Kajoyan Gevork – Page 5 – Armenian Directory & News

PM Pashinyan, Zelenskyy discuss security situation in the South Caucasus

October 5, 2023October 5, 2023 Kajoyan Gevork

17:09, 5 October 2023

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 5, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had a brief conversation on October 5 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Granada, Spain, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a press release.

In a post on X, Zelenskyy said he discussed with Pashinyan the security situation in the South Caucasus.

“During our first-ever meeting, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and I focused on the security situation in the South Caucasus. Ukraine is interested in the region’s stability and friendly relations with its nations. We also discussed our bilateral cooperation and interregional economic projects,” the Ukrainian President said on X.

Armenia and Israel, the Middle East’s last Judeo-Christian nations

October 3, 2023October 3, 2023 Kajoyan Gevork

Washington Times

Oct 2 2023

On opposite ends of the geopolitical playing field

OPINION:

Many American Christians have probably never heard of the small nation of Armenia, but this country of 3 million people holds tremendous spiritual significance for the global church.

In A.D. 301, Armenia became the first nation to embrace Christianity (even before the Roman Empire). The gospel was originally brought to the Armenian people by the Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew in the first century. In addition, Mount Ararat, the focal point of Armenian culture and spirituality, is the place where Noah’s Ark landed after the flood in Genesis.

Apart from Israel, it is probably the most biblically significant nation in the world.

The similarities between Armenia and Israel do not stop there. For one, they are both Judeo-Christian democracies in a sea of Muslim authoritarian states. Armenia gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and has made a concerted effort in recent years to align itself more closely with the Western world despite Russia’s best efforts to stop it from doing so.

Like Israel, the central defining characteristic of Armenia is its faith. Through centuries of war and hardship, the Armenian Church is the glue that has held Armenian society together.

Sadly, like Israelis, Armenians are no strangers to mass murder. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Ottoman Empire (modern Turkey) waged a campaign against the empire’s Christians in which 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered. The events, which are widely seen by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century, are often referred to as “the forgotten genocide” (Turkey disputes the characterization of these events as a genocide).

Hitler, while devising his Final Solution for the Jewish people, invoked those mass murders, stating, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians.”

While both the Armenian and Israeli people were eventually able to establish modern nation-states, the historic centers of their civilizations lie outside their current borders. The biblical heart of Israel, Judea, falls within the Palestinian West Bank. Artsakh, in many ways considered the cultural capital of Armenia, is being religiously cleansed of its Armenian Christians by Azerbaijan.

And while both nations look longingly on their ancient lands, they are also preoccupied with defending their immediate borders from hostile neighbors.

Israel is forced to contend with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Hezbollah to the north, and Bashar Assad’s Syria. Armenia, on the other hand, is sandwiched between Turkey and Azerbaijan. Both countries deny that Armenians were subject to genocide and refuse to open their borders to Armenian transit. This means that the vast majority of the landlocked Armenian border is also under a blockade.

Despite their similarities, Armenia and Israel find themselves on opposite ends of the geopolitical playing field. Israel, in order to balance against Iranian influence in the region, has developed close ties with Azerbaijan, the country committing ethnic and religious cleansing against the Armenians of Artsakh. Similarly, Armenia has developed ties with Iran, a nation openly committed to Israel’s destruction, in an attempt to balance against its own existential threats, Turkey and Azerbaijan.

The sad reality is that the region’s only two Judeo-Christian nations have developed a horrible relationship, driven by the need to survive in a region dominated by hostile Muslim states.

But there is hope. Because of the two nations’ shared values and history, the gap can be overcome given the proper security structure in the region.

If Armenia had the security backing of the region’s greatest power, the United States, it could begin to wean itself off its dependence on Iran. Similarly, the United States is the only nation influential enough to convince Israel to lessen its dependence on Azerbaijan.

It is a tragedy to see these two nations, sister nations, divided and torn apart by the existential threats of the region. The United States is the only nation capable of uniting the Middle East’s last two democratic Judeo-Christian nations.

