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Iraq's Kurdish Jews Cautiously Return to
Homeland, Kurdistan
10.12.2007
By Ivan Watson
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December
10, 2007
Lana was a teenager when her family made a
clandestine journey from Kurdistan to Israel.
It was 1994, and Saddam Hussein had recently lost
control of northern Iraq. Rival Kurdish militias
were battling each other to fill the power vacuum.
In a closely guarded emigration, Lana's family — and
a dozen other Kurdish families of Jewish origin —
traveled over land to neighboring Turkey in a trip
organized and financed by Israel.
Iraq's ancient Jewish community has virtually
disappeared, a casualty of the conflict that
continues to divide the Middle East. For the last 50
years, Iraq and Israel have been sworn enemies, part
of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict. Most of the
ancient Jewish community in Iraq emigrated en masse
in 1951. But unlike their Arab counterparts, Iraqi
Kurds tend to be
less suspicious of their former Jewish neighbors.www.ekurd.net
And some Jewish Kurds
have begun making discreet return visits to
Kurdistan.
Accepting Their Neighbors
Now Lana, 28, is a citizen of Israel who speaks
Hebrew and Kurdish fluently. Last year, she returned
for the first time since her emigration to live in
Kurdistan with her new husband, Hano, an Iraqi
Muslim Kurd. The couple asked that their full names
not be used for fear of reprisal.
"I didn't think twice about marrying a Jewish
woman," Hano said. "My parents always told me
stories about how much they liked their old Jewish
neighbors."
Unlike the Arab majority in central and southern
Iraq, the Kurds of northern Iraq don't see Jews or
Israel as enemies. In the 1960s and 70s, Israel's
Mossad intelligence agency provided equipment and
training to Kurdish rebels who were battling the
government in Baghdad. To this day, locals call a
neighborhood of old sagging brick houses in the
Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, Jewlakan in Kurdistan
region.
A Cautious Return
In the former Jewish quarter of Sulaimaniyah, Haji
Abdullah Salah, an old Kurdish shopkeeper, says it
was a sad day when almost all the Jews left town. |
Haji Abdullah Salah has run a small shop with his
wife, Ameen Abdullah Kadr, out of the ground floor
of an old brick house in Sulaimaniyah's "Jewlakan"
neighborhood since 1951.) in Kurdistan region 'Iraq'
An old brick house in Jewlakan, the old Jewish
quarter of the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah in
Kurdistan.
Photos: Ivan Watson, NPR |
"The government ordered them to leave at that time,
and they shouldn't take anything except their own
clothes," Haji Abdullah recalls. He says that the
last Jew in Jewlakan was a man they called Shalomo,
who stayed behind long after the other Jews had
left. Locals say Shalomo died in Sulaimaniyah a few
years ago.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a small number of
Kurdish Jews has been making discreet return visits
from Israel to the land of their birth. Kak Ziad Aga,
71,www.ekurd.net
says a Jewish classmate
from his childhood recently got a warm welcome
during a return visit to the Kurdish town of Koya
Sinjak. It had been 50 years since he'd seen his
classmate.
Ziad Aga says he doesn't see any problem in allowing
Kurdish Jews to come back to Kurdistan, but the
subject is extremely sensitive for the Kurdish
authorities, who are frequently accused by Arab
media and Iraqi insurgent groups of collaborating
with Israel. The Kurdish leadership denies the
charges.
Despite the difficult history for Kurdish Jews, Lana
says she's proud of her mixed heritage. "Above all,
I consider myself a Kurd," she says. "An Israeli
Kurd."
npr org
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