By Michael Rubin Washington Examiner

Against the backdrop of this autumn’s Nagorno-Karabakh war, another battle raged in Washington: partisans to the conflict seeking to sway American Jewry to their cause. In their telling, Azerbaijan was an enlightened society tolerant of all while Armenia was a deeply anti-Semitic country that supported Adolf Hitler.

Countries that embrace religious freedom seldom need to brag about how good they are to their minorities. The Netherlands, for example, seldom brags about how happy its Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, or Buddhists are. To hold indigenous Jewish communities on a pedestal, as Turkey and Azerbaijan do, is an obnoxious strategy. Not only does it suggest Jews think singularly and interpret policy through a religious lens rather than through the interests of the country in which they are citizens, but the strategy also carries an implied threat: Religious tolerance will be fleeting if Washington or Jerusalem do not abide by Ankara or Baku’s wishes. It’s the mafioso equivalent of, “Nice place you’ve got here; it would be a shame if anything happened to it.”

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.

There is an irony when Azeris accuse Armenians of sympathy toward Hitler when Azeri President Ilham Aliyev appears to harbor a fascination with the German dictator. Just as Hitler defined his enemy as Jews inside Germany, Jews outside Germany, and those who would support the Jews, Aliyev has made similar comments with regard to Armenians. Aliyev has also embraced eliminationist rhetoric. “Armenia, as a country, is of no importance. In fact, it is a colony, an outpost; a territory governed from abroad which was artificially created in ancient Azerbaijani lands,” he said in 2012. In 2018, the Azeri dictator declared, “Yerevan is our historic land and we, Azerbaijanis, must return to these Azerbaijani lands.” Just last week, Aliyev repeated his quest for further territorial conquest (Azeri lebensraum) defining Zangerzur, Sevan, and Yerevan as “Azerbaijani territories” while Erdogan bragged about his “Caucasus Islamic Army.”

Simply put, while it is true that religious freedom is the canary in the coal mine to determine the reality of a regime, trajectory also matters. Azeri and Armenian officials and their respective diasporas may castigate the other, but both societies have traditionally embraced tolerance toward their indigenous Jewish communities. What should be of greater concern, however, is the recent trajectory of Azerbaijan’s leadership not only to embrace rhetoric rooted in the Armenian genocide but also to welcome as a partner a Turkish leader whose obsession lays not with territorial dispute but rather with religious warfare, jihad, and deeply anti-Semitic conspiracies. Simply put, the days of Azerbaijan being an oasis for Jews is now in the past.

Michael Rubin 

Senior Fellow

A little while ago, law enforcement officers took Mher Sahakyan, an MP of the opposition “Armenia” Faction, from the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia, Armenian News-NEWS.am was told by this faction.

Law enforcement officers took Sahakyan from the office of the “Armenia” Faction. NA speaker Alen Simonyan was also there, and shouts were heard.

Simonyan instructed that the reporters be removed from the area.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani has called on Azerbaijani officials to clarify the recent comments made by the Azerbaijani foreign minister on their “new phase of a strategic partnership” with Israel, IRNA reported.

Kanaani reflected on the Israeli foreign minister’s statement on an agreement with his Azerbaijani counterpart to establish a unified front against Iran, describing it as another document of intentions of Israel to turn the soil of Azerbaijan into a ground for threatening the national security of Iran.

The spokesman condemned the stances strongly, noting that the statements on the “new phase of strategic partnership” by Azerbaijan and Israel’s plan to form a unified front against Iran explicitly indicate their anti-Iran collaboration, and urged the Azerbaijani authorities to explain the matter.

Emphasizing the unbreakable historical and religious link between the Iranian and Azerbaijani people, the diplomat said that Iran has always tried to foil attempts by ill-wishers, who make efforts to create distance between the two neighboring states; so, the Azerbaijani government is expected to avoid the plot hatched by the foes of mutual ties between Baku and Tehran.

It is obvious that the Islamic Republic cannot remain indifferent in the face Israel’s conspiracy via the soil of Azerbaijan, he warned.

Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen had informed of the expansion of anti-Iran cooperation between Tel Aviv and Baku—simultaneous with the opening of the embassy of Azerbaijan in the Israeli capital city.

By The Associated Press,

A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump on charges involving payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter, the first ever criminal case against a former U.S. president and a jolt to Trump’s bid to retake the White House in 2024.

The indictment, confirmed Thursday by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, and other people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss sealed criminal charges, is an extraordinary development after years of investigations into his business, political and personal dealings. It is likely to galvanize critics who say Trump lied and cheated his way to the top and embolden supporters who feel the Republican is being unfairly targeted by a Democratic prosecutor.

Related: Donald Trump’s potential indictment caps decades of legal scrutiny

Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing and has repeatedly attacked the investigation as politically motivated, was expected to surrender to authorities next week, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss a matter that remained under seal.

In bringing the charges, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is embracing an unusual case that had been investigated by two previous sets of prosecutors, both of which declined to take the politically explosive step of seeking Trump’s indictment.

In the weeks leading up to the indictment, Trump railed about the investigation on social media and urged supporters to protest on his behalf, prompting tighter security around the Manhattan criminal courthouse.

Related: Trump’s call for protests ahead of anticipated indictment gets muted reaction by supporters

Trump faces other potential legal perils as he seeks to reassert control of the Republican Party and stave off a slew of one-time allies who are seeking or are likely to oppose him for the presidential nomination.

