by Peshraw Mohammed

["Sara’s Homeland" is a Kurdish-language novel by the Kurdish-Jewish author Miran Abraham, which recounts the story of the Kurdish-Jewish community in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, particularly in the city of Slemani (Sulaymaniyah), home to the second-largest Jewish community after Zaxo, often considered the capital of Kurdistani Jews. The novel portrays themes of love, struggle, persecution, antisemitism, and solidarity between Kurdish Muslims and Jews but also anti-jewish prejudices among Kurdish muslims in the early twentieth century. It also reflects the dreams and aspirations for a free Kurdistan, the journey to Israel, and the internal struggle between Kurdishness and Jewishness. Abraham masterfully tells a story that could not have been told in any other way. Before analyzing the novel, it is important to briefly explore the history of the Kurdistani Jews, their influence on the Kurdish community, and the long-standing relationship between Kurds and Jews, which is key to understanding the mutual recognition and affection shared between the two nations today.]

***

The history of Jews in Kurdistan is one of resilience, survival, and cultural fusion. For centuries, Jewish communities across the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran developed a distinct identity intertwined with Kurdish history. Their coexistence with Kurds was marked by mutual respect, yet geopolitical shifts in the 20th century led to separation. The term "Kurdistani Jew" reflects their deep connection to Kurdistan as a homeland and their later migration to Israel.

For over 2,000 years, Jews flourished in Kurdistan, under the protection of Kurdish tribal leaders, experiencing relative peace and autonomy compared to other regions of the Middle East. Communities in places like Zakho and Erbil integrated into Kurdish society while preserving their Jewish identity. This coexistence fostered a unique Kurdistani identity, blending Jewish faith with a strong connection to Kurdish culture and homeland.

However, the rise of Arab nationalism and the formation of modern states like Iraq reshaped the identity of Kurdish Jews. Events like the 1941 Farhud pogrom and subsequent political upheavals marginalized them, pushing many to emigrate. The term "Kurdistani Jew" emerged to encapsulate their dual connection to Jewish heritage and Kurdish roots.

Historically, Jews and Kurds lived peacefully together, with figures like Saladin Ayubi offering stability during his reign. But in the 20th century, Arab nationalism and Islamist ideologies—shaped by Iraq’s policies—fostered hostility toward Jews, leading to their eventual marginalization and exodus.

The founding of Israel in 1948 prompted a mass migration of Kurdish Jews, many of whom were airlifted to Israel during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. This marked the end of their long history in Kurdistan but also began a new chapter, where their Kurdish identity found new expression in Israel.

Israel has long regarded Kurds as natural allies, sharing common values such as self-determination and independence. These historical ties have translated into diplomatic and military cooperation, with significant Kurdish support for Israel. This bond reflects shared histories of persecution and aspirations for freedom.

Asenath Barzani, the first female rabbi in Jewish history, symbolizes the unique fusion of Kurdish and Jewish culture. Her leadership in the 17th century, which broke societal norms, continues to inspire Kurdish Jews in Israel today.[1]

Sara’s Homeland: a Battlefield of History and Memory

Life and Works of Miran Abraham

Miran Abraham was born on March 26, 1970, in Slemani, southern Kurdistan (Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq), into a Jewish family. He grew up in Kurdistan, where, unlike his grandfather who emigrated to Israel, his father chose to stay and join the Kurdish national liberation movement against the Iraqi regime. After the collapse of the Kurdish struggle, Miran and his father moved to the Netherlands, where he now lives with his wife and daughter. Miran began his writing career by translating books into Kurdish on the history, culture, and life of Kurdistani Jews. He later moved on to writing his own novels. Miran’s works are known for their historical realism, exploring themes of persecution, Jewish and Kurdish life, historical responsibility, urbanization, and nationalism. He gained recognition for his novel Sara's Homeland, which tells the story of the Kurdistani Jews.

How to address the so-called ‘Jewish Question’?

