majority he was forced to vote with the coalition led by Netanyahu which opposed the bill.
In July 2017, a Yazidi sex slave survivor of IS captivity, spoke to Israel's parliament and urged the body to formally recognize the genocide.
On August 3, 2014, as the Islamic State swept through Iraq and Syria declaring swathes of the two countries as part of their so-called 'Islamic caliphate', the jihadist group launched a targeted offensive on northern Iraq's Mount Sinjar region with the openly-stated goal of eliminating the estimated 700,000 Yazidis concentrated in the area.
The Yazidis, an ancient ethno-religious minority whose beliefs incorporate elements of Christianity, Islam, and other traditions, had been deemed 'kfir' ('non-believers') and devil-worshipers by the Islamic State.
Over the next several weeks, ISIS summarily executed thousands of Yazidi men and captured thousands of Yazidi women, subjecting them to physical abuse and sexual enslavement. Yazidi children were recruited as child soldiers and forced to convert to Islam under threat of death, while Yazidi religious and cultural sites were reduced to rubble.
Nadia Murad was taken captive and sold into sex slavery when the Islamic state overran northern Iraq in August of 2014. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and visited Israel in her role as a UN Goodwill ambassador.
Nadia Murad appealed to Israeli lawmakers to formally recognize the Yazidi genocide and pass a bill put forth by Zionist Union MK Ksenia Svetlova, who heads the Knesset Lobby for Strengthening Relations between the State of Israel and the Kurdish people.
"My visit here today is to ask you to recognize the genocide being committed against my people, in light of our peoples' common history of genocide,"Nadia Murad, then 24, said in a somber address to lawmakers.
"The Jews and the Yazidis share a common history of genocide that has shaped the identity of our peoples, but we must transform our pain into action. I respect how you rebuilt a global Jewish community in the wake of genocide. This is a journey that lies ahead of my community," Nadia appealed.
"Never again. This is the motto of our country that was built from the ashes of the Holocaust. For myself...It's quite clear that 'never again' stands not only for Jews. It stands also for other nations and for other people," Ksenia Svetlova said at joint speaking event for the two in Tel Aviv in 2017.
Based on 2017 statistics, some 3,000 Yazidis remain in ISIS captivity with thousands more living in squalorous refugee camps on the shores of Greece, reliant on international organizations to provide their basic needs and psychosocial support to deal with their traumas.
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