the old Jewish neighborhood of Zakho and the pitiable state of the small and old Jewish synagogue

Photos from Jewish sites in Kurdistan- the old synagogue in Aqra, Erbil

[1994] Visiting the Kurds of London and reviewing the position of the Kurds (summer of 1994)

Visit to the London Kurdish Community (summer of 1994); impressions and interviews with several important Kurdish representatives, such as Hushyar Zebari (today the Foreign Minister of Iraq), Kamal Mirawdeli, a Kurdish intellectual, "Yizgar," the representative of the PKK in London and many others. This article Appeared originally in Hebrew in the weekend Magazine of Davar entitled “The Wandering Kurd,” December 2nd, 1994 (translated into English by Dr. Michael Chyet)

By Mordechai Zaken
In addition to the large and varied Arab-Muslim community of greater London, and among the many immigrants, with their myriad of languages, who have settled in the British capital, a community of Kurdish exiles has sprung up, estimated at 20,000 people. At the Kurdish New Year's celebration, Newruz, which was held in March,there were 5,000 participants, the overwhelming majority from Kurdistan of Turkey. Most of London's Kurds are refugees from Turkey and Iraq, although there are more than a few from Iran and Syria as well, all of them Muslim countries within whose borders Kurdish minorities have dwelled for thousands of years.In recent years a growing number of Kurdish refugees have settled in many European cities, the leading ones being Paris,London, Stockholm, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels,Copenhagen, Oslo, Geneva, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Helsinki,Rome, Sofia, Nicosia, and Athens. Kurdish refugees also reside in the United States (in San Diego, Washington, New York, Dallas and more), Canada (Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto), and Australia(Sydney and Melbourne).The steady flow of Kurdish refugees bears witness to the deepening of the military struggle and the degeneration of personal safety in Kurdistan, as well as to the poor economic conditions there. Moreover, the collection of refugees in the West have been sending financial support to their relatives back home in Kurdistan. (In London, for example, there are already a number of Kurdish millionaires and others who have been successful in business). However, the most significant contribution of the Kurdish refugees in Europe and the United States is in the sphere of international public relations. Kurdish centers, institutes and organizations of cultural, social, and political scope are sprouting in the West like mushrooms after a rainstorm, ensuring a continuation of the Kurdish people's international struggle, both to promote human rights and for autonomy or independence in the Kurdish regions.The war raging since 1984 in southeastern Turkey (the Kurdish region), between the military wing of the PKK and the Turkish army,has taken a toll of 12,500 lives. In recent years the Turkish army has retaliated against hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of Kurdish villages believed to be harboring fighters of the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers' Party), emptying the villages of their inhabitants, then razing them to the ground. According to several independent estimates, in the last year alone hundreds of villages have been destroyed in this way. This method of decimating the Kurdish population in the border region is not a Turkish innovation. It has been effectively employed in the past both by Syria and Iraq against their respective Kurdish populations. The policy of thinning out areas with a Kurdish majority is intended to assimilate the Kurds into the majority Arab population, in hopes that such arabization will help solve the Kurdish problem. Very few media sources report the destruction of Kurdish villages,mainly due to the indulgent attitude which Turkey, a NATO member,enjoys in the West. Despite this, human rights organizations both in Turkey and worldwide are struggling to disseminate detailed information regarding the massive destruction in Turkey's Kurdish countryside.Another aspect of the Kurdish-Turkish war in southeastern Turkey is of interest to Israelis, because it brings up the issue of Israeli cooperation with Turkey. During the past year several Israeli politicians have visited Turkey, among them President Ezer Weizmann, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and more recently Chief of Police Assaf Hefetz. According to the Turkish news agency, a treaty has been signed for all-inclusive cooperation in matters of security between the two countries. President Weizmann's visit made waves in the Israeli press due to reports of 'Turkish-Israeli cooperation' vis-a-vis international terrorism. By contrast, Foreign Minister Peres has kept a low profile on the Kurdish issue,even denying in the Foreign and Security Councils the very existence of an Israeli-Turkish agreement in the war against the PKK, in response to a question from the Knesset floor by Efraim Sneh, Rabin's Minister of Health. However, despite all of these denials, it is hard to shake off the feeling that the Israeli authorities are not sharing the entire truth about this matter with the Israeli public. A shred of evidence in support of this feeling can be found in the fact that apparently the Turkish army has adopted the Israeli army's method of mista'revim, or 'pseudo-Arabs', i.e., government infiltrators posing as Arabs. The Turkish army now has 'pseudo-Kurds' operating among the Kurdish populace,dressed in traditional garb suited to the mountainous Kurdish region of southeastern Turkey. These 'pseudo-Kurds' have been quite successful in capturing PKK members in their hideouts and finishing them off. However, at least one incident has been reported in which a Turkish military unit mistakenly opened fire on group of Turkish 'pseudo-Kurds', killing the commander and wounding several of the soldiers. Can the Israeli army possibly have shared its experience in such matters with the Turks? If so,all Israeli denials of Israeli-Turkish cooperation are mere lip service. Israel must also realize that cooperating with Turkey may place her in a strange coalition, since for the past several months Turkey has been cooperating with the Iranian army against the PKK. (The Iranians have even handed over to the Turkish authorities PKK members who have fled into their territory).

The London Kurdish community resembles its counterparts in other European countries: three Kurdish cultural centers operate in the British capital, as well as two information centers (primarily serving non-Kurdish journalists and public figures), a Kurdish Solidarity Committee (whose membership consists of public figures,writers, and British spiritual leaders), a human rights organization, and various committees and groups such as the Kurdish Student Organization at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.A number of magazines and newspapers focusing on Kurdistan are also published in London, such as "Kurdistan Report" and "Kurdistan Human Rights Project," which are put out by the human rights organization and the Kurdish Solidarity Committee. In addition, Kurdish-language magazines, such as "Malbend" and "Kurdistani Niwe" are issued by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of Iraqi Kurdistan's two main political parties. By the way, Kurds in London -- as elsewhere -- try to avoid such terms as 'Iraqi Kurdistan' and 'Turkish Kurdistan', out of a desire to minimize the differences implicit in these names. Largely out of a belief in the existence of a single Kurdish entity, they prefer to employ terms that were common in Britain in the early part of the Twentieth Century: Northern (and Western) Kurdistan for Kurdistan of Turkey, Central Kurdistan for Kurdistan of Iraq, and Eastern Kurdistan for Kurdistan of Iran.In London's North End, at the heart of the area inhabited by many Kurdish immigrants, is situated the Kurdish Worker's Society,whose name suggests a connection -- albeit symbolic -- with the PKK, The Kurdistan Worker's Party which has been outlawed in Turkey. On Sunday, the British national day of rest, the place is teaming with activity. Numerous groups of 5-6 men can be seen congregating in the broad courtyard. It was later explained to me that some of them were gambling in the yard. In the large auditorium on the ground floor, televisions and video sets were setup, presenting a continuous run of reports and programs about Kurdistan. The audience in the hall, which also holds a library for Kurdish books and tapes, consisted primarily of women and children. During my visit, a CNN report from the recent Gulf War was being shown.When I tried to make my way to the offices of another Kurdish group, someone tried to prevent me from going in. When I gave him the name of the woman with whom I had an appointment, he insisted that she was in a meeting. When I asked if the meeting was with 'Yizgar' [a pseudonym], his eyes suddenly lit up. "So you know Yizgar!" he said, as he let me into the office. It contained two Macintosh computers, a fax machine and two telephones. The unofficial director of this organization, a young man in his late twenties, slim and mustachioed, is a Kurd who answers to the name 'Yizgar'. Although he has already been in London for several months, he speaks no English. He reached London from Turkey, via Germany. We spoke for an hour and a half through an interpreter, and even though it was not specifically mentioned during our conversation, it was clear to me that he was the London representative of the PKK. In the course of our talk, 'Yizgar' expressed the opinion that despite the violent nature of the Kurdish struggle in southeastern Turkey, there are many who are striving to bring it to an end through a political solution. He hopes that the Israeli government will join other Western governments which support the necessity of finding a political solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey. I cautioned 'Yizgar' not to expect the Israeli government to take a public stand on such a delicate Turkish issue, but I hastened to add that many people in Israel, among them a good number of Kurdish Jews, feel sympathy for the Kurds, even if they don't support the violent struggle.One of the topics that came up while discussing Israel was the problem that many Israelis have with the PKK, namely its cooperation in the past with the PLO and other anti-Israeli organizations. 'Yizgar' confirmed that Kurdish fighters were killed in operations against Israel, (in 1982, eight PKK guerrillas were killed in an operation against the Israeli army in Lebanon),but in his words, all this belongs to the past, and the PKK regrets its involvement in such incidents. During the same period the PKK had training camps in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, where the PLO and other pro-Syrian terrorist organizations maintained bases and headquarters. To this day the PKK's leader, Abdullah Ocalan, has special relations with Syria. The Syrian president Hafez al-Asadhas employed the PKK on several occasions in order to exert pressure on Turkey, during regional conflicts that have cropped up between the two countries on matters such as rights to the waters of the Euphrates River. Both the earnest tone of 'Yizgar's' voice and the subjects we discussed underlined the dilemma facing the Kurds of Turkey.

Not only are the Turkish army and security forces wielding an iron fist against what they call 'Kurdish terrorism': the Turkish authorities are also taking anti-democratic measures which serve to strengthen support for the PKK on the one hand, and for the Islamic Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) on the other, because they are preventing the Kurds and their representatives from enjoying freedom of expression and from engaging in democratic debate. It has become an all too frequent occurrence for the authorities to shut down pro-Kurdish newspapers. Recently the pro-Kurdish Turkish-language daily "Ozgur Gundem" was closed down, and some of its editors and writers were puton trial and imprisoned on charges of publishing separatist propaganda or of preaching terrorism. Three offices of "Ozgur Ulke" --the successor to "Ozgur Gundem" -- were bombed in early December (1994). Not too long ago the pro-Kurdish Democratic Labor Party (DEP)was also shut down by the authorities. The diplomatic immunity of six Kurdish members of parliament was removed, after which they were arrested and have been tried on charges of treason, receiving prison sentences of 15 years -- softened due to international outrage from the original death sentence. Another six members of parliament have sought refuge in Europe. Incidentally, the Democratic Labor Party (DEP) is none other than the continuation of the People's Labor Party (HEP) and the Party for Freedom and Democracy (Ozdep), both of them pro-Kurdish parties which have been closed down in the past by order of the Constitutional Court. DEP's office has been closed, its property has been confiscated by the state, and all of its parliamentary representatives have been stripped of their legal status as members of parliament. The number of Kurds in Turkey ranges between a minimum of ten· million, as estimated by the Turks, and 18-19 million according to Kurdish sources: 15 million in Turkey alone is a moderate estimate.The Turkish policy of destroying villages is intended to deprive the PKK of its basis of support, but this is being achieved at the price of leaving hundreds of thousands of Kurdish villagers homeless, cut off from their land and forced to move to the northand east (or in some cases south, across the border into Iraqi Kurdistan). Moreover, the forced closing of newspapers and political parties, and the arrest of legitimately elected members of parliament, will have the effect of pushing many Kurds -- who would otherwise have opposed the PKK and its methods -- into actively supporting the PKK. This can only lead to an escalation of the violent struggle between the two warring sides. The millions of Kurds living in Turkey's southeast border region are caught between the hammer and the nail. On the one hand are the iron fist of the Turkish military and police and their policies of evacuating the villages, and on the other is the PKK, whose representatives demand food, supplies and money, and have been accused of extorting funds from Kurdish villagers as a sort of tax levied to support the armed struggle. The Kurds have three alternatives:

1) to cooperate with the Turkish army;

2) to join the rebel forces; or

3) to flee to Western Turkey.

During the past decade between five and six million Kurds have migrated to Ankara,Istanbul, Izmir and other cities, a move which implicitly entails a slow process of Turkification. Another 2-3 million Kurdish villagers are crammed into slums in the cities of the war-torn Southeast, while others have stayed behind in the ever-shrinking hope that better times will come. Thousands of Kurds have come to London to escape the harsh reality in Turkey. At one of London's colleges I visited a Kurdish language class, where the Kurmanji dialect was being taught. Kurmanji is spoken in Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq, northwestern and northeastern Iran, and the Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union. The instructor was Baran Rizgar, an economist who, unable to return to Turkey during the past five years, has compiled a small Kurdish-English dictionary and a Kurdish textbook written in Turkish. The class' composition is a reflection of the Kurdish situation in Turkey: most of the students are Kurds born in Turkey who have never before studied their language, since teaching Kurdish is strictly forbidden there. As a reaction to such cultural suppression, some Kurdish young people have even replaced their Turkish names with equivalent names in Kurdish. As is well known, in Kurdistan of Turkey (or 'Northern Kurdistan'), it is prohibited to give a Kurdish child a Kurdish name.The military struggle in Kurdistan has recently taken a turn for the worse. The Turks have been attacking Kurdish 'bases' and villages, not only in the territory under their control, but also what they claim are PKK military bases across the border in Iraqi(or Central) Kurdistan, as well as on the Iranian frontier. Iraqi Kurdistan represents another aspect of the Kurdish problem. In northern Iraq, a region that is almost entirely populated by Kurds,with the end of the Gulf War an autonomous Kurdish government has been established under the protection of the United Nations and the allied forces. However, the region of Iraqi Kurdish self government borders on Turkey, which has just cut back the number of entry permits allowing passage into the Kurdish autonomous zone. The border with Turkey and the good will of that country's government are factors which the Kurds of Iraq must take into consideration, because this border constitutes the only gateway through which they can procure food and supplies. This being the sole lifeline into Iraqi Kurdistan, the Turks are exploiting the situation with political manipulations. An economic embargo has been imposed on all of Iraq by the UN, and an additional internal embargo has been imposed on Iraqi Kurdistan by Saddam Hussein,thereby heightening Iraqi Kurdish dependence on Turkey.

