A year ago, Hamas massacred approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel and captured 251 hostages. Israel retaliated by launching a full-scale offensive on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip with two proclaimed objectives: the destruction of the terrorist organisation and the retrieval of the hostages. At the moment, Hamas is practically beheaded and 97 more hostages are still in Gaza, of whom 39 are already dead. Virtually all the Hamas leaders have been exterminated or out on the lam, and by various estimates about half of its militant personnel have perished. Clearly, it is premature to speculate about the implementation of the initial and emerging goals amid the recent escalation with the more heavily trained and Iran-controlled Hezbollah as well as the expected direct clash with Iran. Yet, a year that has further relegated the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh to the back burner is enough to reiterate some ‘fresh’ lessons for Armenia.
On 7 October 2023, we witnessed that even the Israeli intelligence and army may be caught off guard. Throughout this year, we have been observing Israel, which once disregarded the ratios of exchange and always placed one Israeli above dozens or hundreds of enemy units, permitting the deaths of hostages for the greater ‘global’ goal of destroying Hamas. Let us leave aside the question of the possibility of wiping off the face of the earth an organisation founded on ideology and administering a population of millions, especially one that you have fostered yourself. What matters is not only Netanyahu’s ‘cannibalistic’ views, which Armenians are well aware of, but the Israelis’ sense of the limits to negotiations with terrorists. How can one trust those who savagely slaughtered civilians and now offer to return some of the survivors if the pressure is reduced? It is only Nikol Pashinyan who can offer such a masterclass of naivety to the entire world. Obviously, Israel was not so ‘lucky’ fighting the Palestinians rather than the present Armenian public, so it will still encounter difficulties in exerting political control following its military victory. The Palestinians, despite finding themselves in the most real and hopeless blockade, are not going to rush off to read the books of Netanyahu, the person behind incessant bombardment against them.
Nevertheless, it does not matter how irrational the goal may seem, provided, of course, one is not the head of the ‘real Israel’. Since the dawn of the Zionist movement, its leaders have skilled in the art of the possible. Israeli leaders from Theodor Herzl and David Ben Gurion to Yitzhak Rabin have stood as examples of prudent assessment of their resources and uncompromising political realism. We previously wrote more on how these members of Israel’s aristocracy built a strong state and nation by prioritising national interests over universal values and goods, in our articles on national bourgeoisie and global nations. The neighbouring states’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist made military repulsion a necessary evil and placed all conceivable means at the service of the cause of preserving and strengthening the Jewish state.
Much less did anyone care that, for example, Western Europe – Israel’s key trading partner – would not favour the campaign against Lebanon in 1982. As we can now see, the appropriate prioritisation did not harm the Israeli economy in the slightest. The continued threats to Lebanon, a state and not a terrorist organisation, up to the most recent ones, have not elicited a strong international response either, and the reason is by no means that Israel may not be responsible for the consequences of its actions. Rather, the point is that the immutability of ‘internationally recognised borders’ exists only in the twisted minds of Pashinyan and his patron saint Levon Ter-Petrosyan.
It was just as irrational to establish a state in the desert surrounded by overwhelming enemies and reckon that the Jews would prefer such an accommodation to the amenities of European apartments; to implement a genuine repatriation policy while lacking the resources to absorb such an influx of returnees; to declare defenceless Jerusalem, the centre of all Abrahamic religions, as its capital, and then dare to resort to military action to assume full control over the city; lastly, not to grant partial concessions for the avoidance of new wars. For Israel’s leaders have always been acutely aware that land can be transferred only in return for a full-fledged peace, no more, no less.
The result of this kind of thinking in global diplomacy is that Israel’s right to meet the threat is beyond question. While allies may question the humanity of the means to exercise this right and even try to save face with humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, this will not prevent the U.S. president from calling himself an American Zionist and constantly reminding of his commitment to defend the Israeli state, despite public pressure.
