Israeli rabbi: I came to witness ghost town

"It was important for me to be able to see firsthand the places my former students fought to liberate," Israeli rabbi Rabbi Zamir Isayev, who visited the Azerbaijani lands liberated from the occupation, said, Report informs referring to the Jerusalem Post.

In October, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region was simply the latest in a long history of tension and conflict between the two neighbors, and the scars and devastation wrought by this long history remain today, he said.

The most important stop on tour was Zangilan, a city on the Azerbaijani-Iranian border that is the district’s administrative center of the same name, he said.

"I came to witness a virtual ghost town, a completely destroyed city that lay in ruins for nearly 30 years," he explained.

"Most of its structures have essentially been demolished. The Armenian occupiers clearly had no plans to settle here and only sought to destroy the site, proving that they never regarded this land as their own," he added.

"Jews that fight in the Azeri army are the pride of our community and the entire country," he said.

Born in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku, Rabbi Zamir Isayev was raised in Israel but moved back to the city of his birth and became director of the capital’s Jewish School, whose many graduates took part in the conflict against Armenia.