For decades, Rabbi Zamir Isayev has prayed on Shabbat mornings for the government of his native Azerbaijan, a Muslim-majority nation situated northwest of Iran.
Amid the recent deadly fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over disputed territory, he has added a special prayer for the well-being of Azerbaijan’s soldiers, which he follows up with his regular prayer for Israeli troops.
“Israel is my country as a Jew. Azerbaijan is my country as an Azeri,” Isayev, 40, told the Jewish Telegraphic agency. He was born in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, but grew up in Israel and served in its army.
Isayev’s patriotism is typical of Azeri Jews, one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities, whose synagogues often feature Azeri and Israeli flags as well as pictures of community members who gave their lives fighting for Azerbaijan and before that the Soviet Union.
Nagorno-Karabakh and the Fresh Scars of War
With the cease-fire, Armenia has finally disentangled itself albeit violently and haphazardly from a prolonged territorial conflict that it could never win.
With a little over one month since the signing of the Nov. 10 cease-fire to end what is now called the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, the two belligerents have retrenched in their postwar domestic messaging. At least on this, there has been a remarkable degree of convergence between the two opposing sides Yerevan and Baku broadly agree that the latter decisively won, and the former badly lost. Azerbaijan is holding back-to-back celebrations, culminating in a grand victory parade last week: “If Armenia dares to show its fascism towards Azerbaijan once again, it will face our iron fist. A new period is beginning for Azerbaijan,” said Azerbaijan’s President İlham Aliyev during a recent victory ceremony. Armenia, meanwhile, continues to be roiled by an explosive mix of nation-wide
The 2020 Karabakh War s Impact on the Northwestern Border of Iran jamestown.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jamestown.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
16 Dec 2020 in 8:08 The Jamestown Foundation
On November 11, a day after he signed the trilateral accord with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan ending the Second Karabakh War, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan declared that “almost 99 percent of the liberated territories had been destroyed” (Azernews, November 12),
The Jamestown Foundation writes. The termination of the Armenian occupation revealed the enormous extent of the destruction in the territories that once were home to up to a million people. Everything, including residential buildings, schools, hospitals, public buildings, historical sites, graves and mosques had been razed to the ground, President Aliyev added.
Azerbaijan Demands Compensation From Armenia for Destruction of Previously Occupied Territories jamestown.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jamestown.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.