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.
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?