A recent post highlighted strong intelligence and strategic ties that have developed behind the scenes between the Israelis and the Azerbaijanis. Another nation and an unofficial de-facto nation are also becoming Israelis allies. The first link shows the Greek-Israeli alliance is now becoming very strong. The Greek Defense Minister openly calls it a “strategic alliance,” and the US, Israeli and Greek militaries recently conducted joint air-sea maneuvers. One can expect that the more hostile Turkey becomes toward Israel, the more closely Greece will ally itself with Israel.
The second link documents growing ties between the Israelis and the Kurds in the Kurdish Autonomous region of Iraq. The ties have to be low-key, but an American CIA source is quoted as saying “Israel’s presence in northern Iraq is widely acknowledged.” Israeli-Kurdish trade relations are expanding and the Israeli are reportedly training Kurdish commandoes. The article also reports that there have been joint Israeli-Kurdish missions inside Iran to install sensory devices to monitor Iranian nuclear facilities. With growing Azeri and Kurdish alliances, the Israelis are gaining some interesting tactical options if Israel finds it necessary to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The third link, from the Jerusalem Post, further documents the growing ties between the Israelis and Kurds, but it has a very interesting additional piece of information. It relates that some Kurds believe that they are ethnic relatives of the Jewish people as they also claim Abraham as a common ancestor. Specifically, many Kurds see themselves as descended from the people of the ten tribes of Israel who were transplanted from the Holy Land to the cities of the Medes (II Kings 18:9-12), which is the modern region of the Kurds. Given that many Kurds look more Caucasian than Arab, this is a very likely possibility. No doubt, some Israelites stayed in that region when the Parthian Empire collapsed in the 3rd century AD and did not migrate into Europe with the rest of the Israelite tribes (who were called Goths, Germans, Jutes,and Saxons by the Romans). Given that the Parthian province of Armenia successfully resisted the Sassanian Persians (who overthrew Parthia and drove the Parthians out of Asia) for a couple more centuries, there was a good reason for some Israelites to stay in their historic region of Armenia (which was larger than today’s nation of that name and included some of the mountainous region of the modern Kurdish Autonomous Zone of Iraq. Besides forming stronger ties with the Israelis, the Kurds have cultivated goodwill with the Sunni Arabs by sheltering the Iraqi Vice-President (a Sunni) from the Iraqi central government (dominated by Shiite Moslems whose religion ties them to Shiite Iran) which wanted to arrest the Sunni Vice-President of Iraq.
Given that the Turkish leadership is becoming ever-more hostile towards Israel, it makes sense for the Israelis to strengthen ties with the Kurds, who have a long enmity with the Turks. Previous posts have cited Zechariah 12:2-3 which prophesies that God will protect “Judah and Jerusalem” (the Israelis/Jews) “though all the people of the earth be gathered against it.” Notice that while this prophecy allows for such an extreme outcome in the latter days, it does not actually predict that all nations will be allied against Judah in the latter days. Indeed, I expect the Israelis to be closely allied with the western alliance of “Israel” (the ten tribes of Israel) that will attacked by the Gog-Magog alliance at the very end of our “latter day” age.
Personally, I think the Israeli efforts to form alliances with as many other nations as they can is motivated not just by their natural regional security interests and a common fear of Iran, but a sense of urgency created by the Obama administration’s oft-reported unfriendly relations toward the Israelis. There is no shortage of media reports about the very chilly relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel. Inadvertently, Obama’s enmity toward the Israelis may be contributing to the growing list of Israeli’s regional allies.
