Is Israel Using the Kurds as Patsies?

In an article to appear in this week's New Yorker, the Guardian reports that Seymour Hersh has provided extensive detail of Israel's involvement with various Kurdish factions in the traditionally Kurdish areas of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

"Israel has always supported the Kurds in a Machiavellian way - a balance against Saddam," one former Israeli intelligence officer told the New Yorker. "It's Realpolitik. By aligning with the Kurds Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The critical question is 'What will the behaviour of Iran be if there is an independent Kurdistan with close ties to Israel? Iran does not want an Israeli land-based aircraft carrier on its border." (click here for the full article)

Clearly Israel is attempting to take advantage of the long oppression of the Kurds by the other various ethnicities in the region, including Arabs, Turkomen and Persians. Unfortunately it is a bargain by which the Kurds, in the long run, are likely to suffer the most, while Israel uses Kurds as a proxy force and Kurdish enclaves as safe havens for Israeli actions in the neighbouring regions.

If the various ethnicities in the region were smart, however, they would work together toward some form of rapprochement with the Kurds. Instead of seeing them as enemies to be attacked, they should approach them as friends, with initiatives to create stability in the region, and some sense of safety and security for Kurds and their cultural and ethnic identity.

Unfortunately, most political actions in the region take the form of belligerent confrontation. And the machinations of Israel in that part of the Middle East all too often seem directed at creating dissention, discord and violence.