Fawzia Amin Sidou, a 21-year-old Yazidi woman held captive by Palestinian Hamas terrorists in Gaza, was recently rescued. The mission was led by Steve Maman, a Jewish-Canadian human rights advocate and the founder of an organization called The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq, which is well known for helping free hostages from ISIS.
On 4 August 2014, when she was only 11 years old, Sidou was abducted by ISIS terrorists from her home in Sinjar, Iraq. Maman told The European Conservative that, after being raped by two Muslim men, she was taken by a Palestinian man from Gaza. He held her captive for a few years, during which she was raped, beaten, abused, and forcibly impregnated as an ISIS slave. Her Gazan captor was then killed in battle in Syria. She was put in the Al-Hol detention camp in north-eastern Syria, where thousands of ISIS supporters and victims are held. The mother of her Gazan captor then pushed ISIS to send Fawzia and her two children back to Gaza. She was sent with ISIS members to Turkey, then to Egypt, and then smuggled to Gaza through tunnels. The family of her Gazan captor held her captive from around 2020 until 2 September 2024, when she was freed by the international rescue mission carried out by the governments of Israel, the U.S., Jordan, and Iraq.
In late 2023, one of those who held Fawzia in their home, apparently a Hamas fighter, was killed in an Israeli air strike. Fawzia was able to leave the family home; she found a cell phone and bravely recounted her story in a video she shared on TikTok. The video led Rudaw News to locate her surviving family members, who then contacted Maman.
Maman brought Fawzia’s case to the Israeli National Security Council, advocating for the Israeli government to take swift action to rescue Fawzia and reunite her with her family. He also wrote an open letter to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, asking for his help to liberate Fawzia. The letter said, in part:
On 1 August 2024, Maman added an update to his letter:
After Israel approved the rescue mission, the U.S. government sent a UN ambulance to Fawzia’s location in Gaza. She was then taken to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and then to Jordan. She finally arrived home in Sinjar, Iraq, reuniting with her family on 2 September after ten years of painful separation.
Maman is the main organizer of Fawzia’s rescue. He has worked on Fawzia’s case since November of 2023, contacting officials in Israel, the U.S., Jordan, and Iraq, among other countries, doing his very best to help rescue her. Maman has helped rescue hundreds of other Yazidi captives and genocide survivors. He has been dubbed the ‘Jewish Schindler.’
Although most of the world has abandoned the Yazidi victims of ISIS, some courageous individuals like Maman are still trying to help. Another is Patrick Desbois, a French Roman Catholic priest and a prominent human rights advocate. He is the former head of the Commission for Relations with Judaism of the French Bishops’ Conference and is a consultant to the Vatican. Fr. Desbois is also Director of the Back to Life project, which seeks to help the women and girls in Iraq who are victims of human rights abuses or forced displacement.
Fr. Desbois told the European Conservative:
Yazidis are a persecuted, non-Muslim community indigenous to the Middle East. In August 2014, ISIS terrorists invaded the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar in Iraq. During their occupation of Sinjar, ISIS members murdered thousands of Yazidis either by execution or through deliberate dehydration and starvation. They executed hundreds of Yazidi men and boys who refused to convert to Islam. Thousands more Yazidi girls and women were kidnapped, raped, and turned into sex slaves.
“Most of the survivors of the genocide currently live in IDP (internally displaced persons) camps in the Kurdistan region of Iraq,” said Fr. Desbois, before explaining further:
Maman told the European Conservative:
This Yazidi girl was taken hostage, raped and abused for ten years and never had a chance at life. But now she will have a chance at life to become somebody, to fix the wrong that was done to her, to emerge and to help rebuild her Yazidi nation as a survivor. The Talmud says that ‘one who saves a life saves the world entire’. This is the principle I go by. Through the liberation of Fawzia, the whole world can start again. And saving her was just as important as saving the world.
Fawzia suffered at the hands of ISIS-Hamas terrorists for the past ten years, beginning when she was only 11. She is finally free after a decade of brutal torture and enslavement. But hundreds of Yazidi, Israeli, and other hostages are still being abused and tortured by terrorists in Gaza, Syria, and elsewhere. Governments must share Maman’s and Desbois’ moral courage to help save them.
