Kurds Are True Friends of Israel

I am from the Middle East, but I do not celebrate the recent uprisings and regime changes. It is good to see Arabs topple their dictators, but I worry that their revolution today may harm an existing democracy that is Israel tomorrow. If Arab demonstrations can add new democracies to the region I will welcome it, but I feel that some of them want to overthrow their regimes in order to get a free hand to wage a war against Israel at some point. 

People may wonder why I care about Israel, and my reply is because we have a lot in common with the people of that country. I am a Kurd from Iraqi Kurdistan, and as far back as I can remember, we have been repressed, tortured, killed, bombed and gassed by the same countries that vow to destroy Israel. In just one day, Saddam Hussein’s army killed five thousand innocent men, women and children in my town, Halabja, with chemical bombs in 1988. The Syrian regime denies the existence of hundreds of thousands of Kurds in Syria, and for the past three decades there hasn’t been a day in which the Islamic regime in Iran hasn’t executed a Kurdish man or woman. 

Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and for us, the Kurds, who do not have our own state, Israel is a source of inspiration. We genuinely believe the Jewish people deserve a state of their own, and I would want our state, if we one day have one, modeled after Israel than any of our neighbors. 

Our neighbors are police states where citizens are detained, tortured and killed with impunity. Their dictators can give and take away life as they wish, and any voice of dissent is mercilessly silenced. But when I look at Israel and see a country where politicians, no matter how high-ranking are brought to court for any wrongdoing, where people can criticize their government without fear, where the press is free, I can’t help worrying about its future. 

I cannot celebrate the fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak or Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali when I see protesters hailing resentful remarks at Israel as if it was Israel that repressed and jailed them. It may skip the attention of many westerners, but if you know Arabic and see the protesters’ banners, you will be surprised to find out how much of these demonstrations are about Israel. 

I believe that Israel’s friendly relations with some of its neighbors, such as Egypt and Jordan, has always been fragile. Most people in those two countries dream about the demise of the Jewish state. Every Arab state, not only Egypt or Jordan -- could have peace treaty with Israel, but as long as their peoples are hostile towards the Jewish entity, it would be nothing but fragile peace. 

Turkey is another example. The alliance between Israel and Turkey has unfortunately, and rightly so, estranged millions of Kurds in Turkey. Turkey is a deeply religious country, and its good relations with the Jewish state for so many years only came about because secular military generals used to run that country. Now with an Islamic party in charge, no other country in the region has shown more animosity towards Israel in the past few years than Turkey. 

The Kurds, on the other hand, are extremely friendly towards Israel. Unlike Arab countries whose leaders sign treaties with Israel while their people seethe with anger, in Kurdistan, people and government alike have deep respect for the Jewish people and their faith. In Kurdistan, people speak nostalgically, with tearful eyes and sorrowful hearts, about their old Jewish neighbors. In Europe or America it may be the law that stops the expression of anti-Jewish sentiment, but in Kurdistan, it is genuine sympathy that makes almost everyone friendly towards Israel. 

In any Muslim country, you would find people who would happily volunteer to an army that may one day invade Israel, but in Kurdistan, you would find many people who wouldn’t hesitate to join the Israeli army to repel any such attack. Kurds are victims of genocide, centuries of persecution and displacement. That’s why we understand and relate to the Jewish cause better than anybody else. 

I was walking one day in a market in Kurdistan with a Palestinian colleague who lives in Europe. At one point, we stopped to buy some dried figs and nuts, and when the shopkeeper learned that my colleague was a Palestinian, he turned to her and said, “Please leave Israel alone. Stop firing rockets at them.” 

Once I was traveling from Baghdad to Kurdistan and the passenger next to me in the taxi was an old Kurdish man. He had been enlisted in the Iraqi army in 1956 and sent to the Israeli front in Jordan. He said his fellow Arab soldiers used to castigate him for not wanting to shoot at the Israelis. He would say to them, “It is not my war. I have nothing against the Jews.” 

This kinship between the Kurds and the Jews is not new. Only recently did I see in the Dead Sea Scrolls the story of Tobit, who advises his sons to pack up and go to Media because they would be safe there. And guess what? The third line of the Kurdish national anthem says, “We are the children of the Media.” 

The Middle East is an island on which the Jews and Kurds are stranded. In order to survive, we have to stay together. The direction our region is heading draws us closer to each other. No matter how bleak the future of the region may look, Kurdistan and the Jewish state will survive by holding on to each other. 

* This article first appeared in the Canadian Jewish News.