Kurdish media outlets reported favorably on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s support for Kurdish independence on Monday, highlighting the fact that his position is shared by several other leading Israeli officials.
Last week, Netanyahu told a delegation of 33 Republican Congressmen visiting Israel that the Kurds are “brave, pro-Western people who share our values,” expressing support for an independent Kurdish state. On September 25, voters in the Kurdistan region of Iraq will cast their ballots in a long-awaited independence referendum.
Broadcaster Kurdistan 24 noted that “Netanyahu’s support differs from the usual US administration’s position, which supports a united Iraq, also known as the ‘one-Iraq’ policy.”
“Israel has been the only state to have publicly voiced its support for Kurdish statehood in northern Iraq,” the report said.
“Netanyahu is not the only Israeli official to express support for the Kurds in Iraq as others have also highlighted the cause,” the report continued. “Former Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had previously called upon the international community to help the Kurds in the fight against Islamic State (IS).”
The Kurdistan 24 report added, “Last year, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked stated, ‘We [the State of Israel] must openly call for the establishment of a Kurdish state that separates Iran from Turkey, one which will be friendly toward Israel. The Kurds are politically moderate, have proven they can be politically committed, and are worthy of statehood.”
The report noted that in a meeting with former US President Barack Obama in 2014, the late former President and Prime Minister of Israel Shimon Peres had advised the US to support the creation of a Kurdish state.
Also quoted was former Israeli Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s observation that, “We Jews, like the Kurds, are a minority in the Middle East. Kurds have proven themselves over decades to be a reliable strategic partner for us.”
Kurdish news site Rudaw observed that “The Kurdistan Region and Israel do not have official relations but have enjoyed friendly ties.”
Rudaw pointed out that “the Kurdish Jewish Community (KJC) says Jews around the world welcomed the decision to hold a referendum on independence.” It quoted a June statement from the KJC calling on “all the political parties and social groups to put an end for suppression, mass atrocities, displacement, occupation, destroying civilization, history, and our existence, and for the sake of our future generations to serve humanity and live in a peaceful society, let altogether vote and say (YES) for independence of Kurdistan.”
Iranian media outlets seized on Netanyahu’s comments as buttressing the claim made by the speaker of the Tehran regime’s parliament that Israel wants to sow chaos in Iraq.
“The Zionist regime seeks Iraq’s disintegration,” Ali Larijani alleged during a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in Tehran on June 21. Larijani and other Iranian officials have also accused Israel of supporting ISIS.
@ Michael S:
Hi Michael!
You make some good points–and the nation state in general is not the answer to all of life’s problems. But Kurds, like Jews, and some others found their statelessness often life-threatening…unless they were willing to sacrifice their own identities.
35-40 million Kurds were forcibly Arabized, Turkified, etc.. Some 40 million native Amazigh/Kabyle people–“Berbers”–had the same thing happen to them in North Africa…forced to name their children with Arab names, see their own culture outlawed, etc.. 12 million native, non-Arab Copts in Egypt have similar tales to tell. And Assyrians, etc. So, it’s no accident the a Kurdish leader wrote most of the Foreword to my book–and a “Berber” publisher wrote inside jacket comments http://www.q4j-middle-east.com .
I’m quite familiar with the results of the collapse of empires after WWI…indeed, Iraq is Yugoslavia’s virtual twin. Please see what I mean http://ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2005/8/independentstate278.htm. Michael, you will like this article, I promise.
All my best,
Jerry
Hi, Gerald.
Nice article on Arutz 7. Let me attack it, just for fun.
You seem to be a fan of Kurdish independence, buttressing your enthusiasm by the fact that the Kurds, alone among people of such numbers and antiquity in modern times, do not have their own state; and that since they don’t have one, they should get one.
My mother was Slovenian-American. Slovenia is actually a country today, having won independence 26 years ago, in 1991, after having been ruled by foreigners for 700+ years. If people confused the Kurds with Little Miss Muppet, hardly anyone to this day even knows where Slovenia is, much less that it is not a mispronunciation of “Slovakia”.
So they’re independent. What does that get them? Having their own country, plus a few Euros in their pocket (That’s right, they don’t even have a currency of their own) will get them a bottle of wine. Now that they have a name tag of their own at European Council meetings, other “countries” want their own name tags: Scotland, Catalonia, Flanders, etc. They will be, like the Slovenians, “countries” in name only, their actual citizenship being “European”, which is to say, “German”.
Up until World War I, Slovenia was part of Austria-Hungary. Austria was a country of Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, Hungarians, Romanians, Croatians, Serbians, Bosnians, Italians, Albanians and Roma — just as the Ottoman Empire consisted of Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, Macedonians, Circassians, Georgians, Abkhazis, Ossetians, Arabs of various religions, Crimtatars, and some Jews.
When both the Ottomans and the Austrians began to crumble as empires, the Great Powers purposely carved out of them small, weak states. They repeated this process after World War II, when they broke up the British, French, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, American, Spanish and Portugese empires. Before WWII, there were only some 50 countries in the world; but most of them were viable, fairly powerful countries. Now we have nearly 200 countries, the vast majority of them economic basket cases, some on the verge of famine.
Becoming independent is not the answer to all of life’s persistent problems. Many times, in fact, it actually causes more problems. At least Slovenia has its own seaport, howbeit meriely a glorified fishing harbor. Kurdistan will have no seacoast whatever, and will have all the disadvantages of other land-locked countries like Afghanistan, Nepal and Bhutan. Very plausibly, this is why they have not been independent for all these centuries.
