LONDON — The “Jewish-Kurdish relations in a changing Middle East” conference here brought together some 180 supporters of Kurdish rights and opponents of Jew-hatred Sept. 6-7. It was co-hosted by the Jewish-Kurdish Network, the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, and the Kurdish Studies Forum of the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.
Many participants were originally from countries with significant Kurdish populations — Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey — a nationality of some 30 million, the largest without its own state in the world. Participants also came from Austria, Germany, Sweden, Israel and the U.S.
Welcoming participants, Liat Korduene of the Jewish-Kurdish Network said this was the second event of its kind. She introduced Ofra Bengio, head of the Kurdish Studies program at Tel Aviv University, who said, “Kurdistan is undergoing a severe crisis — which it will overcome.” Bengio said Kurds and Jews have a history of national revival in face of powerful opposition.
The discussion was shaped by upheavals shaking the Middle East today, including Israel’s defensive war to safeguard its existence as a refuge for Jews, which is under attack by the Jew-hating regime in Tehran and its misnamed “axis of resistance”; the Kurds in Iran struggling against the bourgeois-clerical tyranny there; blows dealt against the Kurdish autonomous region by the new capitalist regime in Syria, backed by Washington and Ankara; and Washington’s drive to impose a Pax Americana in the region.
The wide-ranging discussion addressed the history of struggles by both Kurds and Jews, and their relations, as well as the long history of genocidal attacks on Kurds and how to forge a leadership able to lead these struggles to victory.
Khaled Salih, a former adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government, said he watched in admiration as Israeli society mobilized to defend itself after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom.
Salih explained that the KRG was established after the U.S.-led imperialist invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 toppled the Saddam Hussein regime. “Kurds were the only entity with their own organization,” Salih said. “Our goal was to make Iraq livable for Kurds. It’s been a tough ride, and forces in Iraq keep trying to take control away from us.”
Yehuda Ben-Yosef, a leader of the Kurdish Community of Israel, brought a video by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who said, “We believe in strengthening relations between minorities in the Middle East, specifically between Jews and Kurds.”
Several participants pointed out that Israel’s government was the only one that supported implementation of the overwhelming 2017 vote for independence in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, with Washington and Tehran both backing Baghdad’s suppression of it.
Jews, Kurds denied homeland
“The seeds of the current conflicts were sown by the British and American empires,” Salih said. He referred to the post-World War I carve-up of the Middle East by British and French imperialism under the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, made public in November 1917 by the just-established Bolshevik government. Iraq and Syria were created, headed by Arab monarchs under British and French domination respectively. The Kurdish populations were denied their national rights. London got the Palestine Mandate.
The deal also exposed the fraudulent nature of the promise London subsequently made in the November 1917 Balfour Declaration of a “national home” for Jews in Palestine.
In reinforcing the imperialist partitions, another speaker pointed out, the Royal Air Force repeatedly carried out raids to suppress Kurdish rebellions.
In 1946, Kurds established their first free territory, the short-lived Mahabad Republic in the Kurdish-populated areas of Iran, led by Qazi Muhammad. “The republic granted full rights to the Jewish community there,” his granddaughter, Evin Abrishami, told the conference. “You should judge a national movement not just by what it demands for itself, but how it treats minorities.”
“Now we have a Jewish state,” said Nir Boms of Israel’s Moshe Dayan Center, “but it faces a constant struggle to defend its existence.”
Boms said for decades Israeli governments and Kurdish freedom fighters have had fraternal relations. In the 1960s and ’70s, Israel provided military training, weapons and intelligence to Kurdish Peshmerga fighting against the Iraqi government.
‘What is genocide, what isn’t?’
Responding to claims by the left that Israel is carrying out “genocide,” Philip Spencer, a retired professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said this “has been turned against its victims. It should be clear who is committing genocide and who is victim.
“The Holocaust still stands out,” where two-thirds of the Jews in Europe were slaughtered, Spencer added.
“Hamas filmed and broadcast its massacre on Oct. 7,” he said, “but people still deny that it happened.”
Ibrahim Malazoda from Iraqi Kurdistan described the massacres and expulsions of Kurds by the Saddam dictatorship. This included the 1988 Anfal campaign, in which tens of thousands were killed, including the chemical weapon attack on Halabja, which resulted in the gruesome death of 5,000 Kurds. Ben-Yosef said the Kurdish community in Israel spoke out about these horrors at the time. U.S., U.K. and other world media largely ignored the mass murder.
In the conference’s final session, David Hirsh, a professor at Goldsmiths College who has been the target of virulent Jew-hating attacks by campus radicals, and serves as academic director of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, asked a panel of youth whether Kurds really uniformly defend Jews and Israel.
Elyana Elyan, a Jewish Kurd now living in Israel, answered, “of course there’s antisemitism among Kurds, as there is among all peoples, but most Kurds are pro-Jewish, and most Kurds who are Muslim define themselves more as being Kurdish than by their religious affiliation.”
Conference participants bought 13 copies of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class; 12 of the pamphlet UK Policy in the Middle East: Defend British Interests, not the Jews; and two Militant subscriptions.