Jews bury their dead within 24 hours of death. Most people think that’s because the Middle East is a hot climate and...well, you know. However, a Yeshiva-educated Jew told me there is a more important reason: In the pagan world surrounding Jews, body mutilation was the norm. Swiftly burying the dead protected Jewish bodies from pagan depredations.
That rule didn’t make it to Islam, whose many radical practitioners still follow the pagan practice of mutilating the enemy dead. Two stories—that of the Yazidi slave girl rescued from Gaza and the death of Yahya Sinwar—illustrate that difference.
Two weeks ago, wonderful news emerged from Gaza. While waging war against Hamas, the Israelis rescued Fawzia Amin Saydo, a Yazidi woman whom ISIS had kidnapped in 2014 when she was 11:
Amazing!!! Yazidi woman was held as s*x slave by Palestinian in Gaza and rescued by Israelis!
— lelemSLP (@lelemSLP) October 3, 2024
Fawzia Amin Sido was kidnapped by ISIS in 2014 at age 11, sold to Palestinian in Gaza and held by him for 10 years. She was finally rescued by IDF and by @stevemaman , the 'Jewish… pic.twitter.com/XXzA5cpOGz
The Sun has now published the horrors of Fawzia’s life from the moment of her kidnapping. As they did to other women, ISIS fighters imprisoned her in underground tunnels, where the women were beaten, raped, and starved. Eventually, they were sold to other ISIS fighters, who did the same. A man from Gaza who’d been fighting with ISIS bought Fawzia and abused her for years, impregnating her twice before she was 15.
When ISIS was defeated (thank you, President Trump), it sent tens of thousands of captives, including Fawzia and her children, to Al-Hawl, a concentration camp in Syria, where the ISIS women in charge used the Yazidi women as slave labor, and tried to convert them.
Eventually, feeling she had no other options, Fawzia took her children to Gaza to live with the family of her now-dead Gazan captor. There, she was enslaved and beaten. After Israel attacked Gaza, Fawzia was sent to work in a hospital. She says, “All hospitals were being used as Hamas bases. They all had weapons, everyone had weapons everywhere.”
That is a terrible story standing alone, but here’s the worst part:
Speaking just after her release, she told The Sun: “They cooked rice and also meat and brought it to us.
“Because we were so hungry, we just ate what was on the table.
“While we were eating we knew something was wrong because the taste was weird but we just ate because we were hungry.
“After, we all had stomach ache and felt sick.”
Ruthless IS brutes then revealed their heinous act.
“When we were done, they told us that the meat was from the babies,” Fawzia said.
“There was a woman who had a heart attack at that moment and died.
“They showed us pictures of the beheaded kids and babies and said ‘these are the kids you ate’.
“It is very hard but it was not our fault, they forced us but of course it is very hard for us that this happened. Nothing was in our hands.”
Inconsolable mothers wept and screamed, realising why in Tal Afar they had been so callously separated from their babies.
One mother recognised her baby by their hand in photos they were shown, Fawzia recalled.
That is pure Stone-Aged, pagan stuff. That is what the Jews pushed back against. They understood that, no matter the person who inhabited the body—a person with free will— the body itself is made in God’s image and must be respected.
Events on October 7 reminded Jews and the world that Fawzia’s experiences were not unique. Other than among Islamists and the faculty, student, and staff at colleges and universities in the US and Europe, people were horrified by the abuse to which Hamas and Gazan civilians subjected the bodies of those whom they murdered (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu...it didn’t matter), especially the women.
That’s not what Jews do. Never. And if you want proof, this tweet says it all:
IDF Arabic spokesman:
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) October 18, 2024
I remember what the Arabs did to Gaddafi’s body…
I remember how they treated even the bodies of their own opponents when they died or were killed in the streets.
I remember what Hezbollah did to the bodies of Syrians.
I remember what Hamxs did to the… pic.twitter.com/bN2aiWySA0
Picking up where the visible part of the tweet leaves off:
I remember what Hamxs did to the bodies of Gaza’s own sons, men who tried to steal food for their children.
I remember what Hamxs did to its own people—members of Fatah—mutilating their bodies in the streets.
But these soldiers treated death with respect, placing it in a black bag meant for soldiers. No one spat on it, no one beat it with shoes, or shouted “Allahu Akbar,” even though this man had a hand in the massacre and rape of hundreds of Israeli women and children.
This is the difference between armies and terrorists.
Israel represents the humanity of Western civilization. The feral animals of Hamas, and its fellow travelers in Hezbollah, ISIS, and other Islamist fundamentalist organizations, represent the savage, pagan opposite.
Image: X screen grab.