February 23, 2010 

(note: The  Kurdistan border with Iran was where the four Jewish-American hikers were arrested earlier last year.)

ERBIL-Hewlêr, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', (ekurd.net) — According to a report received by ekurd.net from EuroKurd Human Rights-EHR, the editor-in-chief of Israel-Kurd magazine, Dawood Baghestani, has been brutally attacked by a unknown group of armed men on Thursday, in Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan region.

Meanwhile the anti-Israel (the Iranian presstv.ir) website reported that Baghestani was drunk and was beaten at the bar located in the Iraqi Kurdistan's city of Erbil. The news cannot be confirmed by other independent sources. It is still unclear the real reason behind the attack.

Baghestani, 62-year-old, the editor of the Kurdish-and English-language publication "Israel-Kurd" called on Jews to 'come home' to Iraqi Kurdistan. "We 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 last August.

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.

Like Jews, Kurds are a non-Arab indigenous Middle Eastern people seeking independence in their ancestral homeland. Active Israeli support towards a free Kurdistan is seen as a natural policy by many as well as a pragmatic one. “By aligning with the Kurds, Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran, Iraq and Syria,” a former Israeli intelligence officer told the New Yorker. 

Iraqi Kurdistan does have a warmer history with the Jewish state, however. Many of the current crop of Kurdish leaders have visited Israel in past decades.

Jews lived in Kurdistan for centuries, working as traders, farmers and artisans.

But the creation of Israel and the rise of Arab nationalism in the mid-twentieth century dramatically altered the situation, spurring most of Kurdistan's Jews to leave.

Israel has a longstanding relationship with the Kurdish people. In the early 1960’s, Mustafa Barzani and his Peshmerga fighters received training and support in the Jewish State.

Massoud Barzani, the current president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq's north, has expressed his government’s positive feelings towards Israel and relations with the Jewish State. Similarly,www.ekurd.netKurds elsewhere have attempted to establish channels of communications with Israel.

http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2010/2/independentstate3554.htm

Drunken 'Israeli spy' beaten up in N Iraq

Last Thursday, the heavily-intoxicated 62-year-old, named Dawood Baghestani, reportedly began displaying immoral behavior and was battered by bouncers at the bar located in the Iraqi Kurdistan's City of Arbil.

Baghestani is purported to be one of the Israeli fifth columnists in northern Iraq who is in the business of deploying Israeli agents in the Iraqi Kurdistan. He is known to have traveled to Israel a number of times, including a “clandestine” visit back in 1967.

The alleged operative is reported to have been carrying out espionage activities for Israel under the guise of running the Israel-Kurd magazine in the Kurdish-populated area.

The Kurdish- and English-language publication provoked outrage in the predominantly Muslim Iraqi region last year by claiming that it sought to “help solve” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by convincing the “Israeli Kurds” to return to the Iraqi Kurdistan.

"The biggest reason behind the complexity of the Palestinian problem is the unjust practices of Arab regimes against the Jews,” Baghestani had claimed. "If the Jews had not been subjected to an exodus, the Palestinians wouldn't have been either," he had added, referring to the departure of around one million Palestinians from their homeland following the 1948 occupation of Palestine by Zionist forces that established the Israeli regime.

Baghestani is reportedly operating freely in the region with little interference by the local authorities in the Iraqi Kurdistan.

Observers report that Israeli elements have long been present and active in the Iraqi Kurdistan ever since the US military brought northern Iraq under its protection after waging the 1990 Persian Gulf War that followed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait by the former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Israeli agents in Iraqi Kurdistan have also been reported to be providing arms and financial support to Kurdish terrorist groups in northeastern Iraq that are active against governments of Iran and Turkey.

http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/119251.html

Submitted by andie531 on Sat, 2010-09-25 03:31

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