Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar delivered a timely and important message at the first Kurdish-Jewish Conference in London on September 6. He has once again clarified that Israel recognizes the Kurdish historical and ongoing predicament in the Middle East.
Sa’ar went beyond recognition and pointed out that the Kurdish-Jewish relationship in the Middle East is strategic.
His remark highlighted not only the Kurdish-Jewish relationship but also the Kurdish-Jewish alliance, neither invented nor merely a political construct, but a natural alliance rooted in the close ties between the Kurdish and Jewish peoples since the first Jewish deportation by the Assyrians around 720 BCE to Northern Mesopotamia, in contemporary Kurdistan.
This historical Jewish deportation overlaps with the beginning of the Kurdish calendar around 650 BCE.
This encounter laid the foundation for a Kurdish-Jewish relationship that is deeply rooted in the history and collective memory of both peoples.
To honor these close Kurdish-Jewish ties, Kurdish people hope that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as head of the cabinet and ultimate executive authority, will directly echo and institutionalize Sa’ar’s stance to build genuine, lasting trust among the Kurdish people.
Subsequently, Kurdish-Jewish solidarity can move decisively beyond an era in which Kurdish aspirations were treated as convenient rhetorical leverage against Ankara and Tehran rather than as the basis for enduring strategic commitments.
With the belief in this ancient relationship, Kurdish and Jewish academics, civil society representatives, and diaspora activists convened to discuss the shared challenges they face both in their homelands and across the diaspora. The Kurds welcomed the conference and warmly embraced Sa’ar’s message.
Similarly, Israeli media extensively reported on the gathering and its objectives. The conference underscored the strategic relationship between two indigenous peoples of the Middle East and their shared concerns regarding threats emanating from the Sunni and Shi’ite axes.
The strongest headwinds came, unsurprisingly, from the Turkish media and nationalist supporters of the self-appointed monarch Reza Pahlavi, who have circulated distorted narratives about the Kurdish people and their political movements.
These narratives target a people already enduring daily atrocities at the hands of the IRGC and the wider militarized forces of the Mullah regime.
The Kurdish people are a nation of over 50 million whose ancestral homeland was unjustly partitioned between the Iranian Safavid and Ottoman empires in 1639, and later between Arab states and Turkey following the post-World War I settlement of the Middle East in the 1920s.
The Kurds are an indigenous people with their own distinct language, history, culture, and territory, forming an ethnic peoplehood that is neither Turkish, Arab, nor Persian. As a separate nation with its own distinct identity, language, culture, and deep historical roots, the Kurdish people possess every legitimate right to demand full statehood.
Within this framework, self-determination and separatism remain their natural, inherent right under the principle of indigenous sovereignty. The Kurds have been denied their nation-state and, consequently, have suffered multiple genocides, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement under successive Muslim regimes in Tehran, Ankara, Damascus, and Baghdad.
This history is inseparable from the contemporary debate over Iran. The divisive and accusatory rhetoric of contemporary monarchists recalls, in the eyes of many Kurds, the denial and repressive policies of the grandfather Reza Shah Pahlavi, following the collapse of the Qajar Empire in 1925.
Kurdish demand for recognition
The Pahlavi dynasty pursued a centralized Persian nationalist project that marginalized minority identities, including those of Kurds and Jews. Kurdish demands for recognition of their cultural and linguistic identities were denied.
Kurds were misrepresented as “mountainous Iranian people,” a policy that nationalist Turks adapted earlier in constructing a hegemonized Turkish national state. As part of these measures, Kurdish elites and leaders, including Simko Agha, were assassinated while Kurdish political movements were suppressed.
Jews endured a similar fate under the repression of the Pahlavi era. Jewish leaders suffered a similar fate: as part of Pahlavi’s nationalistic project, Shmuel Haim, a prominent Jewish leader and head of the Iranian Zionist organization, was arrested and executed in 1931 for allegedly promoting Zionist activities and encouraging Jewish emigration to Jerusalem.
The Pahlavi regime’s systematic repression and authoritarian policies toward minority communities had a lasting impact. In 1946, the government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the father of the current self-appointed Reza Pahlavi, crushed the short-lived Kurdistan Republic in Mahabad and executed its principal leaders.
The Pahlavi regime continued a repressive and authoritarian policy toward diverse minority communities, including the Kurds, which resulted in the emergence of the current Mullah regime in 1979. The Kurds have again remained a primary target of the new Mullah regime, facing daily executions and repression.
Kurdish leaders and activists have been executed in Iran and assassinated abroad, including in Vienna and Berlin. The regime continually scapegoats Kurds, justifying state crimes by alleging collaboration with Mossad.
The state murder of the Kurdish woman Jina Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police became a defining example of severe repression against the Kurds. Since the February 28 war within Iran and across Iraqi Kurdistan, the regime has killed over 100 Kurdish people, mostly civilians, and wounded more than 1,000.
While Kurds face extreme atrocities by the Mullah regime, monarchist supporters of Reza Pahlavi attack Kurds in the diaspora and on social media, weaponizing accusations of separatism to delegitimize Kurdish autonomy.
However, they deliberately obscure a vital reality: although national self-determination and statehood remain their fundamental right, Kurdish leadership has actively chosen to pursue a democratic, decentralized, and federal Iran.
Members of the Kurdish coalition, including PDK-I, PJAK, Komala, and PAK, have voluntarily set aside unilateral separation to offer a shared future rooted in regional autonomy, civic equality, and collective liberation.
Similarly, at a Moshe Dayan Center panel, representatives of all Kurdish parties declared their readiness to cooperate with transformative forces, including Israel and the US, on regime change and democratization.
The accusations of separatism and attacks on Sa’ar are calculated attempts by Reza Pahlavi’s followers to create a rift between Kurds and Israel, undermining the forces actively resisting the regime. This divisive, chauvinistic policy fractures opposition solidarity, protects the Mullah regime from imminent collapse, and undermines those fighting for freedom.
Yet Sa’ar’s message in London was significant precisely because it recognizes the reality that Kurds and Jews, two peoples with ancient roots in the Middle East, have common interests in defending their identity, security, and peaceful future.
Strengthening the Kurdish-Jewish relationship is strategically important in confronting the challenges posed by authoritarianism and repression in the region.
The writer is a researcher at the Kurdish Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. X: @dagweysi
