Of Blessed Memory: Barbara Levkowitz | AZ Jewish Post azjewishpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from azjewishpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Print this article Iraqi Christians attend a Christmas Eve mass at the Grand Immaculate Church in al-Hamdaniya, near Mosul, December 24, 2018.
(Khalid al-Mousily/Reuters) They have suffered much in the past two decades. Will new attention to their plight improve their lot?
In July 2017, the Iraqi military and Shia militias fought their way through Mosul’s Old City against ISIS. The air was filled with concrete dust and the stench of rotting human flesh and feces, the heat a punishing 110 Fahrenheit. There were dead bodies here and there, ISIS and civilians, soldiers and hostages of a caliphate.
Advertisement
I stood in the ruins of al-Nuri Mosque, where that caliphate had been proclaimed three years before by the self-styled caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. As medics tended to a wounded soldier who groaned repeatedly in agony that I hoped was sedated, I remember vividly how I wished in that moment that his cries could be heard thousands of mi