Posted on 08/02/2007 3:37:21 AM PDT by BlueSky194
There are twenty-two Arab states throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The world demands, in a chorus of barely disguised animosity towards Israel, that yet another Arab state be created within the mere fifty miles separating the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan. Israel, a territory no larger than the tiny principality of Wales and one that would comfortably fit into Lake Michigan with plenty of room left over, would be forced to share this sliver of land with a hostile Arab entity to be called Palestine.
The Arabs do not need another state. Their combined landmass exceeds 5,500,000 square miles, an area larger than that of the United States of America, within which are vast empty regions. The greatest con-trick played upon modern man is the myth of a separate Arab people who call themselves Palestinians. The irony is that the Arabs themselves rejected the name Palestine as being a Zionist invention and not worthy of Arabs who believed that they were simply a part of the Arab nation or, as many of them believed, inhabitants of southern Syria.
The indigenous peoples of the land, which in 1948 became the re-born state of Israel, are the Jews. They trace their ancestry in the land back nearly 4,000 years to the first Jew and Holy Convert, Abraham. But the world has gleefully adopted the myth that the Arabs, who call themselves Palestinians, also trace their beginnings back millennia. Most of the ancestors of these Arabs entered British occupied Mandatory Palestine illegally in the early years of the 20th century; a fact now dismissed as an inconvenient truth.
But there is a people who, like the Jews, deserve a homeland and truly can trace their ancestry back thousands of years. They are the Kurds and it is highly instructive to review their remarkable history in conjunction with that of the Jews. It is also necessary to review the historical injustice imposed upon them over the centuries by hostile neighbors and empires.
Let us go back to the captivity of the Ten Tribes of Israel who were taken from their land by the Assyrians in 721-715 BCE. Biblical Israel was de-populated and its Jewish inhabitants deported to an area in the region of ancient Media and Assyria - a territory roughly corresponding with that of modern day Kurdistan.
Assyria was, in turn, conquered by Babylonia, which led to the eventual destruction of the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah. The remaining two Jewish tribes were sent to the same area as that of their brethren from the northern kingdom, thus creating a densely Jewish populated region.
When the Persian conqueror of Babylonia, Cyrus the Great, allowed the Jews to return to their ancestral lands, many Jews remained and continued to live with their neighbors in Babylon - an area which included modern day Kurdistan.
The Babylonian Talmud refers in one section to the Jewish deportees receiving rabbinical permission to offer Judaism to the local population. The Kurdish royal house of Adiabene and a large segment of the general population accepted the Jewish faith in the 1st century BCE. Indeed, when the Jews rose up against Roman occupation in the 1st century CE, Kurdish Adiabene sent troops and provisions in support of the embattled Jews.
By the beginning of the 2nd century CE, Judaism was firmly established in Kurdistan and Kurdish Jews today speak an ancient form of Aramaic in their homes and synagogues. Kurdish and Jewish life became interwoven to such a remarkable degree that many of the Kurdish folk tales are connected with Jews.
It is interesting to note that several tombs of Biblical Jewish prophets are to be found in or near Kurdistan. For example, the prophet Nachum is in Alikush while Jonah?s can be found in Nabi Yunis, which is ancient Nineveh. Daniel?s tomb is in the oil rich Kurdistan province of Kirkuk, Habbabuk is in Tuisirkan and Queen Hadassah or Esther, along with her uncle Mordechai, is in Hamadan.
After the failed revolt against Rome, many rabbis found refuge in what is now Kurdistan. The rabbis joined with their fellow scholars and by the 3rd century CE Jewish academies were flourishing. But the Sassanid and Persian occupation of the region ushered in a time of persecution for the Jews and Kurds, which lasted until the Moslem Arab invasion. Indeed the Jews and Kurds joined together with the Arabs in the hope that it would bring relief from the Sassanid depredations they had suffered.
Shortly after the Arab conquest, Jews from the autonomous Jewish state of Himyar in what is today?s Saudi Arabia joined the Jews in the Kurdish regions. However under the Arabs, matters worsened and the Jews suffered as dhimmis in the Muslim-controlled territory. The Jews found themselves driven from their agricultural lands because of onerous taxation by their Moslem overlords. They thus left the land to become traders and craftsmen in the cities. Many of the Jewish peasants were converted to Islam by force or by dire circumstances and intermarried with their neighbors thus forming the basis of what are today called the Kurds.
