In 2022, I Was Deported From Kurdistan.

Like the Jews Before Me, I Was Told to Leave and Not Return.

By Levi Meir Clancy.

"You cannot enter. You must leave. You will never see your home again."

These words, delivered in the sterile confines of Erbil International Airport, shattered eight years of my life in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where I had been living since 2014.

When I first visited the Kurdistan Region of Iraq at nineteen years old, I was a tourist. I saw a land brimming with potential, a place where flags waved defiantly and dreams of independence danced in the air. Four years later, I returned, eager to be part of something bigger than myself.

To be clear, I am not Kurdish. My father’s side is Ryukyuan, an East Asian ethnic group indigenous to the Ryukyu Islands near the Japanese mainland and Taiwan. About a third of us were killed during World War II and our land remains under United States military occupation. I grew up with an acute awareness of what it means to be part of a displaced and marginalized people. Being Jewish on my mother’s side only deepened that sensitivity. I felt a deep solidarity with minorities struggling to survive in majoritarian systems. Kurdistan, I believed, was a place where I could live with integrity, create change, and build my future. 

In the beginning, life in Erbil was everything I wanted and more. I made friends, found work, and bought an apartment. I worked tirelessly to make my future there a reality. I was also fascinated by Kurdish attitudes towards Jewish people. Whenever I first met a Kurdish person, their supposed love of Jews and Israel dazzled me. I often heard nostalgic stories about Jewish neighbors, Jewish classmates, or Jewish shop owners from decades past.

But beneath that nostalgia, other layers would inevitably emerge. Conversations would drift into familiar and unsettling territory; conspiracies about Jews hiding gold in old neighborhoods and how they would someday return en masse to retrieve it, or accusations that Jews fled out of greed, despite having good lives in Iraq. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion would be mentioned, and when I tried to explain it was a hoax, my unease was taken as evidence that I was involved in a cover-up.  Some admired Adolf Hitler and minimized the Holocaust. More times than I can count, I would hear about how Jews are a great people, despite controlling the Islamic State and other evils. These contradictions never resolved — they simply coexisted.

It was impossible to visit a village or town without local Muslims or Christians showing me evidence of the Jewish past. There is a neighborhood in Sulaymaniyah still known as the Jewish Quarter, even though no Jews have lived there for generations. Nonetheless, locals declared that Jews were welcome to come back any time. I met many younger people with a fanciful, aestheticized concept of Jewishness. Within a few short years, a mythological Jewish connection could form around any abandoned old building even if the stories were demonstrably false. When I did find any truth, it was usually much more grim and hidden. “We had a Jewish cemetery here,” a man proudly said to me in Duhok, pointing to a parking lot.

On my first visit to Israel, I met Fanya, who had left Lithuania decades ago but recently went back for a visit. She had been shocked to find a major cultural shift, with many Lithuanians now eager to show off Jewish heritage sites. “It has become fashionable,” she explained with a tone of bewilderment. “People love Jews when there are none left.” I realized that this was also what I felt in Kurdistan.

To more deeply understand what I was encountering, I turned to the work of Dr. Mordechai Zaken, a historian of Kurdish Jews and a Kurdish Jew himself. He explained that while Kurdish Jews lived in Iraqi Kurdistan, they had lived under a system of protection, not equality. Their safety had depended on the goodwill of tribal leaders, a fickle patronage that could vanish with shifting political winds. I recognized that  same precariousness in my daily life in Kurdistan, even if it was better than most other parts of the Middle East.

Still, I did not want to leave. I tried to root myself in cultural work, focusing on Jewish history in a place where no Jewish families remained. I collected Judeo-Arabic books published in Baghdad, deportation papers, and other objects and remnants of Jewish life. I hosted seminars and exhibits and found audiences among local Kurdish Muslims who were eager to learn more. 

This advocacy brought me into contact with ARCH, an organization restoring the crumbling Shrine of the Prophet Nahum in Alqosh. I was brought on for a consulting and documentation role, and at first, it felt like a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The Kurdistan Region’s top political figures supported the work, too, which gave me immense hope. 

But soon, cracks began to form. A Muslim man posing as a “Jewish representative” was appointed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs to run an asylum scam for people claiming to be long-lost Jews. The fraudsters claimed the shrine belonged to them and constantly tried to interfere with the renovation. Soon, the mayor of Alqosh herself claimed direct ownership of the shrine and limited access to potential pilgrims. Even when Jewish heritage was treated as valuable, actual Jews themselves were  aggressively marginalized.

