continued from page 17
18 | OCTOBER 31 • 2019
Jews in the D
“pretty well” while her mother
is fluent in it. Karen, however,
cannot speak it though she
understands the language.
“We’
re pretty Americanized,
”
she said. “I have friends who
can speak it fluently. I wish I
knew it more. The language
could easily go away.
”
Jalaba of Farmington Hills
said her mother is very proud
to have her story told in
Adelman’
s book. The larger
story, though, specifically the
attacks on Christian commu-
nities in Iraq and Syria, is very
troubling to the Hakim family.
“We’
ve been very upset by
what’
s happened,
” Jalaba said.
“I was looking over her book,
and I couldn’
t believe how
much I don’
t know” about the
situation in Iraq and Syria.
WHERE TO NOW?
Adelman said the U.S.
Congress has passed a bill,
H.R. 390, called the Iraq and
Syria Genocide Relief and
Accountability Act of 2018.
The bill, signed into law in
December 2018, was drafted
to provide relief for victims
of genocide, crimes against
humanity and war crimes,
who are members of religious
and ethnic minority groups
in Iraq and Syria, for the
accountability for perpetra-
tors of these crimes and for
other purposes.
The bill’
s text notes that the
number of Christians living
in Iraq has dropped from an
estimated range of 800,000 to
1.4 million in 2002 to 250,000
in 2017, according to the U.S.
Department of State’
s annu-
al reports on international
religious freedom. Christian
communities in Syria, which
accounted for between 8 and
10 percent of Syria’
s total pop-
ulation in 2010, are now “con-
siderably’
” smaller as a result of
civil war. The law also focuses
on assisting other affected eth-
nic minority groups including
Yezidis and Shia.
Adelman, in a recent essay
for the scholarly publishing
company De Gruyter, wrote
that if the United States can
assist in developing a federal
structure in Iraq, it would
provide an example of how
minority populations can
gain political representation
in other countries in the
region. This, in turn, would
stabilize a key portion of a
“volatile” Middle East against
both internal disruptions and
outside interference.
She also wrote that if
Christians can settle in a des-
ignated safe haven, they will
be able to protect their land
from ISIS or its successors.
“Chaldean religious leaders
in the Middle East have been
begging those of us in the
West to help their people to
return to their own church-
es and villages, not to lure
them away in a diaspora that
dilutes their culture to a thin
gruel,” she wrote.
“This book has suddenly
become especially relevant
because the latest Turkish
invasion of Syrian Kurdistan
is an attack on the exact
area where a majority of
the Syrian Christians have
been living and, along with
the Kurds, the Christians are
becoming refugees all over
again,” she said recently.
NEXT PHASE OF LIFE
Adelman feels in writing this
book, as well as a previous
book about world-renowned
Indian attorney and politi-
cian Ram Jethmalani, that
continued on page 20
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