The novel places significant emphasis on addressing the long-standing 'Jewish Question,' exploring its relevance not only in the context of Kurdistan and Iraq but also more broadly, spanning the Middle East, Europe and beyond. By extending the discussion beyond Iraq and Kurdistan, Abraham expands the portrayal of Jewish identity and experiences, offering a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective.

The novel form is generally categorized into two traditions: the narrative tradition, which emphasizes history, and the complexity tradition, which prioritizes theory. In the narrative tradition, history takes precedence, while in the complexity tradition, theory is dominant. Many Kurdish novels that aim to philosophize their protagonists strive to align with the complexity tradition, yet the narrative tradition often prevails. This is because novelists frequently emphasize the protagonist's narrative arc, and while they attempt to detach the protagonist from social reality to elevate their role to pure theory, the narrative aspect remains dominant.

In Sara's Homeland, the story oscillates between history and memory—history aligning with the narrative tradition and memory with the tradition of theory construction. Given the novel’s focus on the ‘Jewish question’ in general and Kurdistani Jewish lives in particular, the novelist cannot avoid engaging with both traditions. However, care must be taken not to veer into historiography, as the historian often undermines the essence of memory. To clarify this point in the context of Abraham's novel, which addresses the lives of Kurdistani Jews, it is necessary to consider the interplay between the traditions of historical writing and the narration of memory.

The relationship between history and memory in telling the 'Jewish Question' and the Holocaust has been explored by several scholars, each offering distinct perspectives on their significance and uniqueness.

Shulamit Volkov emphasizes the role of collective memory in shaping Jewish identity, highlighting the complexity of memory as a means of both preserving history and forming a cultural narrative. She views memory not as an exact recounting of events but as a dynamic process that evolves over time, particularly in the context of trauma like the Holocaust.[2]

Moishe Postone approaches the Holocaust from a critical theory perspective, focusing on the way historical memory interacts with ideology and modernity. He argues that the Holocaust is not just a historical event but a symbol of the dangers inherent in modern capitalist societies. For Postone, memory of the Holocaust serves to critique not only Nazi ideology but also broader socio-political systems.[3]

Raul Hilberg, a leading historian of the Holocaust, emphasizes the distinction between history and memory. He believes that history must be objective and based on verifiable facts, whereas memory is more subjective, shaped by personal and collective experience. For Hilberg, the Holocaust is a unique historical event that cannot be fully understood through memory alone; it requires meticulous historical research and analysis.[4]

Together, these scholars illustrate the tension between history as a factual recounting of events and memory as a subjective, evolving narrative. Their perspectives underscore the uniqueness of the 'Jewish Question' and the Holocaust, where historical facts, collective memory, and ideological constructs intersect in complex ways. This tension between history as an objective recounting of events and memory as a subjective experience is central to Sara's Homeland. At times, the novelist draws on his personal memory as the son of a Jewish father who fought for Kurdistan and a mother who died in the mountains, emphasizing the unique identity of the 'Kurdistani Jew.' However, when addressing broader events like pogroms, the Holocaust, and similar phenomena, the narrative shifts to prioritize historical facts.

The novel stands out in its field by offering a dual perspective: it examines the history of Jewish persecution through a Kurdish lens and explores the history of Kurdish persecution through a Jewish lens.

Miran Abraham’s novel weaves a narrative that draws parallels between the crises faced by Kurdistan’s and Iraq’s Jews and those arising from the heart of Europe’s most advanced cultural, economic, and technological system—especially Germany during the Nazi rule. While Abraham underscores the "uniqueness of the Jewish question" in his portrayal of Jewish persecution, he simultaneously ties this issue to the Kurdish question through the lens of Sara’s Homeland. This dual focus reflects both truths and challenges within the narrative tradition: the Jewish genocide during the Nazi era remains unique in its biologization of racism and the systematic attempt to annihilate an entire people, while the Kurdish question also possesses considerable regional uniqueness, shaped by the racialized policies of Arab superiority.