The Turkish role is also apparent in the struggle for power between the two main parties of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).For various internal reasons, Turkey has been favoring the KDP led by Massoud Barzani over the PUK, whose leader is Jalal Talabani.In may respects this Turkish policy of divide and conquer resembles the control games of the great regional powers of the past (the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran until the beginning of the Twentieth Century and their successors Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran after World War One), in that both the tribes of former times and the political parties of today have been played off against one another in order to ensure the domination of the Kurds. As recently as the summer of 1994 a virtual war was raging between these two factions,the KDP and the PUK. The battle between them was over who should have access to what little power, government control and money is at the disposal of the Kurdish autonomous zone's leadership. This struggle typifies the problem of lack of Kurdish unity, and it is clear to all that both the Iraqis and the Turks have a finger in this, as they are alarmed by the current cease-fire between the two sides, and will no doubt try to fan the flames anew. In view of the rivalry and mutual suspicion which exist between the two Kurdish parties and their leaders, there is no guarantee that the conflict will not flare up again.The partisan divisions -- as well as most other activities in Iraqi Kurdistan -- are reflections of the topography of the region,divided as it is between Behdinan (the towns of Zakho and Dihok and their hinterland) on the one hand, and the governorates of Arbil and Sulaimaniyah on the other. Behdinan is almost exclusively the realm of the KDP, under the leadership of Massoud Barzani, son ofthe late Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani. By contrast, the Sulaimaniyah region is almost entirely under the sway of the PUK,headed up by Jalal Talabani, called by his followers "Mam Jalal" (Uncle Jalal).The feud between the two factions has a historical dimension:the dispute between Jalal Talabani and Mulla Mustafa Barzani over control of the KDP in the 1960's, although there are additional fundamental factors which separate the two sides. The KDP reigns supreme in Behdinan, where a southern variety of the Kurmanji dialect is spoken, the terrain is extremely mountainous, and the factor of tribal affiliation is still important and influential in daily life. On the other hand, the PUK's domain is the urban environment (with Sulaimaniyah at its core), where the Sorani dialect is spoken. This region is considered -- not without justification -- the intellectual center of Kurdistan.Consequently it is no wonder that these cultural and social differences should add to the tension, suspicion and feelings ofsuperiority which each faction feels towards the other. The tension between the PUK and the KDP finds expression beyond the confines of Iraqi Kurdistan as well. As mentioned above, in London one finds a number of centers of activity forIraqi Kurds, most of whom belong in one way or another to the parties of their homeland. Dr. Kemal Mirawdeli, expert on Kurdish holocaust literature, Kurdish poet and writer, is also editor of London's only non-aligned Kurdish newspaper, "Hengaw." Mirawdeli isa bit of an oddball in the atmosphere of partisan rivalry which pervades Iraqi Kurdistan. He is not sparing of his criticism for the parties: They should admit that what they want is an independent Kurdish state, rather than hiding behind a camouflage of words like 'autonomy' or 'an integral part of Iraq'. The contradictory messages which the Kurdish parties are broadcasting will only delay Kurdistan's political independence, according to Mirawdeli.

While in London I also met Hushyar Zebari, a native of Mosul,born into the Kurdish tribal nobility of the Zebari tribe. During the forties, his sister was wed to the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani, in a political marriage intended to pave over the enmity and rivalry which had hitherto prevailed between the Zebari and Barzani tribes. In light of this, it is interesting to note that Hushyar Zebari is not only Massoud Barzani's uncle, but also his (=the KDP's) representative in London, a position he has held on and off for the past twelve years. Like many other Kurds, he carries with him wherever he goes the anguish of being a Kurd. Zebari's family paid a heavy price under the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein: his three brothers were murdered, one of them poisoned by agents of the Iraqi authorities. In Zebari's words one also hears echoes of the feud with the PUK, including hints offraud in Kurdish parliamentary elections more than a year ago ("Even fraud could not help the PUK to win", in his words). Kak Hushyar has a message to the people and government of Israel: "We are very disappointed in the Israeli government", he says, adding that the similarities between the Jewish and Kurdish peoples are unparalleled elsewhere. Hence his disappointment at the lack of Israeli assistance to the Kurds of Iraq. It is no secret that close relations of collaboration existed between Israel and theKurds throughout most of the sixties and into the seventies, until the collapse of the Kurdish revolt in 1975.

In the last few years the Kurds have been trying to drum up support among Jewish communities around the world, in order to take advantage of "the Jewish sphere of influence in Washington". Not surprisingly, they also keep glancing hopefully at Israel. In a recent interview with the Lebanese newspaper "Al-Safeer," Jalal Talabani had the following to say: "The Jews who came to the Jewish State from Kurdistan brought with them pleasant memories of a tolerant and hospitable Kurdish nation, which treated them humanely and with respect. The Kurdish Jews have established an association ... which will strengthen ties with Israel. This association has already carried out a number of activities in Israel ... [for instance,] there has been talk of establishing ties [between Israel and the Kurds]. Personally, I don't find this so strange, since the Arabs themselves have begun establishing official relations with Israel." Last year Mam Jalal met with the executive committees of several Jewish organizations in the United States, where he spoke of the brotherhood which had existed between Jews and Muslims in Kurdistan, while asking for aid from the Jewish committees. In the near future a similar meeting is due to take place between a deputation of Iraqi Kurds and representatives of London's Jewish community. The PUK is politically distant from Israel, perhaps mostly because its leader Talabani still has such strong links with Syria's Hafez al-Asad. For many years Talabani has enjoyed Syrian support, as has his Northern Kurdish colleague Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK. This goes far toward explaining the strained relations between these Kurdish groups and Israel. No matter how interested Talabani's representatives worldwide are in cultivating closer ties with the Israelis, this cannot occur, as Talabani hinted at in his interview in "Al-Safeer," until Israel and Syria sign a peace treaty, and the Golan is returned to Syrian control. Without exception, everyone I spoke with in London exhibited a great deal of interest in the Kurdish Jews residing in Israel. Some of them hung on my every word: others have read hungrily everything they have been able to lay their hands on regarding the Kurds in Israel. Some even expressed the desire to visit Israel. Israel's role and her ties with the Kurds were extremely popular topics of discussion during my visit. In a meeting with Kurdish students and scholars from all parts of Kurdistan which was held atthe School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) of the University of London, one participant had the following to say, perhaps naively, perhaps wistfully: "I foresee that in the future there will be a special strategic importance to relations between Armenia, Kurdistan, and Israel."

A month ago the congress of Britain's Conservative Party took place at Blackburn amid much publicity and splendor, under theleadership of Tony Blair. Among the guests at the congress was Latif Rashid, London's PUK representative. Like any other diplomat, Rashid spent an entire week at the congress, participating in deliberations and attending meetings. There can be no doubt that the Kurds have finally begun to learn the lessons of the past, albeit very late in the game, regarding the importance of international backing and support. It would seem that the days are gone forever when the Kurds had no friends but the mountains. It is also apparent that the Kurdish refugees throughout the world, their numbers rapidly increasing, harbor a strong desire to preserve their culture. Even if the Kurdish problem is not solved in the next few years, there can no longer be any doubt that, whether in the battlefield or at the negotiating table, the Kurdish issue -- involving the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, and the world's largest ethnic group without its own country-- will continue to appear on the agenda, albeit due in large part to the masses of Kurdish refugees. A solution, both cultural and political, even though it may tarry, will surely come.

Sarwan Husen, South Kurdistan

o Dear sir..... i am extremely happy and privileged for have a chance to find you here. i am a kurdish native from south Kurdistan, i read your book about Kurds and jews. so it attracted my attentions and made me feel, we as kurdish readers, really need to read this priceless book. if i get permission fro you and government, i will translate it to Kurdish language. so please i want to talk to you as soon as possible. i am looking forward to hearing from you soon. +9647********* +9647*********

A letter from a Kurdish student, from Sweden S. N.

Shalom mamosta Mordechai! Tu çewayî? My name is S. and I'm kurd from Duhok, Kurdistan. I live in Sweden and study economics and politics science at the Gothenburg university. By a coincidence I find your book, Jewish Subjects and their tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan. It was absolutely staggering to read, unfortunately there was just some pages as an illustration of the book. I can´t await to read the whole book. But I just want to say that you have left behind immense treasure, not only for the kurdish jews but for all the kurds. I have been raised to appreciate kurdish language, history, folklore, music and further on. Why I got fond of the book, because both of my grandfathers was against the Aghas in the Doski areas, especially Sai´d Agha in Duhok. They was born late 18th century, and they have also various occurrences that happened to them. Im collecting the narratives now and writing it down, to preserve and hopefully one day publish it. You have inspired me sir and I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Hope I haven´t taken much of your time. Greetings from Sweden, your kurdish compatriot /S. N. [The full name was removed at the request of the Kurdish student]

AMAZON rewiew of the book "Jewish subjects & their tribal chieftains in kurdistan "

AMAZON Customer Reviews 1 Review 5 star:
Tribal Justice in Kurdistan, January 29, 2010
This review is from: Jewish Subjects and Their Tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan (Jewish Identities in a Changing World) Hardcover

By David Pillegi

Mordecai Zaken has provided an enormous service to all those interested in Jewish Kurdish history and the status of minorities in the Middle East. It not only makes an invaluable resource for specialists (as the title of the book seems to imply) but the intimate stories he retells after hundreds of hours of interviews with Kurdish Jews makes this fascinating look into the lives of the dhimmi accessible to those with only a general knowledge of the Middle East or Jewish history. The personal stories about army service, forced marriages, taxes, and the struggle to survive whisk the reader away into the now forgotten world of Kurdish Jewry.

The 1951/52 mass exodus of Kurdish Jews to Israel meant the dissolution of the Jewish community in Kurdistan. Joyce Blau, the noted scholar of Kurdish language and society, has thanked Zaken for preserving the personal accounts of the political, religious, and economic pressures on Kurdistan's Jews. She further commends Zaken for his methodological excellence in the difficult task of categorizing and analyzing oral sources. His overview of the social status of the Jews in Kurdistan provided in his "Preliminary Remarks" is insightful and concise. Those comments provide a sociological context for the oral testimony which reveals the intricate texture of an ancient Jewish community.

Zaken's research reveals the extraordinary and tenuous nature of Jewish life in Kurdistan. The Jews were considered valuable assets because they owed gifts, taxes and forced labor to their tribal agha, or chieftain. As a result, the agha had a vested interest in protecting `his Jews.' But when a blood feud broke out between Kurdish tribesmen it was not unusual for one side to kidnap or kill Jews `belonging' to the rival party. Retaliation would often mean killing or kidnapping more Jews.

There are accounts of aghas who rendered justice for `their Jews'. In one story, when a Jewish merchant's donkey is stolen in a neighboring town and the local mukhtar declines to assist, the agha is willing to use his clout to get the animal back. In another story, an agha requires that two thieves return `one animal for every leg that was stolen.'

Zaken's stories of payments, forced labor, and loyalty owed by Jews to their agha, reveal the difficulties faced by non-Muslims living as dhimmis in this part of the Middle East. His analysis of this system is methodologically sensitive and concludes that the system was not slavery in a western sense nor as understood by Islamic law. Yet the situation of the Kurdish Jews in these oral accounts is shown to be no less terrifying.

Given the immense power of tribal society, it is surprising to learn of the almost exclusively Jewish town of Sandur where hundreds of Jews lived in an independent farming community. It functioned as something of a `city of refuge' to which Jews could flee in order to be protected from their Muslim pursuers. It would be fascinating to learn why the town was tolerated, and given that it was, why didn't similar towns arise as a way of protecting Jewish life and property?

It is also surprising to discover that many Jews had lived for centuries in rural villages with only two or three other families. In such villages there were no synagogues, no trained kosher slaughterers nor any means of Jewish education. Further, is it not clear how marriage was handled within such tiny scattered communities. This raises the question of how Jewish life was perpetuated in such difficult circumstances.

