As things stand, Israel is indirectly complicit in what Luis Moreno Ocampo, the first chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, in recent days called a genocide against Armenians. But it is also in a unique position to put an end to the atrocity.
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I refer to the eight-month blockade of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave by Azerbaijan, one of Israel’s leading strategic allies. For the past two months not even Red Cross humanitarian missions have been allowed through, and last week the first resident died of starvation. Food and medicine are running out, and Ocampo has warned that many more deaths will follow unless Azerbaijan stops blocking the Lachin Corridor, the enclave’s vital access road.
As many readers will know, Nagorno-Karabakh is a territory populated by ethnic Armenians that ended up on the Azeri side of the border because of Soviet machinations. Since the USSR collapse, it has operated as a self-governing entity, but in 2020 Azerbaijan attacked and seized much of the region in a war in which thousands of Armenians were killed. Israeli drones supplied to Azerbaijan played a big role in that victory.
Now comes the blockade against what remains of Nagorno-Karabakh and the 120,000 Armenians living there, clearly aimed at compelling their flight due to the threat of starvation. Indeed, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has been quite transparent, stating that the residents should either accept Azerbaijani citizenship or seek another home.
"You will find no crematoria in Nagorno-Karabakh, nor machetes, but genocide by starvation is no less devastating"
There are 30,000 children, 9,000 disabled people, and 20,000 elderly people among those who are besieged in Nagorno-Karabakh. "Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks," Ocampo wrote in recent days in a pro bono report (read it here), entitled "Genocide against Armenians in 2023." He noted that Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention determined that "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction" constituted genocide.
"You will find no crematoria in Nagorno-Karabakh, nor machetes, but genocide by starvation is no less devastating for being silent," Ocampo said. "It was the same deadly method used against Armenians in 1915, against Poles and Jews in 1939, and against the people of Srebrenica in 1993.”
Ocampo argued that state actors must intervene to force Azerbaijan to end the blockade, and the issue is now being debated at the United Nations Security Council.
Most observers might have expected the state actors in question to perhaps be the European Union or the United States, which are promoting sham “peace talks” between Armenia and Azerbaijan in which the people of Nagorno-Karabakh effectively have no voice. Or maybe even Russia, which has toothless peacekeepers in the area and which has a strategic alliance with Azerbaijan.
But perhaps they should be thinking of Israel.
The Jewish state, which was established after Jews suffered the greatest genocide in history, is indecorously close to the odious regime of President Ilham Aliyev in Baku.
Israel sells this regime weapons, to be used against Armenia, which is a fellow democracy and one of the world’s oldest Christian civilizations. Israel buys huge amounts of oil from this regime. Israel does a growing amount of business with this regime. And Israel also receives a forward base against its nemesis Iran from the regime.
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Defense Minister Yoav Gallant with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev in Baku
(Photo: Defense Ministry)
This is a classic case of realpolitik in action.
That’s because in return for these things, Israel is in bed with a family-run kleptocracy that has, according to the Pandora Papers, siphoned away hundreds of millions of dollars of their country’s oil and natural gas wealth, and which allows its people to wallow in poverty and denies them basic freedoms. It also agitates wildly against Armenians and Armenia itself, commits atrocities against them, and carries out systematic desecrations of Armenian heritage sites. Now comes what is being described by one of the world’s leading jurists as an attempt at a second Armenian genocide.
"Surely the genocide discussion should focus Israeli minds"
Jews, of all people, should not look the other way. If sympathy for Armenia, a fellow scrappy democracy in a mostly non-democratic part of the world, is not enough, surely the genocide discussion should focus Israeli minds. Jews cannot be complicit in this.
Exactly 50 km away from the disaster zone, Israel is implementing large-scale investment programs. Israel is among Azerbaijan's top 10 trading partners, with trade between the two countries reaching $1.7 billion last year. About 90 Israeli companies are actively working in Azerbaijan. Three months ago, President Yitzhak Herzog visited Azerbaijan and discussed more new projects.
The growing influence of Israel on Azerbaijan and the wide presence of Israeli companies in the country can provide leverage.
During the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, Israel continued to supply weapons to Azerbaijan. Since 2016, there have been 92 flights with Israeli arms supplies. The last delivery was this week: IL-76TD of Azerbaijan's Silk Way Airlines arrived at Uvda airbase to receive weapons and transport them to Baku.
A temporary moratorium on the supply of weapons to a country that is committing deadly outrages against civilians could be a serious signal for Azerbaijan to reconsider its policy.
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Israelis protest against arms sales to Azerbaijan fearing genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh, 2020
(Photo: Moti Kimchi)
We know there are righteous people in Israel who agree. Just last week, a large group of Israeli scientists, journalists, public figures, and rabbis addressed an open letter to President Herzog concerning the humanitarian catastrophe.
Rabbi Avidan Freedman clearly drew the line between political gain and a morally correct choice: "As an Israeli and a Zionist, I burst with pride when Israelis are first on the scene to provide support for humanitarian crises around the world … When Israel thinks that it serves its interests by providing weapons to countries that … commit grave violations of human rights – it is a heartbreaking violation of our mission."
Sergei Melkonian Photo: CourtesyThe Armenian people who survived the first genocide of the 20th century could not stay indifferent during the Holocaust. That is why 24 Armenians have been officially recognized as Righteous among the Nations at Yad Vashem.
Israel now has a chance to do the righteous thing itself and to provide a lesson in morality to an often indifferent world.
Dr. Sergei Melkonian is a research fellow at the Yerevan-based think tank APRI.