Israel is in the middle of a war. Rockets from Lebanon are raining down on us every day. We are trying to defend ourselves against ruthless terrorists, who massacred, maimed, mutilated, raped and burned Israeli civilians en masse on Oct. 7 for the crime of being Jewish. However, not many people in the community of nations are sympathetic to our plight.
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US President Joe Biden called Israel's response to the war in Gaza "over the top." Michelle O'Neil, who was recently elected the First Minister of Northern Ireland, said "Hamas will eventually be regarded as a future partner for peace." The French President Emmanuel Macron said that Israel's goal of fighting terrorism did not mean that "it had to flatten Gaza."
Nardia Harman, a refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, recently declared: "Forcing the over one million displaced Palestinians in Rafah to again evacuate without a safe place to go would be unlawful and would have catastrophic consequences. There is nowhere safe to go in Gaza. The international community should take action to prevent further atrocities."
The lead story in the BBC is an article titled "Gazans surviving off animal feed and rice as food dwindles." One of the top stories in CNN is "Girl who was trapped in car with dead relatives after it came under Israeli fire was found dead." The lead article in Le Monde also declares: "Benjamin Netanyahu demands the evacuation of civilians and the destruction of Hamas in Rafah. According to the UN, over 1.3 million Palestinians can be found presently in that area."
Indeed, across the world, Israel is facing a public relations crisis. In recent days, anti-Israel protests have swept across 54 Moroccan cities. Morocco is an Arab country that joined the Abraham Accords. If anti-Israel protests have erupted there, the situation for Israel is ten times worse in other Muslim countries, who are not at peace with Israel. Around the same period of time, students in the UK held walkouts and protests demanding that institutions withdraw support for companies like BAE Systems who are providing weapons and defense support to Israel.
About a week ago, anti-Israel protesters gathered near Columbia University and clashed with the NYPD. Around the same period of time, thousands of people marched against Israel in London. This is only a small sample of the hostility that Israel is presently facing in the international community. As we speak, there are members of the American Jewish community who are deliberately avoiding certain areas, just to avoid violent anti-Israel protesters.
In a time like this, when Israel faces so many challenges in the international arena, the Jewish state should really appreciate a country like Azerbaijan, which has zero anti-Semitism and has stood beside Israel, supplying the Jewish state with 40% of its oil supply as we fight against Hamas. Although some might diminish the rich relationship between Israel and Azerbaijan as being nothing more than a deal to get "oil for weapons," I believe that there is a lot more to the strategic relationship between the two countries than that.
Azerbaijani-Jewish relations span back 2,700 years, when Jews fleeing the Babylonian Exile settled in the Caucuses country. Unlike in other countries where Jews experienced oppression, with the sole exception of the persecutions of Nadir Shah and the Soviet regime, the Jewish people did not face any sort of discrimination in Azerbaijan, even though the country is mostly Shia Muslim. On the contrary, the Jewish community is greatly valued by the Ilham Aliyev government which recently won a fifth term.
Pavel Elizarov, the chairman of the All-Israeli Association of Mountain Jews from the Caucasus, general director of the Parliamentary Lobby of Mountain Jews and Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs on issues of Jews from the Caucasus, sent a congratulatory letter to the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in connection with his election victory.
He did this because President Ilham Aliyev and his father the late Heydar Aliyev played a prominent role in rebuilding Jewish life in Azerbaijan following the collapse of the Soviet Union, funding the reconstruction of synagogues, the operation of Jewish schools, and other activities. Many American Jews could only dream that President Biden would one day fund the Jewish community with US taxpayer money as Aliyev does for the Jewish community in Azerbaijan.
When the Oct. 7 massacre occurred, the Azerbaijani government officially condemned it and has stood by Israel ever since. While anti-Israel protesters march the streets of New York and London, one cannot really find them in Baku. Yes, the Azerbaijanis are greatly saddened by the civilian suffering in this conflict, but they are not taking a biased stance against Israel. This is what makes them different from other governments around the world. For this reason, Israel should cherish this friendship.
I would like to mention that there are some European countries, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic which usually stand side by side with Israel against anti-Israeli decisions in the EU.
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