Drawing parallels

One can’t help but draw parallels between the international response on the Azeri-Armenian conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian one. The very mention of the latter brings out strong emotions and the highest condemnation from the international community while the former has received just a mere lip service from a few. Over the Azeri-Armenian conflict, the alarming number of refugees actually yell ethnic cleansing and the numbers talk for themselves. Over 100,000 from a population of 120,000 have escaped to Armenia fearing persecution. Whether the Azeris wanted to restore peace and intended to give equal rights or a mere lip service of claiming to respect the aspirations of the revolting population, the international response to this conflict has been quite dismal and poor. Israel still had its interests and kept quiet but it also reflects Armenia’s poor diplomacy in the international arena.

Interestingly the Ukrainian-Russian conflict got a united and strong response from the international community against a permanent member of the UN Security council – Russia. One reason is Europe’s historical animosity against Russia and the second being the constant call for help from the world by Zelensky and his international diplomacy. Even the partition of British India to form India and Pakistan did not bring the wrath of the Arab World like May 1948 did for Israel. Modi’s India left decades old international diplomacy strategies of non interference and has rallied the international community against Pakistani terrorism. They’ve repeatedly called Pakistan the global capital of terror thus decimating their economy and reducing its foreign investors. China, another country holding a permanent seat at the UN Security Council continues its onslaught of Uighur Muslims has not gotten a single resolution passed against it at the UN. We can’t help but learn from these examples.

The PLO has been a master of diplomacy and international relations. Now they’re bringing the hatred against Israel at the individual level though social media and other forums. We need to better our diplomacy and international relations against our enemies. Just yelling bias in the UN isn’t helping.  We can always complain that the enemy has a larger audience but we’ve done a David against the Goliath militarily since our independence. We need to do the same in International relations and diplomacy too. Nothing is impossible. We can’t just sit back and continue to help and support the world through technology, aid and healthcare and hope that they’ll start supporting us in return.

The Abraham accords brought limited military peace and a better economy to all its partners and was a good start by Netanyahu. But these countries still continue to support all anti Israel resolutions. Don’t expect the Saudis to take a different path after the peace deal. This will help both sides militarily and economically, but the Saudis will continue to support the Palestinians indiscriminately in the future.

In a world where the anti Israel bias is now reaching university campuses across the world, we need to learn some good strategies from other nations by how they do their diplomacy. We can always cry antisemitism but it doesn’t solve the problem. Successive Israeli governments at the UN can learn a thing or two from some of the experts in the international community including our fellow Jew – Mr. Zelensky.