Israel, the US and others should respond with the unilateral recognition of Kurdistan (and call for restitution by Turkey for their 20th Century genocide.)
Thanks Khaled: "Very few, if any, can show such a moral, historical, and comparative clarity as Daniel. Read it now and share it widely. France, UK, US and every other government punished the Kurds in Iraq after the 2017 democratic referendum to find out if they wished to negotiate their independence from Iraq. They were punished by these government for holding a democratic vote! As a result of that punishment they lost half their territory!"
A very good point . The Kurds have been promised and have contributed mightily to the western cause over the years . They have proved that they can administer cities and land effectively . Turkey , Iran , Syria and Iraq have all assisted the terrorist cause , hence deserve to be punished by losing land .
This makes sense and would bring a substantial pro western state into being - supporting terrorism by creating a secure terrorist base in the middle east at the expense of a close ally makes no sense at all . In fact , it is a folly of gargantuan proportions .
And if international justice is on the table , the UN ought to recognise Tibet’s and Taiwan’s claims to independence and sovereignty .
Im just getting back to Substack from my summer sabbatical. I see that you keep the conversation civil with people like Robert. Very commendable of you. I will be following these events closely. When we first started speaking around three years ago, following the Oct 7th massacre, I mentioned to you that phrase being shouted. From the Rver to the Sea, it will belong to all Israeli's. I stand by that statement more so today than ever before.
Ah. Like in macro finance it is impossible to predict the future so it is with history, i suggest. Nations, in this case "important ones" have shown their hands. Prematurely. The war is not yet finished. If nothing else Israel learns from its, lets call them mistakes. And will come out stronger. I make no predictions other that to confidently say they will be the ultimate winners. And to further clarify, the losers will be the palestinians whoever they are and the Europeans.
Too bad the Kurds didn’t have Jews as their enemy. Then the world would embrace them.
And while we’re talking about the UK maybe since Starmer is recognizing fictitious countries he should give northern Ireland back to the Irish and Scotland to the Scots. He could also divest the UK of any remains of the commonwealth at all.
👏👏👏 Daniel, you’ve done it again with another tour de force of an article that every westerner needs to read! This is the appropriate response to Britain, Canada and Australia embarrassing themselves by recognizing the non-existent Palestinian state. Here’s the thing guys you aren’t helping the long suffering Palestinian people by doing this, you’re helping Iran and it’s proxies. This is also all performative nonsense that is being done for political reasons. The Palestinian Arabs had the chance to have a state of their own several times and turned it down because they refused to live in peace alongside the Jews of the holy land. In 1936, 1947, 1993, 2000, 2008, and 2021. They said no to ALL of them! Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak bent over backwards at Camp David to give Yasser Arafat everything he wanted and more: most of the West Bank, most of Gaza and compensating land in Israel and East Jerusalem as the new state’s capital. Arafat said no and walked away.
The Palestinian leadership under Fatah and Hamas seek the destruction of Israel not a state for themselves. There should be no recognition of a Palestinian state until the Palestinians recognize Israel and Hamas unconditionally surrenders and hands over the hostages. Keir Starmer, Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese closely resemble Neville Chamberlain in his knowing capitulation to Hitler at Munich in 1938. Guess what guys? Most Brits, Canadians and Australians oppose the recognition of a Palestinian state! The silent majority of folks in these nations do NOT favor creating such a state and rewarding Jihadists who are celebrating this moment right now, make no mistake about it.
The response from the United States and Israel should be to recognized an independent state of Kurdistan which is LONG overdue. The Kurds have been loyal allies to the U.S., the West and Israel for decades and have created an oasis of prosperity and gender equality in the Middle East in their semiautonomous zone in Northern Iraq. Why aren’t Starmer, Carney and Albanese celebrating the Kurds every chance they get and recognizing a state for them? It’s because there’s nothing to be gained from it politically. But it is what the United States and Israel should do. The Kurds are being forcibly removed from their land in Northern Syria right now by Ahmad Al-Sharaa’s Jihadist government. They historically have been persecuted by Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran and continue to be to this day. The Nakba on the other hand, was the fault of Palestinian leadership and the Arab countries. How about actually helping a persecuted group?
It’s time for a change in all three of these countries! I call for the election of Kemi Badenoch as Prime Minister of Britain, Pierre Poilivere as Prime Minister of Canada and Sussan Ley as Prime Minister of Australia! I call on them to withdrawal immediately, their recognition of a Palestinian state. The United Nations should immediately pass a resolution recognizing a state of Kurdistan. The EU parliament should pass a resolution doing so as well. All western leaders should sign a declaration calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state on the following conditions:
1) The new state must be a secular, liberal democracy with equal rights for all.