Yes, the Holocaust would not the last act of mass murder of Jews. And yes, the Middle East is now even further away from ‘perpetual peace’. In fact, at the moment the country is not ruled by the most dignified leader. Yes, Israeli civilians suddenly found themselves defenceless on 7 October because institutions faltered briefly and Netanyahu almost ‘captured’ the state apparatus. But it is the presence of inner balance and preparedness to fight for one’s existence, rather than the absence of threats per se, that distinguishes nations with mature immune system.
To be sure, Israel has made and keeps making fateful mistakes. And yes, it’s going to have to account for some of them. But ‘not getting sick’ is only possible in perfect laboratory conditions, it is impossible to avoid encountering irritants in the jungle of grand politics. In real life, unless you are named Iceland or Switzerland, the only way you don’t get attacked is when you don’t exist. Especially if the latter is the official intention of your neighbours. The only question is whether you are battling what is poisoning your existence or letting these toxins replace your healthy cells. In other words, the first step to solve a problem is to acknowledge its existence. So only two things can be said for sure. Israel and the Israeli transnational political nation will do their work on mistakes. Meanwhile, the mistakes being made by the current Armenian authorities may prove to be irreversible.
‘We are not Israel, we do it our way. We don’t have the support of the United States,’ the advocates of the “peace agenda” and “real Armenia” excuse themselves and neglect the tacit and sometimes enthusiastic consensus of all major international players regarding the liberation of Artsakh. What is more, 30 years on, they dare to assert that the whole world regarded us as an aggressor, and in order to draw affection and sympathy, we should give up on Artsakh and make a victim of ourselves. First of all, who wants affection at such a cost? Second, who came up with the idea that the ‘international community’ has no tolerance for winners? Thirdly, in our case the stance of the international community was even more univocal in our favour (we had written about how this should have been preserved even against the background of the oil ‘Contract of the Century’ with Azerbaijan).
Well, the Armenian administration has its own ‘never again’ approach. Genocide cannot repeat itself if, firstly, it never stopped, and secondly, history is being rewritten as if it had never happened. ‘Real’ Armenia is an alternative universe where the Azerbaijani and Turkish glorification of Ramil Safarov, the murderer of a sleeping Armenian, and of the Turkish football player displaying hand gestures of the ‘Grey Wolves’ terrorist organisation do not prove the genocidal policy of the Turkish world towards Armenia and Armenians, instead these executioners are the ones who ‘help’ Armenians to become ‘realists’.
In Israel and its diaspora, too, there are divergent views on the means of preserving the state. Many, including a substantial proportion of the young people who were dancing at a festival held 5 kilometres near the border with the Gaza Strip on the night of 7 October 2023, would be fine with having two states in their historic homeland: a Jewish and an Arab one. Which is more than ‘rational’ against the background of decades-long negotiations and recognition of Palestine by 75% of UN member states. Moreover, up until 7 October, Palestinians were allowed to enter and work in Israel and use the country to export their produce. So unlike us, the Jews had grounds for fantasising a peaceful coexistence.
Like any normal people, Israelis desire to live peacefully, rather than in perpetual anticipation of shelling and terrorist attacks. They also put human life above all else and are protesting to remind the government of the imperative of returning the hostages. Israelis are not cyborgs, they are ordinary flesh and blood people who, against such doubts, fight for their homeland and keep a united front, because they have witnessed on the skin of their ancestors what will happen to them without a state wherever they are, and because they are being led by an elite, not a bunch of time-servers.
And we… pretend to opt for lives, but keep gradually losing them despite the ‘era of peace’. We abandon those who lose their loved ones, and then their homes and family graves, not only in Artsakh, but also in Syunik and Tavush. We do not even know the number of Armenians suffering in Baku captivity for years, let alone their families. Not once did we go on strike to make the government accountable before us for the fate of our compatriots. We have not spent a single minute in mourning since the loss of hundreds of old men, women, children and heroes who fought their last battle for Artsakh just over a year ago. How many torturers of Armenian soldiers and old men, women and children have we prosecuted since 2016? Meanwhile, they are roaming free and are not the least bit ashamed to expose their faces. Just like their accomplices in the ruling circles of Stepanakert and Yerevan. Wherefore, we are condemned to continued loss and mourning.
We chose the ‘peace’. Israel wouldn’t understand.
