[epluribus_2]

Note to all. N Iraq and Kurdistan in particular has always been home to a *** native *** jewish minority, speaking a dialect of aramaic similar to chaldean. Zakho is a jewish town and over the border in iran, there used to be a seat in parliment for the native jews. So the arabs should GET OVER IT and embrace their semitic brethren who have shared those lands since before anyone can remember.

[yonif]

My grandparents from one side of my family are Kurds from northern Iraq.

[SunkenCiv]

I found this fascinating. One of the suggested destinations for the Assyrian exiles was in the very area of this Adiabene.

Adiabene, Jewish Kingdom of Mesopotamia
by Jonah Gabriel Lissner

...two millennia ago this land sheltered the proud Jewish kingdom of Adiabene, with its capital at Arbela, nominally part of the Assyrian province of the Parthian Empire... Helena, Queen of Adiabene, ruled of an empire influenced by the sciences of the Hellenes and the arts of the Persians, in the old foothills of the northern Tigris, on the south shores of the Caspian Sea, ruled a land increasingly swayed by the policies of the Roman Empire of the east, even as memory of the old Alexandran customs had begun to evaporate from the hearts and minds of the residents. To her east lay the treacherous Parthians, to the north the unpredictable Saksa, Dane and affiliated horse-nomads.

and, from the web archive:

Ancient Jewish Cemetery Discovered In Armenia
March/April 2001
Ancient Jewish Cemetery Discovered In Armenia

A Jewish cemetery from the Middle Ages has been discovered by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers in Armenia, a country in which a Jewish community had not been known to exist prior to modern times... There is no contemporary Jewish community in the area of the cemetery. Among the gravestones found were 16 with inscriptions in Hebrew and Aramaic and Armenian-style decorations. The stones bore dates from the 13th and 14th centuries... [T]hough there are oral traditions which place Jews in Armenia in ancient times, until now there was no information of the existence of such a community much earlier than the 19th century... The work in Armenia has been supported by the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, the Biblical Archaeology Foundation, the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Armenian Church's Siwniq Diocese.

Egad! More Jewish plots. Get it? Jewish plots! I kill me.