Kurdish-Israeli relations

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There is an ancient tradition that relates the Kurdistani Jews as the descendants of the ten tribes from the time of the exile of the Assyrians in the 6th century BCE. The Kurdistani Jews speak the eastern dialect of the Neo-Aramaic language, akin to the language of the Babylonian Talmud.

According to the Bible, after the year 722 BC Jews settled in Mesopotamia and Media, today's Kurdistan area, the settlement of the spread of Judaism and Jews. The religious texts report that in the late 8th century BC, the Assyrian invaders of the Northern Kingdom of Israel deported the Jews to "Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes" (II Kings 17:6). The Medes were ancestors of the Kurds. The Medes' kings allowed the Jews to return and live in peace in Jerusalem, their sacred city.

The great Kurdish warrior Saladin Ayyubi's doctor Rambam was a Jew. For centuries after Saladin, the Kurds and Jews lived peacefully with each other, and before the breakup of the Ottoman empire, there was a large Jewish population in Mosul, south Kurdistan.

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[edit] Relations

[edit] Military relations

According to Eliezer Tsafrir (a former senior Mossad official), in 1963-1975 Israel had military advisers at the headquarters of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, and trained and supplied the Kurdish units with firearms and field and anti-aircraft artillery (Reuters, 21.02.1999.).[citation needed]

From the end of the 1950s to the early 1960s, by various estimates, thousands of Mossad agents and instructors of the Israeli army resided in south Kurdistan at the time and conducted undercover operations. Israel became the principal source of weapons supplies and training for the Kurds in their struggle against the Iraqi government.[citation needed]

The KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) together with the Mossad established in the late 1960s the KDP intelligence service "Parastin", which means resistance.[citation needed]

[edit] Political Relations

In 1999, the Kurds accused the Mossad of providing information that led to the arrest in Kenya of Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) in northern Kurdistan. Kurdish protestors in Berlin attacked the Israeli embassy, and the Israeli security forces shot against the crowd. (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FF30Ak07.html) Hundreds stormed the Israeli Consulate, and this resulted in three protesters being shot to death, and another 16 protesters and 27 police officers wounded.

Israeli mass media in 2004 reported about the meetings of Israeli officials with Kurdish political leaders when Massoud Barzani, Jalal Talabani and the former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon publicly confirmed the good relations with the south Kurdistan region.

Jewish organizations worldwide started propaganda and lobbying campaigns to aid the Kurds in southern Kurdistan during Operation Desert Storm to stop the Iraqi government's persecutions. (Barron A. US and Israeli Jews Express Support for Kurdish Refugees // Washington Report of Middle East Affairs, May-June 1991, p.64.) Israel also provided, through north Kurdistan, first aid items to south Kurdistan, and Israeli Prime Minister Shamir, during a meeting with US Secretary of State James Baker called on the US government to defend the Kurds. (Shahak I. Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies // (www.abbc.com/historia/shahak/opensec/07.htm))

The president of south Kurdistan (KRG Kurdistan Regional Government) Massoud Barzani answered a question while visiting Kuwait in May 2006 about the Kurdish-Israeli relationship: “It is not a crime to have relations with Israel. If Baghdad established diplomatic relations with Israel, we could open a consulate in Hewlêr (southern Kurdistan).” Israeli television has in the past broadcast photographs from the 1960s showing Massoud Barzani's father, Mustafa Barzani, embracing the then Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan. (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FF30Ak07.html)

[edit] The genetic bond claim between Kurds and Jews

A team of German, Indian and Israeli specialists published the results of their research that showed that the Jews were distant ethnic relatives of the Kurds. (http://www.noravank.am/file/article/256_en.pdf) The Jews and Kurds according to the research teams have common ancestors who resided in the area between northern Kurdistan and southern Kurdistan.

