My friend Sergio and the BBC
I am often invited to visit schools to talk to the students. It’s a significant part of my job. I want to allow the students to meet with a Rabbi in person to learn about Judaism and Jewish culture without the mediation of their teachers. Moreover, by meeting a Rabbi, they can realise that we Jews are regular human beings.
Over the years, I developed a format. I address the assembly for 10 minutes, usually about one Jewish holiday, and then open the floor to questions.
That is the moment when the dreadful questions about Israel come. The language of those questions betrays the source of information those students are exposed. Invariably they see Israel as an aggressor and the very existence of a Jewish State as a source of trouble if not a problem in itself.
At this point, I tell the story of my friend Sergio. Sergio and I grew up together, during our teenagerhood, the only two non-Catholic kids in the class. Sergio was Armenian. You spot the Armenians because of their family name, which ends as -ian. Like the football payer Makhtrian -who did not play well against Manchester United some weeks ago. The hi-tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, who invented Reddit. And Kim Kardashian (at this point, I always ask, “Why are you laughing?”)
Like us Jews, Armenians are both a people and a faith. There is an Armenian Diaspora; 13 million lives around the world. There is an Armenian Country, Armenia indeed, in West Asia and bordering Turkey. By the way, Armenia has an ongoing conflict with a Muslim neighbouring Country — Azerbaidjan.
Armenians in Europe and America tend to be middle class, although very wealthy dynasties exist. They are very entrepreneurial. They even have their own Birthright program; young Armenians from Diaspora travel around Armenia for two or three months. And, like us Jews, the Armenians carry the memory of a collective trauma, the genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Armies in 1916, when 1.5 million people were murdered and killed by starvation in the general indifference of the Western world. Famously in 1939, before invading Poland, that failed painter said: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”.
By the way, in 1916, in the Armenian village where he was born, the grandfather of my friend Sergio survived because he pretended to be dead; imagine that, a child under a pile of corpses, among them his family, slaughtered by Ottoman soldiers. 7 years old. Not one of those underage terrorists in Jenin, you know. He did not carry weapons. He was not taught how to kill. He was just a child.
While I talk about my friend Sergio, I leave out the account of our funny teenage escapades, which I will leave to your imagination. The students get my point; they understand the similarity between Armenians and Jews — even if I still have to find a Jewish equivalent of Kim Kardashian. And the teachers cringe while I talk, realising that -another time- they have forgotten to teach about the Armenian genocide.
And then I ask a question. This is: Why our media are obsessed with Israel/Palestine while paying no attention to the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan — which leads to periodic outbreaks of violence. Last week the Azerbaidjan PM went into a tirade about how evil contemporary Armenians are; they have become like their persecutors and have forgotten their faith’s values — does it sound familiar?
But why do we hear so much about Israel from the media while Armenia gets no coverage? Am I more interesting than my friend Sergio?
Why?
And my answer is: you tell me.
With this, the assembly comes to an end. I leave the school and the kids to their education. Hopefully, they will look at us Jews as one of the many minorities and not as a bunch of racists. Hopefully, they will learn to approach the Middle East’s conflict with empathy for our side. Hopefully, next year their teachers will teach WWI better. Hopefully, I hope so. Never give up hope.
But I know why so little attention is devoted to the Armenians and so much is given to the Jews; because there has never been anti-Armenian racism comparable to antisemitism.
Life for Armenians, a religious minority in the Ottoman Empire, was never easy, especially in the late 19th Century, with the rise of Turkish nationalism. But Armenians have never been segregated in ghettoes to pressure them to convert to Christianity; they were Christians already. They have never been excluded from a wide range of professions, except for despicable jobs such as moneylending.
There are very wealthy Armenian families, but no one has ever built a political movement against the international Armenian lobby, let alone suggested Boycott-Divest-Sanction Armenian businesses. Armenians have never been considered a different race. Armenians marry inside their faith, as we Jews do, but they are not called racists for this.
There are no popular legends about Armenians kidnapping kids and using their blood to bake unleaved bread to be served on religious occasions. As a result, no BBC reporter has ever insulted or offended a member of the Armenian government with statements such as
This happens only to us Jews. It happened last week. The BBC has issued a poorly worded apology, in which it was omitted even the name of the reporter who rephrased that antisemitic motif.
I am not furious because the BBC is biased. That I already know, and I have learnt to ignore what they say when they report from Israel. Israeli newspapers and the incomparable Times of Israel podcast give me what I need to know about what happens in Israel. I don’t need the BBC.
But, as I explain to the students and their teacher, I feel incredibly sorry for my friend Sergio; because his story and his identity are completely ignored as it happened while the genocide was perpetrated. In the subsequent decades, out of fear of Turkey’s reaction, the whole world has forgotten the plea of the Armenian diaspora, their long request for reparation and justice.
I will be blunt. The British media have primarily embraced the perspective of Palestinian extremists and disseminated a black-and-white representation of the conflict. All the faults are on the Israeli side. Israel is portrayed as an ultimate agent of evil.
The Israeli LGBTQ community, after many legal battles, now enjoys a degree of freedom and self-determination which even Greece and Italy cannot have, not to mention the Muslim Countries neighbouring Israel! But even this is evil for the enemies of Israel, sadly, some of them Jews. Even this is proof of how bad Israel is.
Last week there was a demonstration in Brighton against the proposed judicial reform and to defend the Israeli rule or the law. Almost all our Cheder teachers were there because they take seriously the commitment to be a light upon the nations, and you cannot be a light unto the nations if the judiciary is not independent. I am proud of joining that demonstration — I was the only Rabbi there.
But on social media, the enemies of Israel, some of them Jewish, some of the people who live in our town, smeared and mocked the demonstrators. Why? Because the problem is the Occupation, and the Israeli flag that we waved represents the Occupation, and if you are Jewish, you should carry the weight of shame and guilt, your State was born in sin, and people like you murder children and enjoy it.
This is the current atmosphere, the narrative out there. We have a duty to resist and do what we can to change such a narrative. We have started the Israel in Focus group. It will continue activities and meetings from now on. I really hope that other Reform and Progressive synagogues will follow our example. There’s a legend about the lukewarm relationship with Israel of Reform and Progressive communities. They say that we are not Zionist, and we must dismantle such a vicious rumour.
We must inform and educate about Israel because -like every Jew- we feel for that Country the same feeling that my friend Sergio felt for Armenia, a Country far away from where he lived. Even if the Armenian government is not ideal (it is actually pretty bad, kind of Putinista…) Because the connection with Armenia, repeated in prayers, narrated in tales and legends, and portrayed in paintings and landscapes he had at home, is precisely like our connection with Israel.
So intense and so intimate at the same time, Difficult to explain, impossible to deny. And anyway, nothing, absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.