• Former Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, is a former U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom and co-chair of the IRF Summit.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/oct/2/armenia-and-israel-middle-easts-last-judeo-christi/

MEP Nathalie Loiseau: I am angry and ashamed over Karabakh situation

October 2, 2023October 2, 2023 Kajoyan Gevork

News.am, Armenia

Oct 1 2023

I am angry and ashamed, European Parliament member Nathalie Loiseau said in an interview with France Info radio station, commenting on the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh.

"We have been warned about this for months. The Armenian people are experiencing the first ethnic cleansing of the 21st century. And as it was in 1915, everyone is looking the other way," she said.

A total of 100,483 people have been forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh in the past week.

https://www.euronews.com/2023/10/01/un-mission-arrives-in-nagorno-karabakh-for-first-time-in-30-years

Jews escaping from Russia find a home in Armenia

September 30, 2023September 30, 2023 Kajoyan Gevork

Jewish,Independent

Sept 29 2023

A small landlocked country in the South Caucasus, Armenia has been losing population for decades. Thousands of Armenians have left the country for good due to economic problems and lack of career opportunities. But remarkably, it seems this trend has reversed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Besides forcing millions of Ukrainians out of their homes, the largest European war of the century has caused emigration from Russia as well. Over 700,000 people fled the country, fearing mobilization and political repression. Many found their new home in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, an ex-Soviet state with lax immigration laws that has remained neutral in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Among the 40,000 Russian immigrants now in Armenia, at least a few hundred are Jewish. Armenia’s pre-existing Jewish community also has several hundred members, so the influx of immigrants was more than enough to change its character dramatically.

The Jewish cemetery in the village of Yeghegis, with gravestones attributed to the 13th-14th centuries Photo by Dor Shabashewitz

Jews have had a long history in Armenia. One of the world’s oldest preserved Jewish cemeteries lies in the village of Yeghegis in the mountainous Vayots Dzor province, with gravestones attributed to the 13th and 14th centuries.

Today’s Jewish community of Armenia, though, has its roots in the 19th century, when the Russian Empire conquered the South Caucasus. Armenian cities attracted Jews from all corners of the empire. Built in 1860 by Persian Jews, the synagogue Sheikh Mordecai was the center of Yerevan’s Jewish life until it was shut down during a Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s.

State atheism existed in all of the Soviet republics, but they differed in how Soviet authorities treated Jews in daily life. Unsurprisingly, Russia and Ukraine, which had the largest Jewish populations, evidenced more antisemitism, including physical attacks on Jews wearing yarmulkes and institutional barriers such as universities refusing to accept Jewish students. Armenia, on the other hand, was considered liberal and tolerant.

Throughout the 20th century, over 15,000 Ashkenazim moved from Moscow and Kyiv to Yerevan. Among them were the parents of Gershon Meir Burstein, the rabbi of Armenia’s only shul. Fittingly, the synagogue was named Mordecai Navi — the name of the former synagogue there that was shut down by the Communists.

Armenia’s Jewish community kept growing until the late 1980s, when a war broke out over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in the South Caucasus. Also known as Artsakh, Nagorno-Karabakh a majority-Armenian area that the Bolsheviks handed over to Armenia’s Muslim neighbor Azerbaijan in the 1920s.

After a wave of anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan, Armenia attacked Azerbaijan to regain control over the Armenian enclave and protect its population. Eventually, Armenia won, but at the cost of extreme economic hardship. Week-long blackouts were frequent in the capital, and people had to burn trees from the local parks to keep warm in the winter.

Naturally, those with the right to Israeli citizenship chose to make aliyah, and Rabbi Burstein gladly helped them with the paperwork. After a while, only several dozens of Jews remained in the country. Burstein wrote a letter to the last Chabad Rebbe, asking if he himself should leave Armenia, but never got a response. This was in 1994, the year when the Rebbe died. Burstein decided to stay.

