Kurds, Jews, and the Question of Occupied Nations in the Emerging Middle Eastern Order

Abstract

Relations between Kurds and Jews are commonly explained through a history of coexistence, a shared culture of memory, the centuries-old presence of Jews in Kurdistan, and the experience of suffering and dispersion endured by both nations. These elements matter profoundly to mutual understanding, yet they are not in themselves sufficient to define a durable political relationship. This article argues that Kurdish-Jewish relations must move beyond remembrance and sympathy and be examined in relation to sovereignty, the right of self-determination, the security of nations, memory diplomacy, state-building, and the transformation of the regional order. Within the article’s analytical framework, the term “occupied nation” describes the condition of Kurdistan more precisely than “stateless nation,” because it understands the absence of a Kurdish state not as an inherent incapacity, but as the consequence of territorial partition, dispossession of sovereignty, and the imposition of centralized states upon Kurdistan. Without equating the Holocaust and Anfal, the article examines the mechanisms they reveal in common: enemy-making, the deprivation of rights, the normalization of hatred, and the organized deployment of state power. It therefore argues for transforming memory into a politics of prevention. It further maintains that a Kurdish-Jewish partnership, if founded upon the political independence of both sides, complementary interests, knowledge, institution-building, and ethical responsibility, can advance from historical empathy to strategic cooperation in the political, academic, economic, technological, and security spheres. Finally, the article presents the independence of Kurdistan, in the author’s position, as the fulfilment of the right of self-determination and as part of the answer to the structural crisis of the Middle East, and proposes “ethical realism” as a framework for joining power, right, and responsibility.

Introduction: From Memory to Politics

The international conference “Jewish-Kurdish Relations in a Changing Middle East,” to be held in London on 6 and 7 September 2026, brings into a single conversation subjects that are too often studied apart: the history of the Jews of Kurdistan; national movements and the question of identity and survival; the memory of genocide; regional transformations; Western policy; the role of women and young people; the potential of the diaspora; and the possibility of moving from dialogue to sustained cooperation. The significance of this agenda lies in its ability to lift the Kurdish-Jewish relationship beyond a merely historical or cultural theme and recast it as a question about the political future of the Middle East.

Relations between Kurds and Jews cannot be understood solely through the language of historic friendship or shared suffering. The past can create the conditions for recognition and trust, but a durable political relationship emerges only when memory becomes knowledge, knowledge becomes clearly defined interest, and interest is embodied in lasting institutions. The central question of this article begins here: how can two nations, whose histories and present circumstances are distinct, transform their experiences of denial, dispersion, enemy-making, and the struggle for survival into a responsible programme for security, freedom, and cooperation?

Three theoretical perspectives are brought together in answering that question. Realism explains the importance of power, security, deterrence, and survival; liberal thought emphasizes international law, institutions, and cooperation; and constructivism shows how identity, memory, and narrative shape political conduct and legitimacy. Yet the question of Kurdistan cannot be reduced to any one of these approaches. The state-centrism of realism frequently excludes nations without independent states from the field of analysis. In practice, liberalism sometimes constrains self-determination in order to preserve existing state structures. Constructivist attention to identity, when detached from the structure of power, can become a cultural explanation without a political answer. This article therefore seeks to place right, power, memory, and institution within one frame, offering a concise expression of the author’s wider arguments on enemy-making, occupied nations, and ethical realism (Poorkarim, 2026a, 2026b).

From “Stateless Nation” to “Occupied Nation”

In the literature of political science, the Kurds are frequently described as a “stateless nation.” The phrase captures the formal condition of the present, but obscures the history that produced it. “Statelessness” can suggest that the Kurd nation naturally lacked a tradition of sovereignty or the capacity to build a state. The central problem of Kurdistan, however, is not a natural absence of statehood. It is the partition of the land, the dispossession of sovereignty, and the replacement of the Kurd nation’s will with the authority of the states among which Kurdistan was divided.

The concept of an “occupied nation” brings this relation of power into clearer view. Within this framework, Kurdistan is not an anonymous geographical space in which a dispersed population called a “Kurdish minority” happens to reside across several countries. Kurdistan is the historic land of a nation, divided among Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria through foreign intervention, post-war settlements, and the consolidation of centralized states. The forms and severity of policy have differed across the four parts, but the underlying fact has remained: the Kurd nation has never been permitted to determine, freely and through a credible process, the final political status of its own land.

