The Kurds of Israel

 Nadene Goldfoot

Kurds of Syria use their women in the fight-On 9 October 2019, days after former US president Donald Trump announced that US troops would pull out of north-east Syria, where they had allied with Kurdish-led forces for years. A newly empowered Turkey, which sees the stateless Kurds as an existential threat, and whose affiliated groups it has been at war with for decades, immediately launched an offensive on border towns held by Kurdish forces in north-east Syria, including Ras al-Ayn.

Last October of 2021, President Trump recalled American troops from Syria, acquiescing in a Turkish invasion of the country’s north to roll back the hard-won autonomy of Washington’s former allies, the Syrian Kurds. We approved of an invader's wishes against our ally's best interests. The Kurds were known as great fighters against ISIS, too.

     Kurds successful in fighting ISIS:  Female Yazidi and Kurdish Soldiers Fight Back Against ISIS.  The frontline of the fight against Islamic State militants in Nawaran near Mosul, Iraq, April 20, 2016.When Islamic State swept into the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar in 2014, a few young Yazidi women took up arms against the militants attacking women and girls from their community.

This sudden swerve in American policy—the withdrawal of support for an ally deputized as the American infantry in the fight against ISIS—shocked the sensibilities of Israelis and American Jews not a little. Yet far from producing the usual cacophony of clashing opinions, Mr. Trump’s retreat from the Kurds brought a rare monophony—a chorus of Israeli and Jewish-American voices sounding the same line of support for the luckless Kurds.  He had left an ally in the lurch.  

During their heroic struggle against an ascendant ISIS between 2014 and 2017, Western support for the Kurds was total. But once ISIS was gone, that support turned into cold betrayal, as America and Europe stood by and watched Ankara, Turkey go after the Kurds in Syria this year while Baghdad did the same in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2017.  How quickly the big shots forget their friends.  

Israel is a home now to some 200,000 Jews of Kurdistani origins, who are mostly descended from nearly 50,000 Kurdish Jews evacuated from Iraq during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah in the early 1950s. Israeli Jews of Kurdistani background preserve ties with the ethnic Kurdish communities in the Middle East, including with the Kurdish individuals residing in Israel.

Kurdistan was a mountainous region now divided among Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  There are Kurds living in Israel today.  Kurds in Israel refers to people of Kurdish origin residing in Israel (excluding Kurdish Jews). The Kurdish population who are Moslims in Israel is small and is mainly composed of individuals and families, who fled Iraq and Turkey during the Iraqi–Kurdish and the Kurdish–Turkish conflicts during the 20th century, as well as temporal residents arriving in Israel for medical care.

We also had Jews who made Kurdistan their home in another period.  According to tradition, the first Jewish settlers went to Kurdistan as early as the time of Ezra of the 5th century BCE.  

The early beginnings of Jewish immigration are attested by the Aramaic dialect spoken by Kurdish Jews up to modern times;  it is close to the language of the Babylonian Talmud and the speech of the Nestorian Christians in Kurdistan.  

Toward the end of the 19th century, the Jewish community was estimated to number 12,000 to 18,000 scattered in numerous villages and townlets and living chiefly as merchants, peddlers, and craftsmen.  During the 20th century, their number increased considerably, amounting in Persian Kurdistan alone to a population of 12,000 to 14,000.  After 1948's birth of Israel, the great majority of Kurdish Jews, from all areas, emigrated to Israel, many of them in or near Jerusalem.  This  certainly was the beginnings of the famous ingathering prophesized of in the bible that was to happen. 

Operation Ezra and Nehemiah was an airborne transfer of 120,000 Jews from Iraq to Israel under the auspices of the Jewish Agency and the Israel government.  The project was created in May 1950 and ended in October 1951.  At first the Iraqi authorities didn't permit direct Baghdad -Lydda flights, compelling the immigrants to fly to Cyprus where they transferred to  Israel-bound aircraft. 

