Tel-Chai Nation

The Washington Examiner ran a column by Michael Rubin warning about taqqiya as practiced by Azerbaijan, whose officials have violated cease fire agreements with Armenia this week, and are in cahoots with Turkey, lest we forget:

Indeed, representatives of Turkey’s Jewish community simultaneously tell American visitors how happy they are under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s leadership but appear terrified of running afoul of the mercurial ruler and quietly ask for advice on securing visas. While Turkish Jews can honestly say Turkey has historically been kind to the community, the community has declined under Erdogan as Turkish Jews vote with their feet. The Turkish president, meanwhile, makes little secret of his view that Turkey’s Jews are hostages to his approval of Israel’s behavior. That the Azerbaijani government and its proxies now embrace the same strategy does not assuage concerns.

Indeed, while Azeri diplomats and officials tell visitors that Azerbaijan is home to 30,000 Jews, the true population is less than a third of that as many in the community chose to emigrate when they had the opportunity. Jews also have a long history in Armenia. Armenian officials sometimes tell visitors the country is home to 500 Jews, although both emigration and intermarriage have also taken a toll on this number, and the true figure may be only half that. Regardless, numbers of Jews are likewise a silly metric for supposed anti-Semitism. Consider the fact that the Mountain Jewish community of Azerbaijan aside, most of the Jews in Baku and its environs date their arrival just to the late 19th or early 20th centuries and tied their presence to certain industries: Does that mean that anti-Semitism declined during the influx and then increased after the Ashkenazi Jews again emigrated? Or, to question the logic in a different way, is Bhutan more anti-Semitic than Iran because Iran has more Jews? Is Canada more anti-Semitic than the United States?

Azerbaijan has historically been enlightened with regard to religious pluralism, and polls show anti-Semitic attitudes among Azerbaijanis to be less in most cases than Armenians. But there still have been anti-Semitic incidents in Azerbaijan in recent years, such as the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Baku. Nadraran, a town just 15 miles from Baku, is famous for being a stronghold of Hezbollah, though this is certainly the exception rather than the rule in Azerbaijan today.

Of greater concern, however, should be Azerbaijan’s partnership and general submissiveness to an increasingly anti-Semitic Turkey. Diplomats say the Turkish Foreign Ministry demarches its Azeri counterparts to limit the number of Jews and Israelis at diplomatic functions. Azerbaijan’s recent utilization of Syrian mercenaries, some of whom previously worked for al Qaeda affiliates or the Islamic State, also undercut the notion of Azeri liberalism. To ally with and fight alongside those who would behead Christians and enslave non-Muslim minorities is hardly a sign that Jews will remain safe in Azerbaijan. Sometimes, lavish spreads in luxury hotels for visiting dignitaries are not enough to obscure reality.

Anybody in Israel and/or the Jewish community who overlooks this should be ashamed of themselves. But it does remind me of something notable about the left-wing today: if they'd ever supported recognition of the Armenian Genocide and such before, they no longer do, and I haven't seen leftists talking about it much in the past decade, if at all. Indeed, the left's embrace of Islam seems to have gotten the better of them, and they've since abandoned the Armenian communities as a result of this political correctness.

Labels: anti-semitism, Armenia, Asia, dhimmitude, islam, Israel, jihad, political corruption, racism, terrorism, turkey