Nor does Kurdish political history support the claim of an inherent incapacity for state-building. Varied experiences of Kurdish sovereignty and political organization—from the political authority of Simko and the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad to contemporary institutions in Southern and Western Kurdistan—demonstrate that the difficulty has never been a want of political will or ability. These experiences arose under military pressure, political siege, rivalry among regional powers, and the absence of international guarantees. Their defeats or limitations cannot therefore be reduced to the supposed incapacity of a nation (McDowall, 2004; Natali, 2005; Gunter, 2016).

The distinction between minority rights and the right of self-determination is decisive here. Minority rights protect language, education, culture, religion, freedom from discrimination, and participation within an existing state. Self-determination asks a more fundamental question: who has the authority to determine the political status of a nation and its land? The Charter of the United Nations recognizes the principle of equal rights and the self-determination of peoples, while the common first article of the two international human rights covenants affirms that all peoples have the right freely to determine their political status and to pursue their economic, social, and cultural development (Charter of the United Nations, Articles 1(2) and 55; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 1; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 1).

International law does not, of course, automatically convert every political demand into an immediate right of secession. The relationship among internal self-determination, external self-determination, and the territorial integrity of states is the subject of a complex legal and political debate. Yet acknowledging that complexity must not empty self-determination of its substance. If a nation is told that it possesses the right to determine its future, while independence is excluded under every conceivable circumstance, then the outcome has already been decided before the people have spoken or consented. Under such conditions, the word “determination” is deprived of meaning.

From the standpoint of the Kurdistan Independence Party, the right to decide the future of Kurdistan belongs to the Kurd nation itself. In the author’s position, the independence of Kurdistan is neither a concession to be granted by the occupying states nor a temporary tactical option. It is the historical and existential answer to partition, occupation, assimilation, repression, and genocide—and the fullest exercise of the Kurd nation’s right of self-determination.

The Jewish Experience: Sovereignty and the Passage into Political Agency

To compare Kurds and Jews is not to declare their histories identical. Their geographies, social structures, paths of migration, forms of persecution, and international positions differ in fundamental ways. The Holocaust, moreover, was a specific event with its own historical scale and mechanisms; it must not be dissolved into a hasty analogy. What makes comparative inquiry possible is not an equivalence of suffering, but a shared political question: what becomes of a nation whose ultimate security and political future remain in the hands of others?

Over centuries, antisemitism in Europe travelled from religious prejudice and social exclusion into political and racial ideology, and ultimately into a state project of annihilation. The Holocaust was not a sudden eruption of violence. It was the culmination of a process in which a community was first defined as the “Other,” then stripped progressively of rights and citizenship, subjected to a normalized language of hatred, and finally confronted by the machinery of a state mobilized for its organized destruction (Hilberg, 1985; Bauer, 2001).

In this reading, the establishment of Israel in 1948 was more than the addition of another country to the map of the world; it altered the position of the Jewish people within the architecture of international power. A people whose security had for centuries depended upon the decisions of other states and other majorities became a sovereign nation possessing political institutions, diplomacy, and the capacity for self-defence. The importance of this experience for the Kurds does not lie in imitating Israel. Kurdistan must be built from its own history, society, geography, and interests. The essential lesson concerns the passage of a nation from the object of other people’s politics to a political subject in its own right.

This distinction matters equally to the Kurdish-Jewish relationship. If the Kurds are seen only as a community in need of protection, and Israel only as a prospective protector, the relationship will be unequal and dependent from the outset. Partnership becomes durable only when each side recognizes the other as possessing an independent will, independent interests, and independent responsibilities. The Jewish experience can offer valuable lessons in state-building, diaspora organization, the union of knowledge with policy, and the construction of institutions capable of defending national existence. Yet the independence of Kurdistan must ultimately be the achievement of the will, organization, and agency of the Kurd nation itself.

