A group of 50 senior leading European Rabbis have signed a joint letter condemning Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan Armenia for using holocaust rhetoric in its campaign against its neighbor, Azerbaijan. 

According to the Rabbinical Center of Europe(RCE), the rabbis wrote the following to Pashinyan and Armenian President Vahagn Khacհaturyan.

“Expressions such as ‘ghetto’, ‘genocide’, ‘holocaust’ and others are (…) inappropriate to be part of the jargon used in any kind of political disagreement.”

The RCE adds the rabbis, in the letter, also expressed their concern over Armenia’s close ties with Iran, “a country which incessantly openly and publicly calls for its destruction of the only Jewish country in the world.” 

The rabbis are referring to a July 21 interview Pashinyan gave to AFP.

In the interview, Pashinyan said Azerbaijan was turning Nagorno Karabakh into a “ghetto”, a reference to the Warsaw Ghetto during the Jewish Holocaust.

Here’s what Pashinyan said in the interview:

“Any genocide you know wasn’t like that they woke up one day and started killing people, slaughtering people. Let’s go back to the Holocaust, the one that the world knows the best. Did Hitler come to power and the next morning pulled out the sword and started chasing the Jews in the streets? It lasted years, it was a process, which could have been well predicted. It was expressed in rhetoric; it was expressed in policy.

Now in Nagorno Karabakh they have created a ghetto, in the most literal meaning of the word. I say again, sometimes we do not deliver the terms understandably, we just give people headlines, “humanitarian crisis”. Some percentage of our audience well understands all the details of what’s going on, but the majority does not understand, that’s not their business, that’s not their activity.

But Azerbaijan is creating a ghetto in Nagorno Karabakh today. What’s the international community’s reaction? Russia asks us how we justify our good relationships with the West, is that what you expect of them to make a semi-statement that the Lachin Corridor should be opened? Yes, the Lachin Corridor must be opened. The International Court of Justice rendered a decision back on February 22. That is a decision of the highest international court.”

 Photo credit: Rabbinical Center of Europe