Last night I was honored to join the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) in Congress for commemoration of the 2-year anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh.
In September 2023, the Azeri military, armed with Israeli drones integrating AI technology, assaulted the independent Republic of Artsakh, killing hundreds and driving 150,000 people from their ancestral homeland. The United States was silent.
It was striking last night to hear several Members of Congress - several among them who have been silent on Gaza - speak with passion and commitment against ethnic cleansing, against genocide, for the right of return of Armenian refugees, for the "absolute right of self determination and self governance," and of their commitment to pursuing accountability for the war crimes that Azeri forces committed in that conflict.
That they did so is a tribute to the tireless work of ANCA (work with which I was very familiar when I worked at the State Department, where ANCA's reputation as a competent advocacy organization is well-recognized) and the broader Armenian-American community - and a reminder as well that political change requires political work; it does not freely flow from a moral compass whose clarity would dictate that opposition to one genocide is an opposition to all genocide, but rather must be built, nourished, and sustained.
Yesterday, on the same day the Armenian community commemorated the tragedies of Artsakh, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a formal assessment that Israel's actions against Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide. And today, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee is likely to vote to prohibit U.S. funding - not for the arms being used to commit that genocide, mind you, but rather for the Commission of Inquiry that has named it.
There is a common thread here, of course. The failure of the international rules based order for Artsakh presaged its failure on Gaza, just as its failure on Gaza will presage even further collapse of that order, and more disasters to follow.
When the history of these times is written, the names of Artsakh and Gaza will be two chapters in the same book, and the only thing yet unwritten is whether they will be chapters that find their mutual redemption in justice and accountability, or chapters that preface a far darker story in our global history - and our nation's pathway - than we can yet imagine.
Members of Congress who have recognized war crimes in Gaza should do the same when it comes to Artsakh - and vice versa. And we must all - all Americans - recognize that our national silence, or worse, our national complicity - is not just about the fate of foreign peoples in distant conflicts, but is about the world we are building, and the world we will leave not only to Armenian children and Palestinian children, but to America's children, too.