Although it's obvious that English is not Zaken's first language, the prose is readable and engaging. However, the book would be more accessible if there was a better index. It would also be fascinating if Zaken would include his yet unpublished material on the Christian minority in Kurdistan and compare the different survival strategies used by Christians and Jews in the same geographical areas. This would make the book more interesting to a larger number of readers and might break further new ground in the study of Middle Eastern minorities. His organization of the material by geographical regions and by urban versus rural society is sensible, making the book a good reference work for future students. Zakan's book is highly recommended for anyone interested in the Middle East, the history of modern Iraq, or Jewish life in Arab societies.

An expert review of the PhD thesis upon which the book ("Jewish Subjects and their Tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan," by Mordechai Zaken) was based

Joyce Blau, Professor Emerita, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris 19/06/2004

Moti Zaken’s thesis on the "Tribal Chieftains and their Jewish Subjects in Kurdistan: A Comparative Study in Survival” is highly original and makes a significant contribution to the general history of We Jewish diaspora.

The aim of the author of the thesis was exhaustively to describe the relations between the Kurdish chiefs and their Jewish subjects daring the first part of the 20th century in northwestern Iraqi Kurdistan... Mr. Zaken has undertaken the study of precisely this recent history of a few Jewish communities which lived in the former, prestigious principality of Bahdinan, in northwestern Iraqi Kurdistan. He did this remarkably well. His documentation is based on firsthand information, and is of the highest value. Mr. Zaken collected his data from men and women from various areas of Bahdinan, where they had lived either in cites or villages, and most of whom had immigrated to Israel in the 1950s. He interviewed more than 50 people, many more than once. These discussions, which add up to hundreds of hours of interviews, most of which were taped, were then analyzed and classified. The task of gathering and ordering all this fieldwork was immense, and the candidate is to be congratulated on the methodology that he chose. This part of Mr. Zaken’s thesis, concerning Jewish life in Bahdinan, well complements the Impressive work of the pioneer ethnologist Erich Brauer.[ Erich Brauer, The Jews of Kurdistan, First edition 1940, revised edition 1993, completed and edited par Raphael Patai, Wayne State University Press, Detroit.] Chapter II, which deals with the Jews, Kurds and Arabs between 1941 and 1952 is important because it raises the issue of the emerging conflict between the Zionist movement and the incipient national movements in the Arab countries. This problem, which was aggravated by the establishment of the Stale of Israel in 1948, was profoundly to affect the situation of the Jews in the Arab countries. However, in Iraqi Kurdistan the Kurdish chiefs, who Were concerned by the conflict only indirectly, were not willing to break ties forged with the Jewish communities over the course of thousand of years of co—existence, which on the whole were useful to them, particularly when the Jews, in contrast to the Christians, as we see later in Mr. Zaken’s thesis, could not be suspected of harboring sympathy for the “European enemy”. Many agha and Kurdish chiefs regretted the massive departure of the Jews for Israel in the early 1950s.. Note, in particular, the ties which united the Barzani dynasty to the Jewish people, which Mr. Zaken describes at length and so well in several chapters of his thesis. These were not one-way ties, for even today, in spite of the departure of nearly the whole Jewish population of Kurdistan for Israel, the links have not been definitively broken, and there are many Kurds who recognize their debt to the Jews.. In order to defame the Kurds in the eyes of the Jslamicist-milieux, a thesis is now circulating in Turkey which ‘proves the Jewish origin of the Barzani family’ [Cevat Eroglu (2004) lsrail'in beak stratejisi ve Kurtler (Israel’s everlasting strategy and the Kurds), Sayfa, Istanbul, 244 p. ] Questioned about this, an eminent member of the family, not in the least upset, told me; ‘So much the better. I am convinced of our Jewish origins.” Chapters III to VI describe in detail the daily lives of the Jewish communities of Bahdinan during the first half of the 20th century.. The candidate tried to be exhaustive: the result of his quest for oral documentation was considerable. This huge amount of information has not only been well classified, hut the candidate succeeded in making it a smooth and agreeable read. This detailed study has made a major contribution to the study of the recent history of the region of Iraqi Bahdinan..

In sum, Mr. Zaken's thesis is highly original in both subject and method. The project he undertook is a significant one, in an academic area where there is still a dearth of knowledge, and his work complements the previous research which does exist. He made excellent methodological choices both in doing an impressive number of first hand interviews, a in the careful and detailed way he treated the material he obtained; his data is highly valuable. His work is an important contribution to the study of the Jewish diaspora, to the study of the specificities of the Kurdish Jews, to the study Jewish relations with Moslems and Christians in Iraqi Kurdistan, and to the study of Iraqi Kurdistan itself. I highly commend this thesis, and congratulate Mr. Zaken on his work.

Paris, June 19th, 2004 Joyce Blau

A new book on the Jews & their tribal chieftains (aghas)

Jewish Subjects and their Tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan: A Study in Survival [2007 ] By Mordechai Zaken.

About the book: This book is based on a part of the PhD dissertation of the author at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In fact the book is the outcome of a lenghthy and innovative research that deals with the position of the Jewish communities in dozens of urban centers (Zakho, Amadia, Dohuk, Aqra, Slimaniya, Ushno) and rural villages chiefly in southern Kurdistan, namely Iraqi Kurdistan, during the last few hundreds of years and primarily during the first half of the 20th century. The book describes the position of many prominent and ordinary individual Jewish subjects within the tribal Kurdish society. The unique set of relations between the Jews and their tribal chieftains (aghas), the rights, duties and obligations of the Jews towards their aghas, and the traditional, tribal obligations of the chieftains towards their Jews, receive careful attention and analysis . The book brings to life many tribal chieftains whose personal history had been wiped out from the collective memory in Kurdistan. In fact, this study rescues the life history of many tribal figures and describes in details the Kurdish tribal society during the first half of the 20th century, as it was never told.

The book is based on new oral sources.In fact it is based on hundreds of interviews conducted by the author himself from approximately 1985 until the year 2000, with 65 Jewish informants originally from Kurdistan who immigrated to Israel earlier during the first half of the 20th century.

These interviews were recorded, transcribed, or translated and and carefully analyzed. Information from these interview were compared with pieces and information from other interviews, or with archival material collected at missionaries archives, or records of the British Foreign ministry, or travelers records. The four main parts of the book examine the relationships between the Kurdish Jews and their tribal chieftains in urban centers and villages in Kurdistan, using numerous new reports and vivid examples. It also deals extensively with topics such as the security and murder of Jews in the tribal Kurdish setting, the question of slavery of rural Jews and the conversion of Jews to Islam. The last part of the book examines the experience of the Jews in Iraqi Kurdistan between World War I (1914) and the immigration of Jews to Israel (1951-52).

Readership: All those interested in the history of oriental Jewry, Kurds and Iraq, minorities in the Middle East, tribal society, as well as oral historians, sociologists and anthropologists.

About the author: Mordechai Zaken, Ph.D. (2004) in Near Eastern Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in the history of the Kurds and the Jews in Kurdistan and in the history Muslim and non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East. Dr. Zaken served as Adviser on Arab Affairs to the Prime Minister of Israel, between May 1997 and November 1999.

Published by Brill: • August 2007 • ISBN 978 9004161 90 0 • Hardback (xxii, 364 pp.) • Jewish Identities in a Changing World, vol. 9.- Book Orders: UK, TEL. + 44 (0) 1767 604-954; FAX +44 (0) 1767 601-640; brill@turpin-distribution.com CUSTOMERS IN THE AMERICAS BRILL P.O. Box 605 Herndon, VA 20172-0605 USA TEL. 1 800 337 9255 (toll free, US & Canada only) TEL. +1 (703) 661-1585; FAX: +1 (703) 661-1501 cs@brillusa.com; Brillonline@brill.nl; http://www.brill.nl/

A trip to Kurdistan of a Jew originally from Zakho

This is a short video describing the visit to Zakho, Iraqi Kurdistan, after 58 years, of Mr. Saleh Zaken, a resident of Jerusalem and a native of Zakho. The Jews of Zakho as all the Jews of Kurdistan, have left Iraqi Kurditan in 1951-52 and migrated to Israel. Recently, some of them thave been taking trips to their old country to see the land and meet friends.

Iraq's Kurdish Jews visit their Kurdish hometowns

[An old brick house in Jewlakan, the old Jewish quarter of the Kurdish city of Suleymaniyah. ]



[Haji Abdullah Salah has run a small shop with his wife, Ameen Abdullah Kadr, out of the ground floor of an old brick house in Suleymaniyah's "Jewlakan" neighborhood ]

Iraq's Kurdish Jews Cautiously Return to Homeland
by Ivan Watson


Ivan Watson, NPR
Haji Abdullah Salah has run a small shop with his wife, Ameen Abdullah Kadr, out of the ground floor of an old brick house in Suleymaniyah's "Jewlakan" neighborhood since 1951.

Ivan Watson, NPR
All Things Considered, December 8, 2007 ·
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
For the last 50 years, Iraq and Israel have been sworn enemies - part of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict; one of the casualties of this conflict - the ancient Jewish community in Iraq, which emigrated en masse in 1951. This exodus included most of the Jews who were natives of Kurdistan in northern Iraq. Unlike their Arab counterparts, Iraqi Kurds tend to be less suspicious of their former Jewish neighbors.
As NPR's Ivan Watson reports, Jewish Kurds have begun making discreet return visits to Kurdistan.
IVAN WATSON: Lana was a teenager when her family emigrated from Kurdistan. It was 1994, Saddam Hussein had recently lost control of northern Iraq, and rival Kurdish militias were battling each other to fill the power vacuum. Lana's family traveled over land to neighboring Turkey with a dozen other Kurdish families of Jewish origin. Lana says the voyage was a closely guarded secret, organized and financed by Israel, which was soon to become her new home.
LANA: (Through translator) They told us not to tell anyone we were leaving. To avoid giving away our plans, they even warned us not to sell off our property.
WATSON: Until their departure, Lana's family survived in Iraq by telling people they were Muslim converts. Today, Lana is 28 years old. She has long, red-tinted hair and a small nose ring, and she's a citizen of Israel who speaks Hebrew and Kurdish fluently. Last year, Lana returned for the first time in more than a decade to live here in Kurdistan with her new husband, an Iraqi Muslim Kurd named Hano. He says the two met in Europe and fell in love.
HANO: (Foreign language spoken)
WATSON: I didn't think twice about marrying a Jewish woman, Hano says. My parents always told me stories about how much they liked their old Jewish neighbors.
Unlike the Arab majority in central and southern Iraq, the Kurds of northern Iraq don't tend to see Jews or Israel as sworn enemies. In the 1960s, Israel's Mossad intelligence agency provided equipment and training to Kurdish rebels who were battling the government in Baghdad. To this day, locals call a neighborhood of old sagging brick houses in the Kurdish city of Suleymaniyah, Jewlakan.
This used to be the Jewish quarter of the city. An old Kurdish shopkeeper named Haji Abdullah Salah says it was a sad day when almost all the Jews left town.
Mr. HAJI ABDULLAH SALAH (Shopkeeper): (Through translator) The government ordered them to leave at that time and they shouldn't take anything except their own clothes.
WATSON: Before locking up his shop to go answer the Muslim call to prayer, Haji Abdullah added that the last Jew in Jewlakan was a man they called Shalomo who stayed behind long after the others had left. Locals say Shalomo died here in Suleymaniyah a few years ago.
(Soundbite of chanting)
WATSON: Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, there has been a trickle of Kurdish Jews making discreet return visits from Israel to the land of their birth. Seventy-one-year-old Kak Ziad Aga says a Jewish classmate from his childhood recently got a warm welcome during a return visit to the Kurdish town of Koya Sinjak.
Mr. KAK ZIAD AGA: (Through translator) It was a really exciting moment after 50 years to see my classmate again.
WATSON: Ziad Aga says he doesn't see any problem in allowing Kurdish Jews to come back to Kurdistan, but the subject is extremely sensitive for the Kurdish authorities. They are frequently accused by Arab media and Iraqi insurgent groups of collaborating with Israel, charges the Kurdistan leadership denies.
As for Lana and Hano, the young Israeli Kurdish couple, they asked that their full names not be broadcast for fear of becoming targets, but the young bride is clearly proud of her mixed heritage.
LANA: (Foreign language spoken)
WATSON: Above all, Lana says, I consider myself a Kurd - an Israeli Kurd.
Ivan Watson, NPR News.

Kurdish Jewish Community in Israel

Kurdish Jewish Community in Israel

An ancient (and not completly agreed upon) tradition relates that the Jews of Kurdistan are the descendants of the Ten Tribes from the time of the Assyrian exile (6th century BCE). The first to mention this was Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, the 12the century traveler who visited Kurdistan in about 1170 and found more than 100 Jewish communities who still spoke Aramaic. The traveler Benjamin the Second, who visited Kurdistan in 1848, also mentioned this tradition and added that the Nestorian (Assyrian) tribes were also descendants of the Ten Tribes and that they practiced some Jewish customs. During the Second Temple era, the kingdom of Abiabene was situated in this region; its inhabitants, together with their king, Monobaz, and his mother Helena, converted to Judaism in the middle of the first century, and it is likely that some Kurdish Jews today are descendants of these proselytes.