Abraham might suggest that the Kurdish genocide, particularly during Al-Anfal, was planned and carried out in a manner akin to racialized state policies, similar to Nazi ideology. It is unclear whether Abraham was influenced by Israeli historian Moshe Zuckermann’s thesis, which upholds the uniqueness of the Jewish question but advocates for comparing it with other crimes against humanity—not to relativize the Holocaust but to deepen understanding of other atrocities.

We should here frame the Holocaust as a three-stage process: the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto to isolate European Jews, the failed attempt to relocate Jews and Slavs to Soviet territories following Operation Barbarossa, and the "Final Solution" ((Endlösung)—the systematic extermination of all Jews, involving gas chambers and crematoria. Abraham’s narrative draws parallels to the Iraqi regime’s actions against the Kurds, including displacement, forced Arabization, mass executions, the destruction of over 7,000 villages, and ultimately, the genocidal Al-Anfal campaign.

A particularly intriguing aspect is the use of the term "Al-Anfal," derived from the Quran, by the secular pan-Arab nationalist Ba'ath regime. This raises questions about my thesis in relation to what I have called it ‘Interconnectedness of Antisemitism and Antikurdism’.[5] With the rise of secular pan-Arab nationalism and the establishment of Israel, Islamist and pan-Arab, pan-Turkish and pan-Iranian nationalist movements in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria—regions encompassing and occupying Kurdish historical lands—began framing Kurdish national liberation movements as conspiratorial extensions of a so-called "Zionist plot." This conflation underscores the deeper ideological and historical links between antisemitism and antikurdism.

In 1966, the Iraqi Minister of Defense, Abd al-Aziz al-Uqayli (a prominent member of the Ba'ath Party), accused the Kurds in Iraq of attempting to establish "a second Israel" in the Middle East. He also claimed that "the West and the East are supporting the rebels to create a new Israeli state in the north of the homeland" (referring here to Southern Kurdistan), just as they did in 1948 when they established Israel. "It is as if history is repeating itself," he remarked.

When the Ba'ath Party carried out two genocides against the Kurds in Iraq in 1988—namely, the Al-Anfal operations and the chemical attacks on Halabja—both were part of a total annihilation strategy against the Kurds, whom Arabs viewed as obstacles to the unification of the Arab nation. Naturally, the Kurds were blamed for these genocides: their refusal to embrace Arab identity was portrayed as a choice for their own destruction. This rhetoric mirrored the language used by the Nazis before and after the Holocaust to justify the Shoah.

This raises the question of why Saddam Hussein chose to use the term Al-Anfal from the Quran. I would like to briefly explain the term Al-Anfal in the Quran, why it was used in the context of the genocide against the Kurds, and its connection to the early history of Islam and the extermination of Jews.

The Surah Al-Anfal (The Spoils of War) was written in Medina during the time of the Hijra, Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina. One of Muhammad's first actions in Medina was waging war against three Jewish tribes: Banu Nadir, Banu Qaynuqa, and Banu Qurayza. Muhammad and the Muslim army annihilated these tribes, marking the first "total extermination" and an attempt to erase an entire Jewish lineage during the early days of Islam's establishment. This event is documented in the Hadiths (sayings and actions of Muhammad) as well as in the earliest biographies and accounts of Muhammad’s companions.

Saddam Hussein, the Ba'ath Party, and the Ba'athist ideology had spent years preparing ideologically to view the Kurds as the "second Jews" of the Middle East, as a foreign body against the unity of the Arab nation, as descendants of the devil who, although they had converted to Islam, could not be trusted. The Ba'ath Party in Iraq believed that before the great mistake of the Arab homeland was repeated, meaning before a second Israel emerged, the entire ‘race of the devil’ (the name the Ba'athists used for the Kurds) must be destroyed. Al-Anfal signifies the repetition of the annihilation of the ‘second Jews,’ the destruction of the Kurds by the Arabs and Islam, before another catastrophe strikes the Arab nation. Anfal refers to the seizure of wealth and land in Kurdistan after destruction. The only difference between the new Al-Anfal and the annihilation of the Jews of Medina is that Muhammad did not kill all the Jewish women and children; he made the women slaves and sold the children, but the Ba'ath Party even buried women and children alive.

