Benjamin Kweskin, a Middle East analyst, writes: “Kurds and Jews have a fascinating shared history with roots in ancient times. Many date Jewish presence in what is today Kurdistan to the eighth-century B.C.E., when the Assyrian Empire — ancestors of the same friendly Assyrian Christians who are today under threat — conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The conquerors took thousands of Israelite captives into exile, to the “cities of the Medes” — that is, the predecessors of the Kurds. There was even a Jewish kingdom based in Erbil in the first and second centuries, called Adiabene, or Hadyab.” Read more at The Kurdish Project.
