This article maps a gradual sequence of psychological warfare in Beirut and Jerusalem against the Armenians, preceding the Second Artsakh War.
The Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) conflict is an ethnic, religious and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which was inhabited predominantly by ethnic Armenians until the Azerbaijani offensive in 2023, and seven surrounding districts, which were inhabited mostly by Azerbaijanis until their expulsion during the First Artsakh War from 1988-1994. Starting in the 1990s, the region was controlled by the breakaway Republic of Artsakh. During the Second Artsakh War in 2020 and the Azerbaijani offensive in 2023, Azerbaijan reasserted control over the region and the seven surrounding districts.
Turkey provided military support to Azerbaijan, while Israel supported Azerbaijan openly and with all military and psychological means. The war was characterized by the use of drones (which were crucial to Azerbaijan’s victory), sensors, espionage, government propaganda and the use of the press and social media in online information warfare.
Both Turkey and Israel gradually devoted military assistance and psychological warfare to demoralizing Armenians in the diaspora in general and the Middle East in particular, in the following sequence:
In the year 2000, the Israeli media, visual and audio press gradually began to attack the local Armenian government and people of Artsakh in a very aggressive manner, spreading demeaning hate speech that accused them of stealing the Nagorno-Karabakh region from Azerbaijan.
In the early morning of Sunday, December 2, 2018, Israeli police arrested 40 Arab doctors and pharmacists from their workplaces in Israeli medical institutions and raided the suspects’ homes across the country (from the Bedouin town of Laqiya in southern Israel to the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the north) on charges of obtaining forged certificates from various Armenian universities — while noting that they had passed the official Israeli medical license exam. Two days later, the Israeli police released them and apologized, as their certificates were completely valid. A police investigation was launched at the request of the health ministry, after it received an anonymous complaint about the matter from a man who introduced himself as a doctor, a graduate of a medical university in Azerbaijan. Thus, Israeli authorities tarnished the reputation of Armenian academic institutions and harmed the local economy, as international students then refrained from enrolling in Armenian universities.
In July 2020, Lebanese-Armenian TV host Nishan Der Haroutiounian was accused of insulting Turkish President Recep Erdogan. Widespread demonstrations against the Armenian community took place at the instigation of the Turkish embassy in Beirut.
In August 2020, between 500 and 600 Azerbaijani Jews marched along the Old City of Jaffa-Tel Aviv and demonstrated outside of the Armenian Cultural Center and the Armenian Saint Nicholas Monastery in support of Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. At the same time, the Israeli press revealed that Israel had been supplying Azerbaijan with weapons and military experts for quite some time, in addition to establishing a spy center on the Armenian-Azerbaijani-Iranian border.
During the same period, the scandal of the so-called Cows’ Garden deal gradually emerged, revealing a major land theft that jeopardized 25% of Armenian land in the old city of Jerusalem. The dispossession of 25% of Armenian-owned land for Jewish settlers resulted in a major community uproar.
In September 2020, Azerbaijan announced the start of the Second Artsakh War, which lasted 44 days and ended with Azerbaijan seizing a large area of the Armenian Republic of Artsakh. Taking advantage of the frustration among the Armenian people worldwide and in Jerusalem in particular (due to their defeat at the hands of Azerbaijan and its main allies, Israel and Turkey), the decision-makers in the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate and Jewish settlers in Jerusalem announced the long-term real estate lease deal.
On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan launched a lightning attack on the Republic of Artsakh, which lasted two days and ended with Azerbaijan seizing all parts of Artsakh and committing genocide against the local Armenians.
Dr. Gaby Kevorkian
Armenian Quarter, Jerusalem
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