Hundreds of Israelis rallied in protest of Turkey’s military operation in Syria. Marching on Tel Aviv’s beachfront promenade across from the Turkish Embassy an U.S. embassy office, the protesters waved Kurdish and Israeli flags while holding banners demanding the international community stop the Turkish incursion and arrest President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for war crimes.
One Israeli demonstrator named Hadassah Yishrun identified herself to the Reuters news agency as “a Kurdish singer from Israel.” After expressing support of “Rojava,” a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria home to a sizeable Kurdish population, and “Kurdistan;” she called on the international community “to immediately arrest Hitler Erdogan because he has killed our Kurdish brothers and sisters.”
It is important to mention that there is a large Jewish population in Israel of Kurdish origin, which numbers over 200,000 people according to public information. Over the years, the Kurdish community in the Jewish State has preserved its ties with the ethnic Muslim-Kurdish communities across the Middle East, and have been instrumental in Israel’s vocal support of the Kurdish aspiration for statehood.