Armenia-Azerbaijan area
Armenia-Azerbaijan areaiStock

Background: The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement is an armistice agreement that ended the 2020 Nagomo-Karabakh war, signed on 9 November by the President of Azerbaijan, the Prime Minister of Armenia and Russian President Vladimir Putin, ending all hostilities from November 10.

The people of the Armenian Republic of Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, were indiscriminately shelled by Azerbaijan since September 27.

Artsakh is located in the South Caucasus Like the Republic of Armenia, Artskah is also landlocked and blockaded by Azerbaijan. It is also internationally unrecognized, as the totalitarian state of Azerbaijan refuses to recognize the indigenous people's right to self-determination. Azerbaijan and Turkey have chosen to attack Armenians in an attempt to exterminate us. The region is called "disputed" by some only because Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin granted it to Azerbaijan in the early 1920s, ignoring the fact that Armenians have constituted a demographic majority there for millennia.

Artsakh may be geographically far from you. Or you could consider the ongoing war irrelevant to your daily life. But for us Armenians, it is our historic, indigenous homeland. The people murdered or displaced there are our family and friends. And to our dismay, Israel is still selling and sending arms to Azerbaijan.

As an Armenian who studied in Israel and sees Israel as her second home, I am completely shocked and heartbroken.

Armenia announced last year that it decided to open an embassy in Israel. This decision was "warmly welcomed" by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But on October 1, Armenia recalled its ambassador for consultations regarding Israeli arms sales to Azerbaijan.

Meanwhile, one of the most often repeated pieces of propaganda in the media is "Armenians are antisemitic while Azerbaijan is tolerant nation."

Before the peace treaty was signed in early November, the so-called "tolerant" nation of Azerbaijan had been shelling indigenous Armenians in the Artsakh Republic for five weeks. Azeri armed forces committed war crimes. On October 19, Armenia's Human Rights Defender, Arman Tatoyan, reported that Azerbaijani forces had beheaded an Armenian soldier.

Azerbaijan also systematically engages in murderous hate speech targeting Armenians, calling us a “cancerous tumor,” a “disease” and “parasite,” among other epithets, as reported by a 2018 report entitled "Armenophobia in Azerbaijan: Organized Hate Speech and Animosity towards Armenians."

Azeri aggression against Artsakh largely destroyed this ancient homeland. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported on October 4,

"Hundreds of homes and key infrastructures like hospitals and schools have been destroyed or damaged by heavy artillery fire and by airborne attacks including missiles. Other infrastructures such as roads, electricity, gas, and communication networks have also been damaged. Families are on the move looking for safe shelter, while others have retreated underground to unheated basements sheltering day and night from violence.

"The ICRC strongly condemns the reported indiscriminate shelling and other alleged unlawful attacks using explosive weaponry in cities, towns and other populated areas, in which civilians are losing their lives and suffering terrible injuries, including life-changing ones,” said Martin Schüepp, ICRC Eurasia regional director in Geneva.

While Azerbaijan was busy murdering Armenians and destroying civilian settlements in Artsakh, it also engaged in massive propaganda against Armenians.

They often falsely call Armenians "antisemitic." Antisemitism exists in many countries to differing degrees but to call the whole of Armenia "antisemitic" is grossly and criminally misleading. This serves only one purpose: to try to justify Azeri crimes against Armenians in the eyes of Israeli public.

Actually, Armenians and Jews have a lot in common both culturally and historically.

The first contacts between Armenians and Jews date back to the antiquity. Many historians, such as the 5th-century CE Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi, held that the first appearance of Jews in Armenia occurred in the first century BCE during the rule of the Armenian King Tigran the Great. In Israel too, Armenians have had a presence for centuries. The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, located in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, was founded in 638.

Jews and Armenians are both very ancient nations. We were both expelled from our homelands. We struggled to preserve our cultures and identities. We both lost statehood hundreds of years ago, and gained it back. And we were both exposed to horrible crimes. From 1913 to 1923, Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks experienced genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turkey. As a result, both Jews and Armenians formed a large diaspora.

Twenty-six years after the Armenian Genocide, according to the official website of Yad Vashem, Armenians were among the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. “Some of them (were) motivated by the memory of the atrocities committed against them at the beginning of the 20th century. These acts of rescue took place where the Armenians fled subsequent to the genocide: Ukraine, Crimea, France, Hungary, and Austria.”

A Holocaust Memorial in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, with inscriptions in Hebrew and Armenian commemorates the victims of both the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. The inscription on the monument reads: "Live to never forget the genocide victims of the Armenian and Jewish nations." On January 23, President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian participated in the 5th World Holocaust Forum titled “Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Antisemitism” in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.

The problem in Armenia is not antisemitism. So many Armenians feel a close affinity towards the Jewish people due to our shared pain of genocide. But it is also true that there is a need in Armenia for more cultural and intellectual cooperation with Israel which would raise awareness about our similar causes and histories.

I have been teaching the Hebrew language at the Yerevan Brusov State University in Armenia since last year, and many students have demonstrated a genuine interest in learning more about the Jewish culture and Israel. This is what both nations need: more knowledge about each other and solidarity, particularly in times of war and suffering. Perceived state interests should not trump ethics and solidarity with a potential genocide victim – in this case, Armenians in Artsakh.