Rabbi Burstein’s shul isn’t the only Jewish place in Yerevan today. There’s a secular group that organizes Birthright trips to Israel for Armenian Jews and helps them make aliyah. In March 2022, I witnessed the groundbreaking ceremony of another informal community center. As a Russian speaker already living in Armenia by the time the war in Ukraine broke out, I was invited to a cafe called Mama Jan to give a talk, providing the disoriented recent arrivals with important information about living in Armenia.

Soon the cafe began attracting more immigrants, and a cozy private room at the back of the cafe became the default meeting place for the members of the Yerevan Jewish Home, a social media group for Russian Jews in Armenia, launched by Moscow journalist Nathaniel Trubkin.

“I decided to leave Russia right after the war began,” Trubkin said. “Armenia was an easy choice because Russians could enter it without a valid passport. Domestic ID was enough. Armenia’s largely Russian-speaking society was another important factor. It’s easier to preserve your identity in a familiar setting. I’ve grown to love Yerevan, it’s a hospitable city.”

The Yerevan Jewish Home is more than a group chat, Trubkin explains. “Jewish immigrants from Moscow and Saint Petersburg needed to regain a sense of community, meet new people who share the same culture and engage in networking to build their future.” Their first project was hosting a support group followed by Hebrew classes, Shabbos meetups and movie screenings.

Today, the group has about 500 members, many of whom attend Yerevan’s only synagogue at least semiregularly. Before 2022, the small community was barely able to gather a minyan, even on major Jewish holidays. These days, the weekly Kabbalat Shabbat services often attract over a dozen people.

Still, most of the recent immigrants view Armenia as merely a temporary stop on their way to a more “desirable” destination. Many of the Russian Jews are headed to Israel, while non-Jewish Russians usually hope to move to Western Europe or North America. There’s nothing wrong with this attitude per se, but many use it as a way to justify their lack of interest in Armenia’s culture and language.

One could say immigrants have no obligation to integrate or assimilate, but it becomes slightly more complicated in a postcolonial context. Russians in Armenia aren’t just immigrants; they’re people from a recently dissolved empire taking residence in its ex-colony.

Iranian immigrants don’t expect a waiter at a Yerevan restaurant to speak perfect Persian. They learn some English and eventually learn the local language. For many Russians, it’s different. The Soviet past that the two countries share is enough for many of them to demand that Armenians talk to them in Russian.

Once, for example, I witnessed a Russian lady scolding two local bank employees for speaking to each other in Armenian. She claimed it was impolite to speak anything but Russian if she’s standing there. I’ve also heard Russian immigrants say that Armenia didn’t feel like a separate country, comparing it to a slightly “exotic” province of Russia. This may have been intended as a compliment — they were happy Armenia seemed familiar and easy to navigate. But many of the Armenians I talked to found their approach condescending and offensive.

Thankfully, most of the new Russian Jewish arrivals don’t seem to have this attitude. Maybe it’s the similar histories of the two diaspora peoples, accustomed to being minorities wherever they go, that causes the Jewish immigrants to be respectful and willing to learn about Armenian culture.

Despite shared histories and cultural similarities, relations between Israel and Armenia are far from flawless. This is partly explained by Israel’s dependence on Turkey and Azerbaijan as situational allies against Iran.

That said, Armenia opened an embassy in Tel Aviv in 2020, and the city of Petah Tikva recognized the Armenian genocide that same year. Haifa followed suit in 2023. One can only hope that the growth of Armenia’s Jewish community, even if caused by a global tragedy, might help build better ties between the two countries.

“For now, the region’s geopolitical situation offers little opportunity for a government-level rapprochement, but right now we’re working on the relations between ordinary people wishing to live in peace and engage in cultural exchange,” Trubkin said.

Several weeks after our conversation, Azerbaijan launched an offensive aimed at regaining control over Nagorno-Karabakh. Thousands of ethnic Armenians were forced to flee their homes.

Yesterday, I met with Michael Avetikyan, the Armenian founder of the local NGO Armenian Food Bank. He told me that a group of Russian Jewish regulars at the Mama Jan Cafe had just donated over a dozen boxes of food, clothes, and hygiene items to help the new Armenian refugees. “We may have disagreements with the Israeli government, but we know many Jews and Israelis are our friends, and they’re always welcome here,” he said.