Enemy-Making, Antisemitism, and Structural Kurdophobia

One of the enduring mechanisms of authoritarian rule is the invention of a “threatening Other.” By defining an enemy, internal or external, a state or dominant ideology can manufacture fear, portray concentrated power as a necessity, legitimize repression, and attribute economic or political crises to the presence of another group. Contradiction within the portrait of the enemy presents no obstacle. At different times, Jews were depicted both as agents of capitalism and as agents of communism, as enemies of tradition and as the architects of a corrupt modernity. The contradiction reveals that the purpose was never to describe reality; it was to manufacture the enemy required by power.

Across Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, the Kurds have encountered different forms of the same logic. Demands for national rights have been branded “separatism”; political resistance has been labelled “terrorism” or a “threat to national security”; and even the existence of a distinct Kurdish identity has been converted into a security dossier. Kurdophobia, in this sense, is not merely private prejudice or social hostility. Throughout a substantial part of the region’s modern history, it has functioned as an instrument of centralized state-building and the engineering of identity.

In Eastern Kurdistan, the Pahlavi state and the Islamic Republic, notwithstanding their ideological differences, have shared a refusal to recognize the Kurd nation’s right freely to determine its future. The Islamic Republic fused state centralism with religious fundamentalism and, after the 1979 revolution, answered the question of Kurdistan with a jihad decree, military campaigns, executions, and repression. In Turkey, the project of one nation and one language denied or securitized Kurdish identity for decades. In Ba’athist Iraq, Arabization, the destruction of villages, forced displacement, Anfal, and the chemical attack on Halabja constituted a more naked expression of the same logic. In Syria, the deprivation of citizenship for large numbers of Kurds, the Arab Belt, and restrictions upon Kurdish language and culture served demographic and identity engineering.

Islamic fundamentalism and extreme nationalism begin from different theoretical premises, yet in their response to pluralism they can arrive at a similar destination. The former derives the legitimacy of exclusion from an ideological reading of religion; the latter from an official nation, territory, and centralized state. One seeks to reconstruct society around an approved faith, the other around an official language, history, and identity. The Islamic Republic offers a stark example of the convergence of these two logics: religious fundamentalism, Iranian nationalism, and state centralism meet in its treatment of Eastern Kurdistan, while antisemitism and ideological hostility towards Israel have become part of the regime’s identity and regional policy.

For this reason, resistance to Kurdophobia, antisemitism, fundamentalism, and extreme nationalism is not peripheral to Kurdish-Jewish dialogue. Any credible cooperation must confront both the hatred organized against Jews and the discourse that denies the existence, sovereignty, and freedom of choice of the Kurd nation. To make an ethical selection between these two forms of denial would invalidate the relationship at its foundation.

The Holocaust, Anfal, and a Diplomacy of Prevention

The Holocaust and Anfal are not the same. Their historical contexts, scale, ideologies, and methods of execution differ, and responsible scholarship must keep those distinctions clear. Yet it is both possible and necessary to study comparatively the mechanisms that lead towards collective destruction: the definition of a community as a threat; its gradual deprivation of rights; the normalization of a language of hatred; the conversion of discrimination into official policy; the dehumanization of the victim; and the organized use of state power.

For the Kurds, Anfal and Halabja are not merely memories of a vanished past. Human Rights Watch’s detailed account of the Anfal campaign demonstrated that the operations of 1988 formed part of an organized Iraqi state assault upon the Kurdish population, employing killing, disappearance, village destruction, and forced displacement as matters of deliberate policy (Human Rights Watch, 1993). The political meaning of this memory lies in what it reveals: when the security of a nation rests in the hands of a state that is itself the source of danger, the absence of sovereignty can become an existential vulnerability.

Memory, if awakened only to honour the dead, cannot by itself prevent catastrophe from returning. I therefore argue for a “diplomacy of memory”: the movement of memory from mourning into education, law, policy, and prevention. “Never again” must acquire institutional form before the catastrophe. That requires the systematic recording of incitement and hate speech; the documentation of demographic policies and repression; public education about the early signs of collective violence; the creation of legal networks; permanent engagement with parliaments and international institutions; and the design of early-warning systems.

