The Jerusalem Post
Aug 14 2020
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
AUGUST 14, 2020 04:02
Between 500 and 600 Azerbaijani Jews demonstrated outside the Armenian cultural center aas well as the Armenian Church in Tel Aviv on Monday, according to the Jewish Press.
The protest was in response to a 76-year-old Azerbaijani citizen and 12 Azerbaijani servicemen being killed by Armenian mortar fire in a border skirmish after days of hostilities in the Tovuz region.
The demonstration was organized by Israeli political analyst Arye Gut, who addressed protestors saying, “we have no intentions to commit any provocations either against the Armenian cultural center nor against the Armenian church. We are immigrants from Azerbaijan, citizens of Israel—tolerant of all peoples and religions.”
He went on to say that protestors were there to “demand that Armenia comply with the UN Security Council resolutions and liberate Nagorno-Karabakh and 7 adjacent regions of Azerbaijan, and have one million Azerbaijani refugees return to their ancestral land.”
Gut spoke about the relationship between Azerbaijan and Israel saying that Armenia is trying to damage relations between Israel and Azerbaijan, but that they will not be able to because “Azerbaijan is a real strategic partner of Israel in the world.” He went on to say that “there is a 25,000-strong Jewish community in Azerbaijan. And in contrast, Armenia has almost no Jews.”
Head of the Azerbaijani House in Israel Shirin Nehamia Michaeli thanked those who supported the march and said that “in this terrible war against occupiers, Jews and Azerbaijanis have always fought together.”
Demonstrators chanted “stop the Armenian occupation” and waved Israeli and Azerbaijani flags. At one point during the protest, demonstrators blasted nationalist Azeri Turkish music, while a small group of counterprotesters blasted Armenian music from a balcony in the Armenian cultural center.
The counterprotests were drowned out by music and chants from the protestors and counterprotesters retreated into the cultural center in frustration. The demonstration ended with the playing of the Israeli and the Azerbaijani national anthems.