Yemenite Jews at a Tu Bishvat celebration, Ma'abara Rosh HaAyin, 1950.   Ma'abarot (Hebrew: מַעְבָּרוֹת) were immigrant and refugee absorption camps established in Israel in the 1950s, constituting one of the largest public projects planned by the state to implement its sociospatial and housing policies.  The ma'abarot were meant to provide accommodation for the large influx of Jewish refugees and new Jewish immigrants (olim) arriving to the newly independent State of Israel, replacing the less habitable immigrant camps or tent cities. In 1951 there were 127 Ma'abarot housing 250,000 Jews, of which 75% were Mizrahi Jews; 58% of Mizrahi Jews who had immigrated up to that point had been sent to Ma'abarot, compared to 18% of European Jews.  The ma'abarot began to empty by the mid-1950s, and many formed the basis for Israel's development towns. The last ma'abara was dismantled in 1963. The ma'abarot became the most enduring symbol of the plight of Jewish immigrants from Arab lands in Israel; according to Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, the memory of these camps has been largely erased from Israeli memory.

 80% of the Iraqis in Operation Ezra and Nehemia were dispersed among Maabarot.  10% were absorbed immediately in agricultural settlements, and 10% were welfare cases.  

Historically, a small Arabized population of Kurdish origins exists in Galilee and Jerusalem area, though it has mostly intermixed with local Arabs; their exact numbers are not available since they are counted as ethnic Arabs in the official Israeli census. Some Arabized families of Kurdish background can still be identified by specific surnames. These would be the non-Jewish Kurds.  The Kurdish population in Israel is small and is mainly composed of individuals and families, who fled Iraq and Turkey during the Iraqi–Kurdish and the Kurdish–Turkish conflicts during the 20th century. In 2006, the number of Kurdish refugees from Turkey was estimated at 200. Another estimate for both Iraqi and Turkish Kurds was 150 persons in 2007.

In March 2001,about 60 Kurds had tried to enter Israel but were denied.  It was bad timing. The beginning of this new century of 2000 was bustling with more problems to face.

 On the 4th of March, A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in the coastal town of Netanya, killing himself and three passers-by, and wounding more than 60 others.  On 7 March 2001 Ariel Sharon formally takes office as Israeli prime minister, heading a fragile seven-party coalition and a government team comprising a third of the 120-member Knesset.  26 March 2001 A Palestinian sniper shoots dead a 10-month-old Jewish baby in her father's arms, in the flashpoint West Bank town of Hebron. The town is home to 120,000 Palestinians, and 400 hardline Jewish settlers.  

But, by 2007, 40 Iraqi Kurdish children, mostly from Iraqi Kurdistan, were hosted with their parents and medically treated in Israel, as part of the project initiated by Israeli Save a Child's Heart Organization (SACH). 

In 2013, it was reported that Israel accepted three Kurdish children from Iraqi Kurdistan for medical treatment. The children were settled into Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, southern Tel Aviv area. They were some of the 183 children with Iraqi nationality, entering Israel for medical treatment since the establishment of the program.

     Yazidis who fled Iraq

In January 2015, Yazidi organizations made an official request from Israeli government to absorb Yazidi refugees from Iraq. There was no official statement by Israeli government as a result, but Yazidi sources claimed that refugee absorption took place and thanked Israeli government. There was no response from Israeli Parliament members, upon asking them on this matter of absorbing Yazidi refugees.

Yazidis or Yezidis are a Kurmanji-speaking endogamous minority group who are indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The majority of Yazidis remaining in the Middle East today live in Iraq, primarily in the governorates of Nineveh and Duhok.

Ever since 1962—when the label “Second Israel” was first attached to that same community of Kurds that has recently attracted such profound Israeli sympathy, the Kurds of Syria—the epithet has regularly been applied not just to them, but to the three other Kurdish populations of the Middle East too.

  Kurds of Syria wanted to secede from Baghdad and to broaden their autonomy into full sovereignty.

The accusation that the Kurds form a “Second Israel” was refreshed in regional discourse as recently as September 2017, when the Kurds of northern Iraq voted overwhelmingly, if unsuccessfully. 

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds_in_Israel

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/19/came-to-fight-stayed-for-the-freedom-why-more-kurdish-women-are-taking-up-arms

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/17/israel#:~:text=4%20March%202001,wounding%20more%20than%2060%20others.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/operation-ezra-and-nehemia-the-airlift-of-iraqi-jews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27abarot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidis

 https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/12/13/isis-and-the-false-dawn-of-kurdish-statehood/

https://abcnews.go.com/International/photos/female-yazidi-kurdish-soldiers-fight-back-isis-38882652/image-38883734

How and Why the Kurdish People Are Close Cousins To Jews

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

     Kurdish family in Kurdistan- a mountainous region now divided among Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  The 1st Jewish settlers went to Kurdistan as early as the time of Ezra of the 5th century BCE.  He's the man who left Persia, with permission, to go back to Jerusalem and help his people who had returned there  in 538 BCE from the Babylonian Exile.  The Kurdish population is estimated to be between 30 and 45 million. Most Kurdish people live in Kurdistan, which today is split between Iranian Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkish Kurdistan, and Syrian Kurdistan.

There are also many Kurds among the Kurdish diaspora and in Red Kurdistan.  Kurds also live in Israel today.  

                                               

We find through DNA testing that the Kurds are the closest people to the Jews.  Besides DNA, they are also a people who lost their native land, Kurdistan, just like the Jews had lost their Judah to the Romans in 70 CE.                           

Kurds from Iraq (Dohuk and Erbil Area, North Iraq) have been analyzed for HLA genes. Their HLA genetic profile has been compared with that of other Kurd groups from Iran and Tbilisi (Georgia, Caucasus) and also Worldwide populations. A total of 7,746 HLA chromosomes have been used. Genetic distances, NJ dendrograms and correspondence analyses have been carried out. Haplotype HLA-B*52—DRB1*15 is present in all three analyzed Kurd populations. HLA-A*02-B*51-DRB1*11 is present in Iraq and Georgia Kurds. Haplotypes common to Iran and Iraq Kurds are HLA DRB1*11—DQB1*03, HLA DRB1*03—DQB1*02 and others in a lower frequency. Our HLA study conclusions are that Kurds most probably belong to an ancient Mediterranean / Middle East / Caucasian genetic substratum and that present results and those previously obtained by us in Kurds may be useful for Medicine in future Kurd transplantation programs, HLA Epidemiology (HLA linked diseases) and Pharmacogenomics (HLA-associated drug side effects) and also for Anthropology. It is discussed that one of the most ancient Kurd ancestor groups is in Hurrians (Horites)  (2,000 years BC).  Horites originated S of the Caucasian mountains, who invaded Syria and Eretz Yisrael/Canaan in the 17th century BCE.  They lived near Mt. Seir in Abraham's time (1948 BCE) but their territory was conquered by the Edomites.  Scholars have identified the Haru (Eretz Yisrael from Egyptian documents of 16th century;  before known as "Rutenu."with the Horites and believe that they were pushed back by the Amorites and Canaanites to Mt Seir, whence they were later driven by the Edomites. As usual, opposites attract, and there existed interbreeding among the people.  HLA is the most polymorphic genetic system described in man. It contains several linked loci which encode for cell surface proteins that have an important function in activating immune response after antigenic presentation.  I have never heard of the haplotype of HLA .  Evidently they are close to Kuwait people.                                                             

      A US backed force could cement a Kurdish enclave in Syria.--New York Times

"Presently, Iraqi Kurdistan first gained autonomous status in a 1970 agreement with the Iraqi government, and its status was re-confirmed as the autonomous Kurdistan Region within the federal Iraqi republic in 2005. There is also a Kurdistan Province in Iran, but it is not self-ruled. Kurds fighting in the Syrian Civil War were able to take control of large sections of northern Syria and establish self-governing regions in an Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, where they call for autonomy in a federal Syria after the war.                                             

                   Showing flags of Kurdistan, USA, Israel=friends

 The Times of Israel reported on September 30, 2013: "Today, there are almost 200,000 Kurdish Jews in Israel, about half of whom live in Jerusalem. There are also over 30 agricultural villages throughout the country that were founded by Kurdish Jews." Today, the large majority of the Jews of "Kurdistan" and their descendants live in Israel.

