What Happened to Armenia?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Armenia is located in Western Asia and lies east of the Caspian sea.  Jews moved there as early as the period of the destruction of the 1st Temple in 597 BCE.  Ties existed between Jews in Armenia and Judaea during 2nd Temple days before 70 CE when the Romans were on the scene.  

One of Herod's grandsons, Aristobulus, was made king of Little Armenia by Nero.  Two other grandsons ruled Greater Armenia.  

Many Jews moved there in succeeding generations.  Then from the 4th generation onwards, their population started to dwindle due to exile and emigration.  Medieval travelers found a number of small Jewish communities at Nisibis and other places.

                                                                 

 

Armenian Christians have lived in Jerusalem since the 5th century as there is an Armenian quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem.

                                                                     

    The Armenian quarter           

The Armenian Genocide (sometimes known as the Armenian Holocaust) was the systematic mass murder and expulsion of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians carried out in Turkey and adjoining regions by the Ottoman government between 1914 and 1923. It should have ended in 1917.  The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported from Constantinople (now Istanbul) to the region of Angora (Ankara), 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, the majority of whom were eventually murdered.

Under Muslim rule, Christians and Jews were considered Dhimmis, or 2nd-3rd class citizens.  They weren't allowed to do things a citizen could do and had to pay more in taxes, expectations, etc.  "In addition to other legal limitations, Christians were not considered equals to Muslims and several prohibitions were placed on them. Testimony against Muslims by Christians and Jews was inadmissible in courts of law wherein a Muslim could be punished; this meant that their testimony could only be considered in commercial cases. They were forbidden to carry weapons or ride atop horses and camels. Their houses could not overlook those of Muslims; and their religious practices were severely circumscribed, e.g., the ringing of church bells was strictly forbidden."  

                                                             

                   Jerusalem's Christians, mostly from Armenia and Greece

Armenia–Israel relations are the bilateral relationship between Armenia and Israel. From 1993 to 2007, Armenia was served by the Embassy of Israel in Georgia. In 1996, Tsolak Momjian was appointed the honorary consul of Armenia in Jerusalem. Eleven years later, the residence of the Embassy of Israel in Armenia was moved to Jerusalem. In October 2010, Shmuel Meirom was appointed the Israeli ambassador to Armenia. Armen Melkonian was appointed the Armenian ambassador to Israel in 2012, with a residence in Cairo. In October of that year, Melkonian presented his credentials to Israeli President Shimon Peres.  On the 21st of September 2019 Armenia announced that it would be opening an embassy in Israel.

                                                             

            Christian quarter of Old City of Jerusalem

Armenian-Israelis are ethnic Armenians with Israeli citizenship. Three thousand Armenians live in Israel, including 1,000 in Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter. About one thousand Armenian-Israelis have Israeli citizenship, mainly in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. The Institute of African and Asian Studies at the Hebrew University established an Armenian-studies programme specialising in study of the Armenian language, literature, history and culture and the Armenian Genocide.                      

   Notice that the brown and red section below is land fought over between Armenia and Azerbaijan- Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.             

 

Jews from all corners of the world live in Israel.  "In 2008, Yosef Shagal, an Azerbaijani-born former Israeli parliamentarian from Yisrael Beiteinu said in an interview with an Azerbaijani news outlet: "I find it is deeply offensive, and even blasphemous to compare the Holocaust of European Jewry during the Second World War with the mass extermination of the Armenian people during the First World War. Jews were killed because they were Jews ... [With Armenians] the picture is principally different - seeking to establish the state and national independence, Turkish Armenians sided with the Russian Empire, which was at war with Turkey".                                     

People supporting Armenia protest against the military conflict with Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in Brussels, Belgium October 7, 2020

(photo credit: REUTERS/YVES HERMAN)

Today Israel is in the middle of a big disagreement again between Armenians and 

those from Azerbaijan.The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an ongoing armed conflict between Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey, and the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, supported by Armenia, in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. It is the latest escalation of the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict over the territory, which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but mostly governed by Artsakh, a breakaway state with an Armenian ethnic majority.

Israel is believed to be Azerbaijan’s largest weapons supplier, with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimating that arms deals between the two countries over the past five years have totaled more than $740 million.  Israel is estimated to import about one-fifth of its oil from Azerbaijan. It rarely comments on its arms sales to anyone.

“My father’s family are all there [in the Armenian capital of Yerevan]. We speak daily. The situation is extremely difficult for them,”David  Galfayan, head of the Noyan Tapan Armenian Center for Culture and Education in Israel, told The Media Line.

Says Galfayan: “We’re extremely angry with the Israeli government for selling weapons to Azerbaijan. It’s not only detrimental to the Armenian people, but to the Israeli people as well.”He notes that the sales could boomerang.

QUOTE: “There are many terrorists that Turkey has imported from Syria to fight in Azerbaijan. All those weapons we’re supplying them, tomorrow will reach our borders and be turned against us,” he complained, referring to pro-Turkey Syrian rebels who have been idled due to a cease-fire in that country’s civil war.

The heavy fighting between forces from Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh continued on Wednesday as the flare-up over the disputed Azeri region entered its 11th day.

