In the rush to fulfill their election promise to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees by year’s end – at least now, the date has changed to March 2016 – the new Liberal government is ignoring the most-at risk refugees: the non-Muslims targeted for genocide by the Islamic State (ISIS). They can more than fulfill the quota.
At the top of the threatened and persecuted list are the Yazidis, and then the Chaldo-Assyrian Christians. But all the non-Muslim minorities, such as the Mandaens, the Bahai and the Assyrians, are targeted. The former Conservative government had promised to make these minorities a priority for resettlement. In the bitter debate about security, there is no risk of terrorists hiding among these refugees. Nor would there be integration problems.
Jewish groups in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg voiced their concerns. “We want to make sure the Yazidis aren’t forgotten” said Bob Freedman, former head of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg.” The Jewish community has raised $120,000 to sponsor and resettle in Winnipeg at least four Yazidi families. Montreal businessman Steve Maman, founder of the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq, is raising money to rescue some of the thousands of women captured by ISIS and used as sex slaves, because” no one else is helping them.”
Renanah Gemeiner of Toronto’s Canadian Jews and Friends of Yazidis was adamant. “The Yazidis deserve priority as refugees. They are an ancient, peaceful, monotheistic people. Five thousand were murdered by ISIS last August, and 7,000 children and young women are enslaved. Thousands fled to camps where they are abused by the Muslim authorities in charge, denied food and medicine. The world is abandoning them.”
The attack on these people simply because of their religion hits close to home for Jews.
When discussing the Syrian refugees, comparisons are made to the widespread rejection of European Jews by Western countries during World War II. But the most obvious difference between the two situations is that there was no threat by Jews in the 1930s of daily threats of attack on civilians on several continents. The threats of harm to the West from ISIS and radical Islamists is real – a clear and ever-present danger.
The bitter debate about security is complicated and obfuscated by political correctness. It is impossible to screen the Syrian migrants 100 percent. Most have no papers, and for those that do, the only way is to check was with the now-defunct Syrian authorities. Syrian passports held by some may very well be false.
Integration in the host country is another worry, as evident in the resistance of immigrants from Muslim countries to adapt to their new homes in Europe. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of 56 Muslim countries plus the Palestinian Authority, has decreed, “Muslims should not be marginalized or attempted to be assimilated, but should be accommodated.” Reep Tayip Erdogan, President of Turkey, said that pressuring Muslims to assimilate in the West “is a crime against humanity.”
In view of the genocide being enacted now against the non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East, the government needs to prioritize these imperiled peoples before they are annihilated. Gemeiner reported that she has called John McCallum, Minister of Immigration and Refugees, for an “immediate emergency meeting regarding the Yazidis deserving priority refugee consideration along with the Christians and other groups under attack.” She has not received an answer to date.