From out of this population arose a great historical figure. In 1138, a boy was born into a family of Kurdish warriors and adventurers. His name was Salah-al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub; better known in the West as Saladin. He drove the Christian crusaders out of Jerusalem even though he was distrusted by the Moslem Arabs because he was a Kurd. Even then, the Arabs were aware of the close relationship that existed between the Kurdish people and the Jews.
Saladin employed justice and humane measures in both war and peace. This was in contrast to the methods employed by the Arabs. Indeed, it is believed that Saladin not only was just to the Christians but he allowed the Jews to flourish in Jerusalem and is credited with finding the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple, which had been buried under tons of rubbish during the Christian Byzantine occupation. The great Jewish rabbi, philosopher and doctor, Maimonides, was for a time Saladin?s personal physician.
According to a team of international scientists, a remarkable discovery was made in 2001. Doing DNA research, a team of Israeli, German and Indian scientists found that many modern Jews have a closer genetic relationship to populations in the northern Mediterranean area (Kurds and Armenians) than to the Arabs and Bedouins of the southern Mediterranean region.
But let us return to the present day and to why the world clamors for a Palestinian state but strangely turns its back upon Kurdish national independence and statehood. The universally accepted principle of self-determination seems not to apply to the Kurds.
In an article in the New York Sun on 6 July 2004 titled, The Kurdish Statehood Exception, Hillel Halkin exposed the discrimination and double standards employed against Kurdish aspirations of statehood. He wrote, ?... the historic injustices done to them and their suffering over the years can be adequately redressed within the framework of a federal Iraq, in which they will have to make do - subject to the consent of a central, Arab-dominated government in Baghdad - with mere autonomy. Full Kurdish statehood is unthinkable. This, too, is considered to be self-evident.?
The brutal fact in realpolitik therefore is that the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians have many friends in the oil rich Arab world - oil the world desperately needs for its economies. The Kurds, like the Jews, have few friends and the Kurds have no influence in the international corridors of power.
Mr. Halkin pointed out that, ?... the Kurds have a far better case for statehood than do the Palestinians. They have their own unique language and culture, which the Palestinians do not have. They have had a sense of themselves as a distinct people for many centuries, which the Palestinians have not had. They have been betrayed repeatedly in the past 100 years by the international community and its promises, while the Palestinians have been betrayed only by their fellow Arabs.?
During the tyranny of Saddam Hussein the Kurds were gassed and slaughtered in large numbers. They suffered ethnic cleansing by the Turks but they have exhibited great forbearance towards their tormentors. On the basis of pure realpolitik, the legality and morality of the Kurds' cause is infinitely stronger than that of the Palestinian Arabs.
President Bush has again called for an international conference in order to expedite the creation of another Arab state, which I have no doubt will become a blemish upon the legacy of his presidency and a mortal threat to the embattled State of Israel. The old nostrum that only when the Palestinian Arabs finally have a state will there be peace in the world is a delusion as much as a mirage in the desert.
On the other hand, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds displayed great political and economic wisdom. How different from the example of the Gazan Arabs who, when foolishly given full control over the Gaza Strip, chose not to build hospitals and schools but bunkers and missile launchers. To this they have added the imposition of Shari?a law with its attendant denigration of women and non-Moslems.
The Kurdish experiment, in at least their current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere in the Arab and Moslem world.
President Bush, Tony Blair, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and all the leaders of the free world should look to Kurdistan, with its huge oil reserves, as the new state that needs to be created in the Middle East. It is simple and natural justice, which is far too long overdue. A Palestinian Arab state, on the other hand, will immediately become a haven for anti-Western terrorism, a base for al-Qaida, a non-democratic land upon which the stultifying shroud of Shari?a law will inevitably descend.
Finally, it is also natural justice for the Jewish State, with its millennial association of shared history alongside the Kurdish people, to fight in the world?s forums for the speedy establishment of an independent and proud Kurdistan. An enduring alliance between Israel and Kurdistan would be a vindication of history, recognition of the shared sufferings of both peoples, and bring closer the advent of a brighter future for both nations.
On the other hand, the recent image of Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, hugging the Holocaust-denying and duplicitous leader of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is deeply repugnant to all who know their history.
Mahmoud Abbas has never, and will never, abrogate publicly in English or in Arabic the articles in Fatah?s constitution, which call for the, "... obliteration of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence" or in other words, the destruction of the Jewish State and the genocide of its citizens. This is the man Ehud Olmert hugs.
Consider Abbas' words at a rally on 11 January 2007 to a crowd of some 250,000 screaming supporters. Abbas called upon Palestinians to refrain from internal fighting and to direct their guns only against Israelis. So much for the partner Olmert embraces and the man President Bush and the Europeans shower with money and praise.
It is the Kurds who unreservedly deserve a state; the Palestinians forfeited that right by their genocidal intentions towards Israel and the Jews.
Careful what you wish for. Kurds are still Muslim, and some of the nastiest Muslims have been Kurds. The problem is and always was since Mohammad invented it- Islam and what it teaches.
This is comparing apples and oranges. Kurds are a distinct ethnic group. But there is no such thing as "Palestinians". They are simply Arabs, mostly from Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. For example, father of the PLO Yasser Arafat himself was born in Cairo.
Actually, the Jews coming from Abraham were originally from Mesopotamia/Babylonia. The same also goes for the Arab Bedouins of Palestine-Sinai-Jordan who descend from Ishmael. Jewish and Arab roots are thus ultimately in the Akkadian region south of Kurdistan.
The indigenous people of Palestine would be the Cannanites, who genetically are the native "Arab" population of Israel, Lebanon, and western Syria.
Good enough place to bump this thread. Here’s what I’ve been pushing for:
We should withdraw from Iraq — through Tehran. Here’s how I think we should “pull out of Iraq.” Add one more front to the scenario below, which would be a classic amphibious beach landing from the south in Iran, and it becomes a “strategic withdrawal” from Iraq. And I think the guy who would pull it off is Duncan Hunter.
How to Stand Up to Iran
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1808220/posts?page=36#36
Posted by Kevmo to TomasUSMC
On News/Activism 03/28/2007 7:11:08 PM PDT · 36 of 36
Split Iraq up and get out
***The bold military move would be to mobilize FROM Iraq into Iran through Kurdistan and then sweep downward, meeting up with the forces that we pull FROM Afghanistan in a 2-pronged offensive. We would be destroying nuke facilities and building concrete fences along geo-political lines, separating warring tribes physically. At the end, we take our boys into Kurdistan, set up a couple of big military bases and stay awhile. We could invite the French, Swiss, Italians, Mozambiqans, Argentinians, Koreans, whoever is willing to be the police forces for the regions that we move through, and if the area gets too hot for these peacekeeper weenies we send in military units. Basically, it would be learning the lesson of Iraq and applying it.
15 rules for understanding the Middle East
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1774248/posts
Rule 8: Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas — like liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes, Iraq is having a civil war as we once did. But there is no Abe Lincoln in this war. It’s the South vs. the South.
Rule 10: Mideast civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the U.S. civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; b) like the Cyprus civil war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that keeps everyone in line. Saddam used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is us. If we don’t want to play that role, Iraq’s civil war will end with A or B.
Let’s say my scenario above is what happens. Would that military mobilization qualify as a “withdrawal” from Iraq as well as Afghanistan? Then, when we’re all done and we set up bases in Kurdistan, it wouldn’t really be Iraq, would it? It would be Kurdistan.
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I have posted in the past that I think the key to the strategy in the middle east is to start with an independent Kurdistan. If we engaged Iran in such a manner we might earn back the support of these windvane politicians and wussie voters who don’t mind seeing a quick & victorious fight but hate seeing endless police action battles that don’t secure a country.
