So much for the Walt-Mearsheimer school of Iraq analysis: Kurdish Leader Chastised by Arabs for Moderate Statement on Israel.
Leader of the northern Iraqi district of Kurdistan, Massoud Barazani, has been the target of Iraqi criticism following moderate statements he made regarding relations with Israel.
Barazani was quoted by Iranian state radio and the press in the Gulf states as saying that diplomatic “relations with Israel are not a crime,” as they are often referred to in both Iraq and Iran. The report led unnamed Iraqi officials to condemn Barazani, calling his statements “very dangerous” and saying they “ignore the suffering inflicted on the Arabs by the Zionists.”
This is why I don’t really believe Michael Totten’s dispatches from Iraq when people tell him they don’t hate Jews. Because it seems that for every one Totten found that doesn’t, there are a thousand more who do.
And they seem to be the ones running things.
You’re being unfair, Meryl. They love Jews. Golda Meir understood it (I’m paraphrasing; I can’t find the exact quote): the world loves Jews–moderate, progressive liberal, dead Jews.
Running through the criticisms of Israel from such groups as the Episcopalians and Presbyterians is genuine love for us. They only want us to be true to the high ideals and progressive goals we espouse. They love Jews as writers, musicians, actors, and professors. Those are the Jews who truly represent Jewish ideals. They love those Jews.
Jewish jet fighter aces? Generals? Or for that matter, Jews as a state that is imperfect as indeed all human enterprises are? If only we’d drop such ideas and get back to being the powerless and innocent people they would love to embrace.
I’m sure if the Moslem countries had the ghettoes and impoverished, opppressed Jews they used to have, they’d love them.
I didn’t realize that Totten wrote about Iraq. I thought he wrote about South Kurdistan.
If you actually GO to South Kurdistan you will not find an Iraqi flag in Dohuk or Hewlêr governorates, which are heavily KDP–Barzanî’s party.
Kurds are not Iraqi Arab or any other kind of Arab. Kurds are Kurds, and Kurdistan is Kurdistan, not Arabistan.
Arabs hypocritically complaining about any possible relations between South Kurdistan (or Kurds in general) and Israel is ancient history. They always do this and they never make any references to their own political, diplomatic or business relations with Israel. And you can tell that this news comes from an Arab source because they can NEVER get the Barzanî name correct.
Also, Iranians ALWAYS lie. That’s a fact, and if you were from the region, you’d know that. So, a quote from Iranian STATE radio about Kurds has as much basis in reality as quotes about the same subject in Turkish and Arab media.
Besides, Iranians are bigtime Kurd-killers too.
I know of one Iraqi Arab who advocated normal relations with Israel — namely the Iraqi Arab most hated by the politically correct Left: Ahmad Chalabi.
About thirty years ago IIRC Israel was helping the Kurds against the ruling Ba’athists. That was pre-Saddam’s formal rule, when he was still behind the scenes and making nice with Jacques Chirac over nuke reactors, but there was a war going on anyway.