This serves as the starting point for Miran Abraham to narrate the interconnected story of persecution, genocide, racialization, and biologization, portraying both the Jews and the Kurds as enemies of modern states, among other themes.

The War of Memory and History 

What has made the ‘Jewish question’ both a unique and influential subject, and also the theme of millions of writings, novels, films, and historical works, is the development of ‘Jewish Memory Culture’ (Jüdische Erinnerungskultur)—particularly when Jewish memory entered the public sphere and general consciousness, especially at the end of the twentieth century. Many factors contributed to the emergence of this subject, including oral history, audio archives, and more. Based on this foundation, other traditions of narration and presentation emerged, such as film and novels. In fact, it is memory that makes history something unique, not the other way around. Where historians see only one step in a process or detail within a complexity, witnesses, through memory, alter the picture. They can recognize an extremely important event that has dramatically and uniquely changed their entire life.

If we look at the photographs of the Jewish genocide in the camps, historians might busy themselves with decoding, analyzing, and explaining the images that remain from Auschwitz. Historians know that the people gathered and loaded onto trains are Jews, and the uniformed individuals watching and forcing them are Nazi soldiers. But for memory, the images convey much more than this. Images for memory possess sensory tools—they carry emotion, feeling, sound, and smell. They emit fear. In short, an image, from the perspective of memory, calls for a completely unique observation of events that historians may never easily access. The image of a Jew in Auschwitz, through the historian's lens, is a nameless victim. However, for those who survived, suffered, and experienced it—the remaining members in the image, the victim's friends, and so on—it recalls an absolutely unique and different world that the historian cannot see.

For an external observer and witness (Miran Abraham, for example, experienced the catastrophe both as an observer and as a Kurdistani Jew), who experiences the victims through these images, as Siegfried Kracauer discusses in his analyses of the catastrophe through the theory of memory, this image reveals only an ‘unredeemed’ (unerlöst)[6] reality that must be redeemed, and the rights of victims and the nameless must be recognized. The novelist, as an external and experienced observer through the medium of history, accomplishes the task that the historian cannot fulfill.

This integration of memory and history speaks to the insights of jewish philosophers like Emmanuel Lévinas, who emphasized the ethical responsibility to remember suffering and the need to engage with the past; Zygmunt Bauman (both were survivors of Auswitz), who warned against forgetting the role of modernity in facilitating such atrocities; Hannah Arendt, who focused on the manipulation of memory and truth by totalitarian regimes; Dora Vargha, who explored the interplay of trauma, identity, and memory; and Walter Benjamin, who reflected on the memory of the past as a tool for redemption and historical justice. Each of these thinkers contributes to our understanding of memory not as a passive recollection, but as an active, transformative force that shapes both personal and collective identity in the aftermath of catastrophe.

The novelist revisits historical documents and, through memory, reexamines the experience of the Jews in Sulaymaniyah. These memories shape our understanding and emotions surrounding Jewish history. Historians cannot overlook this memory; they must respect it and thoroughly analyze and comprehend it. However, they cannot, and should not, transform this undeniable and uniquely legitimate memory into a normative historical narrative. Historians' task is to engage with the lived experiences of the victims and incorporate these into the broader historical context. This involves learning from memory, but also critically filtering it. While memory can present an image as entirely unique, history always treats uniqueness with relativity. For Salar (novelist’s own real father), Sara (novelist’s mother), and Chaim (novelist’s grandfather) – all protagonists in the novel -, the experience of the Jews in Slemani is dangerously unique—something an external observer (the novelist, though external, is not neutral, as Abraham is part of the tradition) can understand through the fictionalization of memory. 

