According to the Israeli site http://izrus.co.il/diasporaIL/news/2009-02-09/10436.html, in some areas of Sumgait (Azerbaijan) were several cases of robbery at an apartment owned by Jewish families. According to preliminary data about 12 people were affected who were taken to a hospital ambulance with injuries of varying degrees of severity, including knife wounds.
Presumably, this outbreak of violence, most likely linked to recent events in Gaza.
Filed under azerbaijan, islam, Israel
In my opinion we have to pay more attention on the armenian bloggers’ capacity and skills in order to have success during the struggle with azri and turkish information war.
“The Immigrant Absorption Ministry announced on Sunday it was setting up an “army of bloggers,” to be made up of Israelis who speak a second language, to represent Israel in “anti-Zionist blogs” in English, French, Spanish and German.
The program’s first volunteer was Sandrine Pitousi, 31, from Kfar Maimon, situated five kilometers from Gaza. “I heard about the project over the radio and decided to join because I’m living in the middle of the conflict,” she said.
Before hanging up the phone prematurely following a Color Red rocket alert, Pitousi, who immigrated to Israel from France in 1993, said she had some experience with public relations from managing a production company.
“During the war, we looked for a way to contribute to the effort,” the ministry’s director general, Erez Halfon, told Haaretz. “We turned to this enormous reservoir of more than a million people with a second mother tongue.” Other languages in which bloggers are sought include Russian and Portuguese.
Halfon said volunteers who send the Absorption Ministry their contact details by e-mail, at media@moia.gov.il, will be registered according to language, and then passed on to the Foreign Ministry’s media department, whose personnel will direct the volunteers to Web sites deemed “problematic.”
Within 30 minutes of announcing the program, which was approved by the Foreign Ministry on Sunday, five volunteers were already in touch, Halfon said.”
Eternal Damnation of the Spotless Mind
Bernard-Henri Levy,
The New Republic
Published: January 13, 2009
I write this in remembrance of the renowned Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, murdered two years ago, on Jan. 19, 2007, for his comments on the slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces during WWI … in horror that the police officers guarding the 17-year-old murder suspect, Ogun Samast, saw fit to take a video in which he proudly held the Turkish flag as they recorded their brief association with him for posterity … in solidarity with the brave group of 200 Turkish writers and intellectuals who recently signed an online petition apologizing for the massacre, risking their freedom to keep pressure on the Turkish government.
Outrages like Dink’s murder will continue. They will continue as long as Turkey, fearing the loss of prestige and alarmed by the possibility that it will be obliged to pay reparations to survivors and their descendants, continues to deny that the Armenian genocide took place. This struggle will continue as long as there are no laws in place penalizing genocide denial — and these laws are needed not only in Turkey, but around the world.
Critics may say, “It is not for the law to write history.” That is absurd. History has been written a hundred times over. The facts have been established, and new laws will protect them from being altered.
In 1929, the British statesman and author Winston Churchill wrote that the Armenians were victims of genocide, an organized enterprise of systematic annihilation. The Turks themselves have admitted it. In 1918, in the aftermath of WWI, Mustafa Kemal — soon to be granted the honorific “Ataturk” — recognized the massacres perpetrated by the Young Turk government.
The laws already in place in many countries regarding Holocaust denial do not touch historians — for them the question of whether the slaughter of the Jews was or was not genocide is no longer at issue. What is at stake is preventing the erasure of such crimes from our society’s memory.
Take France’s Gayssot law, which criminalized the denial of crimes against humanity, and which as yet has been applied only to denial of the Jewish Holocaust. This is a law that reins in the fringe and extremist politicians who engage in lightly cloaked anti-Semitism and who may be tempted to advocate Holocaust denial. This is a law that prevents masquerades like that of historian David Irving’s trial in London in 2000.
Irving brought a libel case against Deborah Lipstadt, author of “Denying the Holocaust,” who had labeled him a spokesman for Holocaust deniers. Though the judge ruled in notably strong language that Irving was indeed a Holocaust denier, in the absence of laws penalizing this offense, Irving walked free. Meanwhile, the tabloid journalists and talking heads muddied the issues and ultimately drew more attention to Irving’s work, which may well have been his intention all along.Critics will say, “Where will the law stop?” since technically we could also extend this law to include the denial of the crimes that took place during the colonial era, the publication of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, even the sin of blasphemy. Must we forbid the expression of opinions that do not mirror our own? This is a trap, for two reasons.
By Eric Walberg
Global Research, July 23, 2008
Al Ahram Weekly
It is hard to sort through the hype and heat of Obamania, but one thing is
clear: who’s pulling the strings, argues Eric Walberg
As the United States election race enters the final stretch, Barack Obama
as the candidate promising change is revealing his true colours, much to
the despair of anyone actually expecting any change. His recent call to
declare Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel, his denial of
Palestinans’ right of return, and his support for a Bantustan Palestinian
“state” which poses no threat to Israel show how completely he has caved
in to the Zionist establishment on that issue.
Lebanon’s President Michel Suleiman on Friday decreed the formation of a national unity cabinet, which includes two Armenians in its lineup of ministers.
The unity cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Fouad Saniorai, consists of 30 ministers from the six major sects in a nation made up of 18 religious communities. Alain Tabourian will serve as Minister of Energy and Water, while Jean Ogassapian will serve as one of five Ministers of State.
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Rimma Varzhapetyan, chairwoman of the Jewish Community of Armenia, says there is no anti-Semitism in Armenia as such, however, sometimes anti-Semitic materials appear in the press and their number has grown in the recent days.
Her statement was in response to a comment last week by US Assistant Secretary of State David Kramer, that some media outlets propagandize anti-Semitism. He said “It is unacceptable to have anti-Semitism in a country with historically friendly relations with Israel and the Jewish community.”
Varzhapetyan says there are two reasons that stir Armenia anti-Semitism. One is the long-standing resentment that Israel does not recognize the Armenian Genocide. The other – and the reason for more recent hate-talk – is the exploitation of the heritage of the wife of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who comes from Jewish ancestry.
Filed under armenia, armenian elections, Israel, opposition, Protests, Ter-Petrossian, Ter-Petrosyan
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