Iraqi Shoutout to Jews of Kurdistan

The Jewish Journal reported earlier this week that Iraq’s first lady, Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, wife of President Jalal Talabani, paid a visit to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The First Lady reminisced about her relationships with Jews of her Kurdish hometown, and, according to the Journal, toured the SWC’s Museum of Tolerance.

Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, the petite first lady of Iraq, briefly recalled the killings and tortures the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein had inflicted on her fellow Kurds.

She added, “In every person’s mind there is a small Saddam. Killing Saddam is nothing, but killing the Saddam in our minds is everything.”

Of course, we at Moment thought of Ariel Sabar, whose piece in the current issue of our Magazine, “Return to Jewish Kurdistan,” describes his trip to the Kurdish village where his father had grown up.

For a year, he had tried to talk me out of it. First, he insisted, the Zakho of his day—the houses, the people—was long gone. Second, I could get a fine picture of the city from interviews with Kurdish Jews who had left a half century ago and were now living in Israel. And third, the height of the insurgency wasn’t the ideal time for a sentimental journey to Iraq

Iraq-Israel Relations…in the Tubes

Remember this name: Mithal al-Alusi. He is a Sunni member of the Iraqi parliament who visited Israel two weeks ago to attend a counter-terror conference, and his life is now in danger.

Not that this is the first time. In September 2004, al-Alusi made his first trip to Israel, also to attend a counter-terror conference. Apparently as payback for visiting Israel, assassins went for al-Alusi not long afterwards, killing his two sons.

But Iraq is different now, right? The US troop surge has brought victory within sight, right? Hardly.

Last week, al-Alusi was stripped of parliamentary immunity, clearing the way for his prosecution for violating an Iraqi law from 50 years ago that barred visiting Israel. According to AP, the law allows for the death penalty, but

Palin asked Jesus for a gas pipeline and God for a plan in Iraq

What did you do this weekend? Me? I just sipped some superb Merlot from nearby what Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of that backward village called New York City, would describe as “cosmopolitan” San Francisco and watched some videos of Republican veep pick Sarah Palin.

Speaking at the Wasilla Assembly of God, her former church, last year, Governor Palin asked Jesus for a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in Alaska and called the war in Iraq “a task from God.” As she put it, “Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan.”