This argument leads directly to the meaning of security. The international system is state-centric: states belong to the United Nations, maintain embassies, conclude treaties, and possess recognized instruments of defence. Yet many communities exposed to ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, or existential threat do not have an independent state. “Regional security,” moreover, is commonly reduced to stable borders and the prevention of war among states, even though a region can appear stable at the level of interstate frontiers while millions within those states endure political, cultural, or physical insecurity.

When a nation’s language is restricted, its political structures dismantled, its land subjected to demographic engineering, its elites suppressed, and its freedom to decide its future denied, the preservation of state borders cannot be mistaken for security. The security of states must be joined to the security of nations. Kurdish-Jewish cooperation in this field can move beyond commemoration and establish a permanent body for research, education, early warning, and legal advocacy on behalf of communities at risk—an institution capable, in time, of working with other vulnerable nations and communities as well.

The Jews of Kurdistan: Living Memory and Institutional Possibility

The Jews of Kurdistan form the most tangible human bridge between these two histories. For centuries, Jewish communities belonged to the social fabric of Kurdistan; after the migration of a large part of those communities to Israel, they preserved vital elements of Kurdish language, music, food, ritual, memory, and belonging. They are not merely the custodians of a lost past. They can become among the authors of the future relationship between Kurdistan and Israel.

This potential has not yet been adequately documented or organized. Collecting the oral histories of older generations; preserving family papers and photographs; creating a shared archive; researching Jewish social life in the towns and villages of Kurdistan; and presenting this inheritance to younger generations are at once scholarly necessities and foundations for political trust. The history of this community must not be confined to nostalgia. It should be documented with academic rigour and made accessible to researchers and the wider public.

The Jews of Kurdistan can also serve as a bridge among universities, civil institutions, cultural centres, and decision-makers in both societies. A permanent centre for Kurdish-Jewish studies could bring the production of knowledge, the preservation of archives, the training of scholars, the publication of policy research, and regular dialogue within a single enduring institution. Historical inheritance would thereby cease to be merely an emotional symbol and become institutional capital for the future.

Strategic Partnership: Mutual Interests and Political Independence

The relationship between Kurdistan and Israel must be approached with realism, not political romanticism. Israel, like every state, acts according to its national interests; the Kurdish political movement is equally obliged to define the national interests of Kurdistan with clarity and independence. A durable partnership rests not upon one side’s obedience to the other, but upon mutual recognition, the possibility of negotiation among equals, and a clearly defined convergence of interests.

Common threats are part of the reality. The Islamic Republic presents Israel as an existential enemy while repressing the Kurd nation in Eastern Kurdistan. Fundamentalism and proxy networks target Israel’s security and Kurdish political existence in different ways. Regional states, at various moments, have treated relations with the Kurds or Israel as merely instrumental and tactical. Yet a common enemy is not, by itself, a sufficient foundation for alliance. Enemies, governments, and balances of power change; an alliance defined only by opposition to a third actor will collapse when conditions change.

A more enduring foundation is found in complementary interests and a positive agenda. Israel possesses capacity in technology, water management, agriculture, security, the knowledge economy, research, diplomacy, and the experience of state-building. Kurdistan possesses a strategic geographical position, natural resources, a young population, and a location linking Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, the Caucasus, and the region’s principal lines of communication. Cooperation in water and agriculture, energy, technology and cybersecurity, higher education, health, culture, media, diplomacy, and heritage preservation can carry the relationship beyond the symbolic plane.

Such cooperation must be reciprocal and accountable. Kurdistan must not become an instrument of Israeli policy—or of any other power—and Israel must not be imagined merely as an instrument for the achievement of Kurdish goals. Both sides have the right to pursue their interests. The measure of partnership is whether agreements are transparent, reciprocal, and consistent with self-determination, individual liberty, and responsibility towards civilians and the other communities of the region. This is the boundary between dependency and partnership.

Kurdistan, State-Building, and the Geopolitics of a New Order

The Middle East is no longer defined solely by official frontiers and conventional wars. Energy and trade corridors, transit routes, water, data, technology, and security networks have become central elements of geopolitics. Kurdistan lies at the heart of an important part of this geography. Yet in the absence of Kurdish sovereignty, its position has been less a source of Kurdish power than an arena for the rivalries of others: resources are extracted, roads and borders are militarized, and consequential economic and security decisions are made beyond Kurdistan.

