JEWISH COMMUNITY OF RA: GOD FORBID ARMENIA AND NAGORNO KARABAKH FROM AZERI GOODS

PanARMENIAN.Net
16.06.2007 15:47

/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."