Israel Endorsed Kurdish Independence. Saladin Would Have Been Proud.
. Sagi said such sentiments stirred a reciprocal feeling in him: "I became a patriotic Kurd." He was not alone: The story goes
that Israeli soldiers and Mossad agents wept when the shah of Iran double-crossed the Kurds by signing the Algiers Accord with Iraq, a 1975 resolution of border disputes that ended the Kurdish rebellion and forced the pesh merga to retreat into Iran. that Mr
In the winter of 1966, Mr. Sagi’s commanders sent him on a secret mission, via Israel’s then-ally,
Iran, to aid Mullah Mustafa Barzani and his pesh merga rebels in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Mr. Sagi, who returned to aid the pesh merga against Iraq in 1974, said he traveled around Kurdistan quite a bit in
those years, posing as a British journalist despite what can generously be called a tenuous command of English.
Mr. Netanyahu, who endorsed not only the referendum
but also the establishment of a Kurdish state, had ample strategic reason: A breakaway Kurdistan could prove valuable to Israel against Iran, which has oppressed its own Kurdish population.
"The young man answered, ‘I am Masoud Barzani, son of Mullah Barzani, and if Mullah would hear
that I took a watch, he would hang me!’" Mr. Shemtov recalled.