nationalinterest.org
Jack Cohen – Abandoning the Kurds & Israel and Brazil
Abandoning the Kurds
The US withdrawal from Syria has in effect abandoned the Kurds to their fate. Any liberal who is concerned about the Palestinians should be much more worried about the Kurds. They are supposedly the largest minority in the world, 45 million people, without self-determination. They are divided between Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Turkey has the largest proportion of them, and because Pres. Erdogan is very worried about the Kurdish minority in Turkey, he is determined to prevent any Kurdish groups from obtaining independence. Thus now the US Kurdish allies, the YPG (Young Protection Groups) that fought against and defeated the Islamic State, are on their own.
Not only is Turkey imminently poised to attack the Kurds from within Syria, since they already occupy the western portion of Kurdish territory of Rojava in Afrin, but the Iranians also want the Kurds out-of-the-way. The Iranian Shia regime has for long wanted to have a clear crescent of control from the Iranian border to the Mediterranean Sea. They have proxies in Lebanon, namely Hezbollah, in Syria, the Assad regime, and in Iraq, the Shia-dominated government. But the Kurds, holding north-eastern Syria (about 30% of the country) are in their way.
So the stage is set for a two-pronged attack by Turkey (which is Sunni) and Iran (which is Shia) to carve up the Kurdish area in Syria. The question is how much resistance can the Kurds be expected to put up, they can certainly not withstand attacks by the Turkish Army and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Although Pres. Trump was visiting US troops in Iraq over Christmas and stated that Syrian targets can easily be hit from there. Nevertheless, the US is not going to face off against the Turkish Army, which is a member of NATO. And what will happen if the Kurdish region is divided between Turkey and Iran, can they possibly maintain a friendly relationship?
The consequences of the US pullout are therefore threefold: 1. A Western ally, the Kurds will be defeated; 2. Turkey will re-establish control in an Arab area (the Turkish Empire controlled all of the Middle East); 3. Iran will have its direct land link between its homeland and the Shia proxies in Syria and Lebanon and so will be able to transport heavy military equipment (tanks and missiles) to be used against Israel. The prospect does not look good.
That is why Israel is taking the opportunity now to strike Iranian targets in Syria. It recently attacked targets near Damascus, apparently destroying an Iranian arms depot and killing a busload of Hezbollah senior officers who were on a bus en route to board a plane to take them to Iran for the funeral of a leading cleric. Israel’s attacks in Syria not only embarrass the Syrian regime, but also Russia, that has provided Syria with its air defense system, that is apparently ineffective against Israeli attacks. Russia issued a warning to Israel to stop these attacks because “they endanger civilian aircraft.” But, the fact is that Putin knows very well that Israel will not and cannot allow Iran to build up its forces in Syria close to the Israel border, and that these strikes are surgical and accurate. After US withdrawal four countries are now left, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Israel, to fight over Syria. It’s future is very much a theater of war.
Israel and Brazil
Newly elected Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro welcomed PM Netanyahu to Brazil in a ceremony at Rio de Janeiro on Friday before his inauguration. They exchanged greetings and spoke of the “brotherhood” between the two countries. Bolsonaro is a right-wing candidate, who was elected following charges of corruption against the previous two Presidents, Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, and the fact that they have ruined Brazil’s economy. Although Brazil is a much larger and richer country than Israel, nevertheless they could use some advice in how to recover their economy from Israel.
Not only is Bolsonaro friendly towards Israel, but he has said that he will follow the US lead and move Brazil’s Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognize it as Israel’s capital. So far this was not addressed in the public speeches, but according to some sources, it has been discussed between the two leaders and will be in the works pretty soon. Both leaders visited a synagogue together in Copacabana.
There is a very good reason why Brazil of all countries in the world should be friendly towards Israel. Although it is in principle a Catholic country, a very large proportion of the immigrants from Brazil and Spain to Brazil were Crypto-Jews (or Anousim in Hebrew, meaning “coerced”) or their descendants (Bnei Anousim) trying to escape the Inquisition. These were the people who were forcibly converted to Christianity in Spain mainly in 1492 and Portugal in 1497 and known as New Christians, but who never left the Jewish religious tradition, and carried it on secretly. The Inquisition was mainly established to root out these heretics, and it was a capital offense to be found guilty of “Judaizing.” Also, this was a very good way for the Church and the State to enrich themselves since, like the Nazis, they confiscated all the assets and property of the accused and divided it between themselves, even before they were condemned and burnt to death in an auto-da-fé (confession by fire).
In The Jerusalem Post last Friday there was also an article by Michael Freund, Chairman of Shavei Israel, that helps such quasi-Jewish groups to re-establish links with Judaism, the Jewish people and Israel. The article entitled “The Bnei Anousim: uncovering Jewish history and destiny in Latin America,” quotes a recent article in Nature Communications that found from genetic testing of large numbers of Latin Americans and a proportionate control, that ca. 23% of all Latin Americans have retained Jewish genetic markers. That’s almost one-quarter of the population of South America, a very large number of people!
Furthermore, the proportion of such people in Brazil is even greater. It is not well-known that the people who founded Saõ Paulo were in fact Bnei Anousim and furthermore a large group of them moved into the jungle to escape the Church authorities and were known as “bandeirantes” (I will provide the source for this information at a later date). In the jungle they intermarried with native peoples and formed a distinct group that still exists throughout Brazil, It is estimated that there are at least ca. 5 million people in and around the city of Recife in northeastern Brazil who identify as of Jewish origin. Many of these people retain vestiges of Jewish traditions and there is a movement in which they are now coming out openly and identifying as Jews, although Orthodox Jewish organizations do not recognize them as such. Many of these people are very pro-Israel. So it is quite appropriate for Israel and Brazil to establish strong ties.