In recent centuries, the economic situation of Jews in Kurdistan was difficult and their living conditions highly instable. They were largely cut off from the outside world, but were known for their strength and sturdiness. Those living in cities engaged in commerce and crafts, while those dwelling in the mountains engaged in farming. Their religious life was centered around the synagogue and talmud torah (religious school). Like the Nestorians in the area, they spoke an Aramaic spiced with Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, Arabic and Hebrew words, which they called “the language of the Targum” (the Aramaic translation of the Bible) and which the Arabs call jabali, or “the language of the mountains.” In the 20th century, the urban Jews of Kurdistan adopted Arabic as their principle language, but those in the mountains continued to use Aramaic.

Immigration to the Land of Israel began as early as the 16th century, with the first immigrants from Kurdistan settling in Safed. In the 20th century, Kurdish immigrants arrived in the 1920s and 30s and by 1948 there were some 8,000 Kurds in the country. After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, almost all the Jews of the Iraqi Persian and Turkish parts of historic Kurdistan were airlifted to the new state in 1950-51 in an operation known as “Magic Carpet.” They settled in many towns and villages, with the largest number living in and around Jerusalem. Few had any formal education; many continued to engage in agriculture. Initially they had a rather low public image and there were the brunt of many jokes.

Today, the Kurdish Jewish population in Israel is over 150,000, with the largest concentration in and around Jerusalem. The immigrants in the early days of the state were largely traditional, as there had been no process of secularization in Kurdistan. Today, the majority of young Kurdish Jews are educated and secular, define themselves as “Israeli” rather than Kurdish, and have abandoned many traditional Kurdish customs. Only the elderly still speak Aramaic and/or Arabic, while the younger generations have adopted Hebrew as their principal language. Fifty years ago most of the Kurdish Jews in Israel married within their community; today most young Kurds marry members of other ethnic Jewish communities. In recent years, many Kurdish Jews have achieved high positions in the army and civil service, among them the former Minister of Defense, Yitzhak Mordechai.

One tradition that many Kurds, including many young people, still maintain is the celebration of the Saharana. Although the central focus of this uniquely Kurdish festival is the transition from winter to spring, only the Iranian Kurds hold their Sharana celebrations in the spring during the intermediate week of Passover. All the others celebrate in the intermediate week of Sukkoth, which is in the fall. Kurds from all over the country gather in one village and spend an entire day in nature, dancing, singing, drinking and consuming great quantities of traditional Kurdish dishes, including kubah, chicken stuffed with minced meat, grape leaves and lentils.

The Genetic Bonds Between Kurds and Jews"

The Genetic Bonds Between Kurds and Jews"
by Kevin Alan Brook
Kurds are the Closest Relatives of Jews
In 2001, a team of Israeli, German, and Indian scientists discovered that the majority of Jews around the world are closely related to the Kurdish people -- more closely than they are to the Semitic-speaking Arabs or any other population that was tested. The researchers sampled a total of 526 Y-chromosomes from 6 populations (Kurdish Jews, Kurdish Muslims, Palestinian Arabs, Sephardic Jews, Ashkenazic Jews, and Bedouin from southern Israel) and added extra data on 1321 persons from 12 populations (including Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Berbers, Portuguese, Spaniards, Arabs, Armenians, and Anatolian Turks). Most of the 95 Kurdish Muslim test subjects came from northern Iraq. Ashkenazic Jews have ancestors who lived in central and eastern Europe, while Sephardic Jews have ancestors from southwestern Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East. The Kurdish Jews and Sephardic Jews were found to be very close to each other. Both of these Jewish populations differed somewhat from Ashkenazic Jews, who mixed with European peoples during their diaspora. The researchers suggested that the approximately 12.7 percent of Ashkenazic Jews who have the Eu 19 chromosomes -- which are found among between 54 and 60 percent of Eastern European Christians -- descend paternally from eastern Europeans (such as Slavs) or Khazars. But the majority of Ashkenazic Jews, who possess Eu 9 and other chromosomes, descend paternally from Judeans who lived in Israel two thousand years ago. In the article in the November 2001 issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics, Ariella Oppenheim of the Hebrew University of Israel wrote that this new study revealed that Jews have a closer genetic relationship to populations in the northern Mediterranean (Kurds, Anatolian Turks, and Armenians) than to populations in the southern Mediterranean (Arabs and Bedouins).
A previous study by Ariella Oppenheim and her colleagues, published in Human Genetics in December 2000, showed that about 70 percent of Jewish paternal ancestries and about 82 percent of Palestinian Arabs share the same chromosomal pool. The geneticists asserted that this might support the claim that Palestinian Arabs descend in part from Judeans who converted to Islam. With their closer relationship to Jews, the Palestinian Arabs are distinctive from other Arab groups, such as Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis, and Iraqis, who have less of a connection to Jews.
A study by Michael Hammer et al., published in PNAS in June 2000, had identified a genetic connection between Arabs (especially Syrians and Palestinians) and Jews, but had not tested Kurds, so it was less complete.
Many Kurds have the "Jewish" Cohen Modal Haplotype
In the 1990s, a team of scientists (including the geneticist Michael Hammer, the nephrologist Karl Skorecki, and their colleagues in England) discovered the existence of a haplotype which they termed the "Cohen modal haplotype" (abbreviated as CMH). Cohen is the Hebrew word for "priest", and designates descendants of Judean priests from two thousand years ago. Initial research indicated that while only about 3 percent of general Jews have this haplotype, 45 percent of Ashkenazic Cohens have it, while 56 percent of Sephardic Cohens have it. David Goldstein, an evolutionary geneticist at Oxford University, said: "It looks like this chromosomal type was a constituent of the ancestral Hebrew population." Some Jewish rabbis used the Cohen study to argue that all Cohens with the CMH had descended from Aaron, a High Priest who lived about 3500 years ago, as the Torah claimed. Shortly after, it was determined that 53 percent of the Buba clan of the Lemba people of southern Africa have the CMH, compared to 9 percent of non-Buba Lembas. The Lembas claim descent from ancient Israelites, and they follow certain Jewish practices such as circumcision and refraining from eating pork, and for many geneticists and historians the genetic evidence seemed to verify their claim.
However, it soon became apparent that the CMH is not specific to Jews or descendants of Jews. In a 1998 article in Science News, Dr. Skorecki indicated (in an interview) that some non-Jews also possess the Cohen markers, and that the markers are therefore not "unique or special". The CMH is very common among Iraqi Kurds, according to a 1999 study by C. Brinkmann et al. And in her 2001 article, Oppenheim wrote: "The dominant haplotype of the Muslim Kurds (haplotype 114) was only one microsatellite-mutation step apart from the CMH..." (Oppenheim 2001, page 1100). Furthermore, the CMH is also found among some Armenians, according to Dr. Levon Yepiskoposyan (Head of the Institute of Man in Yerevan, Armenia), who has studied genetics for many years. Dr. Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin wrote: "The suggestion that the 'Cohen modal haplotype' is a signature haplotype for the ancient Hebrew population is also not supported by data from other populations." (Zoossmann-Diskin 2000, page 156).
In short, the CMH is a genetic marker from the northern Middle East which is not unique to Jews. However, its existence among many Kurds and Armenians, as well as some Italians and Hungarians, would seem to support the overall contention that Kurds and Armenians are the close relatives of modern Jews and that the majority of today's Jews have paternal ancestry from the northeastern Mediterranean region.
The Jewish Kingdom of Adiabene in Ancient Kurdistan
In ancient times, the royal house of Adiabene and some of the common people of Adiabene converted to Judaism. The capital city of Adiabene was Arbela (known today by Arabs as Irbil and by Kurds as Hawler). King Izates became closely attached to his new faith, and sent his sons to study Hebrew and Jewish customs in Jerusalem. His successor to the throne was his brother Monobazos II, who also adopted Judaism. In her 2001 study, Oppenheim references the kingdom of Adiabene, but suggests that while Adiabene's conversion to Judaism "resulted in the assimilation of non-Jews into the community... This recorded conversion does not appear to have had a considerable effect on the Y chromosome pool of the Kurdish Jews." (Oppenheim 2001, page 1103). Some of the Jewish Adiabenians may have eventually converted to Christianity.
Conclusions
Research has just begun into the ancient ties between Kurds and Jews. It would be interesting to see if the various Jewish groups have as strong a family tie to Kurds in the maternal lineages as they do in the paternal lineages. Preliminary studies indicate that Jewish populations in eastern Europe and Yemen have maternal origins that contain much more non-Israelite ancestry than their paternal origins. Despite this admixture with other groups, the Jewish Judean people ultimately began their existence in an area within or nearby Kurdistan, prior to migrating southwest to Israel. This exciting research showing that Kurds and Jews may have shared common fathers several millennia ago should, hopefully, encourage both Kurds and Jews to explore each others' cultures and to maintain the friendship that Kurds and Jews enjoyed in northern Iraq in recent times (as chronicled in Michael Rubin's recent article "The Other Iraq"). As Rubin indicates, the Kurdish leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani once visited Israel and met with Israeli government officials. Rubin refers to the Iraqi Kurds' "special affinity for Israel" and writes that "In the safe haven of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Jews and Israel are remembered fondly, if increasingly vaguely." Let us hope that this relationship can be renewed and strengthened.
Bibliography:
Brinkmann, C., et al. "Human Y-chromosomal STR haplotypes in a Kurdish population sample." International Journal of Legal Medicine 112 (1999): 181-183.
Brook, Kevin A. The Jews of Khazaria. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1999.
Hammer, Michael F., et al. "Y Chromosomes of Jewish Priests." Nature 385 (January 2, 1997): 32.
Hammer, Michael F., et al. "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish Populations Share a Common Pool of Y-chromosome Biallelic Haplotypes." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS) 97:12 (June 6, 2000): 6769-6774.
Oppenheim, Ariella, et al. "High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews." Human Genetics 107(6) (December 2000): 630-641.
Oppenheim, Ariella, et al. "The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East." The American Journal of Human Genetics 69:5 (November 2001): 1095-1112.
Rubin, Michael. "The Other Iraq." Jerusalem Report (December 31, 2001).
Siegel, Judy. "Genetic evidence links Jews to their ancient tribe." Jerusalem Post (November 20, 2001).
Thomas, Mark G., et al. "Y Chromosomes Traveling South: the Cohen Modal Haplotype and the Origins of the Lemba -- the 'Black Jews of Southern Africa'." American Journal of Human Genetics 66:2 (February 2000): 674-686.
Traubman, Tamara. "Study finds close genetic connection between Jews, Kurds." Ha'aretz (November 21, 2001).
Travis, J. "The Priests' Chromosome? DNA analysis supports the biblical story of the Jewish priesthood." Science News 154:14 (October 3, 1998): 218.
Zoossmann-Diskin, Avshalom. "Are today's Jewish priests descended from the old ones?" HOMO: Journal of Comparative Human Biology 51:2-3 (2000): 156-162.

Talabani and Israeli Defence Minister shake hands

Talabani and Israeli Defence Minister shake hands (June 1st, 2008)

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has shared an historic handshake with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
The brief meeting took place at an international conference near the Greek capital, Athens.
Iraq does not recognise Israel and under Saddam Hussein was for years an implacable foe of the Jewish state.
The two men also held a short conversation, on the sidelines of the 23rd Socialist International Congress at Lagonissi coastal resort.
Mr Barak also held a private, half-hour meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
At the end of the meeting, the Israeli minister expressed hope that the two sides would reach a breakthrough in peace talks.
No obligations
Mr Talabani's office downplayed the handshake with Mr Barak in a statement which described it as a "civilised social act" without special significance.
The statement said he was was responding to a request from Mr Abbas and was acting as leader of his Kurdish party and deputy president of the Socialist International, not as Iraq's president.
"It does not mean any obligations for the state of Iraq... and will not affect its support for the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority and reliance on Arab unity, the Arab initiative and legitimate international resolutions," the statement said.
Despite its close ties to Israel's main ally the US, the Iraqi government does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, putting it in the same category as all Arab states except Egypt and Jordan.
Addressing the conference earlier, Mr Abbas said Israeli-Palestinian talks "still face great obstacles".
"There is still a wide gap between the respective positions that cannot be overcome unless the Israeli government adopts positions and measures that will clearly emphasize its sheer desire to seize an opportunity to achieve peace," he said.
Mr Barak is attending the conference in his capacity as chairman of Israel's Labour party.
Mr Talabani was a founding member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of Iraq's largest Kurdish parties.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/7483844.stmPublished: 2008/07/01 17:34:45 GMT