The difference between geography and geopolitics lies precisely in the authority to decide. A land whose resources, routes, and security are determined by others remains the geography of someone else’s power. The same land, when it possesses sovereignty, institutions, and the authority to conclude agreements in its own name, becomes a geopolitical actor. An independent Kurdistan could transform energy and trade routes from instruments of coercion into lawful sources of revenue and cooperation, and enter relations with its neighbours and global powers through contract, transparency, and mutual benefit.

Independence, however, is not merely the declaration of a political will. It is a many-layered project of state-building. The experience of the twentieth century demonstrates that new states endure when they build, at the same time, domestic legitimacy, legal institutions, public administration, security, a sustainable economy, human capital, and a diplomatic network. For Kurdistan, three complementary paths can be envisaged: the gradual strengthening of existing institutions at home; the creation of a coherent political and diplomatic arm abroad; and the integration of both within a single strategy. This combined model would allow domestic legitimacy, institutional effectiveness, and international support to accumulate over time, turning independence from a historical aspiration into a viable programme of action.

Cooperation with Israel could accelerate the transfer of knowledge, the training of administrators and diplomats, work in agriculture and water, technological development, cyber defence, and the design of effective institutions. It cannot, however, substitute for Kurdish agency. Internal obstacles must also be faced candidly: political fragmentation, partisan rivalry, and the absence of a shared national narrative can erode even the most legitimate claim under external pressure. State-building is not only a struggle against the occupying states; it also requires the responsible redefinition of power within Kurdish society, the rule of law, political participation, women’s rights, freedom of thought, and institutional accountability.

In this sense, the independence of Kurdistan is not merely an answer to historical injustice; it is part of the reordering of the region. A Kurdish state founded upon democracy, responsible government, a sustainable economy, and balanced relations could play a stabilizing role in security, energy, the containment of extremism, and the integration of regional corridors. An order that continues to deny sovereignty to one of the world’s largest nations without an independent state is not a new order. It is the old structure reproduced with new instruments.

Eastern Kurdistan and the Test of Iran after the Islamic Republic

Debate over Iran’s future must not be confined to the nuclear programme, the Islamic Republic’s regional policy, or the replacement of one government by another. The Islamic Republic is an exceptionally violent and ideological expression of a centralized structure, but the concentration of power, the homogenization of identity, and the securitization of non-ruling nations preceded it. If the Islamic Republic disappears while the same definition of a single nation, the same concentration of authority in Tehran, and the same denial of self-determination survive, the form of government will have changed; the relationship of power will not.

The geography now called Iran is composed of distinct nations, languages, identities, and historical experiences. Kurds, Baluch, Arabs, Azerbaijani Turks, Turkmen, and other communities cannot be explained away as products of “foreign agitation.” They are historical realities of this geography. Denying that plurality has not abolished it; denial has instead transformed it into a security question and a source of permanent crisis.

Three broad scenarios can be imagined for the period after the Islamic Republic. The first is the reproduction of centralism beneath a new face—perhaps secular or electoral, but still imposing one official identity and one centre of decision upon the nations. The second is uncontrolled collapse, accompanied by a security vacuum, armed competition, and foreign intervention. The third is a fundamental reordering of power based upon recognition of the nations, the distribution of authority, and acceptance of the right of self-determination. Fear of the second scenario must not lead Western policy to support the first, for repressive centralism is not stability; it is the postponement of crisis.

In Eastern Kurdistan, the removal of the Islamic Republic alone cannot answer the Kurdish question. The issue is not simply who will govern in Tehran. It is by whose consent, and under what right, Tehran would decide the future of a nation that seeks to determine its own destiny. Different legal forms—from a profound devolution of power to federal, confederal, or independent arrangements—may be debated in the course of transition. But, in the author’s view, the outcome must not be predetermined by a central government or foreign powers, and the independence of Kurdistan must not be excluded from the Kurd nation’s freedom of choice.

