.Kurdish Jews urged to return to Iraq: Report
Arbil, IRAQ (AFP)
A new magazine in Iraq's Kurdistan region has caused furore among conservative Muslims with a rousing call for Jews to leave Israel -- and come back to Iraq.
The magazine, "Israel-Kurd," is the brainchild of Dawood Baghestani, the 62-year-old former chief of the autonomous northern region's human rights commission.
The glossy, full-color monthly in Kurdish and English has a lofty mission: to help solve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict by convincing more than 150,000 Kurdish Jews living in Israel to return to Iraqi Kurdistan, Baghestani told AFP.
"The biggest reason behind the complexity of the Palestinian problem is the unjust practices of Arab regimes against the Jews -- there are more than 1.5 million Jews originally from Arab countries in Israel," Baghestani said.
"If the Jews had not been subject to an exodus, the Palestinians wouldn't have been either," he said, referring to the flight of 700,000 Palestinians from the newly created Jewish state in 1948 during the first Arab-Israeli war.
"If the situation in our new federal and democratic Iraq, and particularly in Kurdistan, becomes stable, then many Jews would want to return and reduce the number of Jewish settlements in Palestine."
The latest edition of the 52-page magazine, which has a circulation of around 1,500 copies, features a woman draped in an Israeli flag on the cover.
Inside are stories about Kurdish Jewish traditions and photographs from the first half of the twentieth century, as well as arguments on how a return of Jews would help to build a wealthy and strong Kurdistan.
Al Arabiya
More at link
A new magazine in Iraq's Kurdistan region has caused furore among conservative Muslims with a rousing call for Jews to leave Israel -- and come back to Iraq.
The magazine, "Israel-Kurd," is the brainchild of Dawood Baghestani, the 62-year-old former chief of the autonomous northern region's human rights commission.
The glossy, full-color monthly in Kurdish and English has a lofty mission: to help solve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict by convincing more than 150,000 Kurdish Jews living in Israel to return to Iraqi Kurdistan, Baghestani told AFP.
"The biggest reason behind the complexity of the Palestinian problem is the unjust practices of Arab regimes against the Jews -- there are more than 1.5 million Jews originally from Arab countries in Israel," Baghestani said.
"If the Jews had not been subject to an exodus, the Palestinians wouldn't have been either," he said, referring to the flight of 700,000 Palestinians from the newly created Jewish state in 1948 during the first Arab-Israeli war.
"If the situation in our new federal and democratic Iraq, and particularly in Kurdistan, becomes stable, then many Jews would want to return and reduce the number of Jewish settlements in Palestine."
The latest edition of the 52-page magazine, which has a circulation of around 1,500 copies, features a woman draped in an Israeli flag on the cover.
Inside are stories about Kurdish Jewish traditions and photographs from the first half of the twentieth century, as well as arguments on how a return of Jews would help to build a wealthy and strong Kurdistan.
Al Arabiya
More at link
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