[Sep.'95] A grave political error:siding with the Turks against the Kurds

[Originally was published in Haatez, Sep. 29, 1995]]

by Moti Zaken

English translation: Dr. Michael L. Chyet

When the din of the airplanes, the high words of enthusiasm and the friendly laughter at the press conference had all died down, and Israeli president Ezer Weizmann had returned from his well-publicized visit to Turkey, a news broadcast on Kol Yisrael ["the Voice of Israel" or the main radio station in Israel] summarized his trip with the following quote of his: "Israel will cooperate in the field of intelligence against the secessionist terror [in Turkey]." This clipped sentence epitomizes one of the Turks' major gains from the Israeli president's visit. At the same time, from the Israeli standpoint, it involves no minor political mistake, one whose cost will be both high and painful. Without embarking on a lengthy analysis of the Turkish fight against and repression of the Kurds, suffice it to say that the Turkish state's burden of guilt in the bloody war taking place within its borders is considerably greater than that of the Kurds.
For some time now the Turks have been trying to enlist Israel's help in their feverish attempts to liquidate the PKK, the guerrilla movement of the Kurdish Workers' Party, which party enjoys the support of the majority of Turkey's 15 million Kurds. In the past several months the Turkish heads of state have met at least four times with the foreign ministers of Syria and Iran -- both of which have sizable Kurdish populations of their own -- in an effort to finalize guidelines for cooperation against the Kurdish fighters. Even if cooperation between the three states were agreed upon – something which only has partial expression on the battlefield -- it would not be given publicity in Syria or Iran.
It was at this, of all times, that the president of the State of Israel chose to promulgate a declaration which can neither strengthen nor weaken Israel's relations with the Turks, but which might gain us a new enemy: the Kurds. In this respect the contrast between Syria and Iran's policy and that of Israel is blatant. Whereas silence regarding the Kurds is the preferred plan of action in most Islamic countries, the Israeli government has [perhaps too] loudly expressed its stand on the issue.
The error in Weizmann's declaration is particularly noteworthy because the State of Israel and the Muslim Kurds have generally enjoyed a relationship of cooperation. Israel even assisted the Kurds -- primarily the Kurds of Iraq -- in the 60's and 70's. Weizmann's statement concerning Israeli-Turkish cooperation in fighting the PKK has been received with a great deal of resentment by the Kurds and their allies.
It will take a long time and no small amount of effort and skill to repair the damage this has wreaked on Israel's relations with the Kurds, even if the Israeli president's declaration does not go into effect. If his words are translated into action, it will cause inestimable damage. Because Weizmann did not reach any agreements with the Turks on his own accord, his declaration has indisputable political significance. It reflects a change in Israeli-Kurdish relations, and as such it calls for serious investigation and profound discussion, and not only in the Foreign Ministry [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], in whose corridors there lurk diplomats nowadays who, in their eagerness to improve our relations with Turkey, are ready to sacrifice an old friend, the battered Kurds, without so much as batting an eyelash or giving a thought to the moral aspects of such a policy.
An additional mistake, made by many, is the artificial distinction made between the Kurds of Turkey and those of Iraq and of the other states within whose borders they dwell. Israel's step will not win her much affection among the Kurds, wherever they may be.Moreover, Israel has functioned for quite some time as a model of identity for the Kurds. From their perspective, Israel has succeeded where they themselves have failed -- in the struggle against Muslim states that have tried to destroy her. As part of the Israeli aid offered to the Kurds in the past, Israeli officers and emissaries have visited Kurdistan, among them Lova Eliav, and Kenesset members (then Army officers) Rafa'el Eitan and Rehav'am Ze'evi. In addition, the well-known Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani visited Israel. Consequently, Israel's cooperation with the Turks constitutes a radical change of policy, and if the Israeli president's declaration is carried out, the Kurds will be justified in adding Israel's name to their list of foes.

There is an honorable way to avoid this error, which is all too reminiscent of the Israeli embroilment in the morass of Lebanon -- where they managed to turn the Shiites into enemies. The external affairs of the State of Israel are not the private property of the Foreign Minister of any particular government leader. Therefore, let us conduct a public parliamentary debate on this issue, so that we may avoid a political mistake which we will later regret. Before getting in over her head, Israel would do well to tell the Turks to fight their own wars, without asking for help from us.

Besides all the above arguments, it must be borne in mind that the relations between the Kurds and the Jews who lived among them until 1950 were, with few exceptions, extremely amicable. The Kurdish Jews who live in Israel today have fond memories of the Muslim Kurds and of Kurdistan, and they will oppose any attempt to turn the State of Israel against the Kurds. For this reason alone, Israel has a moral obligation toward the Kurds in their hour of need. After all, who knows better than the Jewish people what it feels like to be an isolated and persecuted minority?

[March '95] The Turkish incursion into Iraq

[This article was originally published in "Ha'aretz", March 26, 1995]

Moti Zaken

English translation: Michael L. Chyet

The massive Turkish onslaught on its southeastern border, forty kilometers into the heartland of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, seems to coincide with an announcement last week in the Paris variety magazine T.T.U. The magazine reported that fifty Israeli security experts recently went to Ankara to assist the Turkish government in its war against the separatist Kurdish guerrillas of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). It was reported from unidentified sources that the Turkish government hopes to benefit from Israeli experience in combating terrorism, and that the Israeli experts made several suggestions to the Ankara government, among them the establishment of a buffer zone like the one which Israel has set up in southern Lebanon, with mine fields and radar for tracking infiltrators. The magazine also stressed that Israel has recently expanded its reconnoitering flights over Lebanon to include the Bekaa Valley, where there are several PKK bases.
Not more than a few days have passed since this article appeared, and already -- as if to verify the truth of its contents -- thousands of Turkish troops are marching on the fragile autonomous region of the Kurds in northern Iraq. According to reports, 35,000 soldiers, 80 tanks, 100 armored vehicles and hundreds of trucks have crossed the frontier, on the main road leading to the town of Zakho, situated about 10 miles from the border. The Iraqi National Congress (INC), which includes in its ranks both Arab and Kurdish opposition groups, has cited sources in Zakho which claim that the Turkish army has arrested hundreds of men and women suspected of being PKK sympathizers.

In the following, two issues will be addressed: 1) the increasingly close ties between the Israeli and Turkish governments; 2) the fate of the Kurds, both in Iraq and in Turkey.
In December 1994, the Committee on Antisemitism and Xenophobia convened a meeting in the Israeli Knesset, during which the genocide of the Kurdish nation was discussed. In his closing words, the head of the committee, Parliament Member Ovadyah Eli stressed that the Israeli government must be vocal in its criticism of the large scale killing of Kurds, not only in Iraq, but in Turkey as well, in the name of morality and the Jewish experience. Unfortunately, this was a lone voice against the Israeli government's new foreign policy, what with the meetings recently held between Israeli and Turkish senior officials (among them
President Ezer Weizmann, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and Chief of Police, Assaf Heifetz).

The impression one gets from the information at hand is that the Israeli government is indeed collaborating with the Turkish authorities in their war against the PKK, although not admitting this publicly. Official sources prefer to characterize the collaboration with Turkey as a joint venture of shared military intelligence against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, a declaration designed to please Israeli public opinion. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, did a fine job of answering the question put to him on the Knesset floor by Minister (then Parliament of Member) Ephraim Sneh, by insisting that Israel's pact with the Turks had nothing at all to do with the struggle of the Kurds. Nevertheless, neither the world at large nor the various Kurdish communities worldwide believed the Israeli allegations. Because in the end the truth will out, it should be pointed out that the secrecy surrounding the Israeli-Turkish pact is due to a request by the Israelis to keep it under raps, whereas the Turks would like to publicize the collaboration between the two states against the PKK, as is evident from several recent reports.
At this point let us focus our attention on the conditions of he Kurds in Turkey and Iraq since the Turkish incursion over the order. Although the United States has announced its support for the anti-PKK campaign, its support is no doubt conditioned by the intended length of the operation, as was the case with Operation Litani in southern Lebanon and The war for Peace in the Galilee. If Turkey intends to set up a buffer zone inspired by Israel, this will undoubtedly alter the political and military picture in the region. Turkey may be unpleasantly surprised by the developments and reactions inherent in a prolonged military operation of this sort, just as Israel has been in southern Lebanon.
The Turkish invasion has been severely criticized by Massoud Barzani, leader of the (Iraqi) Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), which has hitherto been on good terms with the Turkish authorities. The invasion has been labelled a flagrant violation of the "territorial integrity of Iraq". Others have commented that it makes a mockery of the so-called "Safe Haven" set up by the UN to protect the Kurds of northern Iraq from the Iraqi government. The town of Zakho, a target of the Turkish invaders, is for all intents and purposes controlled by the KDP, and it is therefore not surprising that the incursion has been seen as an assault on the KDP. In the past the KDP has used to its advantage the tensions between the Turks and Jalal Talabani, leader of the rival Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Now Massoud Barzani sees that he is not immune. Battles have been raging recently between the KDP and the PUK, largely because the KDP has been accused by its rival of keeping the monies collected from taxes and custom tariffs at the border crossing with Turkey, rather than handing them over to the Kurdish central authorities. The Turkish invasion comes, then, at a critical time in the history of the Iraqi Kurds. The two main groups, led by Barzani and Talabani respectively, have not yet overcome centuries of traditional, tribal, cultural and social hostilities. Occasionally the recent internal fighting has been so fierce that both sides have suffered casualties. The mutual distrust and suspicion between the two camps increases in pre-election periods, such as the present time, or when the financial management of the joint Kurdish government is in question. In the past Turkey has exploited this Kurdish fractiousness by implementing a policy of divide and conquer, but at least at first glance it seems that the recent Turkish invasion may have a unifying effect on the two rival parties which have fallen on hard times.

On the other hand, the situation of the Kurds in Turkey has been getting progressively worse with the deepening of the military struggle and the constant political and cultural oppression of this minority, which numbers between 12 and 18 million souls in Turkey alone. Human rights abuses in Turkey have been the subject of a number of recent articles in the New York Times. The fate of the Kurds of Turkey has not been pleasant from the establishment of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 until the present day. Over the past eleven years more than 14,000 people have been killed in the war being waged between the PKK and the Turkish army. Human rights organizations and independent journalists have continuously reported on the mysterious killings -- apparently sanctioned by the Turkish state -- of Kurdish journalists and activists, the destruction of hundreds of villages in the southeastern part of the country, and other flagrant violations of such fundamental rights as the freedom of expression. One of the most outstanding topics has been the case of the seven Kurdish members of parliament who were stripped of their diplomatic immunity, then imprisoned on charges of treason following a debate which took place on the floor of the Turkish parliament.

The situation is so bad that Abdullah Ocalan (Apo), the leader of the PKK, has called twice in the past year for a bi-lateral cease-fire. However, the Turkish government is following the lead of its hawkish chief of staff, who claims that "there is a military solution to the Kurdish question", and consequently a peaceful solution is far off. For this reason it is particularly disquieting that Israel in taking part, albeit indirectly, in the spilling of Kurdish blood. This largely Muslim minority has seen in Israel an identity model, and has viewed the Jews as fellow victims of persecution. About a month ago, the PKK came out with a statement to this effect on the 50 year anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen Death Camp. PKK representatives with whom I met in London in September 1994 also expressed regret for PKK activities against the Israeli army in the early eighties, at a time when they were supporting
pro-Syrian forces inside Lebanon. They also said that they would be happy to see Israel use its influence over Turkey to pave the way toward a political solution to the Kurdish problem. Killing cannot lead to a desirable solution. Turkey will ultimately learn this, but unfortunately only after Kurdistan has been made into a killing field will a political solution be reached.

[1988] The Jews of Kurdistan in transition: From Kurdistan to Israel*

[This article was published originally in the Kurdish Magazine Mamostaye Kurd (Stockholm), vol.22, 1994: 59–68. It suggests a socio-economic description and analysis of the position of the Jews of Kurdistan in Israel by 1988.]

