An Israeli airstrike that killed a Palestinian member of Hamas in Gaza actually had an added benefit. Not only is the world better off for the removal of one more terrorist, in this case it also freed a young girl who had been kidnapped from her family and sold as a slave when she was just 11 years old.

Like myriads of other Yazidi women and children, M. was kidnapped from her home town in Kurdistan, and a long ordeal followed which included being incarcerated and “sold” in Raqqa, Syria, where she was forced to marry a Palestinian man from Gaza who was apparently affiliated with Hamas.

During her time with the ISIS/Hamas militant, M. was constantly harassed and mistreated physically and sexually, and her family has seldom heard from her since her abduction.

M. became pregnant and gave birth to her husband’s two children at a very young age, and at some point, after moving between villages around the Syrian-Iraqi border, her husband was ultimately reported dead. 

Her dead husband's family lured her back to Gaza and in 2020 she returned with her two young children but was once again treated like a captive. One of the family members was yet another Hamas fighter. When he was killed this year by an Israeli airstrike, she "was able to leave the family home, got hold of a cell phone, and bravely recounted her story in a video she shared on TikTok."

Eventually, the story made it back to her family in Iraq. They contacted a Canadian businessman named Steve Maman who has been called the "Jewish Schindler" because he has helped to rescue hundreds of displaced Yazidis. Because of the ongoing conflict, it took months to finally get the woman, whose name is Fawzia Amin Sido, out of Gaza.

Sido was secretly smuggled out of Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing in recent days, crossed through the Allenby Bridge to Jordan, and then continued to Iraq, where she was reunited with her family...

Iraqi officials had been in contact with Sido for months and relayed her information to U.S. officials, who arranged for her exit from Gaza with Israel's assistance. Iraq and Israel do not have any diplomatic ties...

After entering Israel, she continued on to Jordan through the Allenby Bridge Crossing and then returned to her family in Iraq.

Sido is said to be in good physical condition but, not surprisingly, is traumatized by her time in captivity. Finally, just this week, the 21 year-old was reunited with her family in Iraq. Steve Maman, the "Jewish Schindler" posted this video of a promise kept.

I made a promise to Fawzia the yazidi who was hostage of Hamas in Gaza that I would bring her back home to her mother in Sinjar. To her it seemed surreal and impossible but not to me, my only enemy was time. Our team reunited her moments ago with her mother and family in Sinjar pic.twitter.com/KuN9JPuGOb

— Steve maman (@stevemaman) October 2, 2024

Something like 6,000 Yzidis were taken captive by ISIS in 2014. Many of the ISIS members responsible are long dead now. The two Palestinians who bought and kept Sido are dead too. That she survived all of this is pretty remarkable. Hopefully she'll have a much better life from here on out.