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Amid Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenian synagogue defaced as local anger over Israeli arms sales to Azerbaijan grows
(JTA) — Vandals threw red paint on an Armenian synagogue on Tuesday, in the latest sign of increasing tensions between Armenia and Israel as Israeli arms sales have fueled Azerbaijan’s offensive in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The paint was smeared on the Mordechay Navi Jewish Religious Center in Yerevan, what is thought to be the only synagogue in Armenia’s capital city. Most estimates put the number of Jews in Armenia at a few hundred.
The Conference of European Rabbis — an organization of Orthodox rabbis led by the exiled former chief rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt — tied the act of vandalism to posts it shared from a nationalist Armenian group that had circulated on pro-Armenian social media pages at the time.
“The Jews are the enemies of the Armenian nation, complicit in Turkish crimes and the regime of Aliyev, stained with the blood of the Republic of Armenia and Artsakh,” one post read, referring to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“The Jewish state provides weapons to Aliyev’s criminal regime, and Jews from America and Europe actively support him,” the post continued, according to the Conference of European Rabbis. “If Jewish rabbis in the United States and Europe continue to support Aliyev’s regime, we will continue to burn their synagogues in other countries. Every rabbi will be a target for us. No Israeli Jew will feel safe in these countries.”
Despite that threat, the Armenian synagogue that was defaced was not burned on Tuesday, according to reports and photos from the scene.
Israel and Azerbaijan have developed close relations in recent years, as Azerbaijan provides Israel with approximately 40% of its oil resources. According to reports, Israel supplied up to 70% of Azerbaijan’s military arsenal in the years leading up to 2020. The Associated Press reported on Thursday that Azerbaijani cargo planes were seen leaving Israel last month.
Israeli officials have said that the arms relationship is partly due to Azerbaijan’s geographic proximity to Iran, a country that routinely calls for violence against Israel. “We have a strategic partnership to contain Iran,” Arkady Mil-man, Israel’s former ambassador to Azerbaijan, told the AP.
Over the past two weeks, more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijani troops began fighting with Armenian rebels, reigniting of a conflict that flared in 2020 and left thousands of fighters dead. The region — which is part of Azerbaijan but has a population that is ethnically and culturally tied to Armenia — was the site of a war in the 1990s, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Armenian officials have begun to express concern over Israel’s military support of Azerbaijan. “For us, it is a major concern that Israeli weapons have been firing at our people,” Armenian Ambassador to Israel Arman Akopian told the AP. “I don’t see why Israel should not be in the position to express at least some concern about the fate of people being expelled from their homeland.”
Azerbaijan has also striven to cultivate ties with global Jewish groups, including the Conference of European Rabbis, which is slated to hold a meeting in Baku in November. The Rabbinical Centre of Europe, a group of European rabbis associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, issued a statement last month condemning Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for using the word “genocide” to describe the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Pashinyan also told Agence-France Presse that Azerbaijani troops have created “a ghetto” in the disputed region.
“Senior Armenian government officials… employed the language and comparisons that are appropriate solely to describe the deliberate, systematic and largest genocide in the history of mankind, which the Jewish people have been subjected to: The Holocaust,” the statement read. “Such words as ‘ghetto,’ ‘genocide,’ ‘Holocaust’ and the like [are] in no uncertain terms inappropriate to be part of the jargon used in any kind of political disagreement. Usage of these terms belittles the terrible suffering experienced by the Holocaust victims and the entire Jewish people.”
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UN Security Council Meets on Iran as Russia, China Push for a Ceasefire
Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The U.N. Security Council met on Sunday to discuss US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites as Russia, China and Pakistan proposed the 15-member body adopt a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Middle East.
It was not immediately clear when it could be put to a vote. The three countries circulated the draft text, said diplomats, and asked members to share their comments by Monday evening. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China to pass.
The US is likely to oppose the draft resolution, seen by Reuters, which also condemns attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and facilities. The text does not name the United States or Israel.
“The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States marks a perilous turn in a region that is already reeling,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Sunday. “We now risk descending into a rathole of retaliation after retaliation.”
“We must act – immediately and decisively – to halt the fighting and return to serious, sustained negotiations on the Iran nuclear program,” Guterres said.
The world awaited Iran’s response on Sunday after President Donald Trump said the US had “obliterated” Tehran’s key nuclear sites, joining Israel in the biggest Western military action against the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution.
U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council that while craters were visible at Iran’s enrichment site buried into a mountain at Fordow, “no one – including the IAEA – is in a position to assess the underground damage.”
Grossi said entrances to tunnels used for the storage of enriched material appear to have been hit at Iran’s sprawling Isfahan nuclear complex, while the fuel enrichment plant at Natanz has been struck again.
“Iran has informed the IAEA there has been no increase in off-site radiation levels at all three sites,” said Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran requested the U.N. Security Council meeting, calling on the 15-member body “to address this blatant and unlawful act of aggression, to condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
Israel‘s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement on Sunday that the U.S. and Israel “do not deserve any condemnation, but rather an expression of appreciation and gratitude for making the world a safer place.”
Danon told reporters before the council meeting that it was still early when it came to assessing the impact of the U.S. strikes. When asked if Israel was pursuing regime change in Iran, Danon said: “That’s for the Iranian people to decide, not for us.”
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Israel Rejects Critical EU Report Ahead of Ministers’ Meeting
FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Israel has rejected a European Union report saying it may be breaching human rights obligations in Gaza and the West Bank as a “moral and methodological failure,” according to a document seen by Reuters on Sunday.
The note, sent to EU officials ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, said the report by the bloc’s diplomatic service failed to consider Israel’s challenges and was based on inaccurate information.
“The Foreign Ministry of the State of Israel rejects the document … and finds it to be a complete moral and methodological failure,” the note said, adding that it should be dismissed entirely.
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Pope Leo Urges International Diplomacy to Prevent ‘Irreparable Abyss’
FILE PHOTO: Pope Leo XIV holds a Jubilee audience on the occasion of the Jubilee of Sport, at St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican June 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi/File Photo
Pope Leo on Sunday said the international community must strive to avoid war that risks opening an “irreparable abyss,” and that diplomacy should take the place of conflict.
US forces struck Iran’s three main nuclear sites overnight, joining an Israeli assault in a major new escalation of conflict in the Middle East as Tehran vowed to defend itself.
“Every member of the international community has a moral responsibility: to stop the tragedy of war before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” Pope Leo said during his weekly prayer with pilgrims.
“No armed victory can compensate for the pain of mothers, the fear of children, the stolen future. Let diplomacy silence the weapons, let nations chart their future with peace efforts, not with violence and bloody conflicts,” he added.
“In this dramatic scenario, which includes Israel and Palestine, the daily suffering of the population, especially in Gaza and other territories, risks being forgotten, where the need for adequate humanitarian support is becoming increasingly urgent,” Pope Leo said.
The post Pope Leo Urges International Diplomacy to Prevent ‘Irreparable Abyss’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.