Media: Armenia and Israel failed to form sense of interethnic friendship

Despite historians, journalists, and political experts pointed out a host of similarities between the Armenians and Jews, it seems they have not been able to forge any significant sense of inter-ethnic amitié - at the individual level or the collective level, reads an article by Martin Sherman, the founder of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a member of the Habithonistim-Israel Defense & Security Forum (IDSF) research team, and a participant in the Israel Victory Project, published in Newsmax TV, Report informs.

Regarding enmity at the personal level, “a 2018 poll among nearly 56,000 adults across 34 countries spanning Western, Central, and Eastern European countries by Pew Research Center showed almost 80% of Armenians would not accept a Jew into their families - more than any other country in the survey. An earlier 2017 Pew poll of 18 Central and East European countries found that less than two-thirds of Armenians would accept Jews as citizens of their country - again the highest in the survey,” the author wrote.

The Pew polls were preceded by a widely-cited country-specific survey conducted by the ADL that found that almost 60% of Armenians harbored antisemitic sentiments. For example, over 60% believed Jews were hated because of how they behave, and almost 40% consider the Jews are to blame for most the wars in the world.

Significantly, the survey was conducted in 2014 - over half a decade before the 2020 second Karabakh War, in which Azerbaijan recovered significant territories; and almost a decade before 2023, which resulted in all of Karabakh coming under the control of Baku, according to the article.

“Accordingly, although the supply of Israeli arms to Azerbaijan is cited as a major factor in Baku’s military successes, this cannot account for the anti-Jewish animus found in the previously mentioned polls,” reads the article.

The author also touched upon enmity at the collective level, an indicator of which, in his opinion, is the relationship between Armenia and Iran.

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