Israel and the Kurds: Love by Proxy

Israel and the Kurds: Love by Proxy

Over the past few years, Israeli politicians—from Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to President Shimon Peres to Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman—have been publicly advocating the establishment of a Kurdish state. Most recent to weigh in is Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who called this past January for the formation of an independent Kurdistan and urged enhanced policy cooperation between Israel and the Kurds. Clearly, the upheavals in the region and the realization that the Kurds are the most effective military power against the onslaught of the Islamic State triggered these calls. But Israelis have long been interested in the Kurds as junior partners in Ben-Gurion’s hallowed peripheral strategy, which considered any competitor or adversary of the Arabs an objective ally of the Jewish state, whether sub-state groups like the Kurds or nations such as Turkey, Iran (in earlier times and perhaps again in the future), and Ethiopia. But even beyond this general motive lies layers of relationships between the Jewish and Kurdish people that go back many centuries.

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