VIEW GALLERY: Armenians in Israel protest arms sales to Azerbaijan

BY DIANA GALSTYAN

Members of the Armenian community of Israel from across the country gathered in Tel Aviv last week to protest in front of the country’s major broadcasting companies, demanding them to cover the war in Artsakh, especially Israel’s role in supplying arms to Azerbaijan.

As it is well known, Israel supplies 60 percent of Azerbaijan’s military’s armaments, including drones and deadly cluster bombs, which are banned by almost 100 nations.

The weapon of “the most moral army in the world… the only democracy in the Middle East,” as Israel presents itself, is used today to attack innocent civilians, women, children, the elderly, to bomb hospitals and churches.

However, it seems that the Israeli media has chosen to ignore this fact and stays silent, pretending that Israel has no relation to the distant conflict in the Caucasus. Therefore, we, the Armenians living in Israel, came to remind them that silence is violence.

Silence kills. Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust because the world remained silent. We came to remind the media that a country dealing with the collective trauma of the Holocaust has no moral right to contribute and turn a blind eye to the other nation’s Genocide.

And finally, we came to remind them that in a democratic country media cannot choose silence while its government is indirectly involved in war crimes.

Unfortunately, the doors remained closed that day. Instead of coming out and speaking to us, the media preferred to cowardly photograph us from their windows. But we know that we’ve been heard and seen. And we will keep on shouting until the media begins to do what it is supposed to do – talk!