I thought it would be cool for us to set up security for the Kurds on their southern border with Iraq, rewarding them for their bravery in defying Saddam Hussein. We put in some military bases there for, say, 20 years as part of the occupation of Iraq in their transition to democracy. We guarantee the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan as long as they don’t engage with Turkey. But that doesn’t say anything about engaging with Iranian Kurdistan. Within those 20 years the Kurds could have a secure and independent nation with expanding borders into Iran. After we close down the US bases, Kurdistan is on her own. But at least Kurdistan would be an independent nation with about half its territory carved out of Persia. If Turkey doesn’t relinquish her claim on Turkish Kurdistan after that, it isn’t our problem, it’s 2 of our allies fighting each other, one for independence and the other for regional primacy. I support democratic independence over a bullying arrogant minority.
The kurds are the closest thing we have to friends in that area. They fought against Saddam (got nerve-gassed), they’re fighting against Iran, they squabble with our so-called ally Turkey (who didn’t allow Americans to operate in the north of Iraq this time around).
It’s time for them to have their own country. They deserve it. They carve Kurdistan out of northern Iraq, northern Iran, and try to achieve some kind of autonomy in eastern Turkey. If Turkey gets angry, we let them know that there are consequences to turning your back on your “friend” when they need you. If the Turks want trouble, they can invade the Iraqi or Persian state of Kurdistan and kill americans to make their point. It wouldn’t be a wise move for them, they’d get their backsides handed to them and have eastern Turkey carved out of their country as a result.
If such an act of betrayal to an ally means they get a thorn in their side, I would be happy with it. It’s time for people who call themselves our allies to put up or shut up. The Kurds have been putting up and deserve to be rewarded with an autonomous and sovereign Kurdistan, borne out of the blood of their own patriots.
Should Turkey decide to make trouble with their Kurdish population, we would stay out of it, other than to guarantee sovereignty in the formerly Iranian and Iraqi portions of Kurdistan. When one of our allies wants to fight another of our allies, it’s a messy situation. If Turkey goes “into the war on Iran’s side” then they ain’t really our allies and that’s the end of that.
I agree that it’s hard on troops and their families. We won the war 4 years ago. This aftermath is the nation builders and peacekeeper weenies realizing that they need to understand things like the “15 rules for understanding the Middle East”
This was the strategic error that GWB committed. It was another brilliant military campaign but the followup should have been 4X as big. All those countries that don’t agree with sending troups to fight a war should have been willing to send in policemen and nurses to set up infrastructure and repair the country.
What do you think we should do with Iraq?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1752311/posts
Posted by Kevmo to Blue Scourge
On News/Activism 12/12/2006 9:17:33 AM PST · 23 of 105
My original contention was that we should have approached the reluctant “allies” like the French to send in Police forces for the occupation after battle, since they were so unwilling to engage in the fighting. It was easy to see that we’d need as many folks in police and nurse’s uniforms as we would in US Army unitorms in order to establish a democracy in the middle east. But, since we didn’t follow that line of approach, we now have a civil war on our hands. If we were to set our sights again on the police/nurse approach, we might still be able to pull this one off. I think we won the war in Iraq; we just haven’t won the peace.
I also think we should simply divide the country. The Kurds deserve their own country, they’ve proven to be good allies. We could work with them to carve out a section of Iraq, set their sights on carving some territory out of Iran, and then when they’re done with that, we can help “negotiate” with our other “allies”, the Turks, to secure Kurdish autonomy in what presently eastern Turkey.
That leaves the Sunnis and Shiites to divide up what’s left. We would occupy the areas between the two warring factions. Also, the UN/US should occupy the oil-producing regions and parcel out the revenue according to whatever plan they come up with. That gives all the sides something to argue about rather than shooting at us.
That leaves Damascus for round II. The whole deal could be circumvented by Syria if they simply allow real inspections of the WOMD sites. And when I say “real”, I mean real — the inspectors would have a small armor division that they could call on whenever they get held up by some local yocal who didn’t get this month’s bribe. Hussein was an idiot to dismantle all of his WOMDs and then not let the inspectors in. If he had done so, he’d still be in power, pulling Bush’s chain.