Mordechai Zaken

Introduction
A group of twenty residents from Jerusalem took a trip in July, 1988 to Turkey, mainly to its Eastern Kurdish districts. It could have been considered an ordinary journey if the Israeli tourists had not been in fact native Kurdish Jews.[1] Originally they were from Zakho, Iraqi Kurdistan, and most of them had immigrated to Israel between the years 1950-1951.[2] As Israeli citizens, they are prevented from visiting Iraq. Thus, the only option left for them if they wish to visit Kurdistan is Turkey, with which Israel has diplomatic relations. The purpose of their voyage to Turkey was to search for the Kurdish flavor of life which they had left behind when they immigrated to Israel. All these years since their immigration, they have been longing for Kurdistan; the land, the people, the scenes, the cultural climate in which they were raised. In a similar tour, a year earlier, a group of Kurdish tourists sailed to the heart of the river where they asked a Kurdish singer who joined them to sing Kurdish songs while sailing. They took him on this journey to the heart of a river because in Turkey the Kurdish language is strictly forbidden and he certainly could not have sung in public at the club where he works. There is no need to say that the Turkish authorities would not have approved if they knew about this specific wave of Israeli-Kurdish tourism. Many tours of this nature have taken place in the last few years and the number is increasingly growing each summer. The Kurdish Jews in Israel are highly attached to the land of their birth and some of them would pay a fortune if they would be permitted to visit their home towns in Iraq.Also, around July of 1988, a group of young Israeli dancers went on an official journey to West Germany and Italy. The teenagers from the neighborhood of Katamonim (or Gonenim) represented Jerusalem in this tour. The significant point is that the youth group performed Kurdish dances rather than Israeli folk dances. This fact might be surprising, but only at first glance. Gonenim, where these teenagers were raised, is a neighborhood where many Kurdish Jews live. [3] They are the first generation born in Israel to immigrants from Kurdistan. Their tour was not the first international trip of this sort and nor was it the first Kurdish dance troupe ever to represent Israel in Europe. At least a dozen similar groups actively perform in Israel. Ma'oz Zion (Kastel), near Jerusalem, is another community inhabited mainly by Kurdish Jews. Kurdish dances frequently take place there on holidays, weddings and other joyful occasions and in 1974 this community actually formed an official dance troupe, affiliated with the local municipality, whose chairman was a Kurdish Jew (Nathaniel Gabai), native of Zakho, the son of the former Jewish mukhtar of Zakho Jewish community (Moshe Gabbai). Throughout the years this troupe was invited to Germany and Holland where it was praised for its performances.The dance troupe and the tours to Turkish Kurdistan should be sufficient to demonstrate the warm and emotional feelings of the Kurds in Israel towards their land of birth and the Kurdish culture. They are highly moved by anything linked to Kurdistan. Many feel nostalgia towards Kurdistan.[4] In some communities along with those mentioned above, the Kurdish spirit is much more emphasized due to the simple fact that they are heavily populated by Kurdish residents. The Neo-Aramaic language is still heard in the streets of these communities as if these people had not yet left Kurdistan, where Neo-Aramaic was the common spoken language among Jews. A stranger who passes through Katamonim will be surprised to see the elder Kurds walking on the streets with their traditional Kurdish costumes and kafiyya, speaking Neo-Aramaic. It is evident that not only the native Kurds feel this way towards the Kurdish tradition but also their children are very well aware of their Kurdish origin. It is no wonder that they are actively involved in dance troupes and take part in typical Kurdish events such as the traditional spring festival - the Sahrane. The Israeli teenagers while performing in such events are very convincing, dancing various Kurdish folk-dances and dressed in colorful Kurdish costumes.

The director of the youth's dancing group and the major force behind its achievements is Mr. Gurji Zaken, [5] a man full of enthusiasm, known by all for his dedication to the Kurdish tradition. Fifty year old Gurji was quite a famous Kurdish singer at weddings and other joyful events. He has also recorded a tape of Kurdish songs, but his musical career had to be stopped due to medical instructions.Gurji, native of Zakho, immigrated to Israel at the age of fourteen. He is one of my informants in an oral history research project of the Kurdish Jews. His Kurdish childhood, which was prematurely taken away from him due to the circumstances (the immigration en-masse of the Iraqi Jews to Israel), seems to be one of the factors behind his great attachment to the Kurdish culture. Among his virtues: he has an amazing memory, he is a remarkable story-teller and has total command of both Neo-Aramaic and Kurmanji, the Kurdish dialect spoken around Zakho. Four remarks should be taken into consideration to understand how the Kurdish culture continues to flourish in Israel:[6]

a. Most of the Kurds still live together in the same neighborhoods or agricultural communities where they compose in fact a majority of the population. The more homogeneous the community, the easier it is for the Kurds to preserve their unique traditions. This produced both positive and negative consequences, resulting from living together throughout the years. On happy occasions such as a wedding, the family receives constructive assistance from neighbors in the arrangements and preparations. Also at sorrowful events, such as death, they receive psychological and emotional support and condolences, which cannot be measured, from the surrounding community. On the other hand, however, the concentration of Kurdish families in a small community frequently causes friction, disagreements and rivalries in these communities.
b. The language which is largely spoken in various degrees of intensity in the homes of all the Kurds is Neo-Aramaic which was spoken by Jews and Christians in Kurdistan for countless generations.
c. The favorite music in these houses is usually "Eastern music" (Arabic, Greek and other Mediterranean melodies composed of Hebrew songs) rather than Western (European, American or even the mainstream Israeli) music. In every Kurdish house one can find dozens of tapes of Kurdish music. The most popular singers are Muslim Kurdish singers who still live in Kurdistan: Hammo (Muhammad Aref Jizrawi), Hasso (Hassan Jizrawi) and Isa Barwari.
d. Kurdish dances, performed to the sounds of Dohla, Kurdish drum, and Zurne, Kurdish wind instrument, are an indispensable part of any Kurdish wedding or other cheerful occasion. There are so many such occasions due to the large extended families that frequently they coincide with one another, and the Kurdish guests have to choose between events or to rush from one to another.

From the Kurdish Mountains into Israel: A new beginning

Almost all the Jews of Iraqi Kurdistan immigrated to Israel by 1951. Two waves of immigration took place, one in the mid-thirties [7] and the second in 1950-51, when the Iraqi government allowed Jews to immigrate to Israel. At first, those who wished to immigrate had only to give up their Iraqi citizenship. Later, the Iraqi regime announced that the immigrants would not be permitted to take any property out of Iraq.[8]The Kurdish Jews from Turkey and Persia, on the other hand, were less restricted in their immigration to Israel. Thus they came more gradually. Today, approximately 100,000 Kurdish Jews live in Israel.[9] In the early fifties, more than 750,000 Jewish immigrants from many countries arrived to Israel in the first three years after the independence, creating a mosaic of cultures. The population of the small country more than doubled in a short time, mainly due to the mass immigration of Jews from Arab and Islamic countries. The sharp differences between the various ethnic groups created social and ethnic tension. The term "oriental" Jews to indicate outsiders were used by Israelis of European origin in reference to Jews from the Middle East who immigrated to Israel. In analyzing the absorption process and the status and image of the Kurds in Israel, there is a need to clarify socio-cultural phenomenon, commonly referred to as the melting-pot concept. [10] The new immigrants were expected to integrate into the society, stripped of their original culture, adopting new, Israeli-Westernized characteristics. The concept of melting-pot in Israel was designed primarily for the new immigrants from the Islamic countries. Their original cultural identity was suppressed in the course of the bureaucratic process of absorption and integration. As a result, many felt either shame or humiliation about being "Easterner" (or "Oriental") as opposed to the other segment of the population from European origin, which were "Westerners". (These two groups are better known as Sepharadim and Ashkenazim respectively.) It was not very likely for the new immigrants, due to the conditions in this young and developing country to have a distinctive cultural pride. The Oriental Jews were ranked at the lowest level of the social scale. Prejudice, stereotypes and racial feelings contributed their part as well as the fact that they came from a traditional society and were lacking the skills and education required by a modern country. These facts added to the general atmosphere in Israel, causing discrimination, cultural and social suppression against the new immigrants. The Kurdish Jews were not spared from such a fate. In Israel, as almost in any other country that absorbs immigrants, the new immigrants were stigmatized according to their land of birth. The Moroccans, for example, were considered hot tempered, violent and lazy, [11] while the Kurds were regarded as ignorant... . They were a favorite subject of ethnic jokes. The phrase Ana Kurdi which literally means," I am a Kurd" symbolized them. It implies that the Kurd speaks in a straight forward manner, without hesitation. It also signifies someone who is simple minded and ignorant.The term 'Kurd' in Israel has a negative connotation. This stereotype prevailed mainly during the 1950's and 1960's. Nevertheless, many people are still stereotype oriented. A young professional told me that once, during a job interview she could not answer a question addressed to her. She simply replied: "Ana Kurdi " only to find out that the interviewer was of all things Kurdish. She did not use this phrase out of racial prejudice but, rather due to inter- cultural conditioning.Itzhak Rabin, a former Israeli Prime Minister, was once asked in a cabinet meeting (in 1974) whether Israel was interested in Kurdish pressure on Iraq and whether the United States prevented such pressure. "I don't know" he replied. One of the cabinet members, Dr. Yoseph Burg, added immediately the phrase "Ana Kurdi ", to indicate the ignorance which such an answer reflected. Even though people might still use such a phrase out of habit the image of the Kurds has in fact changed in the course of years. This change was effected through the positive attitude, economic achievements and the hard working nature of the Israeli Kurds. The atmosphere was more severe during the 1950's but even today one can sense echoes of social tension in Israel. From the mid-seventies onwards, however, opposite socio-cultural tendencies to those described above arose and they were not disconnected from political developments.[12] The new theme that emerged stressed giving each ethnic group the pride which was withheld from them in the past. The concept that the Western culture was preferable has no longer been dominant. The uniqueness of each distinctive group was encouraged to be emphasized and expressed.
Social and Economic Changes of the new Kurdish immigrants in Israel
In the second half of the 18th century, Kurdish Jews began to immigrate to Palestine, preferably to Jerusalem, where they formed a considerable community. In 1939, the number of the Kurds in Jerusalem rose to 4,369 within the Jewish population of 80,850.[13] According to a survey taken in 1972, 30,000 Kurds lived in the Capitol. In 1989, I estimate that there are between forty and fifty thousands Kurds in Jerusalem alone. In the beginning of the 20th century the diligent and hard working Kurds held various occupations within the workforce. Many hard working Kurds earned their living in the quarries, as builders or in the pioneering work of road paving. Throughout the years many others found work as shopkeepers in Mahane Yehuda, the biggest market (Hebrew: Shuq) of Jerusalem, and they own vegetable and fruit stores. Therefore the Neo-Aramaic language is commonly spoken in the market between shopkeepers and Kurdish clients, either out of acquaintance or in order to gain a better price in bargaining. Porterage is another unique occupation that has become monopolized by the Kurds. As a result Kurds also now control the moving company business. Havatzelet street in downtown Jerusalem, which is known as the center for porters is equally famous for its strong and large Kurdish figures. The children of former Kurdish builders, following in their fathers’ footsteps, have become contractors and managers of huge companies. Jerusalem is the home of at least a dozen Kurdish contractors whose wealth is legendary. The last two presidents of the Association of Contractors in Israel were Kurds. Some of these wealthy contractors are involved in large projects overseas, in Africa, Europe and the United States. More than a dozen Kurdish families, also from Jerusalem, have also established themselves in the hotel management business and own hotels in Jerusalem, Eilat, Tiberius and Netanya. In Kurdistan some Jews practiced a large range of occupations such as shepherds and farmers. They lived as peasants in villages, growing vineyards, orchards, grain, tobacco and raising cattle and sheep. The Jews of Zakho had some other peculiar professions which involved trading transactions. Many families earned their living being rafts men (tarahe) and muleteers (qatarchaye).

