Is Gaza to Blame for the Plight Brought Upon Itself?

World opinion must be made to understand that the plight of Gazans today is the result, not the reason, for the smoldering Judeophobic hate on their part.

The antisemitic surge across the U.S. and elsewhere has again underscored the appalling pervasiveness/perverseness of the loathing the Jewish people are subject to.

It has exposed how shallow it lies below the surface, ready to erupt on the flimsiest pretext, even in the most “liberal” and cultured societies.

'Geographically challenged louts'

Although since WWII, the naked hatred of Jews, as individuals or a religion, has been muted in many parts of the world, it appears that, recently, much of this restraint has been loosened — perversely, just after the Jews have been submitted to a gruesome genocidal assault within the Jewish state itself.

After all, by any conceivable standard of decency, those horrific atrocities should have unleashed a wave of, if not international sympathy for the Jews/Jewish state — then at least of severe and unreserved condemnation of their vile adversaries. Indeed, each assault on an Israeli civilian — each rape, massacre, and mutilation — each projectile fired indiscriminately at nonmilitary targets, are all indisputable war-crimes.

Yet, stunningly, just the opposite occurred!

Across campuses of prestigious universities, main boulevards and town squares, we witnessed the groundswell of vicious, visceral vitriol directed not only against the Jewish state’s righteous retaliation against the barbarous tsunami of bare-faced war crimes; but against Jews, as Jews, guilty not of any action but mere association.

Perversely, instead of being excoriated for their savagery, the Gazans were lionized as bold freedom fighters, with “geographically challenged” louts chanting “from the river to the sea” — a euphemistic slogan for the destruction of the Jewish state … without them having the slightest idea which river and/or sea are involved.

Perverse inversion of victim/victimizer

Arguably, some of the most egregious manifestations of this perverse inversion of victim and victimizer have been promulgated by some Armenian sources.

Indeed, an August 2023 analysis by The Institution For The Study Of Global Antisemitism And Policy (ISGAP), titled Antisemitic and Anti-Israeli Narratives in Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora, warns that in significant circles of Armenian society — under the influence of “antisemitic cliques … [a] popular construct has become the uncritical assimilation of the Arab-Islamic narrative of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

According to ISGAP, this :leads [them]to deny Israel’s right to exist and…the right of Jews to their national self-determination — which falls under the internationally recognized definition of antisemitism.”

The ISGAP analysis cautions that "in recent months, the Armenian segment of the Internet (including the Russian and English language segments) has been [inundated] with expressions of unconditional solidarity with Palestinians on the 75th anniversary of the Nakba (“the catastrophe of the Palestinian people,” which, according to this narrative, is the creation of the State of Israel).

It cites the policy director of the Washington-based Armenian National Committee of America as insinuating that the creation of Israel is “a crime that never ended.”

Misplaced pique

Allegedly, Armenian rancor against Israel is due to the supply of weapons to Azerbaijan in its successful wars (2020, 2023) in Nagorno-Karabakh, which resulted in the Armenian enclave being overrun and absorbed into Azerbaijan.

However, the real purpose of Israeli weapons supply to Baku was not the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, which had no strategic significance for Israel. Rather, it was to bolster its strategic cooperation with a moderate pro-Israel Azerbaijan against its extreme anti-Israel Iran, an existential peril for the Jewish state.

Significantly, polls by Pew and the ADL show that distinct antisemitic sentiments prevailed in Armenia well before those military conflicts took place.

Likewise, Armenian suggestions that the situation in Gaza and Nagorno-Karabakh were at all similar is utterly baseless. After all, it should be recalled that since 1993, and particularly since 2005, Israel tried repeatedly — albeit ill-advisedly — to extricate itself from Gaza, being thwarted only by the unremitting aggression from Gazan terror groups, making Israeli military action unavoidable.

Indeed, the plight of Gazans today is undoubtedly the result, not the reason, for the smoldering Judeophobic hate on their part.

Incandescent incoherent vitriol

Recently, echoes reminiscent of the irrational Jew-hatred, that has reduced Gaza to rubble, were spluttered (for want of a better word) by Vladimir Poghosyan former adviser to Armenia’s armed forces and purportedly an expert on his country’s national security.

Virtually apoplectic, he ranted: "I will scream to the whole world, about the just killing of Jews ... You jackals must be exterminated completely … I never recognized the Holocaust  … Jews are a destructive people, who have no right to be on this earth …”

Soaring off into a hate-filled tirade, he charged: “… you suckers have not left your mark in any country in the world, never. You have always been situational temporary workers killing different people." — somehow unmindful of the fact that Jews (0.2% of the world’s population) comprise over 22% of all Nobel prize laureates.

So, while it is true that Poghosyan no longer holds an official position, his diatribe is still worthy of mention because of his past standing. Indeed, the editor of the Jerusalem Post, Israel’s largest English daily, tweeted it on the very day it was made public.

Bearing the blame

Sadly, since the USSR’s dissolution, Armenia as a small landlocked country, subject to myriad constraints/pressures from larger and stronger neighbors, has found itself “between a rock and a hard place.”

That truth, however, cannot obscure the fact that it has brought considerable animosity on itself by making some injudicious choices of its own, for which it alone must bear the blame.