 Kurdish Jews in Israel are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants of the Kurdish Jewish communities, who now, in 2021, reside within the state of Israel. They number between 200,000 to 300,000.

At one time in history, Kurds and Jews got together, as our DNA proves.  When did this happen?               

We Jews were in Kurdistan long ago.  According to the memoirs of Benjamin of Tudela and Pethahiah of Regensburg, there were about 100 Jewish settlements and substantial Jewish population in Kurdistan in the 12th century. Benjamin of Tudela also gives the account of David Alroi, the messianic leader from central Kurdistan, who rebelled against the Persian Seljuk Sultan Muktafi and had plans to lead the Jews back to Jerusalem. 

These travellers also report of well-established and wealthy Jewish communities in Mosul, which was the commercial and spiritual center of Kurdistan. Mosul is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. Approximately 400 km north of Baghdad, Mosul lies on the Tigris river.  (So interesting because Abraham had come from UR on the Euphrates River.)  Many Jews fearful of approaching crusaders, had fled from Syria and Palestine to Babylonia and Kurdistan. The Jews of Mosul enjoyed some degree of autonomy in managing their own community.  We even know of family histories from Mosul. 

Jewish Kurd, 19th century, Ottoman era

Tanna'it Asenath Barzani, who lived in Mosul from 1590 to 1670, was the daughter of Rabbi Samuel Barzani of Kurdistan. She later married Jacob Mizrahi Rabbi of Amadiyah (in Iraqi Kurdistan) who lectured at a yeshiva.  So there were Jewish Kurds.  

 Immigration of Kurdish Jews to the Land of Israel initiated during the late 16th century, with a community of rabbinic scholars arriving to Safed, Galilee, and a Kurdish Jewish quarter had been established there as a result. The thriving period of Safed however ended in 1660, with Druze power struggles in the region and an economic decline.

Many Kurdish Jews, especially the ones who hail from Iraq, went through a Sephardic Jewish blending during the 18th century.

Since the early 20th century, some Kurdish Jews had been active in the Zionist movement. One of the most famous members of Lehi (Freedom Fighters of Israel) was Moshe Barazani, whose family immigrated from Iraq and settled in Jerusalem in the late 1920s. In 1939, there were 4,369 in Jerusalem, growing to 30,000 in 1972.

The vast majority of Kurdish Jews were forced out by Iraqi authorities, being evacuated to Israel in the early 1950s, together with other Iraqi Jewish community. The vast majority of the Kurdish Jews of Iranian Kurdistan relocated mostly to Israel as well, in the 1950s.

                                                 

One of the main problems in the history and historiography of the Jews of Kurdistan was the lack of written history and the lack of documents and historical records.   Brauer on left and Patai on right.        

During the 1930s, a German-Jewish ethnographer, Erich Brauer, began interviewing members of the community. His assistant, Raphael Patai, published the results of his research in Hebrew. The book, Yehude Kurditan: mehqar ethnographi (Jerusalem, 1940), was translated into English in the 1990s. 

