WATCH: video in Kurdish
DUHOK, Kurdistan Region - Hundreds attended a memorial service in the Kurdish city of Duhok on Wednesday in respect to the former Israeli leader Shimon Peres, who died Tuesday at age 93.
The two-day ceremony is for Kurds to "honor and remember a friend" who showed support for the establishment of a Kurdish state, said activist Baiar Zaweti, who arranged the memorial service in Duhok.
"Peres was one if the first -- if not the only -- head of a state who openly showed support for Kurdish independence and we are here to remember him as a friend," Zaweti told Rudaw.
Peres, who served as Israel's prime minister and president and remained an influential figure for the Jewish community across the world, had frequently praised the Kurds for their "democratic aspirations" and publicly defended Kurdish statehood.
"The Kurds have, de facto, created their own state, which is democratic,” he said in a meeting with US President Barack Obama in 2014. “One of the signs of a democracy is the granting of equality to women.”
Between 1948 and 1951, over 121,000 Jews left Iraq and Kurdistan for the Holy Land in the so-called Operation Ezra and Nehemiah as Israel airlifted tens of thousands of Jews following the Iraqi government’s intensified persecution after Israel was created in 1948.
An estimated 10,000 Jews remained in Iraq even after the exodus who were then forced to carry yellow identity cards and were banned from selling their properties.
Some 1,000 Jews still live in the Kurdistan Region according to the Kurdish ministry of religious affairs, which in October 2014 designated two people to represent their fellow Jewish citizens in the ministry.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also declared his support for the creation of a Kurdish state in 2014, which he said was necessary for the formation of "an alliance of moderate powers" in the Middle East.
"We should... support the Kurdish aspiration for independence," Netanyahu told Tel Aviv University's INSS think-tank on June 29, 2014, and praised what he called ‘the political commitment’ in Kurdistan.”
“They are a fighting people who have proved their political commitment, political moderation, and deserve political independence,” he said.
The memorial service in Duhok will continue on Thursday, organizers told Rudaw.
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