PanARMENIAN.Net
Jewish community of RA: God forbid Armenia and Nagorno
Karabakh from Azeri goods
16.06.2007 15:47 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Jewish community of Armenia has published an
open latter, expressing its deep anger in it at the statements of Meir
Bruk, the Chief Rabbi of European Jews of Azerbaijan. Head of the
Jewish Community of Armenia Rimma Varzhapetyan, Chief Rabbi of Armenia
Gershon Meir Burshtein and President of `Menora’ cultural center Villy
Veiner have undersigned the latter. The PanARMENIAN.Net brings the
whole text of the letter.
`Baku based `Zerkalo’ newspaper published G. Inandj’s article in its
June 12, 2007 edition, where the other cites his interview with Meir
Bruk, the Chief Rabbi of the European Jews of Azerbaijan. The
above-mentioned article was also posted on the Internet. `Armenia is
weak spiritually and economically, since there is no place for
tolerance and indulgence there,’ these are his words, which are placed
in the preamble of the article.
`If the `opus’ were introduced only on behalf of Inandj, we would not
pay attention to it. There is a lot of dirt in Azeri press addressed
to Armenia and it is impossible to react all of them.
It is another question, when the spiritual leader of Jews of
Azerbaijan is busy with it, and not for the first time, by the way. It
is not proper for him to talk profusely about political subjects,
including the situation of Jews in Armenia and the State’s attitude
towards them. He speaks about such subjects, where he is quite an
ignoramus, of course if he does not realize a certain well-paid order
from above. However, let’s analyze concrete statements made by
Mr. Bruk.
1…’Heidar Aliev is the author of the modern ideology of tolerance in
the process of building the state,’ end of the quote. It looks like,
because of his young age or may be inadequate education Mr. Bruk does
not remember or does not know that continuing the policy of his
predecessors on the leading posts of the country the `father of
tolerance’ used to do everything in order to make minority nations
(fortunately, significantly lesser the Jews) either fully assimilate
or leave their original places of residence. Let us not go into
details. But it would be good if Mr. Bruk familiarized himself with
statistic data on population of Azerbaijan at the moment, when the
republic was first established at the beginning of the last century
and now.
Where are the greater part of Lezghins, Ayrums, Karapapakhs, Kurds,
Tats, Talyshs and other national minorities of Azerbaijan, not to
mention the Armenians of Nakhichevan? Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh
would suffer the same fate, Nagorno Karabakh, which Mr. Bruk calls on
to return Azerbaijan. Or may be Mr. Bruk is not aware of Heidar
Aliev’s statement when he occupied the post of the First Secretary of
the Communist Party. Then he said that one of his major goals on the
post of the First Secretary was to liberate Karabakh from
Armenians. Not so bad `father of tolerance’. And today we witness the
`tolerance policy’ carried out by the successor of the father, Ilham
Aliev. As a vivid example is the cruel murder of the Armenian officer
in Hungary by idiot Safarov, who has become a national hero in
Azerbaijan. Fortunately, the world community has adequately condemned
this act of violence.
For Mr. Bruk to know, even during the heaviest times of the community
regime Armenia was among the few republics, where there wasn’t any
place for anti-Semitism and where people treated well the national
minorities -Russians, Jews, Kurds, Ezyds, Greeks, Assyrians and other
nations, among them Azeris.
And verbiage of Bruk that there are few Jews in Armenia because there
aren’t any conditions for national and religions tolerance in that
country, are at least illiteracy. Even if we take the figure (200)
presented by Mr. Bruk for the Jewish population of Armenia, which he
has spun out of thin air, it does not speak in his favor. How can we
understand the fact that in case of actual absence of Jews in Armenia
and national and religious tolerance there are officially registered
four Jewish public, religious and cultural organizations in the
republic, which are recognized by all world Jewish organizations. Here
we have a working synagogue headed by the Chief Rabbi of Armenia. The
Chief Rabbi of Azerbaijan must know this fact taking into account his
the post he occupies.
2… `Armenians see the economic and political prosperity of
Azerbaijan and there is nothing left for them than to take that model
as an example’, end of quotation. Not so bad example. Only a quite
waning man may think that Armenia or another country may take as an
example the political model of Azerbaijan. Doesn’t Mr. Bruk know the
opinion of the European Parliament on countless violations of
democratic bases and human rights committed by Azerbaijan, the
continuing political and judicial prosecutions of any kind of dissent?
And of course God forbid Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh from goods that
Mr. Bruk promises them in case if Armenia returns Nagorno Karabakh to
Azerbaijan. Nobody here has forgotten Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku, and
Karabakh. People in other countries, including Israel too remember
those `goods’.
We think that the wise Rabbi has forgotten that his and our mission is
in peacekeeping and helping our countries to settle the accumulated
problems on the level of popular diplomacy, and not in compressing the
complex relations between the two neighbors, which are intense and
without it. Our mission is not to become marionettes in the hands of
certain political and financial bosses.
At the end we’d like to draw the attention of the whole European
community, public and religions International Jewish Organizations
that Jews of Armenia are deeply irritated at the above-mentioned
article. We think that similar statements made by an official
religions leader, Mr. Bruk, are of quite provocative character, they
promote ethnic discord and are contrary to the tolerance policy
declared by those organizations. We hope that actions of Mr. Bruk will
receive adequate evaluation and condemnation.’