                          

Israeli scholar Mordechai Zaken wrote a Ph.D. dissertation and a book, using written, archival and oral sources that traces and reconstructs the relationships between the Jews and their Kurdish masters or chieftains also known as Aghas). He interviewed 56 Kurdish Jews altogether conducting hundreds of interviews, thus saving their memoires from being lost forever. He interviewed Kurdish Jews mainly from six towns:  (Zahko, Aqrah, Amadiya, Dohuk, Sulaimaniya and Shinno/Ushno/Ushnoviyya), as well as from dozens of villages, mostly in the region of Bahdinan. His study unveils new sources, reports and vivid tales that form a new set of historical records on the Jews and the tribal Kurdish society. His PhD thesis was commented by members of the PhD judicial committee and along with the book upon which it has been translated into several Middle Eastern languages, including Arabic, Sorani Kurmanji, as well as French.

                                                

The Kurdish people are believed to be of heterogeneous origins combining a number of earlier tribal or ethnic groups including Lullubi, Guti, Cyrtians, Carduchi.

Some of them have also absorbed some elements from Semitic, Turkic and Armenian people.

                                       

Kurds are an Iranian people, and the first known Indo-Iranians in the region were the Mitanni, who established a kingdom in northern Syria five centuries after the fall of Gutium. The Mitanni are believed to have spoken an Indo-Aryan language, or perhaps a pre-split Indo-Iranian language. The current view is that the separation of Iranian peoples from Indo-Aryans occurred between 1800 and 1600 BCE, which makes it nearly impossible for the Gutians to have been linguistically or culturally Kurdish, although it is possible that they still contributed to the Kurdish ethnogenesis to an extent, if at the very least genetically.

                                                   

The Kurds are a people of Indo-European origin. They speak an Iranian language known as Kurdish, and comprise the majority of the population of the region – however, included therein are Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, Azerbaijani, Jewish, Ossetian, Persian, and Turkish communities. Most inhabitants are Muslim, but adherents to other religions are present as well – including Yarsanism, Yazidis, Alevis, Christians, and in the past, Jews, most of whom emigrated to Israel.

                                                 

     Turkey attacked Kurds in Syria and the USA did not help their Kurdish allies.  Here, Turkey-backed Syrian rebel fighters assist their injured fellow fighter near the border town of Tal Abyad, Syria, October 24th 2019. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi.  Turkey, the former Ottoman Empire, is not a friend of Israel or the Kurds.   Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become more problematic to them for many years, now.  

                                                                   

Two years ago, on October 8, 2019,  President Donald Trump cast his decision to abandon Kurdish fighters in Syria as fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East, even as Republican critics and others said he was sacrificing a U.S. ally and undermining American credibility.  Biden recently did the same thing to Afghanistan, leaving in a lurch allowing the terrorists to take the country.  

Trump declared U.S. troops would step aside for an expected Turkish attack on the 

Kurds, who have fought alongside Americans for years, but he then 

threatened to destroy the Turks’ economy if they went too far. (Turkey’s unfolding economic crisis has deepened further after Donald Trump announced he was 

doubling US import tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium, stoking the country’s currency freefall and rattling financial markets.)

The Turkish lira plunged by more than 20% against the dollar after the president announced the move, amid a widening dispute between Washington and Ankara over the imprisonment of the US pastor Andrew Brunson.

Even Trump’s staunchest Republican congressional allies expressed outrage at the prospect of abandoning Syrian Kurds who had fought the Islamic State group with American arms and advice. It was the latest example of Trump’s approach to foreign

 policy that critics condemn as impulsive, that he sometimes reverses and that

 frequently is untethered to the advice of his national security aides.

A staunch defender of the Kurds that need their own Kurdistan back is Victor Sharpe,

Jewish author:  February 19, 2012          

Who Truly Deserves a State? The Kurds or the Palestinians?

By Victor Sharpe  https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/02/who_truly_deserves_a_state_the_kurds_or_the_palestinians.html   Top Articles By American Thinker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Kurdistan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Kurds

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-syria-ap-top-news-international-news-politics-ac3115b4eb564288a03a5b8be868d2e5

https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/turkey-attacks-kurds-in-northeast-syria-idUSRTX76VOB

https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/499593

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_population