Growing up as an Israeli minister, the Shoah has always been a pivotal part of my life. Every weekend, a family from Tel Aviv came to our home. Their names were Rosa and Ernest Gold. I understood that they ran away from Europe due to the Shoah. My grandfather knew him and invited him to be part of our family because he did not have any family or children and they married in Kibbutz Ha-On, but then they left the kibbutz to go to Tel Aviv. As a child, I was raised as the adopted son that they never managed to have. Due to this upbringing, I always have had pivotal respect for all victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing. And it is precisely for this reason that I always stand in solidarity with Azerbaijan.
I have visited Karabakh twice, where I was a personal witness to Armenia's campaign against Azerbaijan, where the Karabakh region and seven other Azerbaijani districts were occupied for close to thirty years by Armenia in violation of four UN Security Council Resolutions. I was in Shusha and along the Armenian and Iranian border six months after the Second Karabakh War ended and more recently, I was in Aghdam last June, which is otherwise known as the Hiroshima of the Caucuses. On both trips, I drove by mile after mile of ruined homes and villages, burned farmland and polluted rivers on dirt roads, just to get there, taking notice that there were cars along the way that did not survive the journey.
The plight of Aghdam was especially horrific. Everything that was there, whether refrigerators, furniture, construction material or family heirlooms, was confiscated by the Armenians in the First Karabakh War and then sold to the Iranians.
What I witnessed there reminded me of the horrific situation I witnessed during the First Lebanon War. In fact, what I witnessed in Karabakh was worse than what I saw in Lebanon, as at least in Lebanon you could find fish in the rivers and cows in the field. But in Karabakh, one could not even find these things.
Azerbaijan was ready to sit down and negotiate a peace treaty with Armenia in order to obtain a brighter future for both their people and the Armenian people. Last August, Azerbaijan and Armenia came very close to signing a permanent peace treaty, which would have ended Armenia's status as a land-locked blockaded country and helped both Azerbaijan and Armenia to enjoy prosperity, tranquility and a brighter future. However, in the talks between both countries, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan decided to backtrack at the last minute on issues that were already agreed upon between both countries by refusing to recognize Azerbaijan's rights in Karabakh and the seven Azerbaijani districts in violation of the Tripartite Agreement that was signed between Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia.
And then his country decided to attack Azerbaijani soldiers in mid-September, killing 80 Azerbaijani soldiers, in addition to laying additional landmines in the region, a reality that has made the Karabakh region almost uninhabitable and led to the death of many innocent Azerbaijanis. In fact, more than 240 Azerbaijanis have been killed by landmines in recent times and 11,270 square kilometers in Karabakh is inhabitable because of landmines laid by Armenia in violation of international law.
Around the same period of time, members of the Armenian Diaspora community attacked the Azerbaijani Embassy in Paris, which in itself is a blatant violation of international law. But when Azerbaijan decided to defend themselves following the border clashes initiated by Armenia, then all of a sudden there are certain voices in the media that point an accusatory finger at the State of Israel for its alliance with Azerbaijan based on unverified reports in social media, some of which have proven to be blatantly false.
An example of this is an article published on October 13, 2022 in The Jerusalem Post titled "The shame I feel as an Armenian Jew," a propaganda piece that attempts to cast a shadow on the current friendly relations between Israel and Azerbaijan. This is blatantly unfair. Armenia is a proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, while Azerbaijan is Israel's eyes and ears on Tehran. Furthermore, Azerbaijan is a multi-cultural, pluralistic and tolerant country, which I personally witnessed maintained the main Armenian church in Baku for historic conservation and is in the process of rebuilding churches in Karabakh.
In contrast, Armenia destroyed countless Azerbaijani mosques and even some Albanian and Russian Orthodox churches during their close to thirty-year occupation of the Karabakh region. Furthermore, despite that occupation, there is still a thriving Christian community in Azerbaijan, as I visited several churches and a Christian museum in the center of Baku. However, Azerbaijanis have been ethnically cleansed from Armenia. And yet, there are some who blame Israel for building an alliance with Azerbaijan due to Israel's connection to the Shoah, as if the history of the Caucuses ended in 1915 and the more recent Khojaly Genocide did not exist. However, I argue it is precisely because of our connection with the Shoah that I believe that we should stand with a country who has multiculturalism, religious tolerance and pluralism as a national policy and who fell victim to a horrific ethnic cleansing campaign, which robbed Azerbaijanis of one fifth of their country, and not with a country who serves as a proxy for the Islamic Republic of Iran and systematically falsifies videos and photos to promote their agenda Pallywood-style.
Ayoob Kara, who is running in the Nov. 1 Knesset election as part of Likud, served as minister of communications.
