Kurds and Jews: A Common Cause
Howard Frederick
hfrederick at igc.apc.org
Mon Apr 22 18:03:55 BST 1991
Subject: Kurds and Jews: A Common Cause
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| CRTNET |
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| April 20, 1991 |
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| Number 406 |
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| COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AND THEORY NETWORK |
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| Edited by Tom Benson, Penn State University |
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CONTENTS --
-- The Kurds, the Jews (Bob Werman)
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 8:59 +0300
[from] <RWERMAN at HUJIVMS> Bob Werman
Subject: The Kurds, the Jews
The Kurds, the Jews: Two People with a Common Cause
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The Kurds are once again in the headlines; the only
headline that this poor, besotted people seem to earn is one of
slaughter and maltreatment, of broken promises, of hopes dashed,
starvation and death. The Kurds are an ancient non-Arab Muslim
people who may be of Iranian stock; they speak Kurdish, a
language that bears some relation to Persian. They have been for
most of their history migrating, pastoral mountaineers, known as
brave and resourceful fighters, skilled in guerrilla warfare.
The great Saladin was himself a Kurd. They live in Eastern
Turkey, Northern Iraq and Iran and to a small extent in
Northeastern Syria. They are mostly Sunni Moslems.
The Turks captured part of Kurdistan in 1550, but the area
was never completely conquered; the still ambivalent - at best -
attitude of the Turks to the Kurds is evident in their current
refusal to admit Kurdish refugees who have crowded the Iraqi
Turkish border. Even more obviously antagonistic is the Turkish
treatment of their own Kurds; the Turks have kept the Kurds
living in abject poverty, isolated and with extremely limited
economic opportunities. The migrations of the semi-nomadic Kurds
in the past has produced great tension in Turkish-Persian
relationships.
The British promised the Kurds a homeland after World War
I; this promise was forgotten when the British created the
Kingdom of Iraq for their Arabian ally, King Faisal I, a cousin
of Abdullah, the ally they set up in Jordan in contravention to
the Balfour Declaration's promise of that territory as part of a
homeland for the Jews.
The Russians occupied Northern Iran after World War II and
again promised the Kurds a state, but now in Iran as well; again
the promise came to nought. And now President Bush has
encouraged the Kurds to revolt and overthrow Saddam Hussein in
the wake of Operation Desert Storm. And again the Kurds have
been deserted. Believing that the Iraqi army had been destroyed
as claimed by the US and that the US would support their
revolution, the Kurds attacked and temporarily captured much of
Northern Iraq. But this initial success was halted and reversed
by a resurgent Iraqi army. Moreover, the expected aid from the
Americans was not forthcoming. Secretary of State Baker spent
all of 12 minutes at the Turkish-Iraqi border viewing the plight
of the hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees [there are less
than 5,000,000 of them altogether], who are camped on the border,
in the cold mountainous atmosphere without shelter and food after
having fled from Iraqi helicopters, supposedly destroyed by the
US and its allies, from phosphorous bombs and Napalm. It was a
detour for Secretary of State Baker, we have to admit that. So
much for promises.
The Iraqis have persecuted the Kurds with a vengeance; time
after time the Kurds have attempted to revolt. In the 60's under
Barazani [not Jewish, but the name - meaning from the town Barazan
- is also found among Kurdish Jews, including Asnat Barazani [1590-
1670], the only woman head of a yeshiva that I have ever heard of]
they appeared to have some success; Israel was known to favor the
Kurdish revolt and probably supplied arms to the rebels as well as
tactical aid. With Saddam Hussein's accession to the rule of Iraq,
the Kurdish revolt was suppressed with finality. The Iraqis
overflew a Kurdish village and dropped canisters of poison gas;
the result: 5,000 dead, no survivors other than those villagers
away at the time of the bombing.