During my visits to Israel, I would walk the streets of mixed cities, surrounded by Arabs, Jews, Muslims, and Christians sharing the same space — and then return with whiplash to Erbil, where not a single Jewish family remained. Of course, while there were no Jews left in Kurdistan, there were hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel whose families had fled from there. When I met them, their reactions to my living in Kurdistan varied. Some recoiled at the mention of the place, and urged me to leave. 

In some cases, I met Kurdish Jews who celebrated the mutual allyship they had found with Kurdish Muslims on social media. Among them, a few expressed a deep nostalgia for Kurdistan. They spoke of Kurdistan as a place where, despite real hardship, their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had lived meaningful and dignified lives. Whenever I mentioned antisemitism I had encountered, they bristled, some even becoming defensive and accusing me of distorting their truth. I came to understand that for many, acknowledging these realities felt like airing dirty laundry, risking the fragile bridges they were trying to build. Yet when it came to actually planning a trip to visit Kurdistan, they would hesitate: “It’s not the right time.” Even their beautiful nostalgia could not overcome the reality. 

Most Kurdish Jews I met, though, had no nostalgia. They would ask about what it was like to live in Erbil, and about the villages and towns their grandparents came from. Many of them were curious about visiting, but very few ever made the trip. Their language, customs, memories, and faith had moved with them. Kurdistan, for them, was a closed chapter.

I recall one woman I met in 2022 at a dinner party in the United States; she was older, an Iraqi Jew. When she learned I would be flying back to Erbil in a few days, she pulled me aside. “Please,” she said, “don’t go back. You don’t have to get on that plane.” I reassured her that I would be fine; after all, I had lived there for eight years already.

A few days later, I flew back to Kurdistan and arrived at Erbil International Airport. A passport control officer asked me the usual questions.And then, the conversation shifted. He asked me to explain my ancestry, and asked if I was Jewish. I answered honestly. A few minutes later, guards detained me. 

Through an open door, I could see an official speaking intently on the phone. During my detainment, I explained that my documents were fully in order, and the official I spoke to confirmed this was true. Within a day, armed guards at Erbil International Airport escorted me onto a plane out of the country. 

Earlier in my detainment, I sent updates to trusted contacts, still hoping it was a misunderstanding. Many of them had once shared meals in my home, assuring me that Jews were welcome in Kurdistan. I reached out to the Ministry of Awqaf, the Director of Coexistence, the Kurdistan Region’s U.S. offices, and officials familiar with my residency. One by one, they responded coldly. The decision was final. “Safe travels,” one diplomat said—curt and unmistakably final.

It had been over seven years since I moved to Erbil, which was enough time to realize I had arrived during a rare, brief window when Jewish presence was uncontroversial enough to go undisturbed. At that time, visibly Jewish tourists were still unheard of, and most Kurdish people were keen to convey a kind, moderate, and hospitable image to anyone who made the effort to visit.

But during the year before my deportation, I had begun to feel that things were changing. Officials had previously promised that the Kurdistan Region’s diversity was backed by a government committed to coexistence. These same officials had grown distant at the same time that threats, harassment, and hate incidents against Jewish visitors and Jewish sites were rising for reasons no one would explain.

After my deportation, I received some additional insight through informal channels. One of my close friends in a government security role told me that I was deported for being a “security threat”. A Jewish influencer who had visited the Kurdistan Region in the past told me that some of his visibly Jewish friends had also recently been denied entry at the airport. The official reason on my deportation documents was: “Entry denied. Blacklisted.”

What claim did I really have to a home where no Kurdish Jews remained? Why did I believe I could be the exception? In hindsight, I had allowed myself to believe in the fantasy of return. I thought I could revive what generations of Jews before me had been forced to abandon– a presence, a connection, a sense of continuity in this land. Standing on the other side, I was forced to see things clearly. Kurdistan’s chapter of Jewish life was remembered with reverence– spoken of with pride, pointed out to visitors, and preserved in stories– so long as it stayed in the past. ◦

Levi Meir Clancy spent nearly eight years in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where he devoted his personal time to organizing cultural events and walking tours, and volunteering for the late Kurdish Jewish researcher Dr. Mordechai Zaken. He now lives in the Bay Area and works for a Jewish social services organization.