Azerbaijan is now divided between their own republic and Iran.  Jews had also lived here, and lived well even under the Mongols of the 13th century but then they embraced Islam, most Jews apostatized.  By 1926, 19,000 European Jews were in Azerbaijan, largely at Baku, and 7,500 "mountain Jews" speaking a Persian dialect.  In 1979, there were some 35,497 Jews in Azerbaijan.  By 2009 there were from 7,800 to 16,000 Jews here.  

Armenia is a Christian country and Azerbaijan is the 26th largest out of 48 Muslim countries with 8,676,000 population in 2011 of which 93.4% are Shi'a Muslim.  They do not share a border but are close to each other and are fighting.  What does the EU expect would happen to Israel with a Palestine in their back yard?  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia%E2%80%93Israel_relations

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/armenians-in-israel-seethe-over-arms-sold-to-azeri-enemy-644997

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan%E2%80%93Israel_relations

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/AZ

https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/azerbaijan-population

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_conflict

The A Team of Terrorists: Hezbollah, the Proxy of Iran

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                             

Hezbollah is the terrorist army" used by Iran, and play a prominent role in Iran's response to any attack on its nuclear weapons facilities. "  
                                                                       

There is much evidence showing that Israel is already being targeted by Hezbollah for their try to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program by sabotaging it and using assassinations as well.  They have been warned by Iran what their intention has been.  
                                                                             

Former president Ahmadinejad sending his rockets
maintained by Hezbollah (president from 2005-2013) 

In July 2006, Hossein Safiadeen, a Hezbollah representative in Tehran, Iran announced that this group intended to murder Israelis and Jews wherever it could find them.  He stated, "There will be no place they are safe."  "We are going to make Israel not safe for Israelis. There will be no place they are safe,” Hossein Safiadeen told a conference." 

In January 2012, Azerbaijan authorities hit a Hezbollah terror cell that had supposedly targeted Azerbaijan's Israeli ambassador and a rabbi from the local Jewish school..  

In February, Diplomats in Georgia and India from Israel came under attack at the same time.  The very next day a bomb exploded in a Bangkok apartment, exposing a Hezbollah backed Iranian cell that were preparing to slaughter Israeli diplomats in the Thai capital.  This shows that any Israeli outside of Israel is exposed to being hit.
                                                                       

                                                                             

The Shahab 3 of Iran

         Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called Israel a "cancerous tumor" that must be removed, and he must have loved Hossein Safiadeen's comment.   The Ayatollah is a man who has been seeking the opportunity to do just that with the push of a button.  

Is there a Lebanese Canadian Bank in your neighborhood yet?  It is in one, according to U.S. officials, on St. Moritz, Switzerland, where 2 Winter Olympics has been held,  that Hezbollah launders at least a portion of the money it earns through their global criminal fund-raising operations.  A U.S. federal agent spoke to the New York Times in December 2011 about Hezbollah saying they were like "the Gambinos on steroids,"  

"Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the government of Iran has been accused by several countries of training, financing, and providing weapons and safe havens for non-state militant actors, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, This group is designated a terrorist group by a number of countries and international bodies; however, Iran considers such a group to be "national liberation movements" with a right to self-defense in the face of Israeli military occupation.

The United States State Department has also accused Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militias of terrorism against US troops, and Iran of cyberterrorism, primarily through its Quds Force."

Many analysts have zeroed in on Iran’s ability to retaliate in the Middle East. But Iran’s area of influence is not limited to its region. Over the past decade, it has launched operations, either through Hezbollah or its own agents, around the world—including in Latin America, Eastern Europe, East and South Asia, Western and Central Africa, and within the United States itself.

In July 2019 Argentina became the first Latin American country to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization—a move timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the AMIA bombing. The Argentine government ordered the group’s financial assets frozen. In August 2019, Paraguay—where much of Hezbollah’s fundraising in the area was carried out—followed suit and designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Hezbollah and Iran have raised funds throughout Latin America by appealing to the well-established Lebanese and Shiite diaspora in the region. Much of the funding flows through one man, Assad Barakat, and his family. Barakat was a prominent member of the Lebanese community in Paraguay. After all, Hezbollah was first established by Iran and placed in Lebanon by Iranian Revolutionary Guards.   Their ideology is of a Shia Islamic fundamentalist terrorisim  group and the Lebanese political party that needed them.  Their goal is to establish an Islamic state across the Arab world which takes in Israel by eliminating the state and to fight "Western imperialism." 

                                         

In the aftermath of the 1979-2020 Iranian Major General and commander of the Quds Force Soleimani strike okayed by Trump, the most concerning element of Hezbollah’s international operations for the U.S. government may be the group’s activity within the United States itself. Unlike in the rest of the world, Iran itself has not been conclusively linked to activities in the U.S.; rather, it has likely outsourced these operations to Hezbollah.  However, we realize that Hezbollah is Iran!  This is 2020, and war is different.  One can get proxys to do your dirty work.  

Resource: THE FALLEN ANGEL, by Daniel Silva, the facts in the back of his historical fiction story that he lists under Author's Note.
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2020/01/ayatolas-general-soleimani-and-israel.html
https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/world/hezbollah-envoy-in-iran-in-warning-to-israel-269177.html
https://www.lawfareblog.com/iran-and-hezbollahs-presence-around-world