Yoav Loeff, an expert on Armenian language and history, was a member of the team who discovered a medieval Jewish cemetery in Eghegis, Armenia in 2000-2003. He teaches Armenian history and culture at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

"Both the Armenian and the Jewish people have a long tradition of valuing learning," Loeff said. "And both - maybe due to centuries with no self-rule and harsh historical circumstances - developed a strong tendency toward innovation and the applying of learning abilities into creative problem solving. Therefore, together with the fact that both countries have very few natural resources, I believe that Israel and Armenia can cooperate especially in fields that use more 'thinking power' than based on natural resources, for example high-tech, but also cultural exchanges and so on."

The Armenian Studies Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem keeps constant connection with the Armenian community concerning academic issues and the Armenian Genocide commemoration, noted Loeff.

"The Museum of Natural History in Jerusalem, which is located in a villa that was originally built by an Armenian in the late 19th century, holds for some years now a yearly festival dedicated to Armenian culture in cooperation with the local Armenian community and the Armenian Patriarchate," he said.

In 2019, Israeli historian professors Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi co-published an invaluable book "The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924," in which they documented Ottoman Turkey's genocide against Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks.

Sadly, the state of Israel has not yet officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. But Israel is an intellectually and culturally diverse country. Many Israeli leaders have publicly acknowledged the reality of the Armenian Genocide.

Israel’s Knesset’s (Parliament) Education, Culture, and Sports Committee announced in 2016 that it recognized the Armenian Genocide. It urged the government to formally acknowledge the crime as such.

“We must not ignore, belittle or deny this terrible genocide,” Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said. "We must disconnect the current interests, bound to this time and place, from the difficult past, of which this dark chapter is a part.”

At the January 2015 United Nations (UN) General Assembly’s Holocaust memorial, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin also recognized the Armenian Genocide, saying that "cynical accusations against Israel of genocide and war crimes harm the world body's ability to fight the real thing," Haaretz reported.

Rivlin continued:

“In 1915, the days of the Armenian Genocide, Avshalom Feinberg of the NILI underground [A Jewish spy network in Ottoman Palestine] wrote the following: ‘My teeth have been worn away by anger, who is next? I have walked on sacred and holy ground, on the road to Jerusalem, and asked myself if it is this time that we live in—1915–or in the days of Titus or Nebuchadnezzar? And I asked myself whether I may cry for the hurt of the daughter of My people alone and if Jeremiah did not shed his tears of blood also for the Armenians."

The blood of Armenians is once again shed – this time in Artsakh.

Sadly, during this excruciating period, we Armenians had not received enough solidarity from Israel, a genocide-survivor state just like Armenia.

An argument of those opposing Armenia-Israel cooperation is Armenia’s relations with Iran. Armenia's interaction with Iran, however, has been modest whereas Baku’s economic ties to Tehran run much deeper. Iran, for instance, is the sixth largest exporter of products and services to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s trade with Iran totalled $422.68 million between January and October of 2019. This was a 30.7% year-to-year increase over the corresponding period in 2018. Iranian investments in Azerbaijan currently exceed $3.4 billion.

The National Iranian Oil Company owns 10% of Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field. Over 1,000 Iranian companies currently conduct business in Azerbaijan. And approximately 250,000 Iranian tourists visit Azerbaijan each year.

As Emily Schrader, CEO of Social Lite Creative and a research fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute, points out in her article "Why Israel must stand with Armenia:"

"Those looking out for Israeli interests would rightly counter that Armenia has warm relations with Iran, but they would also do well to remember that Armenia does so only because it is isolated from all other neighbors and has no source of energy if not for Iran. Imagine if Israel worked more closely with Armenia to reduce their dependence on Iran instead of supplying arms to Azerbaijan.

"While the diplomatic situation is extremely complex, and there are strong arguments to be made on both sides, we are nothing if not a nation that can stick to its principles. The side of Turkey, Iran and Azerbaijan is not where Israel should be positioning itself, and certainly not by supplying Azerbaijan with arms used to kill Armenians. Morally, Israel must stand with Armenia, a nation with shared values and history similar to the Jewish state."

Unfortunately, this has not been the case so far. According to news reports, “While the Israeli Defense Ministry does not publish details of sales by country, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in 2016 said his country had bought $4.85 billion in defense equipment from the Jewish state."

“Since the current war in Artsakh started, I believe additional weapons were brought from Israel to Azerbaijan three times," said Anahit Khosroeva, a professor at Yerevan State University.

And sadly, the silence of much of the Israeli public and intellectuals is deafening.

On August 22, 1939, Adolf Hitler said, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

The leaders of Israel should finally declare that they do by halting arms sales to Azerbaijan. We do not know how long this treaty will hold.

Emma Avagyan is an Armenian academic researcher whose main field of interest is the Jewish history, culture and Israel. She took a BA degree from the Oriental Studies department of Yerevan State University in Armenia. She graduated from the MA program of Israel Studies at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel in 2019. She has been teaching the Hebrew language at the Yerevan Brusov State University since last year. She is currently studying at the Jewish Studies Program of Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden.