Kurdistan: The Other Israel

There is a Middle Eastern nation with a long history and a distinctive language and culture; a nation that has been targeted for genocide; a nation that, even within the heart of its ancient homeland, is surrounded by people who do not accept its right to exist. And so, this nation can never let down its guard or put down its weapons.

I’m not speaking of Israel. I’m speaking of the Kurdish nation, unique in what we’ve come to call the Muslim world. The Kurds—some 35 million of them—are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East after Arabs, Persians and Turks. Kurds live in Syria and Iran and constitute about 20 percent of Turkey’s population. In all these countries they are an oppressed minority. But in a Switzerland-sized area in northern Iraq, officially known as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), about six million Kurds now enjoy significant self-rule. They will not give it up easily.

Throughout their history, the Kurds have been under the thumb of one foreign power or another. But the most famous Kurd of all was himself an empire builder: Saladin, the brilliant general who defeated the Crusaders in 1187 at the Battle of Hattin near Tiberias in what is now the state of Israel. No sultan, pasha or caliph of the Middle Ages was considered more honorable. Christian chroniclers called him chivalrous. After his capture of Jerusalem, he permitted Jews to resettle in the city. His personal physician was Maimonides.

Today, Kurds constitute about 20 percent of Iraq’s 30 million citizens. While there are Christian and Jewish Kurds (Jewish Kurds migrated en masse to Israel after World War II, where approximately 150,000 live today) most Kurds are moderate Sunni Muslims. In Kurdistan, it is rare to see a woman wearing a veil and not unusual to see wine and whiskey sold openly.

While in power, Saddam Hussein tried to Arabize the Kurds—coercing them to adopt Arab names, speak only Arabic and refer to themselves as Arabs. When that didn’t work, Saddam tried a more drastic approach: Twenty-two years ago, he used chemical weapons of mass destruction to murder 5,000 Kurdish men, women and children in Halabja, a small city hard up against the mountainous border with Iran. The Halabja massacre was the most infamous atrocity of Operation Anfal, a name the supposedly secular Saddam took from a sura of the Koran that prescribes permissible conduct against enemies of Islam. During the Anfal campaign, Kurds were herded into concentration camps, and at least 150,000 Kurds were slaughtered. More than a million were driven from their homes.

Kurdistan also is one corner of the Muslim world where Jews and Israelis are neither hated nor routinely denigrated. It is a not-very-well-kept secret that in the 1960s and 1970s, Israelis provided aid to Kurdish rebels and that they continue to provide assistance to Kurds when they can. At a university in the Kurdish capital of Erbil, I met with students who praised Israelis for their courage and industriousness—to the chagrin of their professor, a left-leaning American.

A Kurdish driver told me about his travels in Russia and Central Asia, then said he hoped someday to visit America and Israel, too. I asked him why. Because, he said, Israelis and Kurds face similar challenges. Both have suffered persecution. Both have managed not just to survive but to achieve.

Despite the fact that Iraq and Israel have never had diplomatic relations nor is there any official Israeli presence in the KRG, Kurdish officials state publicly that Iraq should have peaceful relations with all its neighbors—without exception. Some go farther: “We have no problems with Israel,” Falah Mustafa Bakir, head of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Department of Foreign Relations, explained. “They have not harmed us. We can’t be hating them because Arabs hate them. We think it is in the interest of Iraq to have relations with Israel. And the day after the Israelis open an embassy in Baghdad, we will invite them to open a consulate here.”

It was not lost on Bakir that Israel is one of the few functioning democracies in the region. The Kurds, too, he said, are attempting to build durable democratic institutions. Kurdistan, he added with pride, is sometimes called “the second Israel.”

Kurds did not feel threatened by the close relationship between Israel and Turkey over the past decade; the Israelis did not weigh in with regard to the conflict over the status of Turkey’s Kurdish minority. In any case, Israeli-Turkish relations today are not what they once were, thanks to a Turkish government that is increasingly Islamist and has been cozying up to the theocrats in Tehran.

What does the average Israeli know about the Kurds? Worldly Israelis, as well as Israelis from families that fled to the Jewish state from other corners of the Middle East, are at least aware that they have one friend in a largely hostile neighborhood. Last year, Israel-Kurd, a glossy magazine, was launched by Dawood Baghestani, the former head of Kurdistan’s human rights commission. It included stories about Kurdish Jewish traditions, an interview with a retired Kurdish Jewish Mossad general, and essays on why Jews should consider returning to Kurdistan.

That friendship is based in part on this understanding: A Middle East in which there is no place for Israel, no place for Jews, is likely to be a Middle East in which there is no place for Kurds. The attempted ethnic and religious cleansing of the Middle East, the project to rid the region of minorities, to make everyone’s identity first Muslim and then Arab, Persian or Turkish, may be the most important development journalists are not reporting, human-rights activists are not protesting, and political leaders are not addressing. Most Kurds get that. Most Israelis get that. Too many Europeans and Americans have yet to figure it out.

Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.