Baku To The Future: Azerbaijan, Not Armenia, Is Israel’s True Ally

BAKU TO THE FUTURE: AZERBAIJAN, NOT ARMENIA, IS ISRAEL’S TRUE ALLY

Ha’aretz, Israel
Oct 29 2014

While Armenia continues to spout anti-Semitic bile, the Azeri
government has proven itself to be a trustworthy and important partner
for the Jewish state.

By Maxime Gauin and Alexander Murinson | Oct. 29, 2014 | 3:11 PM

Yair Auron’s op-ed (‘Israel must not sell arms to the Azeris’) is a
strange mixture of baseless accusations, absurd parallels and selective
indignation. Auron argues that Israel should not sell weapons to its
key ally in the neighborhood, namely Azerbaijan, which is accused of
‘genocide’ or genocidal desires against the Armenians, nothing less.

The very notion of Israel’s national interest is absent from the
article. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between
Israel and the newly independent Azerbaijan in 1991, the relationship
has improved consistently. Now 40 percent of the oil consumed in
Israel comes from Azerbaijan, a crucial client for Israeli high-tech
industries. Meanwhile, the Armenian government has established close
relations with the Iranian mullahs.

As relations between Israel and Azerbaijan have improved, anti-Semitic
diatribes appear more regularly in Armenian domestic and diaspora
publications, in which Israel and Jews are vilified and demonized.

Armenia has become a virtually mono-ethnic country, thriving on a
daily diet of virulent nationalism bordering on racism. Already back
in the 1970s and 1980s, members of the Armenian Secret Army for the
Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) terrorist group trained at Palestinian
bases in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, shoulder-to-shoulder with the
inglorious Black September, who attacked the Israeli delegation at
the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.

Auron’s description of Azerbaijan is virtually the opposite of the
truth. In this country, Jews and Christians – including Azerbaijani
Armenians – enjoy equal rights with the Muslim majority. The recent
conflict began in 1987, when Azeris were expelled from Armenia and the
autonomous Karabakh region. In 1992, the newly independent Armenia,
having secured the support of Russia and the nationalist organizations
of the Armenian diaspora, attacked Azerbaijan and conquered 20 percent
of its territory – not only Karabakh but also seven districts with
an overwhelming Azeri majority. All the Azeris were expelled or
massacred. In the town of Khodjaly, more than 600 Azeri civilians
were systematically exterminated by Armenian armed forces.

Under these conditions, it is no surprise that war rhetoric
continues in Azerbaijan (think of France between 1871 and 1914,
when Alsace-Lorraine was occupied by Germany) – but there is no
state-sponsored racism, no concentration camps and, of course, no
gas chambers. The Azerbaijani government has always made clear that
it prefers a peaceful solution to retake the territories illegally
occupied by Armenia. The comparison with Nazi Germany is absurd.

It is even more absurd when you consider the current official ideology
in Armenia: The Republican Party, which has ruled since 1998, openly
claims its fidelity to Garegin Nzhdeh (1886-1955), a leader of the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Considering that supporting Hitler
from another country was good but insufficient, Nzhdeh went to Germany
at the beginning of World War II and became a member of the Armenian
National Council, established in 1942 with the blessing of Alfred
Rosenberg, Hitler’s minister for the eastern occupied territories.

Several places received the name of Nzhdeh after independence,
including a metro station. You can also find in Armenia the monument
of Drastamat Kanayan (‘Dro’), a partner of Nzhdeh who led the 812th
Armenian battalion of the Wehrmacht and also worked as an agent of
the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service. Luckier (and
maybe more organized) than Nzhdeh (who died in a Soviet prison), Dro
escaped the Soviets and became a CIA agent to secure American support.

The media supporting the current Armenian government and the ARF
largely use anti-Semitic rhetoric against those Armenians who do not
share their views. Anti-Semitic expressions are recurrent in Armenia
today. The only monument in the country dedicated to the Holocaust has
been repeatedly vandalized, but the perpetrators were never arrested.

Another striking example is the virtual impunity of the neo-Nazi
Union of Armenian Aryans.

In short, Auron is totally wrong: wrong in terms of Israel’s national
interests, wrong about Azerbaijan and wrong about Armenia.

Yair Auron’s column “Israel must not sell arms to the Azeris” can be
read at

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress