Anti-Semitism in Armenia, 2009–2010

In general, the Jewish community is in a safe and stable position. Criminal anti-Semitic acts are the exception to a peaceful norm, and in recent years anti-Semitic rhetoric in the media and public life, which were relatively rare before, have become even rarer. The sympathies of the Armenian population have been moving towards Israel recently, in part because of the recent rapprochement in foreign policy between Turkey and Iran; nonetheless, a certain Iranian influence can also be felt because of the particularities of Armenian-Iranian geopolitical and economic relationship.
The only recent flagrant anti-Semitic act that appalled the Jewish community was the desecration of the Yerevan memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust on October 19, 2010. Unknown anti-Semites used a stencil to write a call for the destruction of Jews in Armenian and ti paint a swastika. It is notable that the communal authorities promptly painted the sign over. Proceedings were instigated on the “vandalism” article of the Criminal Code; however, the guilty party had not been found.

The memorial that symbolizes the suffering of the Jewish and Armenian peoples had been erected on October 27, 2006, on the Koltsevy Boulevard in Yerevan. A pedestal in memory of the Holocaust victims, which had occupied that same spot before the erection of the memorial had been desecrated by vandals no less than five times. The culprits had never been found.