The description of one ethnic group as being 'the new Jews' or the 'new Irish' or more recently the 'new Palestinians' has never appealed to me but I think I can recall hearing or reading the Kurds described as the former and possibly the latter during the time when they were a semi-cause on the left in Britain and elsewhere.

Of course as we know the Kurds lost that 'favoured oppressed nation status' when they committed the unforgivable crime of failing to oppose the overthrowing of a fascist dictator who had gassed and massacred their women and children. Suddenly the Kurds were something of an embarassment for the anti-war left. Indeed some even felt betrayed by the Kurds' support for their own liberation.

That process of transformation of the status of the Kurds in the eyes of the Stopper left is completed by one paragraph from Tariq Ali in the Guardian today...