Not only in the Kurdish mountains but also in Israel some Kurdish Jews were attracted to the pastoral way of life and settled in agricultural communities, sometimes inhabited exclusively by Kurds. The Kurds, as previously mentioned, preferred to be with Kurds. These communities are located in the mountainous areas of Jerusalem, around Haifa in the north, in the Jordan Valley region and in the south of the country, the Negev. A large group of the town Jews earned their living through a variety of trade, store ownerships and other various crafts such as tailoring, shoe production and the kind. As is true with many immigrant communities, many second generation Kurds have broken the traditional pattern of following in their parents footsteps in their business by receiving education in the universities and other institutions of higher learning . Some of those educated hold high positions in governmental ministries and serve as high ranking officers in the police forces and the army (presently there is one Kurdish Major General, Yitzhak Mordechai, who is the head of the Israeli Army Central Command. In the late 1990s he would become the defense minister in the cabinet of Benjamin Netanyahu). Economic Turning Point The immigration of the Kurdish Jews to Israel has been, from many aspects, a turning point. Economically, it has been a story of success which is indicated by socio-economic change within the communities. While in Kurdistan only a few Jews were relatively rich, in Israel the wheel of fortune turned around. Many of the poor Kurdish Jews received for the first time in their lives a real opportunity to demonstrate their abilities and fulfill their potential. For many of them it has been a new beginning. New horizons have been opened and it has been as though they were reborn. The traditional hierarchical stratification which was based on wealth broke down in the new circumstances and life conditions offered in Israel. It should be noted that in Kurdistan the majority of the Jews had hardly any chance for socio-economic mobilization. A person who was born into an impoverished family would have found it quite difficult to escape poverty. He might have improved his economic status compared to his father's, but he certainly could not become a rich man. He was limited in resources and was primarily concerned with earning a basic living. The opposite description was also correct. Wealthy Families would usually keep their socio-economic status for a few generations unless a financial catastrophe occurred. In the unique economic conditions of Kurdistan the rule that only the rich could become richer, generally prevailed. Only someone who had resources and economic patience (for instance, to store goods for a long time, until the prices were raised), would be able to maintain and increase his wealth. In Kurdistan, economic advantage has also remained with some families. There is a strong correlation between kinship patterns of socio-economic status: wealthy families increase the likelihood of the families next generation in retaining and perhaps strengthening their economic and social status. In Israel, all the Kurds rich or poor had to start all over again from the beginning because they practically left all their property in Iraq and came to Israel. Interestingly enough, most of the richer families in Kurdistan are not quite as rich in Israel and vice-versa, many of those who were poor in Kurdistan became very rich and economically successful in Israel. In fact, mainly the poor ones broke through and became rich within a period of fifteen or twenty years of their immigration. Some of my informants who were very wealthy in Kurdistan told me the following: “Look at this (the name is given) family, they hardly had anything to eat in Zakho... and here they have become millionaires ". Or they would say:" Look at this person. In Dohuk, his status was very low, and here he became so rich. When he sees me, he crosses the road to the opposite side... because he cannot look at my eyes." Description of the Jewish trade community of Zakho could further clarify this phenomenon. At least half of the families (150 out of 300, in the mid-forties) earned their living through various trade transactions. The Jewish merchants in Kurdistan could be divided into three main groups. (i) Wholesaler merchants (pl:tijare), who owned stores and shops in the Khan or the Jewish market (shuqet hozaye). (ii) Shopkeepers (pl:dikandare), merchants in a smaller size compared to the first group. (iii) Wandering Peddlers (pl: bazaze or xazare). They would buy products in the market and then ride a donkey or a mule would travel between the villages around the town. The peddlers would leave their home town on Sunday and returned after a week or two.[14] Besides the objective difficulties of journeys in the isolated and remote Kurdish mountains, the Jewish peddlers were also vulnerable to attacks by brigands. Throughout the years many Jewish peddlers were robbed and a few dozens were murdered by the brigands after being robbed. In Neo-Aramaic being robbed is literally translated as being "stripped", derived from the Neo-Aramaic root Sh-l-X (Heb. ש-ל-כ) which actually means to take off the clothes, since even their clothes were usually taken by the brigands. It was indeed an extremely dangerous occupation. The murdered peddlers still strongly prevail in the collective memory of the Kurdish Jewish community as if it just occurred and not in fact tens of years ago. The wholesale merchants used to cooperate in partnership with smaller merchants and peddlers. In such partnerships, they only invested money while the troubles and risks of the journey were left to their partners, the peddlers and small merchants, who were also responsible for negotiating and carrying out of the deals. The wholesalers themselves used to wait for a message from their wakil in the big city (e.g. Those in Zakho or Dohuk had wakil in Mosul) informing them that the price of a certain good, which they have had in storage for a long time, has been raised. Then they would send the requested merchandise by delegates, either through rafts men (pl:tarahe), or muleteers (qatarchaye). The smaller merchants, the peddlers and other less fortunate had to work much harder in Kurdistan to make a living. No wonder, therefore, that once in Israel they were willing to work at any available job and were not afraid of taking risks. Those who had been well off in Kurdistan, on the other hand, were more spoiled and selective in choosing their job. Their social and psychological background imposed limits on them. Their self-image was still one of a rich and respected person. Nevertheless, not only did they have to earn a living but they usually had to work under supervision and being subordinate to others, a situation unfamiliar and difficult for them to handle. As a result, working themselves to a higher position was a far more difficult task.[15] The economic transformation of the Kurds in Israel was observed by Danni Rubinstein, a journalist from Jerusalem. In his youth, in the early fifties, he volunteered to teach Hebrew to the New Kurdistani immigrants in the absorption center Kastel near Jerusalem. He followed the absorption process of the Kurds in Jerusalem and their progress throughout the years. Rubinstein gives the next account: [In the fifties] "the tin huts in which they lived were burning from the heat of the summer... and they were freezing in the winter..." "Today”, added Rubinstein, "some of the streets of Kastel are more luxurious than those of Savion, a suburb of Tel-Aviv, perhaps the most expensive location in Israel.[16] Intrigues and Politics: The Association of Kurdish immigrants as a source of political power The late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was once a guest of honor at the first official assembly of the Kurdish Immigrants Association in Israel (1973). In her speech she remarked that if it took twenty five years (since the establishment of the state in 1948) until their first official gathering, then "the Kurds must be very bad politicians". The Kurdish association which has been active since 1970 is indeed politically motivated. The chairman, Mr. Habib Shimoni and the small group of activists around him are affiliated with the Labor party. Most of them have political interests. It is not surprising, therefore, that some of them harness their activity in the Kurdish Association as a carriage for their political aspirations in the Labor party. The Kurdish Association is supposed to be an interest group representative of the Kurds in Israel. Instead it is an organization, controlled by a few activists and petty politicians who are concerned mainly with themselves. Any social or ethnic based organization in Israel has a potential political power. Leaders of large sectors of the population are likely to demand the representation of their interest group in the political sphere. This is usually done through the candidacy of the leader of the sector in question to the Israeli parliament, on behalf of one of the large political parties. The political assumption behind this candidacy is that the political party will attract as many voters as possible from the sector which the candidate represents. In this manner, candidacy of one of the Kurdish association leaders, for instance, is aiming towards the Kurdish voters. It should be understood therefore, how the chairman of the Kurdish association, Mr. Habib Shimoni, became a parliament member in 1974 on behalf of the Labor party. Ever since that time he tried repeatedly, without success, to be nominated again as a candidate for the parliament. Some explanations for his political failure are explored in the examples below. Most of the public events organized by the Kurdish association focus on folklore. The biggest annual happening is the Sahrane, the spring festival, which somehow takes place around September-October, in the autumn. The Sahrane attracts between ten and twenty thousands Kurds and others from all over the country. For two successive days they gather in one of the national parks, live in tents, listen to Kurdish music and dance in groups to the sounds and traditional dancing melodies from early dawn until midnight. They enjoy, of course, delicious Kurdish food and the men drink 'Araq or Conjac. The festival is usually covered by the Israeli media, more so during election years, when Israeli leaders are guests of honor and speak in front of thousands of potential voters. The Sahrane of September 1988, two months before the Israeli election, was attended by all the prominent political leaders, from both large parties. Once, when both leaders of the two major parties failed to show up to the festival, it caused disappointment to Mr. Shimoni, the chairman of the Kurdish association, who hoped for some moments of fame and glory in the company of the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. In the last volume of Hithadshut (the publication of the Kurdish association) he hence expressed his anger and frustration concerning their absence at the festival. Five full pages in that publication were dedicated to letters of protest which he had sent to the Israeli leaders and the answers which he received from them. The Kurds who were celebrating in the Sahrane were indifferent to the appearance of one Israeli leader to the other, for they were dancing, singing and celebrating with their friends and families. They were indifferent whether some political leaders were present in the huge park or not. Mr. Shimoni however managed to bring this matter to the political level, hoping to receive some attention. Actually, in the political arena he is not taken seriously. Nevertheless, he is the chairman of the Kurdish association, in which he invests his energy, time and talent. He is the first and the only chairman of the association for the last eighteen years, a fact which by itself does not necessarily demonstrate too much democracy. Internal politics have caused some internal disputes within the Kurdish association. In 1985, group of Iranian Kurds withdraw from the Kurdish association and established a separate association of Kurds from Iranian origin. In doing so they protested against Mr. Shimoni who did not cooperate or associate with them. Ever since another spring festival is organized annually by the new Association of the Iranian Kurds. It is entitled Seyran (a spring festival in the Neo-Aramaic dialect of the Iranian region). Personal disputes have also threatened to split the Kurdish association and endangered the celebrating of the Sahrane. In 1984, a dispute between Mr. Shimoni and his rivals in the association caused a temporary split. His rivals organized a separate Sahrane festival in the in Jerusalem, leaving Mr. Shimoni out. Among the visitor-guests for this Sahrane was the mayor of Jerusalem, Mr. Teddy Kollek, who came to greet the Jerusalemite Kurds, some of whom work in the municipality, or are associates in the labor party, in which Mr. Kollek is a member. Later on Mr. Shimoni unjustly accused Mr. Kollek in the local press of interfering in internal dispute and inflaming the atmosphere between the Kurds. This vicious accusation was baseless since Mr. Kollek was not quite aware of the internal conflict. All he really wanted was to greet the Kurds for whom he has much appreciation. Mr. Shimoni, on the other hand, was furious that a political figure honored the Sahrane organized by his opponents, thus giving it publicity. This is a typical example of Mr. Shimoni's tactless behavior which was the cause for many disputes.[17] The Kurdish Association has its own publication, as mentioned above, Hithadshut. It has been published irregularly, five volumes within the last seventeen years. The editor is Mr. Shimoni himself who wishes, it seems, to centralize most of the functions of the association by himself only. Hithadshut has some valuable sections dedicated to historical and cultural aspects of the Kurdistani Jews. Some articles deal with the contemporary situation of the Muslim Kurds in Kurdistan. Other sections simply glorify and self-praise Mr. Shimoni. Hundreds of pictures, articles, and letters are dedicated to him and to the small group of his closest associates. These parts of the journal are intended to advance his political aspirations. In this manner Mr. Shimoni has made the publication his own personal and political organ. In 1984, Mr Shimoni failed in the primaries of the Labor Party once again to be nominated as a candidate for the parliament. As a result, he organized a group of elderly Kurds and activists on a mission to the leader of the Labor party, Mr. Shimon Peres. The mission demanded that Mr. Shimoni be nominated as a candidate for the parliament otherwise the Kurds would withdraw from the Labor party and would establish a new party of their own. Neither their demands were met nor their threat carried out. This was another act designed by Mr. Shimoni which was ridiculed by all, since no change was expected even among his peers (Mr. Shimoni knew very well that he had no chances in establishing a new party. His hope was that he will succeed to convince the Labor's leader that he has a wide backing and therefore should be nominated as a candidate, in spite of his failure in the primaries).[18] Most of the activists in the Kurdish Association, as stated above, are affiliated with the Labor party. Although no direct survey or poll has ever been taken exclusively among the Kurdish population in Israel as a whole it appears that their political preferences are divided between the two large parties, Labor and Likud, with no considerable advantage to either. The 1988 elections to the Israeli Parliament confirm this notion. In five agricultural communities which are inhabited almost exclusively by Kurdish Jews the results show equality in the votes for Likud and Labor.[19]

