It's a very canny political move. If the Kurds get Israeli support, they can tell Iraq to stick it. Inviting Israeli citizens to take residence is a good option. Even Turkey might have to reconsider their position if they accidentally kill the region's most belligerent nation's citizens.
It has advantages, yes. But the Kurds are also very genuinely into multiculturalism. I have written about that before. They want a Kurdish state with minorities who speak their own languages. They want to live in mixed cities. That was a very clear message I got in Arbil. Everyone wanted me to see the Assyrian (Christian) quarter and see remnants of Jewish architecture in the city.
What I've never understood about Israeli Jews is that if this was really the case - that they would live outside of Israel if it was safe - why they don't move to a first world country. Israel isn't some backwater - the skills many residents possess would get them priority entrance to the English-speaking states. Then they'd never have to worry about rockets again.
No, but they would worry about being defenceless in the face of whatever other attack there will be.
Before the Shoah many Jews in Europe were anti-Zionist for precisely the reasons you cite: living in the first world was possible and safe and there is no need to move into a region where non-Arab (and back then non-Turkish) peoples were persecuted and enslaved.
Then the Shoah happened and suddenly the vast majority of Jews understood why Jews have to have their own country with their own military providing their own security.
You also underestimate the cultural problems. People complain when Israeli ultra-right wingers suggest that Palestinian Arabs could live in Egypt (when in 1948 they decided that they wouldn't want to live with Jews). But often the same people see no problem with deporting millions of middle-eastern Jews to far-away places like Europe or America.
It was difficult but possible to make Aramaic- and Arabic-speaking Jews into Hebrew-speaking Israelis. But to adapt to a completely foreign culture would prove more difficult. Israel is not very different from other middle-eastern countries. It took the best from western culture from its European elite, but remained a middle-eastern country.
I do not believe that anti-Jewish sentiments in the west would suddenly stop if Israelis left the middle-east for America and the Commonwealth. People, especially liberals (and I am not sorry for saying this) still need a scapegoat for the evils of the world and midde-eastern Jews, who are both Jewish and foreign, are the ideal scapegoat for everything.
And the Arab world, without any Jews, would become even more anti-Semitic. Even today the most anti-Semitic among Arabs and Muslims are found in countries where there are no Jews and where there have never been any Jews, in that order of strength.
In Iraq the Arabs in the south, who have never met Jews and who live in a region where Iraqi Jews have never lived even before the 1930s, are more anti-Semitic than the Arabs in the north. And finally, the (Sunni) Arabs from Baghdad and the Kurds from Mosul and Arbil, where Jews lived until the 1950s are the least anti-Semitic.
Thus removing Jews from the middle east would simply make the problem worse.
We have to learn to live together, not to teach each other that whoever hates the most can keep the land. I do not wish to make an area Jew-free just because one big nation claims that it cannot co-exist with Jews. What will we do when the Jews are gone and the Arabs remember that they also cannot live with black Africans, Kurds, Assyrians and/or Berbers? (Fact is, they already persecute, murder and enslave those peoples. Removing the Jews from the picture would solve the smallest conflict and leave the other peoples without hope. Where would Sudanese blacks flee if not to Israel? Who would train and support the Kurdish anti-terrror police, if not Israel? Who would protect Christian holy sites in Jerusalem if not Israel?)
Israel is not only the religious home of the Jewish people, it is also the guarantee that Jewish survival does not depend on the good will of the host country. We have tried the alternative for 2000 years.
What's the attraction to Israelis of living there, Leauki? Is it the common purpose of being monocultural and under siege? It's a heavily immigrant-based population, so it can't be some real connection with the land beyond a flexibly cultural one.
Parts of the Jewish population in Israel have been there for over 3000 years (the "settlement" in Hevron is one of those old seats). And it is a real connection with the land. Jerusalem and the surrounding land is mentioned in most Jewish prayers and for the last 2000 years famous Jewish authors have lived in Israel whenever possible. Maimonides resided in Israel. Even Gaza has mostly Jewish famous people.
The Arab population of Israel is also heavily immigrant-based (mostly from Egypt). And those who moved into Israel in the 20th century (when the Zionists created a booming economy) hardly have a deeper connection with the land than immigrating Jews.
However, the land of Israel is very similar to Kurdistan and Egypt and Morocco and all the places middle-eastern Jews lived before the rise of Arab nationalism. There certainly is cultural connection to the middle east.
An American from Iowa probably also feels somewhat at home in Minnesota and would perceive a difference between moving from Iowa to Minnesota and moving from Iowa to China. It's the same for middle-eastern Jews. (European Jews are a minority in Israel, even including the more recent Russian immigrants.)
I can imagine that Iraqi Jews might move back to Kurdistan and live there, if the Arabs give in and allow it. But I don't see the Arabs giving in and agree that they can live with Jews anywhere. I think it is more likely that they will demand that even more of the middle-east become Jew-free and western liberals will likely agree with them and demand the same. The Arab position of the past 100 years is clear: no Jews in Arab states, no Jewish state next to Arab states, no peace with Israel, no talks with Israel. Before that position changes fundamentally, there is nothing anybody can do to create peace in the region. (And that attitude has to change not only towards Jews but also towards all the other non-Arab peoples.)
And I know from what I hear from Sudan and other places, that the hatred for non-Arab peoples continues, even with the Jews gone. You don't want to be black, gay, Jewish, Christian, or Kurdish in an Arab state. But you can be any of these things in Israel and now Kurdistan. (And apparently there are many people who want to be Arabs in Israel and Kurdistan, judging from immigration records and numbers of naturalisations in Jerusalem whenever the city is under discussion.)
