Letter from a Kurd to Israel

Israel and Kurdistan - time for an alliance of the ages.

Victor Sharpe, 15/10/19 15:05 

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24584

Sometime ago, before Turkey chose first to lurch further into the deadly embrace of Islamism and later under the growing dictatorship of Recep Tayip Erdogan, I received a plea from a highly educated  Kurdish friend who was supportive of Israel's epic struggle to survive among its hostile Arab neighbors. He was devoted to the Jewish people for he knew of both the shared values and even ethnicities existing between Jews and Kurds dating back millennia.

Here is some of my Kurdish friend's impassioned letter from ten years ago, which was in reply to my American Thinker article of June 2010 titled, In his reply, he uncannily warned against the then alliance of Israel with Turkey:

"I wish the Jews in Israel and abroad would know better about the policy of their leaders concerning the Kurds, because it happens in the name of Israel, and that should matter to all Jews. Turkish oppression of the Kurds is unknown to most Israelis. It is hard for me to understand how Israel's cooperation with Turkey does not take into account the misery that it imposes upon the Kurdish people who yearn, as the Jews have for centuries, to be free from terror and persecution?

"Not so long ago, the Jews in Europe endured the Shoah and they know better than anyone else the horrors of that experience.”

He went on to add the following:

"Of course it's not only Israel but the whole world that is pro-Turkish and anti-Kurdish. It is not fair to criticize Israel only, but given the history of the Jewish people, there should be a heightened sensitivity towards Kurdish suffering.

"We Kurds have shared so much culture together and we still remember fondly the Jews who lived with us for centuries. But the Turks waxed and waned in their attitude towards the Jews; sometimes they were tolerant and sometimes hostile. There are many Turks today who share Islamist ideas and proclaim hostility towards the Jewish state. Within Turkey lies the same anti-Jewish pestilence that exists throughout the Arab and Persian world.

Now in hindsight, it is glaringly obvious how correct my Kurdish friend's warning those ten years ago was. Erdogan has sought every opportunity to break Turkey’s erstwhile friendship with the Jewish state and now he seeks a veritable caliphate in the Islamic world while garnering to himself those, like Hamas, who harbor deep hostility towards Israel.

Turkey is an enemy of both Israel and the Kurdish people. He pointed out that, "the legitimate arguments and rights Israel has are the same rights and truths it denies in its official policy towards the Kurds. For now and for the future, everything looks black. I fear the worst for us. The whole world is against us, and on the Turkish side there is no change...."

From 1961, the Jewish state was the only nation to actively support Kurdish aspirations. According to Mordechai Nisan in his book, “Minorities in the Middle East”, the Kurdish leader in 1966, Mustafa Barzani, told a visiting Israeli emissary, Arieh Lova Eliav, that. “In truth, only the Jews cared about the Kurds.”  

I remember an article in the New York Sun on 6 July, 2004 titled "The Kurdish Statehood Exception," in which Hillel Halkin exposed the discrimination and double standards employed against Kurdish aspirations of statehood.  He wrote:

"The Kurds have a far better case for statehood than do the Palestinians. Kurdish people have their own unique language and culture, which the Palestinian Arabs do not have. They have had a sense of themselves as a distinct people for many centuries, which the Palestinian Arabs have never had. They have been betrayed repeatedly in the past 100 years by the international community and its promises, while the Palestinian Arabs have been betrayed only by their fellow Arabs."

The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory's current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world.

The Jewish state must now, more than ever, not ignore the 35-40 million Kurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries, nay millennia, but have been denied; an independent Kurdish state of their own.

Turkey has now chosen to break its alliance with Israel and instead has sought alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria, along with the Hamas occupied and terrorist infested Gaza Strip. Under Erdogan it has turned on Israel with a viciousness that is quite desolating. It is sliding remorsefully back to the 7th century mindset and cesspit that so many of its neighbors wallow in.

Israel should advance the restoration of a profoundly just, moral and enduring pact with the Kurdish people, and assistance towards creating a future independent State of Kurdistan. An enduring alliance between Israel and Kurdistan would be a vindication of history, a recognition of the shared sufferings of both peoples, and bring closer the advent of a brighter and strategically stronger future for both non-Arab nations.