2) Hamas must unconditionally surrender and release every single hostage to a neutral country or an NGO.
3) Hamas will go into exile to whatever Arab country will have them.
4) UNRWA will be totally abolished.
5) The Palestinians must forever give up on the full right of return.
6) The new Palestinian state will be demilitarized.
7) The new Palestinian state will immediately join the Abraham Accords.
8) All Palestinians living abroad will immediately be extended citizenship in their respective countries.
9) The Palestinians will officially apologize for October 7th.
10) The Palestinians will officially recognize Israel’s right to exist.
So many things wrong here: clearly super one-sided despite a laudable nod to the Kurds. Yes, it’s true that in 1947 the UN proposed partition and the Jewish Agency accepted while Arab leaders rejected, but to treat that as the end of the story is simplistic — especially given the massive imbalance in population, land allocation, and subsequent wars (Jews had risen from ~5% of the population in the late 19th century to over 40% by 1947, largely through immigration waves and land purchases that inevitably displaced others). You also ignore how Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank (illegal under international law), decades of military occupation, and the humanitarian toll on civilians in Gaza (blockade, repeated bombardments, tens of thousands displaced) shape the conflict today, which weakens your moral authority. At the same time, it’s fair to stress that Palestinian leadership has been dysfunctional and often violent (Hamas’s authoritarianism, corruption within the PA, rejection of coexistence), and that Hamas rule in Gaza has been catastrophic. But dysfunction is not the measure of a state’s right to exist (Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, even pre-1990 South Africa were recognized despite appalling governance). That’s the core weakness: selective history, sweeping generalisations, and total lack of empathy for ordinary Palestinians make your essay far more a polemic than a serious argument.
Thank-you. I would like to narrow our personal debate to your claim that a state's right to exist is not based on governance. Firstly, some nations just exist as a matter of fact, so whatever my beliefs about them and legitimacy, it will make no difference.
Here, however, we, in the nations of the Crown, are deciding whether to actively recognise a State which currently doesn't exist and doesn't exhibit any of the features of a State. Leaving aside the point about whether any State should be recognised that is un-State-like de facto, our recognition should be based whether that State fulfills OUR values of legitimacy. In the Anglo-West, that is based on the writings of John Locke and the social contract. For a political unit to be legitimate, it must be limited to protecting the rights of all individual citizens to life, liberty and property. Otherwise it's a tyranny. Given that no conceivable Palestinian government, Fatah, Hamas or otherwise, is willing or capable of protecting these rights, then it is an illegitimate polity that will inevitably breach natural law. Why should we recognise a State that is illegitimate according to our view of political legitimacy? The answer: we have no reason to do so.
By contrast Kurdistan is entirely legitimate according to our conception, we promised its creation in a treaty, we recognised it way back when in 1927 and it was a crucial ally in a recent war. So, sorry, the Kurds deserve a State FAR more than Palestine. Join me in our unilateral recognition. Symbolic fairy land recognitions are in vogue after all.
I don’t think you can choose when and when not to apply the Lockian yardstick, and philosophical idealism aside, the reality is the Palestinians are far from having an ounce of a chance at self-determination. Ultimately recognition of a state for them is an act of politics, a way to give them some bargaining power in their one-sided struggle, and an attempt to do something when we all know there is every likelihood of continued misery and suffering for the vast majority of Palestinians. That is not because they are uniquely incapable as a people, but because decades of occupation, displacement, weak and often corrupt leadership, and the entrenchment of militant actors like Hamas have created a situation where no “Lockean” state can possibly emerge.
Recognition in this case is not an endorsement of Hamas or Fatah, nor a declaration that the institutions of Palestine are just, democratic or stable. It is an acknowledgment that millions of people live without meaningful sovereignty, under permanent occupation, and with no realistic prospect of political agency. To dismiss their demand for recognition because their leadership is flawed is to hold them to a standard that we have never applied consistently elsewhere.
The difference is that in Palestine, recognition functions less as a philosophical judgment than as a practical tool: a means of keeping alive the possibility of negotiation, of giving ordinary Palestinians a sliver of hope that their suffering is visible, and of maintaining some balance in an otherwise entirely one-sided conflict. Recognition does not absolve Palestinians of the need for reform, nor does it erase the failures and cruelties of their leadership. But to say they must be denied recognition until they produce a model liberal democracy is, in practice, to say they will never be recognised at all.
