Arye Gut: “Nagorno-Karabakh Region Reminded Me Of What The Romans Did To Ancient Israel”

“Last week, I visited Azerbaijan and witnessed the destruction that was implemented by Armenia over the past three decades in cities such as Agdam, Fizuli, Jabrail, and Zangelan. We drove 1,350 km of this territory. This is practically the territory of Israel from the border of Lebanon to Eilat. My journalist friend Shmuel Din Elmas and I have traveled to fast territories, but I would say Agdam, Fizuli, Jabrail and Zangelan are all ghost towns that were destroyed under the Armenian occupation. The scale of the destruction is terrifying and striking in its cruelty.”

“I visited these territories for the first time in my life,” Gut added, noting that Azerbaijanis were barred from visiting the Nagorno-Karabakh region, even though the international community recognized that these lands are part of Azerbaijan. Between 1992 and 1993, Armenia occupied these territories with the assistance of Yeltzin’s Russia in violation of four UN Security Council Resolutions, and Azerbaijan recently regained these lands last fall during the Second Karabakh War.

Gut was in shock by the moral and human damage caused as a citizen of Israel and as a native of Azerbaijan. “I felt as if a terrible and brutal plague had come to these lands. Not a single house, kindergarten, school, library, or museum remained. Cemeteries, mosques and churches lay in ruins. Armenian looting and vandalism wiped Agdam, Fizuli, Jabrail and Zangelan off the map. 

As he described, “What used to be streets and houses were now only doorways, columns, and scattered window frames. All of the ruins were overgrown with trees. The ruins looked ancient, like the remains of some long-gone empire. Agdam in particular was living evidence of how a population with almost 130,000 people was transformed into a heap of unnecessary stones.”  

For Gut, Mark Twain’s descriptions of how the Land of Israel was made desolate and barren following the Roman persecutions has an uncanny resemblance to what he saw in Nagorno-Karabakh: “I visited what was once the Bread Museum, which was built on the old premises of what used to be an old mill dating back to the 1800’s. In the past, this mill was a protected historic landmark. Agdam, like Karabakh in general, has always been an agrarian land due to its unique soils and climate. Therefore, it is no coincidence and no wonder that the first Bread Museum in the Soviet Union was created in Azerbaijan. However, after three decades of Armenian occupation, it lay in ruins.”

During the trip, Gut said he ruminated on the inhumanity behind the destruction.

“I often asked myself how anyone who loves life could do such a thing.   How they could deliberately destroy and desecrate everything sacred and human, whether they be museums, libraries, mosques, churches or even cemeteries.”