(Washington, D.C., September 27, 2021) EMET is proud to stand in solidarity with over 300  courageous Iraqi dissidents, intellectuals and tribal leaders who met in a conference in Erbil this past Friday, asking for their country to join the path of peace with Israel and sign onto the Abraham Accords.

This group faces the possibility of imprisonment, torture or even death at the hands of the Iraqi government, which has already issued arrest warrants for those whom the government can identify, and are trying to determine the identity of all 300-plus participants for the same purpose. According to the Iraqi Penal Code, any overtures of peace toward “the Zionist entity” is punishable by death. 

EMET is currently circulating a letter in Congress to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “immediately and publicly intervene on behalf of these brave humanitarians” and to sanction individual members of the Iraqi government for issuing arrest warrants for leaders of the conference. We further ask that the United States government also sanction those Iraqi leaders directly responsible for these retrograde and primitive arrest warrants.  

EMET calls on all members of Congress to sign onto this letter to protect the human rights and lives of those forward-thinking and heroic individuals who participated in this Erbil conference and to continue building on the Abraham Accords, a historic step toward stabilizing the Middle East.  

On September 17th, Secretary Blinken gave an address from the White House recognizing the one-year anniversary of the signing of the Abraham Accords, in which he said, “We will encourage more countries to follow the lead of the Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. We want to widen the circle of peaceful diplomacy, because it’s in the interests of countries across the region and around the world for Israel to be treated like any other country. Normalization leads to greater stability, more cooperation, mutual progress – all things the region and the world need very badly right now.”  

Said EMET President and Founder Sarah Stern, “We therefore encourage President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to stand on the side of those who encourage peaceful co-existence with Israel. Our voice should be lent to the forward forces of light in the region; not to the retrograde forces of darkness, of prejudice and of enmity.” 

We also encourage our readers to call into their member of Congress and Senators, asking them to please sign onto the EMET letter. You can find our letter here. 

You can find your local representative here and your senators here. To be connected to any of your Congress members via phone, call (202) 224-3121.  

For additional help, email EMET at [email protected]. (Please note that our offices will be closed on Tuesday and Wednesday in observance of the Jewish holidays.)