Western policy must likewise distinguish between preserving a border and creating stability. Support for any project that merely preserves the name of a “united Iran,” if it perpetuates the denial and repression of nations, will reproduce the crisis. A more responsible approach would support democratic transition, accountability for state crimes, lawful mechanisms for the distribution of power, and the principle that the nations of this geography must play an effective and free part in determining their future relations with one another.

The Diaspora, Britain, and the Passage from Reaction to Policy

A nation without a formally recognized state is not necessarily a nation without diplomacy. A diaspora, universities, media, parliaments, think tanks, legal organizations, and civil networks can form part of a nation’s foreign-policy apparatus before the establishment of its state. The Jewish experience demonstrates that geographical dispersion, when joined to organization, knowledge, transparent resources, and sustained political participation, can be converted into soft power and institutional influence.

The Kurdish diaspora in Europe and North America now possesses capacities unavailable to previous generations. Kurds are present in universities, specialized professions, the media, civil institutions, and the political structures of their host countries. Yet population and social presence do not, by themselves, produce political power. A diaspora becomes an actor when it works simultaneously on three levels: producing discourse and knowledge, maintaining a durable presence within institutions, and influencing decision-making.

Britain occupies a particular place in this transition. Its Parliament, universities, globally influential media, think tanks, and extensive network of civil organizations make it possible to raise the question of Kurdistan not only at moments of execution, bombardment, or war, but as an issue connected to regional security, energy, migration, extremism, international law, and the future political structure of the Middle East. Britain’s historical role in shaping the modern regional order also creates a critical responsibility—one that must be recalled in the precise language of research and policy.

Kurdish diplomacy must move beyond a politics of reaction. Protest against repression is necessary, but it is not a substitute for permanent strategy. Before a crisis, legal cases must be prepared, research published, scenarios written, regular relationships established with legislators and parliamentary committees, professional narratives made available to the media, and workable solutions proposed. Cooperation with Jewish networks in institution-building, education, archival work, research, and political participation can provide useful experience, provided that the organizational and intellectual independence of the Kurdish diaspora is respected.

Women, Young People, and the Quality of the Future State

National freedom without individual freedom cannot provide the foundation of a free state. A movement that defends its nation’s right to self-determination must recognize the same principle of choice within its own society. The freedom of women, the freedom of the individual, freedom of thought, and the freedom of a nation are not separate questions. Each returns us to the same principle: who has the right to decide another person’s life and future without that person’s consent?

The Kurd nation cannot ask the ruling states, “By what right do you decide for us?” while permitting, within its own society, the lives of women, freedom of conscience, or individual rights to remain subject to the will of others. The presence of women in Kurdish politics must not remain symbolic. Women must hold a direct and effective share in leadership, diplomacy, the economy, universities, public administration, and the design of the institutions of the future state.

Nor should the younger generation inherit only the memory of Anfal, Halabja, prison, exile, and resistance; it must inherit the knowledge of state-building. The Kurdistan of the future will require international lawyers, diplomats, economists, specialists in technology and cybersecurity, public administrators, scholars, journalists, and policy-makers. The national struggle is no longer conducted on the military field alone. Universities, courts, parliaments, media, the economy, and technology are also decisive arenas. Joint Kurdish-Jewish educational programmes, scholarships, research networks, and academic exchanges could become one of the most enduring investments in this generation.

From Dialogue to Institution-Building

The value of a conference is not measured by the number of speeches, photographs, or closing declarations it produces. The important question is what structure remains after the meeting has ended. If Kurdish-Jewish relations are to endure changes of government, regional crises, and generational succession, they must move from personal connections into institutions possessing memory, budgets, programmes, and accountability.

A first step could be the establishment of a permanent strategic dialogue or a Kurdish-Jewish Council for Cooperation, charged with coordinating academic, cultural, legal, and policy work—not with claiming exclusive representation of either community. Alongside it, a joint research centre could study, with academic methods, the history of the Jews of Kurdistan, Kurdophobia, antisemitism, Anfal, the Holocaust, the rights of occupied nations, and possible futures for the regional order.

Another step should be an oral-history and archival project devoted to the Jews of Kurdistan, recording the memories of older generations before they are lost. A network for women and young people should have an independent programme and a defined budget, moving their participation beyond ceremony into leadership training, research, internships, and decision-making. A specialist genocide-prevention group could monitor incitement, demographic policies, and indicators of organized violence, while maintaining links with lawyers, parliaments, and international institutions.

