Israel’s role in the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis: A troubling legacy - opinion

September 19 will mark the first anniversary of the Azerbaijani attack on the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which led to the destruction of its self-rule and compelled the exodus of its entire population of 120,000 ethnic Armenians, who are now refugees. This outrage, and continued aggression by Azerbaijan against Armenians and Armenia, is to a large degree enabled by Israeli drones and other weapons.

As an Israeli, and as a researcher of the history of genocide and antisemitism, this picture makes me deeply ashamed. That’s why I am scandalized by invectives against Armenia like Mordechai Kedar’s recent essay in The Jerusalem Post, which was based on a warped view of its relationship with Iran and falsehoods about alleged antisemitic incidents in the country.

Spreading such misinformation requires a special degree of chutzpah when one lives and works in Israel, which did much to enable the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Consider the consensus in Israel about how Holocaust denial constitutes antisemitism. Well, Kedar is a citizen of a state that has consistently aided the deniers of the Armenian Genocide in multiple ways, by not recognizing it and by pressing for a long time the US Congress and presidents not to recognize it. Israel has been collaborating with such denial because of its political, economic, and military relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan as well as because of concerns that it would somehow undermine the claim for the uniqueness of the Holocaust.

One may argue that this is simply how politics and national anxieties work. Yet if we are consistent, we must nonetheless concede that this is a form of anti-Armenianism. And this anti-Armenianism has to do with the most tragic and devastating point in the history of the Armenian people and because it is state-run anti-Armenianism; imagine if the Armenian state was engaged in Holocaust denial or in supporting explicitly or implicitly Holocaust denial!

Instead of acknowledging Israeli anti-Armenianism, Kedar promotes it.

Even if one can be concerned about Armenia’s relations with Iran, they are primarily based on geographic and geopolitical necessities, and the reports of a massive weapons deal are lies. To suggest, as Kedar does, that Armenia has turned into an “Iranian proxy” is blatantly ridiculous and genuinely dangerous.

In Israeli and international discourse, the “Iranian proxies” are terrorist groups – Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas. The preposterous implication would be that Armenia is on its way to becoming another link in the Axis of Evil. What may be the outcome for Armenia if this kind of discourse is taken seriously – for example, by a Republican White House as impervious as Kedar is to nuances and any consideration that is not from the perspective of Israel’s security? 

Quite clearly, Kedar’s rage against Armenia has to do with more than its relations with Iran or the extent of alleged antisemitism within it. For a long time, Israel’s political establishment has held a grudge towards Armenia for showing support for the Palestinian struggle for liberation from the Israeli occupation, and more particularly for a Palestinian state. This grudge is quite evident in Kedar’s mentioning of Armenia’s recognition of “the nonexistent ‘Palestinian state’” and his remark that “anybody who knows the history of the Middle East remembers that Armenians have always supported Palestinian terrorist organizations.”

One can see that according to Kedar, Armenians have always supported terrorism, whether Palestinian or Iranian. If we turn this logic to Israel, we’d be forced to say that Israelis have always supported Turkish and Azeri state terrorism against the Armenians.

The truth is otherwise. There is a well-documented and ancient friendship between Jews and Armenians. The Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem is a cultural jewel that helps both peoples and must be preserved at all costs.

The Soviet experience

Throughout the Soviet experience, where Armenians and Jews stuck together in the face of Stalinism and Russian oppression. There were strong friendships forged in the Gulags, in Soviet academia, in writers’ and underground intellectual groups. There are large numbers of remarkable individuals of shared Armenian-Jewish ancestry: Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion; Levon Aronian, the chess grandmaster and two-time Olympic champion, Elena Bonner (Andrey Sakharov’s wife), and others.

Against this background, it is truly dispiriting to observe the lengths to which right-wingers in Israel go to disparage peoples and states – especially small and relatively weak ones – that dare to support the international consensus and international law: the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. These right-wingers believe that anyone who supports this must be antisemitic, a supporter of terrorism, an Iranian proxy, or simply blind, and no friend of Israel.

The Armenian government as well as Armenian intellectuals and civil society activists have repeatedly expressed their desire for better, genuinely friendly relations with Israel. They have done so while knowing full well the extent of Israel’s collaboration with the denial of the Armenian Genocide as well as Israeli relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan, which have been quite devastating to Armenia. Israel has largely shunned these overtures. It barely disguises its cynicism: the young democracy in Armenia, it’s implied, has less to offer than Turkey and Azerbaijan.

In supporting a Palestinian state, Armenia has shown Israel friendship, not enmity. Who knows where we would have been today had Israel attempted to promote a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians? Perhaps – no one can tell for sure, of course – October 7 would not have happened.

If one wants to offer some balance to Armenia’s relations with Iran and to help fight antisemitism within Armenia, one could do no better than to befriend Armenia. Israel should finally recognize the Armenian Genocide and should limit the kind of arms it sells to Turkey and Azerbaijan to make sure they are not used to further harm Armenia itself.

Since this is not something Israel is likely to do anytime soon, certainly not this government, Israelis should really be more humble and less hypocritical when talking about Armenia.

The writer, who specializes in genocide studies and political theory, teaches at the University of Haifa and serves as a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking.