Over the course of the summer of 2002, two Armenian newspapers have systematically defamed Jews in what is normally a relatively peaceful corner of the former Soviet Union for Jews. Blatantly antisemitic articles rarely appear in the Armenian press, instead there are occasional expressions of frustration at Israel’s friendly relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan and assertions that widespread knowledge around the world of the Holocaust somehow minimizes the Armenian genocide of 1915. Normally, articles on these sensitive subjects avoid direct antisemitic rhetoric. That is why this summer’s wave of blatantly antisemitic articles has caught UCSJ’s attention, since they possibly signal an increase in antisemitic sentiment in Armenia.

The first and worst of these newspapers—Azg—is a publication of the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party (also known as the Ramkavar Azatakan Party after its leader) —a nationalist organization. It is a daily newspaper with a print run of around 3,500 copies (for comparison, the leading state newspapers in the country—Hayastani Hanrapetutyun and Respublika Armeniya—have print runs of 15,000 and 5,000 copies, according to Internews). Writing in a May 31, 2002 article about the illegal, racist policies of the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar Kray (Aleksandr Tkachyov) against the local Armenian population, the paper’s Moscow correspondent finds a way to blame Jews. The following quote is from the English language version of the article from Azg’s web site; the translation’s grammatical and spelling mistakes have been preserved:

“Interestingly, but Russian nationalists admit their complete helplessness to fight against Jews. They know that out of 7 billionaires in Russia 5 are Jews. The wife of the sixth, Azeri Vagit Alekperov is said to be a Jew and all of them made their fortunes not by producing something, but taking hold of the Russian national wealth- crud oil and non-ferrous metals and selling it to the West. Nothing is changed when they are called Jew mug, nothing. The point is that according to some sources the mother of governor Tkachov is also Jew, though I do not have enough grounds to insist on it, but many steps of the governor could be explained by this fact. Let us recall that the leaders of the October Revolution in 1917 were all Jews, who built a new Russia by ruthlessly destroying Russian nobility, professional military and Orthodox Christians. Now there are wonderful conditions in Russia to plunder the country making Armenians, Azeris, Kurds and other minorities the scapegoat. By the way, chief of migration department in the administration of governor Tkachov is a pureblooded Jew.”

Aside from the numerous, obvious antisemitic myths contained in this paragraph, it should be noted that the assertion that the policies of the Krasnodar Kray regional administration against ethnic minorities is somehow controlled by Jews is particularly absurd, given that this region is widely known as the most antisemitic part of Russia.

A February 8, 2002 remark by Israel’s ambassador to Armenia—Rivka Cohen—touched a nerve that some Armenian extremists sought to exploit. Ambassador Cohen termed the 1915 massacres of Armenians by Turks a “tragedy” but argued that it wasn’t a genocide (This official stance of the Israeli government is at odds with that of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and many Jewish scholars and leaders who term the 1915 killings a genocide). Several newspapers called for Ambassador Cohen to be termed persona non grata in Armenia. According to a subsequent letter to the editor written by local Jewish leader Rima Varzhapetian, during an interview that was published in the June 22, 2002 issue of Azg in which Ms. Varzhapetian expressed her concern about recent antisemitic incidents in Armenia, the author of the article distorted her words to make it appear that she believed that these incidents were a direct consequence of Ambassador Cohen’s statement. The following quote was taken from the English language version of the newspaper’s web site:

“Noting the concrete anti-Jewish manifestations that have taken place in Armenia after Israeli ambassador’s announcement, Varjapetian noted the incident when a group of Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s (ARF) youth organization members burned the flag of Turkey on the central Republic Square of Yerevan this April 23. She said that on the corners of the Turkish flag the Israeli national flag was depicted with the portrait of Jewish king David. She also showed us the plaque at the entrance of the community’s office on which unidentified people pictured a Nazi swastika. Also a nazi swastika was painted on the memorial stone of the Jewish Holocaust.

Despite these unpleasant incidents, Mrs. Varjapetian said that Armenian people are stripped from such features as demeaning other nations and over-estimating themselves, which comes from the difficult history Armenia had.

Talking to daily Azg the members of the ARF youth organization stressed that their action was not aimed against Jewish nation but was a protest against the announcement of Rivka Cohen, assuring that ‘a nation that had survived a genocide can not be chauvinistic and hate another nation.’”

In her letter to the editor, Ms. Varzhapetian was especially critical of this last paragraph, which, in her words, “justified” the actions of the ARF protestors.

The next month, Azg continued to defame Jews. Writing on July 13, the paper’s Moscow correspondent Ruben Ayrapetyan claimed that Russia’s friendlier relations with Israel are a result of years of pressure on the part of Russia’s “Judafied” media and Russian Jewish organizations, which he asserted are controlled by Israeli intelligence agencies.

Finally, an August 1, 2002 Azg article entitled “Hitler Would Applaud the Government of Israel” compared the actions of the Israeli military in the Occupied Territories to those of Nazi Germany (“Hitler also promised his people living space”) and quoted the past president of the World Jewish Congress Naum Goldman as supposedly saying that antisemites hate Jews “only a little more than we deserve.” The article was inspired by the Israeli Army’s July 2002 occupation of land belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church in order to construct a wall separating Israel from the West Bank, which set off a firestorm of anti-Israel criticism in the Armenian media and from official circles. However, it should be noted that most of this criticism was phrased in ways that did not seek to defame Jews.

The same land seizure issue was the subject a July 23, 2002 article in Golos Armenii—a leading independent publication with a circulation of around 5,000 that is normally critical of the government. In the opening paragraph of this article, entitled “Ghosts of the Past: They Don’t Just Exist, They Rule the World,” the author indulges in dangerous speculation linking Israeli policies with the Armenian Jewish community—shouldn’t the government retaliate against Israel’s land confiscation, the author asks, by seizing the “luxurious jeep of the chief rabbi of Armenia”? The article goes on to argue that the land confiscation is motivated by:

“[T]he Armeniaphobia of Israeli, and more broadly, Jewish political and public circles who drew attention to themselves starting with their furious opposition to international recognition of the Armenian Genocide and ending in the openly pro-Turkish regional policies of Israel, which in the end, are especially targeted against Armenia.”

The author then draws a connection between the Israeli government’s refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide and supposedly hidden Jews in the Turkish government at the time of the genocide, at the same time making a reference to the infamous antisemitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The sinister motives behind the Israeli stance on the Armenian genocide, the author of the article argues, are:

“…the ethnic origins of a number of leading members of the Young Turks who held during the First World War key positions in the Ottoman Empire and were thereby directly involved in the misdeeds of the Turkish authorities towards Armenians. The chief ideologues and conductors of Pan-Turkism, everybody knows, were hardly Turks.

In connection with this, I would like to tell today’s Zionist Elders who have placed a wall on the path towards international recognition of the Armenian Genocide: Your actions are just as cynical and immoral as the unending efforts of certain circles to present the Holocaust as the actions of the Jews themselves…”

On August 1, 2002 Golos Armenii published a review of a book by Aleksandr Svarants entitled “Pan-Turkism and the Geostrategy of Turkey in the Caucasus.” The author of the review praises Mr. Svarants for “exposing the long time alliance of Pan-Turkism with political Zionism and its protector the USA, which along with Israel and Turkey protects Azerbaijan.” According to the reviewer, the author characterizes the founding of the state of Israel as “the robbery and humiliation of another people” and traces the origin of Pan-Turkism to “Zionist teachings.”

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