The district attorney in Atlanta has for two years been investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to meddle in Georgia’s 2020 vote count. And a U.S. Justice Department special counsel is investigating Trump’s storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and his efforts to reverse his election loss.

Today, we learned from the Datalex judicial information system that the “Civil Contract” party filed two lawsuits against the 168.am news website. The fact that the authorities of the day are trying in every possible way to silence free speech and an impartial press is perhaps nothing new.

It turns out that both lawsuits filed against the media refer to administrative offenses against the rights of citizens and the health of the population. Thus, the plaintiff party demands to subject the defendant to administrative liability in accordance with the procedure provided for in Article 40.1 of the RA Code on Administrative Offenses. This article is about campaigning on or before polling day.

The article says that campaigning through public speeches and public events on the day before the vote and the day before it causes a fine in the amount of four hundred to six hundred times the minimum wage. Campaigning through print media, terrestrial broadcasting radio stations and television stations (including during satellite broadcasting) on ​​the day of the election and the day before it shall result in the imposition of a fine in the amount of 500 to 700 times the minimum wage on the person or leader of the media activity.

Aramazd Kiviryan, the lawyer of 168.am , said in a conversation with “Hraparak” that they have not yet received any notification from the court, but they are aware that the CP filed two lawsuits against the media outlet. “We haven’t received any documents yet, but I can say that two lawsuits have been filed against the media, it refers to Article 40.1 of the RA Code,” the lawyer said.

In response to the question of what publications the KP filed a lawsuit against, two lawsuits under the same article, the lawyer said that until they receive a notice, they cannot say which specific publications it refers to. “I can’t say about that at the moment, we haven’t received any claims yet,” he said.

Ամբողջական հոդվածը կարող եք կարդալ այս հասցեով՝ : https://hraparak-am.translate.goog/post/34b09ef4abd816f05c4a58bacb4e6f5a?_x_tr_sl=hy&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=nui,sc

© 2008 – 2021 «Հրապարակ օրաթերթ»

By Michael Rubin March 30, 2023

It has been a bad month for Iraqi Kurdistan. First, the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce found against Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani’s nephew to the tune of $1.65 billion.

A Paris arbitration court then found in favor of Iraq in a multibillion-dollar ruling against Turkey leading to a freeze on most of the Kurdistan Region’s oil exports through the country. Iraqi lawyers told me one reason for the verdict was Masoud’s unwillingness to submit his own business contracts to the arbitration judges.

For Masoud’s eldest son Masrour Barzani, the finding is worse. Masrour faces a lawsuit in the United States for falsely alleging an affair between American journalist Zack Kopplin and Shnyar Anwar Hassan, a Kurdish woman married to Sarkawt Shamsulddin, an opposition parliamentarian and frequent Barzani critic. Kopplin and Hassan never met, but Masrour apparently sought both to deflect attention from and delegitimize Kopplin’s reporting. In conservative Kurdish society, such allegations are serious: Reputations matter and honor crimes are real. In US court, Masrour’s defense in rests in part on a claim of sovereign immunity. By rejecting Barzani’s argument in Paris that his Kurdish authority was part of the Iraqi government, it essentially undermined his ability to claim sovereign immunity elsewhere.

The personal slander and libel in which Masrour and Masoud engage against Hassan is the rule rather than exception. I know Barzani tactics well. Twelve years ago, I exposed Masrour as the owner of an $11 million mansion in McLean, Virginia. I subsequently wrote a chapter on Kurdistan Regional Government corruption for the Routledge Handbook on the Kurds. Because I neither have family in Iraqi Kurdistan nor do I do business, the Barzanis have no leverage over me, so they turned to Plan B: spreading rumors about me in Iraqi Kurdish chatrooms and Barzani-run newspapers.

Prior to his 2020 death, former Kirkuk governor Najmaldin Karim admitted that he, Barzani’s uncle and former Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, and Fadhil Mirani, the politburo secretary of Barzani’s political party, crafted tales to discredit me. It was the type of slander common in Iraq dating back to the Baath Party when, the Fedayeen Saddam beheaded women they said were prostitutes; in reality, they were PhDs and medical doctors married to suspected critics.

What works in tribal societies does not work on the international stage. Rather, it hemorrhages the Kurdish government’s credibility. Today, however, Masrour now doubles down. In the past week, Masrour has launched a public offensive against the US Consul-General in Erbil to counter criticisms in the State Department’s annual human rights report.  A more mature leader might address those concerns or point out factual errors, but Masrour instead accused the consulate of promoting homosexuality and perversion. That Masrour simultaneously expects the United States to continue funding his Peshmerga militia salaries to the tune of almost quarter billion dollars a year and arrests journalists for meeting with the consul-general is bipolar.

Masrour’s rule is unstable. Kurds (including Barzani family members) say Masrour compounds the problem by isolating his father Masoud in his mountaintop palace. There, they present him with cherry picked news and social media reports to channel his anger against both foreigners and any Kurd whom Masrour sees as potential competitors. Rather than be an elder statesman who might moderate and mature his son, Masoud is today their captive, albeit in a gilded prison.

Iraqi Kurdistan-based expatriate writer Winthrop Rodgers is correct: Iraqi Kurdistan’s house of cards is collapsing. The region is exhibit A in why the US must base its policy on strengthening systems rather than individual leaders. Perhaps wiser leaders might salvage what Iraqi Kurds have achieved, but Masoud and Masrour’s cheap homophobia, social shaming, and deflection reaffirm they are not up to the task. Their provincial mindset makes the entire family appear foolish on the world stage.