So good to see Kurds getting coverage–if not support–that they deserve. My research and work on the Kurds go back to the 1970s when most folks who heard of Kurds thought about Little Miss Muffett–and those were the wrong curds. My doctoral research paper on their cause was picked up–in a much shortened form–by the heavily Nobel Laureate-sponsored academic journal, the Fall 1982 Middle East Review (“british petroleum Politics, Arab Nationalism, and the Kurds”), and from there made its way into Paris’s acclaimed Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po)–and from there into many other authors’ books on them later on in the form of footnoted references. The Kurdish Regional Government in Irbil spread my “State Department Math” around itself with my name later removed http://cabinet.gov.krd/a/d.aspx?r=77&l=12&a=6589&smap&s=010000 . Most of my book’s (“The Quest For Justice in the Middle East…”) Foreword was written by the President of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, and dozens of my articles on the Kurds appeared in assorted Kurdish media outlets–and many other non-Kurdish ones as well. Let’s all do whatever we can to bring the plight of this people to the world’s attention. If Arab’s can demand a 22nd state–and second, not first, in the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine (Jordan sits on 78% of the original since 1922), then it’s long past due for some 38 million Kurds–who pre-date Arabs and Turks in their region by millennia–to get some semblance of justice themselves. Check this out in Israel National News http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13827
@ Michael S:
Well, you know a lot more about it than I. I recall many years ago there was a Wolf Barzani, their leader who got scads of publicity and support in the West. His picture was all over the place as a hero.
As for the Armenian Massacre I always believed that it had been perpetrated by the “new” secularist Turkey, led by Mustapha Kemal or Attaturk. Used to read a lot about him as a kid, but, as you are intimating, the Turkish hordes were composed, like their former empire of more peoples than ethnic Turks alone. The Armenians being Christians, and the Kurds being Muslim, was all the reason they needed to join in such horror., Pity they’re not more like the Druze.
The only self-evident fact which shines through all the blood is ….TRUST NO ONE”…
@ Edgar G.:
“This should make Turkey and Israel life-long kissin’ kuzzins”
You crack me up with that one, Edgar 🙂 There are no “kissin’ kuzzins” in the Middle East — unless you count the Mafia “kiss of death”.
The Kurds, foremost among them the PKK, have been at odds with the Turks ever since the San Remo accords. They are not saints; and they actively participated in the slaughter of Armenians and Assyrian Christians. That’s the Middle East for you: never a lack of blood under the bridge. The Barzani faction (which controls the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq) also allied itself with Saddam Hussein at one time, to fight against their kindred PUK faction, led by the Talabani clan. It’s not a “neat” situation by a long shot
The YPG, who are dominant in the Syrian Kurdish region, are the US allies that the Turks (probably correctly) accuse of being allied with the PKK rebels in Turkey. The PKK insurgency, on the other hand, was rekindled a couple of years ago by the Turkish President Erdogan for personal political reasons. Up until that time, the Turkish government had been negotiating peace with imprisoned PKK leader Ocalan. The incident that caused Erdogan to cut off the talks, was a massacre of predominantly Kurdish demonstrators, which Erdogan absurdly blamed on the Kurds.
I personally like the YPG, who have female soldiers like the IDF. The roots of the tradition come from the PKK and YPG’s roots as a Soviet-sponsored independence movement years ago. They are SECULARISTS, and some are downright agnostics and atheists — much like the IDF in the early years. ISIS fighters are terrified of these women; because to be killed by one means that the Muslim fighter can never attain Paradise.
@ Michael S:
I would have thought that the Turks want to exterminate the Kurds with whom, for over 40 years, have been in a permanent low level war…. the P.K.K. . The P.K.K. say they don’t want a separate state, but there have been nearly 50,000 deaths so far from their conflict with Turkey. Seems odd to me, not to want a separate state, yet prepared for so much bloodshed to get “rights” IN TURKEY. Seem on the wrong track..
If the Turks would be warned off by the U.S. The Kurdistan Region of Iraq could combine with the Turkish influenced Iraqi Kurds the and the Syrian Kurds, to form a single people which they really are, Perhaps also the P.K.K. who would then be a legal entity, with their own members in a Kurdish parliament. This new state would make a wonderful ally for Israel.
Then, or perhaps concurrently or even sooner, Israel could publicly announce that they recognise the Armenian Genocide.
This should make Turkey and Israel life-long kissin’ kuzzins…….. At least, the next flotilla from Turkey could be selectively shelled with a clear conscience after due warning, with no millions in compensation etc.
“Israel has been the only state to have publicly voiced its support for Kurdish statehood in northern Iraq,”
I have not followed the Kurdish situation much lately. Those are a most unfortunate people: They are surrounded, TRULY surrounded (not like Israel, which has a seacoast) by countries that do not want them to exist as a people: The Turks, Iranians and Sunni Arabs. They have also been divided: One faction of Iraqi Kurds are toadies of the Turks; another are toadies of the Iranians. The Syrian Kurds are opposed by the ruling Iraqi Kurds and by the Turks, who want to exterminate them.
These Syrian Kurds are supported by the Americans; but after ISIS is defeated, the US must ultimately abandon them to the tender mercies of their Turkish enemies (who are NATO members, and false friends of Israel and the West).
Kurdistan has oil, and is potentially rich; but without countries to ship their oil through, they are isolated and poor. They are fiercely independent; and I dare say that one day Turkey and Iran will both be destroyed, but Kurdistan will remain. Israeli help will ensure this.