The UN may have recognised a new Arab state in 1947, which never materialised, but let’s not forget the creation of Iraq, Syria, Transjordan and Lebanon, from the demise of the Ottoman Empire after World War One.
Transjordan (the real second state in any two state solution) was created in 1922, a nation which accounts for 78% of what was British Mandated Palestine.
It’s strange how the UN has the authority to carve a state out of other people’s country especially after grotesque terrorist activities leading up to it. Yet when that same body makes pronouncements that state created from terrorism can blithely ignore them (eg SC 242). If SC 242 is invalid then so is the partition. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
Pakistan was created in the same fashion in the same circumstances in nearly the same year. Yet no-one questions her existence or talks of refugees. I wonder why?
I assume you are making a joke. The majority of people within the borders of what was then West Pakistan had been there for centuries. No one objects because there is nothing to object to. The circumstances are incommensurate with one another.
The UN then and the UN have nothing in common. Back then the UN had a leading role in the Korean War against the Soviets! It tried to uphold principles and maintain the peace led by the US.
But it isn't about the UN anyway. The point I am making is the Jews and the West recognised Palestine. The Arabs of Palestine - then know as the "Arabs" - didn't. This is just a repetition. When the Palestine recognises itself, there will be peace.
Also, on having one's cake and eating it, I assume that this is the end of the refugee issue. If WB/Gaza are Palestine and Palestine is a State, then you cannot be a refugee in you own State. If you can then I guess I am a refugee due to the house prices in SE England.
Complete nonsense. Did it occur to you that the UN charter is a continuity? Israel and its supporters need to start being honest with themselves. The country was forged in a grotesque crucible of unspeakable acts. Its existence is a fait accompli now but it has gone rogue. It has become a psychopathic state which is replicating the despicable conduct of the Nazis. The claim of victimhood now rings hollow.
It will find out soon enough that Israel needs the world rather more than the world needs Israel.
Thanks Khaled: "Very few, if any, can show such a moral, historical, and comparative clarity as Daniel. Read it now and share it widely. France, UK, US and every other government punished the Kurds in Iraq after the 2017 democratic referendum to find out if they wished to negotiate their independence from Iraq. They were punished by these government for holding a democratic vote! As a result of that punishment they lost half their territory!"
A very good point . The Kurds have been promised and have contributed mightily to the western cause over the years . They have proved that they can administer cities and land effectively . Turkey , Iran , Syria and Iraq have all assisted the terrorist cause , hence deserve to be punished by losing land .
This makes sense and would bring a substantial pro western state into being - supporting terrorism by creating a secure terrorist base in the middle east at the expense of a close ally makes no sense at all . In fact , it is a folly of gargantuan proportions .
And if international justice is on the table , the UN ought to recognise Tibet’s and Taiwan’s claims to independence and sovereignty .
An excellent set of comments. 100% agree.
The UN is bullshyte.
Hi Daniel.
Im just getting back to Substack from my summer sabbatical. I see that you keep the conversation civil with people like Robert. Very commendable of you. I will be following these events closely. When we first started speaking around three years ago, following the Oct 7th massacre, I mentioned to you that phrase being shouted. From the Rver to the Sea, it will belong to all Israeli's. I stand by that statement more so today than ever before.
Am Yisrael Chai
Thank you.
Ah. Like in macro finance it is impossible to predict the future so it is with history, i suggest. Nations, in this case "important ones" have shown their hands. Prematurely. The war is not yet finished. If nothing else Israel learns from its, lets call them mistakes. And will come out stronger. I make no predictions other that to confidently say they will be the ultimate winners. And to further clarify, the losers will be the palestinians whoever they are and the Europeans.
Too bad the Kurds didn’t have Jews as their enemy. Then the world would embrace them.
And while we’re talking about the UK maybe since Starmer is recognizing fictitious countries he should give northern Ireland back to the Irish and Scotland to the Scots. He could also divest the UK of any remains of the commonwealth at all.
An excellent article.
Thanks.
👏👏👏 Daniel, you’ve done it again with another tour de force of an article that every westerner needs to read! This is the appropriate response to Britain, Canada and Australia embarrassing themselves by recognizing the non-existent Palestinian state. Here’s the thing guys you aren’t helping the long suffering Palestinian people by doing this, you’re helping Iran and it’s proxies. This is also all performative nonsense that is being done for political reasons. The Palestinian Arabs had the chance to have a state of their own several times and turned it down because they refused to live in peace alongside the Jews of the holy land. In 1936, 1947, 1993, 2000, 2008, and 2021. They said no to ALL of them! Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak bent over backwards at Camp David to give Yasser Arafat everything he wanted and more: most of the West Bank, most of Gaza and compensating land in Israel and East Jerusalem as the new state’s capital. Arafat said no and walked away.
