Montreal Gazette, QC, Canada
June 3 2011
Muslim Azerbaijan, Israel’s unlikely ally
Agence France-Presse June 3, 2011
BAKU, Azerbaijan – Men swathed in embroidered shawls rock back and
forth reverentially as they murmur morning prayers in Hebrew at a
smart modern synagogue built for them by the state in the heart of
Muslim Baku.
Despite Azerbaijan’s majority Shiite population, the government has
funded the construction of two new synagogues in Baku in recent years,
and maintains warm relations with Israel which have angered its
Islamic neighbour Iran.
Near the entrance to the synagogue is a photograph of the ex-Soviet
state’s powerful leader, Ilham Aliyev. According to the leader of
Baku’s Ashkenazi Jewish community, Gennady Zelmanovich, “there have
never been signs of anti-semitism in Azerbaijan.”
Some analysts suggest however that the lack of overt prejudice is
partly because the country’s Jewish population is so small as to be
virtually invisible.
Tens of thousands of Azerbaijani Jews emigrated to Israel after
independence in 1991 and only around 30,000 remain in a country which
emerged as one of the most secular in the Muslim world after decades
of Soviet rule.
Energy-rich Azerbaijan’s relationship with Israel is a pragmatic one,
based on the export of oil and the import of weapons and military
technology. Trade turnover between the two countries last year
amounted to $1.8 billion.
“Each country finds it easy to identify with the other’s geo-political
difficulties and both rank Iran as an existential security threat,”
said a diplomatic cable from the U.S. embassy in Baku published by
WikiLeaks.
The country needs Israeli weapons to help build up its military amid
its continuing conflict with Armenia over the region of Nagorny
Karabakh.
President Aliyev has vowed to win back control over Karabakh – by
force if necessary – from the ethnic Armenian separatists who seized
it during a war in the 1990s that killed an estimated 30,000 people.
Baku has bought hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of battlefield
hardware, military communications technology and unmanned drones,
according to Israeli media.
“Israel’s world-class defence industry with its relaxed attitude about
its customer base is a perfect match for Azerbaijan’s substantial
defence needs that are left largely unmet by the United States, Europe
and Russia,” the leaked U.S. embassy cable said.
Azerbaijan does not have an embassy in Israel because it does not want
to offend its Muslim partners in the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, analysts suggest, although Israel does have an embassy in
Baku and was one of the first to recognize the country’s independence.
“Israel is in need of friendly relations with Muslim countries,” said
Elhan Shainoglu, director of the Baku-based Atlas political research
centre, adding that the Jewish state also backs Azerbaijan over the
emotive issue of Nagorny Karabakh.
“Unlike in Europe, there has been no suppression of Jews in
Azerbaijan’s history, while Israel has always supported Azerbaijan’s
territorial integrity,” the analyst said.
Islamic activists however complain that while the authorities fund the
construction of synagogues, they have closed several mosques, arrested
suspected Islamists and prohibited the wearing of the hijab in schools
as part of attempts to stamp out religious extremism.
Muslim campaigners also want the Israeli embassy in Baku to be shut
down in an act of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
“We have always said that the regime in Israel is not only against
Muslims but against all of humanity,” said Akif Geydarli of the banned
Islamic Party.
“Azerbaijan’s friendship with such a country is unacceptable.”
Armenia also accuses Azerbaijan of intolerance because the country’s
large ethnic Armenian population fled when hostilities in Karabakh
began in the early 1990s amid bloody outbreaks of inter-ethnic
violence.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Muslim+Azerbaijan+Israel+unlikely+ally/4885452/story.html