LALISH, Iraq: One by one, members of Iraq’s minority Yazidi community light oil lamps to mark their New Year at a sacred shrine, but for Omar Sinan the celebration cannot erase the atrocities of extremist rule.
In 2014, the Daesh group swept across swathes of Iraq, carrying out horrific violence against the Kurdish-speaking community whose non-Muslim faith the extremists considered heretical.
Daesh massacred thousands of men and abducted thousands of women and girls as sex slaves.
Tuesday night as the sun set over the Lalish stone shrine in northern Iraq, Yazidis began lighting oil lamps, 365 of them, one for each day of the year.
Hundreds came to mark the Yazidi New Year — which to the faithful commemorates the creation of the universe by angels and celebrates nature and fertility.
Six years after Iraq declared victory over Daesh, the Yazidis came to Lalish barefoot and dressed in white.
The men wore embroidered vests over their shirts while women donned traditional head coverings, featuring gold coins.
“Before, this was a time for celebration and our joy was immense. But today... we cannot forget what we have been through,” said Sinan, attending the celebration with his children.
The Yazidis follow an ancient religion that emerged in Iran more than 4,000 years ago and is rooted in Zoroastrianism. Over time it incorporated elements of Islam and Christianity.
The community was persecuted for years, including under Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
When Daesh invaded Iraq in August 2014, one of their targets was Sinjar, the Yazidis’ historic home on the Nineveh Plain, in a remote corner of the country’s north.
“Ever since the genocide, there is sadness in our hearts. It won’t go away,” said Sinan, a 37-year-old mathematics teacher.
“This sadness will live in us for eternity.”
During the New Year celebration, Yazidis pay their respects at the graves of relatives, and those who can afford it slaughter a sheep and offer some of the meat to the poor.
Iraq’s federal government in Baghdad has dedicated the first Wednesday of April as a holiday for the Yazidi community.
Before Daesh marched into their villages in 2014, there were 550,000 Yazidis nationwide out of a worldwide total of 1.5 million, including in neighboring countries and the diaspora.
But after the massacres and the abductions, nearly 100,000 fled abroad, according to the United Nations. Most went to Europe, Australia and Canada to try to build new lives.
Arabic-language teacher Faleh Jomaa, 60, was among those who decided to stay in Iraq with his wife and three children, unlike his four brothers and their families who emigrated to Germany.
“The Yazidi community has suffered 74 genocides over time but it rises again each time, like plants from the depth of the Earth,” he said.
In January, Germany’s parliament recognized the 2014 massacre of Yazidi by Daesh as a “genocide,” following similar moves by parliaments in Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands.
On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani said “political and security measures” have yet to be adopted to allow displaced Yazidis to return to Sinjar.
In March, his government allocated $38.5 million to rebuild Sinjar and villages in the Nineveh Plain.
According to the UN migration agency, IOM, more than 200,000 Yazidis who survived Daesh brutality are still displaced living in and outside camps across Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.
“The needs of displaced persons and returnees in Sinjar remain high,” the IOM said in a report in January, noting a “lack of adequate shelter and basic services... including running water, electricity, health care and education.”
Daesh extremists “destroyed around 80 percent of public infrastructure and 70 percent of civilian homes in Sinjar City and surrounding areas,” it added.
Khawla Abdou, who fled with her husband and eight daughters to Germany, chose to return home this year to mark the New Year in Lalish.
“We came to pray to God on this sacred day so that he could free our daughters who are still held by the enemy,” the 67-year-old said.
“May God hear our prayers and free our daughters. We cannot forget them and we will never forget what happened in Sinjar.”
According to the IOM, more than 2,700 Yazidis are still missing, some held by extremists.
Iraq’s Yazidis mark New Year still haunted by Daesh horrors
https://arab.news/basz8
Iraq’s Yazidis mark New Year still haunted by Daesh horrors
- Hundreds came to Lalish to mark the Yazidi New Year — which to the faithful commemorates the creation of the universe
- When Daesh invaded Iraq in August 2014, one of their targets was Sinjar, the Yazidis’ historic home on the Nineveh Plain
Israeli fire and airstrikes kill 35 in Gaza
- Hamas, which denies Israeli charges that it steals aid, accused Israel of “employing hunger as a weapon of war and turning aid distribution sites into traps of mass deaths of innocent civilians”
GAZA: Israeli fire and airstrikes killed at least 35 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, most of them near an aid distribution site operated by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, local health authorities said.
Medics at Al-Awda and Al-Aqsa hospitals in central Gaza areas, where most of the casualties were moved to, said at least 15 people were killed as they tried to approach the GHF aid distribution site near the Netzarim corridor.
The rest were killed in separate attacks across the enclave, they added.
BACKGROUND
The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that at least 274 people have so far been killed, and more than 2,000 wounded, near aid distribution sites since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operations.
There has been no immediate comment by the Israeli military or the GHF on Saturday’s incidents.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the UN says is neither impartial nor neutral.
The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that at least 274 people have so far been killed, and more than 2,000 wounded, near aid distribution sites since the GHF began operations in Gaza.
Hamas, which denies Israeli charges that it steals aid, accused Israel of “employing hunger as a weapon of war and turning aid distribution sites into traps of mass deaths of innocent civilians.”
Later on Saturday, health officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza said Israeli fire killed at least 12 Palestinians, who gathered to wait for aid trucks along the coastal road north of the strip, taking Saturday’s death toll to at least 35.
The Israeli military ordered residents of Khan Younis and the nearby towns of Abassan and Bani Suhaila in the southern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and head west toward the so-called humanitarian zone, saying it would forcefully work against “terror organizations” in the area.
The war in Gaza erupted 20 months ago after militants raided Israel and took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s single deadliest day.
Israel’s military campaign has killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza, and flattened much of the densely populated strip, which is home to more than 2 million people.
Most of the population is displaced, and malnutrition is widespread.
Despite efforts by the US, Egypt, and Qatar to restore a ceasefire in Gaza, neither Israel nor Hamas has shown willingness to back down on core demands, with each side blaming the other for the failure to reach a deal.
Egypt delays opening of massive new museum
- Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a press conference on Saturday that the grand opening would be delayed until the last quarter of this year
CAIRO: Egyptian authorities announced on Saturday that the long-awaited inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, known as GEM, would once again be delayed as a result of escalating regional tensions.
“In view of the ongoing regional developments, it was decided to postpone the official inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which was scheduled for July 3,” the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said in a statement.
Spanning 50 hectares, the GEM is twice the size of both Paris’ Louvre and New York’s Metropolitan, and two-and-a-half times that of the British Museum, according to its director.
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a press conference on Saturday that the grand opening would be delayed until the last quarter of this year.
In view of current events, “we believed it would be appropriate to delay this big event so that it can maintain the appropriate global momentum,” he added.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has previously described the GEM as “the largest archeological museum in the world dedicated to one civilization.”
The opening of the massive, ultra-modern museum situated near the Giza Pyramids has been repeatedly delayed over the years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other reasons.
Israel says attacks on Iran are ‘nothing’ compared with what is coming
- Netanyahu said Israel’s strikes had set back Iran’s nuclear program possibly by years but rejected international calls for restraint
JERUSALEM/DUBAI: Iran and Israel traded missiles and airstrikes on Saturday, the day after Israel launched a sweeping air offensive against its old enemy, killing commanders and scientists and bombing nuclear sites in a stated bid to stop it building an atomic weapon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s strikes had set back Iran’s nuclear program possibly by years but rejected international calls for restraint, saying the attack would be intensified.
“We will hit every site and every target of the Ayatollahs’ regime, and what they have felt so far is nothing compared with what they will be handed in the coming days,” he said in a video message.
In Tehran, Iranian state TV reported that around 60 people, including 20 children, had been killed in an attack on a housing complex, with more strikes reported across the country. Israel said it had attacked more than 150 targets.
In Israel, air raid sirens sent residents into shelters as waves of missiles streaked across the sky and interceptors rose to meet them. At least three people were killed overnight. An Israeli official said Iran had fired around 200 ballistic missiles in four waves.
US President Donald Trump has lauded Israel’s strikes and warned of much worse to come unless Iran quickly accepts the sharp downgrading of its nuclear program that the US has demanded in talks that had been due to resume on Sunday.
But with Israel saying its operation could last weeks, and urging Iran’s people to rise up against their Islamic clerical rulers, fears have grown of a regional conflagration dragging in outside powers.
The United States, Israel’s main ally, helped shoot down Iranian missiles, two US officials said.
“If (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei continues to fire missiles at the Israeli home front, Tehran will burn,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
Iran had vowed to avenge Friday’s Israeli onslaught, which gutted Iran’s nuclear and military leadership and damaged atomic plants and military bases.
Tehran warned Israel’s allies that their military bases in the region would come under fire too if they helped shoot down Iranian missiles, state television reported.
However, 20 months of war in Gaza and a conflict in Lebanon last year have decimated Tehran’s strongest regional proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, reducing its options for retaliation.
Lawmaker and military general Esmail Kosari said Iran was reviewing whether to close the Strait of Hormuz, the exit point for oil shipped from the Gulf.
Nights of blasts and fear in Israel and Iran
Iran’s overnight fusillade included hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones, an Israeli official said. Three people, including a man and a woman, were killed and dozens wounded, the ambulance service said.
In Rishon LeZion, south of Tel Aviv, emergency services rescued a baby girl trapped in a house hit by a missile, police said, but later on Saturday Tel Aviv beaches were busy with people enjoying the weekend.
In the western suburb of Ramat Gan, near Ben Gurion airport, Linda Grinfeld described her apartment being damaged: “We were sitting in the shelter, and then we heard such a boom. It was awful.”
The Israeli military said it had intercepted surface-to-surface Iranian missiles as well as drones, and that two rockets had been fired from Gaza.
In Iran, Israel’s two days of strikes destroyed residential apartment buildings, killing families and neighbors as apparent collateral damage in strikes targeting scientists and senior officials in their beds.
Iran said 78 people had been killed on the first day and scores more on the second day, many of them when a missile brought down a 14-story apartment block in Tehran.
State TV said 60 people were believed to have been killed there, though the figure was not officially confirmed.
It broadcast pictures of a building flattened into debris and the facade of several upper storys lying sideways in the street, while slabs of concrete dangled from a neighboring building.
“Smoke and dust were filling all the house and we couldn’t breathe,” 45-year-old Tehran resident Mohsen Salehi told Iranian news agency WANA after an overnight air strike woke his family.
Fars News agency said two projectiles had hit Mehrabad airport, located inside the capital, which is both civilian and military.
With Iran’s air defenses heavily damaged, Israeli Air Force chief Tomer Bar said “the road to Iran has been paved.”
In preparation for possible further escalation, reservists were being deployed across Israel. Army Radio reported units had been positioned along the Lebanese and Jordanian borders.
Iranian nuclear sites damaged
Israel sees Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to its existence, and said the bombardment was designed to avert the last steps to production of a nuclear weapon.
A military official on Saturday said Israel had caused significant damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan, but had not so far taken on another uranium enrichment site, Fordow, dug into a mountain.
The official said Israel had “eliminated the highest commanders of their military leadership” and had killed nine nuclear scientists who were “main sources of knowledge, main forces driving forward the (nuclear) program.”
Tehran insists the program is entirely civilian in line with its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and that it does not seek an atomic bomb.
However, it has repeatedly hidden some part from international inspectors, and the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday reported it in violation of the NPT.
Iranian talks with the United States to resolve the nuclear dispute have stuttered this year.
The next meeting was set for Sunday but Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Saturday that continuing the talks while Israel’s “barbarous” attacks lasted was unjustifiable.
We will recognize the State of Palestine soon, Macron tells Asharq News
- French president: ‘I have agreed with the Saudi crown prince to postpone the New York conference to a date in the near future’
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron pledged, in statements to Asharq News on the sidelines of a meeting with journalists and representatives of Palestinian and Israeli civil society institutions, that his country will recognize the State of Palestine at an upcoming conference that France will organize with Saudi Arabia in New York.
In response to a question about whether there are conditions for recognizing the Palestinian state, Macron said: “There are no conditions. Recognition will take place through a process that includes stopping the war on Gaza, restoring humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, releasing Israeli hostages, and disarming Hamas.”
He stressed: “This is one package.”
Macron indicated that France and Saudi Arabia have agreed to postpone the UN conference they are co-organizing, which was originally scheduled to take place in New York next week. He noted that current developments have prevented Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from traveling to New York.
Macron explained that he had spoken several times with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday and Palestinian President Abbas, and it was agreed to “postpone the meeting to a date in the near future.”
He also claimed that the president of Indonesia, which currently does not officially recognize Israel, had pledged to do so if France recognizes the State of Palestine. Macron emphasized “the need for maintaining this dynamic.”
The International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine, scheduled to be held in New York from June 17-20 and co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France, outlined in its paper a commitment to the “two-state solution” as the foundational reference. The paper defines a timeline for implementation, outlines the practical obligations of all parties involved, and calls for the establishment of international mechanisms to ensure the continuity of the process.
Asharq News obtained a copy of the paper, which asserts that the implementation of the two-state solution must proceed regardless of local or regional developments. It ensures the full recognition of a Palestinian state as part of a political solution that upholds people’s rights and responds to their aspirations for peace and security.
The paper highlights that the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and the war on Gaza have led to an unprecedented escalation in violence and casualties, resulting in the most severe humanitarian crisis to date, widespread destruction, and immense suffering for civilians on both sides, including detainees, their families, and residents of Gaza.
It further confirms that settlement activities pose a threat to the two-state solution, which it states is the only path to achieving a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace in the region. The paper notes that the settlement activities undermine regional and international peace, security, and prosperity.
According to the paper, the conference aims to alter the current course by building on national, regional, and international initiatives and adopting concrete measures to uphold international law. The conference will also focus on advancing a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace that ensures security for all the people of the region and fosters regional integration.
The conference reaffirms the international community’s unwavering commitment to a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution, highlighting the urgent need to act in pursuit of these objectives.
Iranian media claims Israeli pilots captured, IDF denies
DUBAI: The Iranian army has claimed they have downed a third Israeli F-35 fighter jet since Israel’s attacks began on Friday.
State Iranian media, Tehran Times, reported that one pilot is believed to have been liquidated and another captured by Iranian forces.
However, the Israeli Defense Forces denied the claims dubbing the news “fake”.
“This news being spread by Iranian media is completely baseless” the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Friday the launch of “Operation Rising Lion” against Iran in an effort to deter the Iranian threat of nuclear weapons to Israel. Netanyahu confirmed the operation will continue until the mission is accomplished.