Jews have lived in Kurdistan since antiquity; Benjamin of
Tudela, a 12th century traveller, visited the region about 1170
C.E., reporting that more than 100 Jewish communities were found
there. He reported that in the town of Amadiya there were 25,000
Jews, all speaking Aramaic. Some of these are probably
descendents of first century converts to Judaism, a national
[Adiabene] conversion that began at royal levels and is recorded
in a number of sources. The Kurds or Kurdistan are mentioned [as
Kardu or Kurduchim] in the Targums to Genesis [8:4] and Jeremiah
[51:27], in Josephus [Antiquities 1:93] and in the Talmud
[Yevamot 16a]. In modern times the Jews of Kurdistan were
singular in that they spoke ancient Aramaic, although polluted by
insertions of foreign words from Kurdish, Persian, Arabic,
Turkish and Hebrew.
Kurdish Jews lived a difficult and poor life, working as
farmers and as artisans. Their relations with the Kurdish
Muslims were actually quite good, particularly after 1948. The
positive attitude of Kurdish Jews in Israel [they all left in
1950-51, about 20,000 of them] to their ex-neighbors has played
an important role in Israeli support of Kurdistani national
ambitions at the political as well as offering practical military
aid. I remember a Kurdish Jewish wedding in the 60's where a
major part of the entertainment was recital of a ballad whose
chorus was chanted by all; the theme of the ballad, in Arabic,
was the heroism and successes of the non-Jewish Kurdi rebel
leader of the time, Barazani.
Following this tradition, Israel is now involved in
sending supplies to the Kurdish refugees, providing blankets,
tents, canned goods and medical supplies to be parachuted to the
starving, freezing refugees. We have currently sent two tons of
such supplies for the Kurds. Israel has other reasons to be
concerned about the treatment of the Kurds. Israel identifies
with the plight of the Kurds. Israel is now being asked to make
territorial, political and military concessions to Israel's
enemies, with the understanding that international guarantees,
particularly American, will provide the protection needed and
lost by these guarantees. If promises are not kept, if the word
of the US and its Persian Gulf allies cannot be relied upon, how
can Israeli put its trust in such guarantees? And it very much
sounds as if promises were made to the Kurds, promises which were
not kept.
President Bush ended the Persian Gulf War too soon. He
did not want the world to see him as vindictive, hunting Saddam
Hussein down; he believed that the Iraqi people would depose a
weakened Saddam Hussein, whose promises of victory were shown to
be a mere illusion. He did not want to exceed his UN mandate, he
was sensitive to the fear the Arabs had of Western presence and
purposes in the Arab sub-continent. He did not want any more loss
of lives of American soldiers; he was riding on a crest of
popularity at home that would collapse in the face of heavy
casualties. President Bush stopped when he had accomplished
withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait, when the army of Iraq no longer
seemed a threat, when American self-image had risen to new heights.
But his refusal to help the Kurds actively [after all, this
is an internal problem of Iraq - a consideration that can be used
most cynically] has opened the doors to new and renewed criticism
of President Bush's motives in the Persian Gulf. Protecting
sources of oil was always a consideration, and a correct one, in
the US action against Iraq; now it incorrectly appears in the eyes
of critics that it was the only one or the major consideration in
US intervention. Even more damaging may be the loss of the newly
regained image of the US as the major keeper of international
morality, as a defender of the world, or at least as the leader
in the world's self defence against aggression. The whole world
once again asks with deep concern, "Can the US be counted on to
keep its promises to other countries?"
We in Israel have a very cynical attitude to promises.
More than once we have witnessed UN buffer forces who walked out
at the first smell of trouble. We have had the US guarantee the
right of free passage in the Straits of Tiran; but when Egypt
closed the Straits in 1967, the US did nothing more than
remonstrate with Egypt.
One of our Prime Ministers, Levi Eshkol, was caught, the
story goes, in the act of breaking a promise. When someone
pointed out that he had not kept his promise, Eshkol reputedly
replied, "What? Are we no longer allowed to make promises?"
We would like to believe promises made to us; it would
make lives so much simpler, so much safer if we could count
on the promises. But we are cynical. What is happening with the
Kurds does not make it easier for us. It is very difficult for
us to believe in promises. But we very much want to.
__Bob Werman
rwerman at hujivms
Jerusalem
copyright 1991 USA. All rights reserved.
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