[edit] Kurds in Israel

Immigration from Kurdistan to Israel began in the 16th century, with the first immigrants from Kurdistan settling in Safed. Kurdish immigrants later on in the 20th century arrived in the 1920s and 1930s, and by the year 1948 there were some 8000 Kurds in Israel. When the state of Israel was established in 1948, crowds of people from all four parts of Kurdistan moved to Israel. Today, the Kurdish Jewish population in Israel is over 150,000; the largest concentration of Kurdish people can be found around Jerusalem. (http://www.jcjcr.org/kyn_article_view.php?aid=20)

In Israel, generally, the Kurdish immigrants have kept alive the cultural heritage of Jewish Kurdistan through their distinctive cuisine, music, and traditions. (http://www.yaleisraeljournal.com/spr2005/goodman.php) A new book that came out recently by the Israeli scholar Mordechai Zaken describes the relationship between the Jews of Kurdistan and their Muslim neighbours and masters (tribal chieftains or aghas)in southern Kurdistan during the last few centuries.[1]

[edit] Jews in Kurdistan

In the middle of the 20th century, the number of Kurdistani Jews was estimated at 40-50 thousand.

Numbers of Kurdistani Jews in southern Kurdistan (based on the Iraqi statistics): 3109 Jews - Hewler province 4042 Jews - Kirkuk 10345 Jews - Mosul 2271 Jews - Suleymaniye 2851 Jews - Diyala province The total of 22,618 Jews lived in the Kurdish-populated areas (Patai R. Preface, in: Brauer E. The Jews of Kurdistan. Completed and Edited by R. Patai. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1993, p.16.)

It's estimated that around 10% of the population of Kurdistan after world war 1 were Jews.

[edit] Famous Israeli-Kurdish people

  • Rabbi Samuel Barzani, a Kurdish man and also the father of Rabbi Asenath Barzani, founded numerous Jewish schools in Kurdistan, and ultimately Rabbi Samuel's daughter Asenath headed the Jewish academy in Mosul in southern Kurdistan.
  • Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela traveled during the 12th century in about 1170 to Kurdistan. There Benjamin found over 100 Jewish communities who still spoke Aramaic.

[edit] References

  1. ^ [2008] Jewish Subjects and their Tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan: A Study in Survival, By Mordechai Zaken. About the book: This book deals with the position of the Jewish communities in dozens of urban centers and rural villages chiefly in southern Kurdistan, namely Iraqi Kurdistan, during the last few hundreds of years and primarily during the first half of the 20th century. The book describes the position of many prominent and ordinary individual Jewish subjects within the tribal Kurdish society. The unique set of relations between the Jews and their tribal chieftains (aghas), the rights, duties and obligations of the Jews towards their aghas, and the traditional, tribal obligations of the chieftains towards their Jews, receive careful attention and analysis . The book brings to life many tribal chieftains whose personal history had been wiped out from the collective memory in Kurdistan. In fact, this study rescues the life history of many tribal figures and describes in details the Kurdish tribal society during the first half of the 20th century, as it was never told. This book is based on new oral sources (based on hundreds of interviews with Jewish informants originally from Kurdistan), diligently collected and carefully analyzed. The four main parts of the book examine the relationships between the Kurdish Jews and their tribal chieftains in urban centers and villages in Kurdistan, using numerous new reports and vivid examples. It also deals extensively with topics such as the security and murder of Jews in the tribal Kurdish setting, the question of slavery of rural Jews and the conversion of Jews to Islam. The last part of the book examines the experience of the Jews in Iraqi Kurdistan between World War I (1914) and the immigration of Jews to Israel (1951-52). Readership: All those interested in the history of oriental Jewry, Kurds and Iraq, minorities in the Middle East, tribal society, as well as oral historians, sociologists and anthropologists. About the author: Mordechai Zaken, Ph.D. (2004) in Near Eastern Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in the history of the Kurds and the Jews in Kurdistan and in Muslim and non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East. Dr. Zaken served as Adviser on Arab Affairs to the Prime Minister of Israel (1997-1999). Published by Brill: • August 2007 • ISBN 978 9004161 90 0 • Hardback (xxii, 364 pp.) • Jewish Identities in a Changing World, vol. 9, List price EUR 120.- / US$ 162.- Book Orders: UK, TEL. + 44 (0) 1767 604-954; FAX +44 (0) 1767 601-640; brill@turpin-distribution.com CUSTOMERS IN THE AMERICAS BRILL P.O. Box 605 Herndon, VA 20172-0605 USA TEL. 1 800 337 9255 (toll free, US & Canada only) TEL. +1 (703) 661-1585; FAX: +1 (703) 661-1501 cs@brillusa.com; Brillonline@brill.nl; http://www.brill.nl/

[edit] External links