The Palestinian leadership under Fatah and Hamas seek the destruction of Israel not a state for themselves. There should be no recognition of a Palestinian state until the Palestinians recognize Israel and Hamas unconditionally surrenders and hands over the hostages. Keir Starmer, Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese closely resemble Neville Chamberlain in his knowing capitulation to Hitler at Munich in 1938. Guess what guys? Most Brits, Canadians and Australians oppose the recognition of a Palestinian state! The silent majority of folks in these nations do NOT favor creating such a state and rewarding Jihadists who are celebrating this moment right now, make no mistake about it.
The response from the United States and Israel should be to recognized an independent state of Kurdistan which is LONG overdue. The Kurds have been loyal allies to the U.S., the West and Israel for decades and have created an oasis of prosperity and gender equality in the Middle East in their semiautonomous zone in Northern Iraq. Why aren’t Starmer, Carney and Albanese celebrating the Kurds every chance they get and recognizing a state for them? It’s because there’s nothing to be gained from it politically. But it is what the United States and Israel should do. The Kurds are being forcibly removed from their land in Northern Syria right now by Ahmad Al-Sharaa’s Jihadist government. They historically have been persecuted by Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran and continue to be to this day. The Nakba on the other hand, was the fault of Palestinian leadership and the Arab countries. How about actually helping a persecuted group?
It’s time for a change in all three of these countries! I call for the election of Kemi Badenoch as Prime Minister of Britain, Pierre Poilivere as Prime Minister of Canada and Sussan Ley as Prime Minister of Australia! I call on them to withdrawal immediately, their recognition of a Palestinian state. The United Nations should immediately pass a resolution recognizing a state of Kurdistan. The EU parliament should pass a resolution doing so as well. All western leaders should sign a declaration calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state on the following conditions:
1) The new state must be a secular, liberal democracy with equal rights for all.
2) Hamas must unconditionally surrender and release every single hostage to a neutral country or an NGO.
3) Hamas will go into exile to whatever Arab country will have them.
4) UNRWA will be totally abolished.
5) The Palestinians must forever give up on the full right of return.
6) The new Palestinian state will be demilitarized.
7) The new Palestinian state will immediately join the Abraham Accords.
8) All Palestinians living abroad will immediately be extended citizenship in their respective countries.
9) The Palestinians will officially apologize for October 7th.
10) The Palestinians will officially recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Wonderful Idea
Thanks Nurit
"The best take yet"
- Thank-you Brian Jones
"The best take yet"
- Thank-you Brian Jones
So many things wrong here: clearly super one-sided despite a laudable nod to the Kurds. Yes, it’s true that in 1947 the UN proposed partition and the Jewish Agency accepted while Arab leaders rejected, but to treat that as the end of the story is simplistic — especially given the massive imbalance in population, land allocation, and subsequent wars (Jews had risen from ~5% of the population in the late 19th century to over 40% by 1947, largely through immigration waves and land purchases that inevitably displaced others). You also ignore how Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank (illegal under international law), decades of military occupation, and the humanitarian toll on civilians in Gaza (blockade, repeated bombardments, tens of thousands displaced) shape the conflict today, which weakens your moral authority. At the same time, it’s fair to stress that Palestinian leadership has been dysfunctional and often violent (Hamas’s authoritarianism, corruption within the PA, rejection of coexistence), and that Hamas rule in Gaza has been catastrophic. But dysfunction is not the measure of a state’s right to exist (Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, even pre-1990 South Africa were recognized despite appalling governance). That’s the core weakness: selective history, sweeping generalisations, and total lack of empathy for ordinary Palestinians make your essay far more a polemic than a serious argument.
Thank-you. I would like to narrow our personal debate to your claim that a state's right to exist is not based on governance. Firstly, some nations just exist as a matter of fact, so whatever my beliefs about them and legitimacy, it will make no difference.
Here, however, we, in the nations of the Crown, are deciding whether to actively recognise a State which currently doesn't exist and doesn't exhibit any of the features of a State. Leaving aside the point about whether any State should be recognised that is un-State-like de facto, our recognition should be based whether that State fulfills OUR values of legitimacy. In the Anglo-West, that is based on the writings of John Locke and the social contract. For a political unit to be legitimate, it must be limited to protecting the rights of all individual citizens to life, liberty and property. Otherwise it's a tyranny. Given that no conceivable Palestinian government, Fatah, Hamas or otherwise, is willing or capable of protecting these rights, then it is an illegitimate polity that will inevitably breach natural law. Why should we recognise a State that is illegitimate according to our view of political legitimacy? The answer: we have no reason to do so.