Among the Jews of Slemani—who were completely marginalized by the newly established Iraqi state, displaced, subjected to anti-Jewish laws, and so on—the expulsion, dehumanization, dispossession, and reduction of their status to mere economic actors is something a historian cannot fully comprehend and remain loyal to, especially if that historian is involved in the oppression of these people. This is why very few historians in Kurdistan have been able to write thoroughly about the Jewish community there: due to the aforementioned issues and because of political, cultural, class, and religious interests. It was left to a few sociologists, philosophers, and intellectuals to address the history of Kurdistani Jews. Thus, Miran Abraham's novel becomes a unique work within this tradition, navigating the conflict between history and memory.

Pogrom, ‘Now-Time’ and the Allegory of Intellectuals 

You are familiar with pogroms, including Kristallnacht, which occurred on November 9–10, 1938, in Nazi Germany. This coordinated attack on Jewish communities involved widespread violence, destruction, and persecution. Synagogues were burned, Jewish businesses looted, and around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, with at least 91 killed. The name "Kristallnacht" refers to the shattered glass from Jewish-owned establishments. Officially blamed on public outrage over the assassination of a German diplomat, the violence was orchestrated by the Nazi regime, marking a significant escalation toward the Holocaust.

Miran Abraham’s novel seeks to depict Iraq's equivalent of Kristallnacht through a fictionalized narrative, examining how intellectuals helped rationalize and execute Nazi-like antisemitism. Intellectuals played a crucial role in totalitarian regimes, helping normalize violence like pogroms. Abraham’s novel skillfully portrays how Iraqi intellectuals, shaped by a mix of secularism and Islamism, perpetuated conspiracy theories and scapegoated Jews for Iraq's struggles. Their views justified pogroms and deepened societal prejudice against Kurdistani Jews.

The novel critiques these ideological roots, reflecting on 'Jetztzeit', a concept borrowed from Walter Benjamin that challenges the historical continuum and demands moral reckoning. Abraham’s work is a call for revolution—not politically, but in confronting a buried history that still haunts Iraq and Kurdistan. It also challenges intellectuals, especially Kurdish intellectuals, to reflect on their country’s history of persecution, aiming to honor the erased history of Kurdistani Jews and push for a long-overdue societal reckoning.

***

References:

1. These books and texts are helpful to understand the entire history of Kurdistani Jews: Baser, Bahar. Once A Diaspora, Always A Diaspora? The Ethnic, Cultural and Political Mobilization of Kurdistani Jews in Israel, Politics, Religion & amp; Ideology Volume 22, 2021 - Issue 3-4; Bengio, Ofra. Jews, Israel and the Kurds: Unravelling the Myth, Israel Affairs Volume 27, 2021 - Issue 5; Bengion, Ofra, Surprising Ties between Israel and the Kurds, https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/israel-kurds; Khezri, Haidar. Kurds, Jews, and Kurdistani Jews: Historic Homelands, Perceptions of Parallels in Persecution, and Allies by Analogy, Religions 2022, 13(3), 253; Patai, Raphael, and Eric Brauer. The Jews of Kurdistan, Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthro, 1993; Sabar, Ariel. My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq, Algonquin Books, 2008; Gavish, Haya. Unwitting Zionists: The Jewish Community of Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan, Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthro, 2009.

2. Volkan, Volkan. Killing in the Name of Identity: A Study of Bloody Conflicts. Durham: Pitchstone Publishing, 2006.

3. Postone, Moishe and Santner, Eric, Catastrophe and Meaning The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century.

4. Hilberg, Raul, The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian.

5. For my thesis see this: Peshraw Mohammed, The Left and Islamism: Antisemitism and Antikurdism,

https://www.telospress.com/the-left-and-islamism-antisemitism-and-antikurdism/

6. Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, New York: Oxford University Press,

1960, p.14.

Peshraw Mohammed, born in southern Kurdistan (Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq), based in Berlin, is a freelance author and translator specializing in German philosophy, antisemitism, and the cultural history of National Socialism. Since October 7, he has been writing regularly for German platforms and delivering speeches on antisemitism across various political spectra, including the right, the left, and Islamism. He is currently working on his forthcoming book, Genealogy of Demonization: The Interconnectedness of Antisemitism and Antikurdism (in English).