| From Jewish Voices for Peace: We’ve been watching with heavy hearts as over 100,000 Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh, following a two-day offensive by the Azerbaijani military, in which hundreds of Armenians were killed or wounded. This forced exit is ethnic cleansing — and it’s all too familiar. Internationally recognized as a territory of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh is a predominantly Armenian region, effectively under Armenian control in recent decades. Since last December, its residents have been under blockade, causing shortages of essential goods like food, fuel, and medicine. Residents began fleeing in droves during Azerbaijan’s military offensive last week, fearing that conditions would worsen with the collapse of the local Armenian government. Whole communities made refugees, fleeing under the threat of violence — we’ve seen this before. The Nakba, the violent displacement of Palestinians from their land that led to the establishment of Israel, looked chillingly similar to the flight of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. It comes as no surprise, then, that Israel supplies nearly 70% of Azerbaijan’s weapons imports. The Israeli arms industry developed this technology over decades of killing and dispossessing Palestinians — and then it exports these weapons worldwide. The Nakba is ongoing to this day, as the Israeli government and Jewish settlers continue to push Palestinians off their land through the constant threat of settler violence, attacks by the Israeli military, and a discriminatory legal system. The Israeli apartheid regime oppresses Palestinians at home and supports ethnic cleansing and displacement of populations worldwide. It’s never been more clear that our liberation is bound up together, and that a world without Israeli apartheid is a safer world for all of us. |
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 
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