By contrast Kurdistan is entirely legitimate according to our conception, we promised its creation in a treaty, we recognised it way back when in 1927 and it was a crucial ally in a recent war. So, sorry, the Kurds deserve a State FAR more than Palestine. Join me in our unilateral recognition. Symbolic fairy land recognitions are in vogue after all.
I don’t think you can choose when and when not to apply the Lockian yardstick, and philosophical idealism aside, the reality is the Palestinians are far from having an ounce of a chance at self-determination. Ultimately recognition of a state for them is an act of politics, a way to give them some bargaining power in their one-sided struggle, and an attempt to do something when we all know there is every likelihood of continued misery and suffering for the vast majority of Palestinians. That is not because they are uniquely incapable as a people, but because decades of occupation, displacement, weak and often corrupt leadership, and the entrenchment of militant actors like Hamas have created a situation where no “Lockean” state can possibly emerge.
Recognition in this case is not an endorsement of Hamas or Fatah, nor a declaration that the institutions of Palestine are just, democratic or stable. It is an acknowledgment that millions of people live without meaningful sovereignty, under permanent occupation, and with no realistic prospect of political agency. To dismiss their demand for recognition because their leadership is flawed is to hold them to a standard that we have never applied consistently elsewhere.
The difference is that in Palestine, recognition functions less as a philosophical judgment than as a practical tool: a means of keeping alive the possibility of negotiation, of giving ordinary Palestinians a sliver of hope that their suffering is visible, and of maintaining some balance in an otherwise entirely one-sided conflict. Recognition does not absolve Palestinians of the need for reform, nor does it erase the failures and cruelties of their leadership. But to say they must be denied recognition until they produce a model liberal democracy is, in practice, to say they will never be recognised at all.
I’m a big fan of Pierre Poilivere. I don’t think I spelled that correctly.
The UN may have recognised a new Arab state in 1947, which never materialised, but let’s not forget the creation of Iraq, Syria, Transjordan and Lebanon, from the demise of the Ottoman Empire after World War One.
Transjordan (the real second state in any two state solution) was created in 1922, a nation which accounts for 78% of what was British Mandated Palestine.
Starmer is of NO interest
https://youtu.be/HTfOVFwMRg4?si=a3ymA0SQlOomiXNZ
It’s strange how the UN has the authority to carve a state out of other people’s country especially after grotesque terrorist activities leading up to it. Yet when that same body makes pronouncements that state created from terrorism can blithely ignore them (eg SC 242). If SC 242 is invalid then so is the partition. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
And I take it you recognise Pakistan?
I don’t recognize any country as I am not a sovereign state. But then I don’t know what you are referring to.
Did you read my essay on Edwin Samuel Montagu? Anticipating an answer in the negative I suggest you do. He was a very perceptive man.
Pakistan was created in the same fashion in the same circumstances in nearly the same year. Yet no-one questions her existence or talks of refugees. I wonder why?
I assume you are making a joke. The majority of people within the borders of what was then West Pakistan had been there for centuries. No one objects because there is nothing to object to. The circumstances are incommensurate with one another.
What Resolutions have the Palestinians complied with?
Tu Quoque fallacy. Israel and its supporters rely heavily on the legitimacy of the UN when it suits them but not when it doesn’t. Simple concept.
The UN then and the UN have nothing in common. Back then the UN had a leading role in the Korean War against the Soviets! It tried to uphold principles and maintain the peace led by the US.
But it isn't about the UN anyway. The point I am making is the Jews and the West recognised Palestine. The Arabs of Palestine - then know as the "Arabs" - didn't. This is just a repetition. When the Palestine recognises itself, there will be peace.
Also, on having one's cake and eating it, I assume that this is the end of the refugee issue. If WB/Gaza are Palestine and Palestine is a State, then you cannot be a refugee in you own State. If you can then I guess I am a refugee due to the house prices in SE England.
Complete nonsense. Did it occur to you that the UN charter is a continuity? Israel and its supporters need to start being honest with themselves. The country was forged in a grotesque crucible of unspeakable acts. Its existence is a fait accompli now but it has gone rogue. It has become a psychopathic state which is replicating the despicable conduct of the Nazis. The claim of victimhood now rings hollow.
It will find out soon enough that Israel needs the world rather more than the world needs Israel.
Read about Montagu and you will learn something.