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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