Several score Israelis of Kurdish origin demonstrated outside the Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday morning while U.S. Secretary of State James Baker was meeting with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
The Kurdish Jews were protesting the suffering of Iraqi Kurds fleeing the forces of Saddam Hussein in northern Iraq and demanded that the United States help them.
If the United States does not stand behind the Kurds of Iraq, its credibility will be damaged, the demonstrators warned.
Baker visited a mountainous region on the Turkish-Iraqi border Monday where some 50,000 Kurdish refugees are camped without shelter under life-threatening conditions.
The U.S. official spent only seven minutes there. He left when Turkish officers warned that the refugees might become unruly.
The Israeli demonstrators wore Kurdish costumes and played Kurdish music to emphasize their solidarity with their former countrymen.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
