Just days before the U.S. House is expected to pass a resolution declaring the wholesale slaughter of Christians in the Middle East a “genocide,” a Chaldean Catholic priest held up his own blood-stained shirt at the National Press Club and pleaded for the people of America to officially recognize these atrocities as genocide.

CNSNews.com is reporting on the moving witness of Father Douglas Bazi who spoke at the National Press Club last Thursday and called upon the U.S. State Department to recognize the genocide of Christians in the Middle East at the hands of ISIS.

“I’m begging here--begging people of America to recognize it as a genocide," Bazi said. “'Genocide' is a polite word. Can we think of another word to fit what happened to my people? We are not talking about persecution just like stories.”

When asked by Americans how life is in Iraq, the Iraqi-born Bazi describes the kind of persecution he and his parishioners faced in his parish in Erbil.

“There is no life in Iraq for my people,” he said. “They call my church the church of martyrs or the church of blood. My church in Baghdad been blowed up, blowed up in front of me,” Bazi said. “I survived twice. They bombed my car. I got shot in my leg by an AK-47. I was kidnapped for nine days. They used the hammer to broke my teeth, my nose, and my back,” Bazi said.

He then held up the shirt he wore during his kidnapping which was full of faded blood stains.

“I look to my blood every day, and I remember and this is what happens to my people every day,” Bazi said. “I’m lucky. I still look to my blood and remember, but what about my people? They don’t have any chance more to talk about our stories. I’m here to tell you that my people, they feel that we are forgotten and we are alone. My people need a future. I’m begging here--begging people of America to recognize it as a genocide.”

Bazi’s pleas come at a pivotal moment in the discussion about whether or not to declare the killing of Christians by ISIS to be war crimes. While Secretary of State John Kerry has agreed that crimes against Yazidis and other minority groups in the Middle East are acts of genocide, he told Congressional leaders that he needed more time to determine if attacks against Christians met the criteria of a genocide declaration.

Some of his reasons for not including Christians in the declaration, most of which have been called "flimsy" and "political" by the media, are that Christians were given a choice in many cases to convert or pay a fine rather than be killed. The state department also says ISIS has never made any declaration of its intent to wipe our Christians, which is a requirement before the declaration can be made.

He has been ordered to come to a decision no later than March 17.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives will vote tonight on a bipartisan resolution declaring the atrocities carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) against Christians and other minorities to amount to genocide.

The vote on the resolution, which was approved unanimously by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 2, expresses the sense of Congress that “those who commit or support atrocities against Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities, including Yezidis, Turkmen, Sabea-Mandeans, Kaka’e, and Kurds, and who target them specifically for ethnic or religious reasons, are committing, and are hereby declared to be committing, ‘war crimes,’ ‘crimes against humanity,’ and ‘genocide.’”

It then calls on “all governments, including the United States” to “call ISIL atrocities by their rightful names: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”

The resolution lists ISIS’s atrocities against Christians and other minorities as “mass murder, crucifixions, beheadings, rape, torture, enslavement, the kidnaping of children.”

It calls these and other acts of violence as being “deliberately calculated to eliminate their communities from the so-called Islamic State” which refers to areas across parts of Syria and Iraq which are in the hands of ISIS.

The resolution is expected to pass.

Another resolution will also be voted upon tonight, this one sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) which condemns “the gross violations of international law amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity” by the Assad regime, its allies and other parties to the Syrian conflict.

The resolution calls upon President Barack Obama to promote the establishment of a war crimes tribunal to address these crimes.

"Whether the official U.S. list of genocide victims includes or excludes Christians will affect the persecuted Christians enormously," writes Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, for National Review. "In raising humanitarian aid, receiving asylum, overcoming de facto discrimination in U.N. resettlement programs, receiving restitution and reparation for seized land, and securing a place at the peace-negotiations table."

She adds: "It would also give these two-millennia-old Christian communities a sense of justice – something that still matters greatly to the families of Holocaust victims and that eludes the Armenian community."

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