Thursday, October 25, 2018

Yazidi Woman Awarded Not-So-Nobel Prize

Nadia Murad, an Iraqi Yazidi woman was selected to receive the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month. It is instructive that:
1) Iraq has a population of 37,000,000 (37 million) people, all of whom have lived under U.S. occupation and war/ proxy-war since 2003. Off those millions, the Nobel committee selected a clear Islam-hater;
2) Of that population (37 million), 90% are Muslim. (Yazidis, by comparison, form 2% of the population.) Vast segments of the Muslim population have fought back against the U.S. occupation and war, often times in ways which demonstrated extraordinary courage and heroism. (Despite the pervasive labels and propaganda against fighters who oppose U.S. power, fighting a superpower with vastly great force of arms can only be described as heroic, and in any other era--e.g. the Warsaw Ghetto, the Algerian Civil War, etc.--would be viewed as an act of courage.)

Comparable to the Palestinian children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks, Iraqis (in the early days of the war) armed with only IEDs would launch themselves upon U.S. APCs and tanks--but only after the U.S. dropped 50,000 bombs and missiles on Baghdad in just over a month's period. And yet not one Muslim fighting occupation and oppression was deemed worthy of the Nobel committee's consideration;
3) Iraqi Muslim women suffered perhaps the most as a result of the U.S. occupation and war; and many of them have fought back against the terror enacted upon them by a Superpower terror. Again, not one of them was deemed worthy of the Nobel award.
Only Nadia Murad was deemed worthy. After she visited Israel (in a trip to witness the enacting of legislation protecting Yazidis, an incredible irony in a state which practices apartheid against Palestinians), she returned to Germany where she currently resides. Shortly after that, she was notified by the Nobel Committee of her award. In response, she said, "I am incredibly honored and humbled by their support and I share this award with all Yazidis with all the Iraqis, Kurds and all the minorities and all survivors of sexual violence around the world." Oddly, she uttered not one word against those who had occupied and steadily destroyed and destabilized her country since 1991.
If it were up to me, Abeer an-Janabi, the 14-year old Iraqi girl raped and burned to death by U.S. troops in 2006 (all of her family were killed by U.S. troops in the same incidentj) would have received the Nobel. Posthumously, if there is such a thing as a posthumous Nobel. THAT would have restored the dignity of the Nobel.
© 2018 Nadrat Siddique

No comments: