Jewish 'Oskar Schindler' Helps Rescue Yazidi Women, Christians from Sex Slavery

JERUSALEM, Israel – The U.S., Israel, and Iraq recently participated in the rescue of a captive abducted by the ISIS terror group held by a terrorist operative from Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

ISIS has abducted some 6,000 women and children, selling many into sex slavery. The recent deliverance was made possible by a Jewish businessman who has been facilitating the rescue of Yazidi and Christian women kidnapped by ISIS in Iraq for a decade.

Dubbed the "Jewish Oskar Schindler," Moroccan-born Steve Maman is a Jewish-Canadian businessman.

He told CBN News that the history of his people is a factor in his motivation to help the women. 

"Being that I was born Jewish, the Holocaust is a subject that is very close to our, to our nation – the help that we've received from the nations, from the people that came to help us. For instance: Oskar Schindler, who has rescued a thousand Jews, which today amounts to about 12,000 descendants."

Maman's most recent coordinated rescue was a 21-year-old Yazidi woman held in war-torn Gaza.

Kidnapped in Iraq in August 2014, at age 11, Fawzia Amin Sido suffered violence and was forced to marry a militant at age 14.

She had two children and was eventually moved to Gaza where her master's family held her after he was killed.

In order to leave Gaza, Sido had to leave her little ones behind. She was taken first to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, then Jordan, then Iraq, where she was reunited with her family on Mount Sinjar on October 1st.

We spoke with Maman recently. He preferred not to talk too much about the rescue, which he called one of the most difficult he and his team had carried out.

He weighed in on the current situation and he told us he's still in touch with Sido.

"Yes. We've been in contact every day. Her children are on her mind very, very much. One has to expect that," he stated.

Maman added, "She had to abandon her two children there. They were children that were from a Palestinian Hamas Muslim family. And there was no way that that family were going to let those children go. It’s a great thing that we succeeded in negotiating the family letting her go. It was a long ordeal. They wanted $50,000 at the beginning.  And then they changed their minds. They didn’t want her to leave anymore. And after a certain time, we re-entered conversations and we succeeded to let her leave that house."

We asked him about the 101 hostages, nearly all of them Israeli, still held captive by terrorists in Gaza. Did he have any suggestions on how to rescue them?

Maman replied, "I think that Israel is one of the best intelligence (networks) in the world. It has a moral compass, set in a direction that no other country, no other army in the world, has.They are doing the exact, and the proper procedure in order to get those hostages liberated. Annihilating Hamas is a is a must in this war."

He continued, "They succeeded at getting back over 100 hostages so far, which is an incredible feat, considering that Hamas is willing to sacrifice itself for this mission. So we have to trust the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). We have to trust the Israeli government. We have to trust the prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for what he is doing. I don't think there is a better solution on the table than what they are currently, doing right now."

I asked him, "How can the world actually facilitate getting, maybe, Yazidi women back that are still in captivity, or the hostages from Israel? What can the world's response be?

Maman answered, "During the Holocaust, the world knew of the plight of the Jewish people. And they haven't acted from 1939 to 1945.

The same thing has happened with Yazidis," He explained. "There's difficulty to get them out of the camps. So right now in Kurdistan, after ten years, they're still living in tents. They have been abandoned by the world. There are very few who have recognized the genocide of the Yazidis. And this says a lot. As far as Israel, I believe that if looking at the current media around the world, I'm not sure that the world wants to see the Israeli hostages freed or released."

Maman went even further.

"I think that there are, many who are enjoying this moment, who see it as a punishment for the state, for Jews, for the State of Israel," he declared. "And they do not see that there's a justification for our army, the IDF, being in Gaza looking for those hostages. There are complaints when hostages are rescued that our actions were too harsh. To rescue for Israelis, we had to kill 100 Hamas. I mean, the media around the world were very, very unhappy with what Israel did. And that tells us how much the moral compass has completely veered off course."

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