In the field of public policy, a permanent network in London, Brussels, Washington, and other centres of decision-making could produce concise, documented, solution-oriented reports. In practical fields, working groups on water and agriculture, technology, energy, health, cybersecurity, and education could define limited, transparent, and measurable projects. Institution-building is credible only when it goes beyond the announcement of grand objectives and identifies responsibility, time frames, resources, and criteria by which results can be judged.

Ethical Realism: A Conclusion

The concept I consider most suitable for explaining this partnership is “ethical realism.” International relations cannot be understood without power. A nation without the means of defence, political organization, or diplomatic influence may be morally in the right and yet remain unable to secure its own existence. Conversely, power severed from right, law, and responsibility can itself become an instrument of domination and a producer of new victims. Ethics without power may be confined to mourning; power without ethics becomes tyranny. Responsible politics must join the two.

A Kurdish-Jewish partnership must be realistic because it concerns security, national interests, deterrence, state-building, and geopolitics. It must be ethical because its legitimacy arises from self-determination, resistance to genocide, the simultaneous rejection of antisemitism and Kurdophobia, democracy, individual liberty, and responsibility towards other nations and civilians. Such a framework does not permit either side to turn the other into an instrument, nor does it allow the suffering of one nation to be invoked in order to disregard the rights of another.

The Jewish experience demonstrates that memory, organization, diaspora, knowledge, diplomacy, and sovereignty can transform a nation’s place in the international system. The Kurdish experience demonstrates that a nation can survive partition, the prohibition of its language, forced displacement, repression, and genocide without surrendering either its identity or its political will. Yet the preservation of identity is not the end of the road. For the Kurd nation, the task must be to turn survival into sovereignty and historical resistance into the capacity to govern its own land freely and responsibly.

In the author’s view, the independence of Kurdistan is not a privilege that the occupying states possess the authority to grant or withhold. It is the fulfilment of the Kurd nation’s right freely to determine its future, and the historical answer to partition, occupation, denial, and Anfal. This is not to equate Kurdish and Jewish histories. It is to state a political principle: the lasting security of a nation cannot forever depend upon guarantees from those who rule over it.

Over the past century, the Middle East has repeatedly sought stability through concentrated power, assimilation, the sanctification of existing borders, and the securitization of national demands. The result has not been durable stability. Recurrent wars, forced displacement, repression, and crises of legitimacy have persisted. A new order will differ from the old only when the fate of nations is no longer treated as an “internal affair” of states, and when nations themselves are recognized as bearers of rights and as political actors. Kurdistan is not peripheral to this question. It is one of the decisive tests of the region’s future.

The London conference can inaugurate a new phase if it moves from memory to politics, from empathy to partnership, from personal ties to institutions, and from mourning after catastrophe to an architecture of prevention. Its purpose should not be merely to improve relations between Kurds and Jews. It should create a model showing how two nations with different histories can transform memory into knowledge, knowledge into institutions, institutions into responsible power, and power into freedom and security. This, in the sense developed throughout this article, is ethical realism: the union of right with power, memory with the future, and independence with responsibility.

Selected References

Bauer, Y. (2001). Rethinking the Holocaust. Yale University Press.

Bengio, O. (2012). The Kurds of Iraq: Building a State within a State. Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Gunter, M. M. (2016). The Kurds: A Modern History. Markus Wiener Publishers.

Hilberg, R. (1985). The Destruction of the European Jews. Holmes & Meier.

Human Rights Watch. (1993). Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds. Human Rights Watch.

McDowall, D. (2004). A Modern History of the Kurds. I.B. Tauris.

Natali, D. (2005). The Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Syracuse University Press.

Poorkarim, A. (2026a). Kurd and Israel: Politics, Identity, Security; The New Middle East. Kurdnation Media Center.

Poorkarim, A. (2026b). Kurdistan and Israel in the New Middle East. Kurdnation.

United Nations. (1945). Charter of the United Nations.

United Nations General Assembly. (1966). International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

United Nations General Assembly. (1966). International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

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