Dor Shabashewitz is a Russian-born Israeli journalist and junior researcher with a background in anthropology and sociolinguistics. He writes about ethnic minority rights in the ex-USSR and endangered languages around the world.

After Azerbaijan Claims Full Control Over Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia PM Signals Foreign Policy Shift Away From Russia

September 25, 2023September 25, 2023 Kajoyan Gevork

Sept 23 2023

Published By: Saurabh Verma

AFP

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Sunday signalled a major foreign policy shift away from Russia, following Moscow’s refusal to enter the latest conflict with Azerbaijani over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Pashinyan told the nation in a televised address that his former Soviet republic’s current foreign security alliances were “ineffective” and “insufficient”.

He added that Armenia should join the International Criminal Court (ICC) — a tribunal which has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over his actions in Ukraine.

“The systems of external security in which Armenia is involved are ineffective when it comes to the protection of our security and Armenia’s national interests,” Pashinyan said.

His address aired just days after Azerbaijan claimed full control over Nagorno-Karabakh after a lightning offensive that forced rebels in the ethnic Armenian territory to agree to disarm.

The separatists’ apparent capitulation could mark the end of a conflict between the Christian and Muslim Caucasus rivals that has raged — off and on — through the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) — a Russian-dominated group comprised of six post-Soviet states.

The group pledges to protect other members that come under attack.

But Russia is bogged down in a war in Ukraine and has grown more isolated on the international stage.

It argued that Yerevan itself had recognised the disputed region as part of Azerbaijan, and refused to come to Armenia’s aid.

“It has become evident to all of us that the CSTO instruments and the instruments of the Armenian-Russian military-political cooperation are insufficient for protecting the external security of Armenia,” he said.

“We must transform and supplement the instruments of Armenia’s external and domestic security, in cooperation with all the partners who are ready for mutually beneficial steps,” Pashinyan said.

– ‘Respect our sovereignty’ –

Pashinyan’s address came after days of increasingly strong criticism in Moscow of what has been Russia’s main ally in the volatile Caucasus.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday accused Armenia of “adding fuel to the fire” with its public rhetoric.

Moscow had earlier this month summoned Armenia’s ambassador following its decision to host US forces for small peacekeeping drills.

Russian state television commentators have been attacking Pashinyan and other Armenian leaders for their criticism of Moscow.

Pashinyan’s comments about the ICC threaten to generate particular anger in the Kremlin.

ICC judge Tomoko Akane issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March for the war crime of allegedly unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children.

Putin has avoided visiting other ICC member nations to avoid the possibility of arrest.

Pashinyan sent the Rome Statute — a founding document of the ICC — for parliamentary ratification earlier this month.

The Armenian leader said the ICC could help “ensure our security”.

“The decision is not directed against CSTO and the Russian Federation,” Pashinyan said of his desire to join the tribunal.

He concluded his address by calling “on our colleagues to respect out sovereignty”.

– ‘Aggravating tensions’ –

Independent Armenia analyst Beniamin Matevosyan said Pashinyan was “deliberately aggravating tensions with Russia”.

“He is openly telling Russia: if you don’t help keep Armenians in Karabakh, I’ll quit CSTO,” he said.

Matevosyan said the Nagorno-Karabakh supporters and people with roots in the region were leading the protests that have been simmering across Armenia in the past few days.

“He is afraid of the 120,000-strong mass of people (from Karabakh). He is seeing that so many Karabakhis are taking part in the street protests these days,” Matevosyan told AFP.

Pashinyan’s new diplomatic line is also running up against the hard reality that Russia still has a military base in the Armenian city of Gyumri that offers Moscow important geopolitical influence.

The base is believed to house 3,000 soldiers and has existed since World War II.

Armenia analyst Hakob Badalyan added that, in view of the war in Ukraine, Western powers may be unwilling to become more involved in the region.

“The West doesn’t want to assume the responsiblity,” Badalyan said. “It is telling Armenia: negotiate and make peace with (rivals) Turkey and Azerbaijan.”