Page 8-The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, October 13, 1988
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Jewish news
An independent Community Newspaper serving as a forum for diverse viewpoints.
Cheshvan 3, 5749 - Noach eandlelighting: Montreal 5:51; Toronto 6:16
The decision on the part of the Nobel committee to award its peace prize to the United Nations peacekeeping force is a sage one. Canadians have two reasons to be especially proud of this award,
It was a Canadian, Lester B. Pearson who acted as the godfather in thercreation of the UN's peacekeeping unit. In 1956, when he was Canada's ambassador at the world drganization, Pearson proposed the formation of a peacekeeping unit to separate Israel and Egypt in the wake of the Sinai campaign.
For his exertions on behalf of peace in the Middle East Pearson became a Nobel laureate himself. In his subsequent career as Prime Minister of Canada; Pearson continued to supportthe UN's mediation in trouble spots all over the globe.
The second reason tlanadians can take pride in the award is the fact that more Canadians (80.000) have served in various UN pea--cekeeping operations than any other country. Since 1956 Canadian troops hav,e been deployed in Kashmir, Afghanistan, Cyprus, the Golan Heights and latterly along the Iran-Iraq border. Regrettably 78 Canadians have also died trying to uphold peace.
Canada is a favofite choice for UN peacekeeping because of the sterling reputation it has achieved as an honest broker among nations. It is a reputation which this country has guarded zealously.
, Unfortunately that good name has been tarnished somewhat, at least internally, by the revelation that Jews, women and Arabs have been excluded from Canada's contingent now being deployed in the Persian Gulfw
The Canadian Jewish Congress acted correctly in denouncing the Canadian goyernment's acquiescence in a request that the three, categories of soldiers mentioned above be excluded from the
500-member mihtary force sentlo monitor the ceasefire between Iran and.Iraq". ■
The excuse offered by Capt. Don Ryan of the department of defence that''there are senisitivities in'that area — so we don't want to jeopardize peacekeeping efforts by putting someone in, the field who could inflame the situation'' — is scaridalclus: The assertion that Canadian Jews, women and Arabs could potentially inflame the situation is nothing less than slander. It is not only contrary to the Canadian Human Rights Code, it is an affront to human dignity.
It is unfortunate that while Canadian peacekeepers promote the cause of peace abroad, their representatives at home sow the seeds of discord in Canada.,
science soars
While Israel continues to be a lightning rod for critical comment, the nation's scientists aremaking remarkable strides on a number of different fronts.
In mid-September Israel entered thfe space age with the successful launching of its first satellite, bfek-1 (Horizon). This is a rernark-able achievement, given the tiny Israeli population and ^the competition for funds in a state which is, in many ways, under siege.
Foreign .Minister Shimon Peres was on target when he said that "Ofek-1 shows technological and scientifiic ability, which opens up a whole new world for us and turns Israel into a partner in the sector of states at the top of the technological world."
The satellite was put into Orbit by a Shavit launcher, described by experts as a solid-fuel rockeit of sophisticated design developed by Israel's Weapons Development Authority. The satellite will nnake Israel less dependent on American intelligence data.
A discovery JDy a Technion professor, Dan Schechtmah, will also make Israel less dependent on conventional crystals. The Israeli scientist wiU be nominated shortly for the Nobel Prize (according to the Jewish Exponent, Sept, 23) for his discovery of a new crystal fofrn; already dubbed the Schechtmariit.
Peers describe his finding as revolutionary because it suggests the existence of a third form of matter. Solid matter is.either amorphous (where atoms are randomly distributed) or crystalline (where particles are ordered-in infinitely repeated lattices).
Schechtnian's experiments with alloys of manganese and aluminum have pointed to the existence of a state of solid matter that is neither amorphous nor crystalline. Scientists are excited at the prospect of applying Schechtman^ distovery to nTetailurgy, electronics and eleictro-optics.
Ele'ctro-optics,-wdare pleased to report, is also bejng^u in Israel45y a "gfotfp of Torah scribes who have developed a computer program to help check the kashruth of mezzuzot and tefillirt parchments.;. V-V'-;
The deyelppment of a hand-held scanner will make it much easier to scan mezzuzot. and Torah scrolls in order to control the sale and distribution of parchments containing scribal errors:
We applaud the progress of Israeli science.
EGYPT \ / ^O^D^V SAUDI ARABIA
SHELDON KIRSHNER
Iraq's recent offen.sivc against its Kurdish population is but the latest sorrowful chapter in the doleful history of a defeated people. ,
Shortly after Iraq and Iran began observing a United Nations ceasefire in the Gulf War on Aug. 20, the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, dispatched several armored divisions to northern Iraq to crush the long-sirnmering Kurdish rebellion. .
Iraq reportedly ended military operations last month when its forces overran Kurdish bastions near the Turkish border. Kurdish rebels, with the help of Iran, had seized pockets of Iraqi ter-. ritory, and it was these that Iraq apparently reconquered.