Contact with Muslim Kurds after the Immigration

The immigration of the Kurdish Jews to Israel brought to an end a long time relationship with their fellow Muslim Kurds. Characterizing the nature of these relationships, many incidents could point to the contrary, while others exemplify how the relations between the two groups were cordial. In any case, this is a far more complicated subject than we could elaborate on. Throughout the years the Israeli-Kurds followed the struggle of the fellow Muslim Kurds for an independent state from a far distance. They watched and listened to the radio and television with great interest. Worried and frustrated, they knew that there was nothing they could do. Habib Shimoni, while a parliament member, brought the issue of the Kurdish struggle to the agenda of the parliament. Although it seems that the contact between Jews and Kurds ended while the former had immigrated, there were some exceptions.20 One story exposes the nature of a single relationship between a Jewish Kurd and a Kurdish Mula. The late Kurdish leader, Mula Mustafa Barazani, visited Israel twice secretly to meet with the Israeli authorities, and also met on these occasions with his Jewish friend, David Gabai, better known as Xawaja Xino. Between the years 1965-1974 there was cooperation between the Iraqi Kurds and the State of Israel. These were fruitful years of contact between the Kurdish leader and the Israelis, through military consultants and other messengers. Israel was one of the few countries who assisted the Kurds; in military equipment, strategy and tactics of war, medical and technical supplies and in other ways. David Gabai was a childhood friend of the child Mustafa Barazani. His father, Eliyahu Gabai (Xawaja Xino) was the head of the Jewish community of 'Aqra and had strong contact with the Barazani family. During the 1930's he supplied food and aid to the Kurds who were revolting against the British. His son David Gabai later became one of the richest men in 'Aqra. In 1951 he immigrated to Israel like the rest of the Jewish Kurds and the tie between him and Mula Musatafa Barazani ceased. Since his property was left behind he had to work in road paving for a living, then as a shepherd and lastly as a grocer in a vegetable store. When the relations between Mula Mustafa and Israel were initiated, the Kurdish leader continually inquired about his old friend Xawaja Xino( which was originally the nick-name of his father). Eyebrows of the Israeli authorities were raised in wonder as to the identity of this mysterious person whose name was frequently mentioned by the Kurdish leader. In Israel, in the city of Tiberius where he lived he was known in his Hebrew name David Gabai. His Kurdish nickname was known only among family and friends. Finally he was located in Tiberius and the authorities asked him to talk about Mula Mustafa Barazani. He was recorded as if he were speaking directly to Barazani himself and so he said: "When you went to Russia in 1945 the Iraqi authorities wanted to hang me. They blamed me for assisting you. I told them that you forced me to trade for you, by threatening my life and the lives of my family. I bribed a police officer and so I was rescued from death." When Mustafa Barazani was told that his friend Xawaja Xino was located he asked for proof that the man is indeed alive. He received the recorded message and a picture. Barazani listened delightedly to the recording, but when he looked at the picture he pointed out the work shirt of Xawaja Xino and said: "Xawaja Xino wears a worn shirt?! This is a shame to the State of Israel. " The Israeli messenger who witnessed this incident indicates that only at this point had he realized how strong the contact was between these two. From this point on, there was much correspondence between them. Thereafter they met three times; twice in Israel and once in Kurdistan. In 1968, on Mula Mustafa's first visit to Israel he demanded, while still in the airport to see Xawaja Xino. A messenger was sent immediately to bring Xawaja Xino, and the two spent one whole night talking to one another. On his second trip to Israel, in 1973, Barazani asked to visit Xwaja Xino in his house. Some Israeli Kurds were also invited to this meeting. Mula Mustafa wore a western suit and Xawaja Xino wore a traditional Kurdish outfit. The two men closed themselves in a room and talked for a long time. Then they returned to the reception room, where for six hours Kurdish songs were sang, stories were recalled and food and drinks were served. A few months later, Xawaja Xino's dream to go back to Kurdistan came true. The eighty six year old man went to visit Mula Mustafa for two weeks at his headquarters in the Kurdish mountains. Throughout the time between their meetings they corresponded. A large file of letters from Barazani is kept in Xawaja Xino's house. In 1979 Mula Mustafa Barazani passed away. Six months afterwards Xawaja Xino too passed away. Salima, Xawaja Xino's daughter, said that in his last six months he was in grief. There is a strong argument among the Kurds in Israel, that this special connection between the two helped increasing the confidence of Barazani in Israel. Whether it is true or not; such a strong bond further indicates that the ties between Jewish Kurds and Kurdistan did not cease when they immigrated to Israel.[21] Aside from this special case, there have been various other interactions between Israeli Kurds and Muslim Kurds, increasing in number in the recent years. The Sahrane of 1988 was tempered by the call of the newly formed Public Council of Kurdish Jews to focus world attention on the chemical warfare being waged against the Kurds of Iraq. The public Council also invited former secretary of the D.P.K. (Democratic Party of Kurdistan) in exile, Hamid Huseini to visit Israel in the Sehrane. Huseini indeed came and met with the press and with some political figures who attended the Sehrane, as well as the Kurdish members of the Council. Special Kurdish guests who came from West Germany to take part in the Sehrane were "Bargeran" and "Sarbast" (their revolutionary names), two singers who entertained and moved the crowd with emotionally delivered mellow Kurdish songs. For "Sarbast", coming to the Sehrane in Israel had special meaning. Apparently he grew up in the Jewish Quarter of Zakho, in one of the homes the Kurdish Jews had left when they immigrated to Israel. "Bargeran", After occasionally meeting Israeli Kurdish tourists in Frankfurt, visited Israel and his Kurdish friends for the fifth time this year.[22]
In these very days when thousands of Kurdish refugees flee from Iraq to Turkey, they receive attention from the media. Among the reporters who flew to Turkey were some Israelis. One of them is Hana Kalderon from "Haaretz". She wrote that the rumors that an Israeli journalist is there (in Sirtustu camp) spread quickly. A young Kurd, Faysal Muhammad Barwari, asked her to meet with him and his two friends, Wajjan Musa and Hashem Tamar. They told her they wanted to move to Israel, to live there for a while, until the situation will improve. "We are not the only ones", they emphasized. "There are many like us. In a minute we can compose a list [of people interested]". "What are you going to do in Israel?" asked the reporter. "We do not know", was the answer, [but] "it will be better than [being] here or in Iran." After a while appeared a Kurdish man from Amedia, and asked the Israeli journalist to send his message to his Jewish friends from Amedia, now living in Israel. "Please write" he asked, that I, Muhsen Saleh 'Abd al- 'Aziz [al-] 'Amedi, ask "the Jews in Israel [those] who immigrated from Amedia, with whom we lived and to whom we helped, to help us now. Give this message to Yoel, Yehezkel, Yitzhak and Moshe Matlub. I remember them, all of them"[23] The Jerusalem post's reporter, Yehuda Litani, who also visited some refugees camps in Turkey had similar impressions. In Diyarbakir refugee camp he sat in a tent among twenty five Kurds and listened to the most senior man there, Salman Khurshid, who asked him to transfer a message to the Israeli public and especially to "our Jewish brothers who used to live with us in Kurdistan". Then, the man asked the reporter about the nature of the uprising, the "intifada", in the West Bank and Gaza strip. The reporter explained the situation to him and then Salman Khurshid concluded: "Let me suggest something and see how you Israelis and your government react to it." The man simply suggested that one and a half million Palestinians will be transferred to Northern Iraq, to the Kurdish part of the country. "They will have to be accepted nicely by their so-called Arab brothers", he said "And send us, instead, to the territories. Believe me everybody will be satisfied." Why, asked the reporter, and Salman Khurshid reply:" Because we are your friends, we can trust each other...We will guard your border, we will protect you from the Arabs, our common enemy." For the reporter's question if he is serious, he answered: if you were to agree to my suggestion "most of us here would leave without hesitation". In the Mardin refugee camp near the Syrian border, when the name Israel was mentioned, a group of Kurds asked the reporter "please help us". In which way? he replied. First, said one of them, "take in some thousands of refugees like you took the Kurdish Jews, our brothers, at the beginning of the 50's." Then, he said, "raised your voice for us in the most powerful state in the world; the United States", which is your ally. They are not doing enough, he complained. "Don't they understand that the Iraqis are publicly committing genocide?" During his last visit to Diyarbakir refugee camp the reporter was approached by a Kurd, Shafiq Mustafa Mula al-Jalil, who wanted to send a letter through him to his old Jewish neighbors from the village of Sharanash, who now live in Israel. In the letter , the writer does not ask anything specific, but only sends his regards to his Jewish neighbors.[24] The fact that Kurds, during their hard times, think about Israel and specifically the Kurdish Jews there as a potential source of support, seems to reinforce the opinion that the relationship between Jews and Kurds in Kurdistan were more cordial than the opposite.

Notes

* I would like to express my thanks to the "Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture" (New York) for its support in my research.

1. Whenever a reference is made for the Kurdish Jews in this article, it actually denotes Iraqi Kurdish Jews. 2. For more details on the immigration of the Jews from Iraq see the following: Shlomo Hillel, Operation Babylon (1987); Nissim Rajwan, Jews of Iraq: 3000 Years of History and Culture (1985); Heskel M. Haddad, Flight from Babylon: Iraq, Iran, Israel, America (1986). 3. More Kurds live in the Katamonim (or Gonenim) neighbourhood in south Jerusalem, about forty and fifty thousands people. 4. Nostalgia of Jews from the Arab countries to their land of birth is usually regarded in Israel as either idealizing the past or focusing on the positive recollections. The Kurdish Jews generally long for the good experience they had in Kurdistan while also remembering the bad experiences there. At the same time, they generally love and appreciate their present life in Israel. 5. Zaken family, originally from Zakho, is the largest extended family of Kurdish Jews in Israel. 6. The Kurdish culture indeed continues to flourish in Israel but at the same time this is the last generation of Kurdish natives. Hadi Rashid al-Jawashli in his book "al-Hayat al- ijtimaiyyah fi Kurdistan" ( pp.4-5), wrote about his meetings in Damascus with Kurds, who were descendants of Kurdish soldiers of Ṣalāḥ al-din . In spite of the hundreds of years which have passed, they still preserve their original social Kurdish characteristics and language. It does not seem very likely that something similar will occur with the Israeli Kurds. 7. In this wave of immigration, families were torn apart when some members of the family immigrated to Palestine while the rest of the family remained in Kurdistan. 8. See the citations in note no: 3. 9. More figures on the Jews of Kurdistan in Israel and their distribution there according to their exact hometown in Kurdistan and their present location in Israel is to be found in the book: Amnon Shiloah, Arik Cohen and Yisaskhar Ben-Ami, Ha-kehilot Ha-yehudiyot Me-Asia Hatikhona Hadromit Vehamizrahit Beyisarel-Rikuz Netunim [The Jewish Communities from Central, Southern and Eastern Asia - concentration of data], (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1976):72-108. 10. The terms "Conformity" and "Melting Pot" are sometimes mistakenly misplaced. In the American experience Conformity meant that anyone was welcome to come to the United States, provided they dropped the cultural patterns in which they were reared and totally adopted the Anglo-American pattern of life. The "Melting Pot" theory suggested that the developing American cultural tradition was not strictly only one, but rather a product of contributions made by several cultural traditions. The different traditions were melted together to create one new product. In Israel, when the term melting pot usually used in this context, the real meaning behind it was similar to that of Conformity. 11. The harsh economic situation did not strengthen the immigrants who were subjected, among other things, also to economic discrimination. On this and other issues concerning the immigration see this partial list: Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis (1986); Eliezer Ben Rafael, The Emergence of Ethnicity: Cultural Groups and Social Conflict in Israel (1982); Moshe Shokeid, Dual Heritage: Immigrants from the Atlas Mountains in an Israeli village (1985); Heskel M. Haddad, Jews of Arab and Islamic Countries: History, Problems, Solutions (1984); Rafael Ben Shoshan, "The Moroccan identity in Israel", Bama'arakha, no:151-2, May-August 1980: 204-206; Maurice M. Roumani, "The Sepharadi factor in Israeli politics" in The Middle East Journal, vol. 42:no.3 (Summer 1988); 423-435. (See also the books cited in note 19.) 12. In general, the pattern of the cultural emergence of the Eastern Jews in Israel, the improvement in their social status and ethnic identity is parallel to the emergence of the "Likud" party to their rule in 1977. It is clear that the Oriental Jews were responsible in part for Likud's victory over the Labor for the first time since the establishment of the state of Israel. See, for example, Roumani, Ibid and for more details see the citations in notes 11 and 19. 13. Ze'ev Vilna'i, "Kurdim be-eretz Yisra'el" [Kurds in the land of Israel] in Ve'im Bigvurot, Jerusalem 1984, P.194. 14. Occasionally the peddlers lost the sense of time during their trips. There is a famous story about one of them who returned to Zakho after a long trip and did not see any one on the streets. Wandering around on his donkey he thought that something horrible had happened while he was away. Soon afterwards he realized that it was "Yom Kippur" (the Day of Atonement), the most holy day in the Jewish religion. The city was quiet because everyone was fasting and praying in synagogues. 15. Mordechai Zaken, "Mosdot merkaziyim vemishar bekehilat yehude Zakho" [Social and economic institutions among the Jewish community of Zakho], Hithadshut (5), 1985:11-22. 16. Dani Rubinstein, "La-Kurdim yesh harbe yedidim" [The Kurds have many friends]. Davar ha-Shavua , 23 November 1984. 17. Habib Shim'oni's desire for publicity and his anxiety in organizing the "Sehrane" could be best illustrated from the way he planted rumors in the Israeli press, about the expected visit of Mula Mustafa Barazani to the Sehrane festival in September 1975. The newspapers' reports were indeed a little skeptical and asked "Will he come or not ?", but in the meanwhile the Sehrane was publicized and many Kurdish people came to celebrate, hoping that they would be able to see the admired Kurdish leader. When Barazani finally did not come, the Hebrew newspaper "Davar" reported that "the Persian government, perhaps the Shah himself, prevented Barazani from coming to the Sehrane". Perhaps Mr. Shimoni did invite the Kurdish leader to participate in the Sehrane. Nevertheless, it seems not very likely that Barazani, after the collapse of the Kurdish struggle would appear in public at a festival in Israel. Mr. Shimoni, taking advantage of the public interest, continued to claim even when the festival began, that Barazani still might be coming. See "Ma'ariv", 16 September 1975 and "Davar", 25 September 1975. 18. Hithadshut (Jerusalem), vols. 1-5, (ed.) Habib Shimoni, Jerusalem. 19. The five agricultural communities in question are Alqosh (named after Alqosh in Iraqi Kurdistan) near Haifa; Even Sapir, Orah, Aminadav and Nes-Harim near Jerusalem. The average vote for the Labor in these five communities is 35.7% while the average for the Likud is 34.4%. The distribution of the votes, in percentage, to the Labor and Likud respectively, were as follows: Alqosh: (19.3; 39.6); Even Sapir: (42.4; 36.5); Orah:(30.7; 40.9); Aminadav (35.7; 32.4); Nes-Harim (50.5; 22.6). For more details about ethnic vote and the ethnic factor in Israeli politics in Israel see: Hanna Hertzog, Political ethnicity in Israel," (in Hebrew) Megamot, vol. 28, no. 2/3 (March 1984); Yohanan Peres, Ethnic relations in Israel, (in Hebrew) Tel-Aviv: Sifriyat Hapoalim, 1977; Asher Arian, Politics in Israel: The Second Generation (Chatham: NJ: Chatham House publishers,1985); Lilly Weissbrod, "Protest and Dissidence in Israel," in Cross-Currents in Israeli Culture and Politics, ed. Myron J. Aronoff, vol.4 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984). 20. There are still some connections between Jewish and Muslim Kurds. One of my informants is in touch with his Agha's son, who lives today in the United States. 21. Yitzak Ben Hurin, "Ma'ariv-Sof Hashavua'" (Tel-Aviv), 9 September 1987. More about the history of the connection between Gabai family and Barazani family see in the following Hebrew newspapers: "Yediot Aharonot", 12 April 1963; "Ma'ariv", 8 March 1977 and the publications: Hithadshut, vol. 1(1973):14-15, Bamaærakha (Jerusalem), no. 147 (May 1973):44-45. 22. The Jerusalem Post-International Edition ,15 October 1988. 23. "Haaretz", 7 October 1988. 24. The Jerusalem Post-International Edition ,15 October 1988.

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