Technically, yes...but there isn't one government outside the Arab world that wants to see the moderate Hashemite rulers of Jordan overthrown after a massive influx of dysfunctional Al Qaeda fanboys. ;)
PRIDE AT THE BORDER
By RALPH PETERS
April 15, 2004 — THE Iranian guards were unhappy. As a half-dozen Kurdish border guards and I approached the gate - with snow-capped mountains vivid in the distance - the Iranians shifted their grips on their weapons, raising the barrels slightly.
There was no danger. It was just how folks say, “Howdy.”
As our troops fought terrorists and insurgents down south, I took a stroll along the Iranian border, in country that competes in beauty with the mountains of the American southwest. I carried no weapon. I trusted the men around me, both the pesh merga veterans of the long Kurdish freedom struggle and the young troops trained by our 101st Airborne Division.
They were tough, if not much given to spit-and-polish, and they moved the way men do who live with their guns.
It was the sort of April day when the heart swells at the glory of creation. But the business of those border guards was serious. In addition to ambushing commercial smugglers, the Kurds have been intercepting terrorists - including some major figures - and Iranian infiltrators.
Despite the rugged nature of the country, Kurdistan’s borders are the most secure in Iraq.
There is at least one part of the country where we don’t have to look over our shoulders. When people have fought for freedom for generations, they won’t give it up to a bunch of upstart thugs.
From the formal crossing point atop a ridge, we went back down along the valley and through Tawela, a snug town at the end of a broken road - literally the end of the line. Long under Islamist occupation, it and the surrounding villages were liberated last year by Kurdish fighters supported by American special operations forces.
Now, the townspeople boast countless examples of that international symbol of progress, the satellite dish. Of course, they’re poor - so they’ve figured out how to make one dish serve several houses or huts - and the young people are already master channel-decoders. After all their suffering, the Kurds in that valley are hungry for the world.
The buildings thinned as we climbed again. A glen led back toward the border, between ancient stone walls. A mountain stream carried the chill of melted snow, running swiftly, anxious to reach the warmer lowlands. Slender chinar trees along the banks glittered with their first golden leaves, the color of beeches in autumn. The dirt road became a trail.
Kurdish culture is manly and proud. You don’t wear a bulletproof vest unless the rounds are cracking within shouting distance (if then). And you don’t wimp out.
I did my best to represent America, marching hard up the track, purposely setting a difficult pace. One wiry sergeant kept up with me, step for step. I’d seen the scar on his cheek where he’d been shot through the mouth, but there have been plenty of wounds in the Kurdish struggle. I kept pushing.
A few of the younger soldiers slipped behind us. But the sergeant, short, proud and erect, would not relent. But he was also careful not to push ahead of me. He didn’t want to embarrass his guest.
Sweating in the brisk air, we passed over the stream a few meters short of an informal border crossing the locals use to visit family on the other side - and where smugglers and infiltrators alike have been apprehended by the Kurdish border guards.
We stopped in a narrow clearing, bounded by old terraces and pink blossoms. A boy passed with a donkey. No one cared. Everyone knew who was allowed to cross. There were no passports, no identity cards. The guards on duty up above, on both sides, were invisible from below. But they watched every step a human being or an animal took.
It was then that I got my comeuppance.
As the stragglers rejoined us in the meadow, the Kurds lit up cigarettes, and we told jokes about the Saudis, glutting ourselves on the perfect air. And in a pause between rounds of laughter, I learned from one of the other men that the sergeant who had kept up with me - out of pride and to protect me, if necessary - hadn’t just been shot once through the jaw. He had been wounded 20 different times.
My attempt to impress the Kurds had been stupid. And thoughtlessly cruel. It must have cost that sergeant real pain to make that brief forced-march. But he had smiled all the way.
When we said goodbye later on, the sergeant touched his heart and told me, “You are an American. You are my brother. I would die for you.”
He meant it.
Say, if every single ethnic group in the world is automatically entitled to a pure ethnic state of its own, on what grounds are white Southerners jeered for demanding the same thing?
Unfortunately many of them (such as the KPP in Turkey) are Communists as well.
Note: this topic was posted 8/2/2007. Thanks BlueSky194.
It looks like a number of the top articles under Israel sidebar are from long ago years ago. 2007, 2008 even 2003.
Actually, all the sidebars I see have old stories mixed in.
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