In turning its fury on the Kurds, Iraq almost certainly deployed chemical weapons, razed countless Kurdish villages, killed an estimated 1,000 civilians and created a refugee problem when about 60,000 Kurds streamed into Turkey. Iraq strenuously rejected accusations that it had used poison gas, but the denials had a hollow ring: Last spring, Iraq's Air Force, in a desperate bid to dislodge Iranian troops from the Iraqi Kurdish village of Halabja, dropped mustard, cyanide and nerve gas bombs on its own population, decimating some 4,000 Kurds. . The Kurds, a fiercely independent mountain people scattered throughout Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and the Soviet Union, have been: fighting ' to establish a homeland called Kurdistan for decades now. But the insur-. gencies they have mounted in Iraq. Iran and Turkey have fizzled — beaten back by a.lack of Kurdish unity, a dearth of. international support antTstrong Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish resistance.
Approximately 19 million Kurds" inhabit a 5p0,000-square mile region claimed by Kurdish nationalists. There are 9 million Kurds in Turkey, 5 million in Iran^ .4 million in Iraq, 800,000 in Syria, 300,000 in the Soviet Union and 100,000 in Lebanon. Sunni Moslems, they live in iso-: lated, mountainous country, which enable than to maintain their cultural traditions and Farsi-related language. [ The history of the Kurds is one of
constant struggle against foreign domination.
The Kurds chafed under Ottoman Turkish rule, but their sporadic rebellions were always crushed ruthlessly. With the downfall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, they thought their moment of truth had arrived. Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. President, had called for the self-determination of non-Turkish nationalities in the defunct empire. And at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, which was to .settle national claims raised by disaffected minorities,
: the Kurds demanded independence. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which liquidated the Ottoman Empire, provided for the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state. In this document, Turkey promised to grant independence to the Kurds, and "to renounce all rights and titles" to Kurdistan. It was as close as the Kurds would ever come to having a country. Kemal Ataturk, the leader of the new Turkish state, refused to honor the Kurdish clauses in the Treaty of Sevres. Revolts by the Kurds in the 1920s and 193()s, as well as stirrings of cultural pride, were brutally suppressed by Turkey.
In newly-created Iraq — where oil ; was. found — and in Iran, the Kurds were crushed remorselessly.
More recently, the focus- of the Kurds' attempt to gain .some measure of independence has been in Iraq. In
, the 1960s, Mustafa Barzani, the then head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led a revolt against the central government aided and abetted by Iran and Israel. In 1970, Iraq promised to give the Kurds local autonomy within four years and pledged that Iraq's vice-
: president would be Kurdish. But the Kurds were not satisfied with the proposed terms, claiming they did not meet all their demands. - Four years later, Iraq imposed a settlement which gave the Kurds limited autonomy in several northeastern provinces. Some Kurdish leaders, such as Jalal Talabani, accepted it, but others, notably Barzani, rejected it vehemently. A new round of warfare broke out, with Iran and Israel helping the Kurds clandestinely.
The revolt petered out in 1975, following an agreement between Iran and Iraq. In the aftermath of the 1978 Is-'
: lamic fundamentalist revolution, and
.especially after the eruption of the Gulf War in 1-980, the new Iranian government extended further aid to the Kurds. During the Gulf War, the hard-pressed^ Iraqis were forced to deploy a few divisions in the Kurdish region. Barza-
^^nVs successor, his son Massud, rejected Baghdad's offer of a truce.'
For all its current professions of solidarity with the Kurds, Iran has also had a serious Kurdish problem. Immediately after World War II, when Iran was divided into Soviet and British spheres of influence,
there existed a short-lived Kurdish republic' The shah of Iran, who claimed to be their friend, sacrificed them on the altar of expediency when he signed the 1975 Algiers accord with Iraq. Since the 1978 revolution there have been repeated Kurdish uprisings, all of which have been put down without regard for life or property.
Turkey's record is not any better.
Turkey has given refuge to some 60.000 Kurdish refugees fleeing the Iraqi army, but the Turks have been ruthless towards the Kurds. Turkey; which refers to the Kurds as '!mountain Turks," does not recognize the Kurdish language. Indeed, it is an offence even to speak Kurdish.
In the late 1970s, when Turkey was wracked by lawlessness, Kurdish nationalism flourished. But with the 1980 coup, the army cracked down hard — arresting 3,500 Kurdish nationalists and executing 50 of them. -
In 1985, Ankara and Baghdad sighed an agreement permitting their respective armed forces to attack Kurdish strongholds in Iraq and Turkey. In at least two instances, the Turkish Air Force bombed and strafed Kurdish bases just inside the Iraqi border.
In 1986, the Kurds declared a "liberated zone" in Turkey's far eastern region. In response, the government rushed reinforcements there.
To Turkey's dismay, Syria has let Kurdish nationalists set up camps adjacent to the Turkish frontier. As a result of pressure, Syria has dismantled several of them, permitting the Kurds to establish installations in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Observers believe that Damascus' support of the Kurds is a function of its territorial claims on Turkey (the Turks seized a swath of Syrian land in the 1930s) and its calculated effort to deflect Kurdish nationalism within Syria itself.
It is highly unlikely that the Kurds will ever achieve genuine national in-; dependence. Not any of the countries whose territory incorporates historic Kurdish lands will willingly relinquish them. And the Kurds cannot rely on any of the great powers for support.
While the U.S. recently risked its cordial relations with Iraq to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Kurdish villages, Washington has made a point of not raising the far more salient issue of Kurdish independence. And needless to say, the Soviet Union has no interest in encouraging the Kurds. ^ . ,
The Kurds have been history's big loser. Their chances of attaining statehood are even more remote than that of the Palestinians.