Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The Slow Death of the Armenian Quarter

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

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Speaking of the hag, we are talking about a whole lot of people that probably deserve to be there today. I'm sure we are. We kind of always are more or less. It does tend to be a trend. And today's episode, we're leaving the Republic of Armenia. We're going to somewhere else. But if you're like us, regardless of the ethical and moral quandaries, and despite the fact

that this year is actually quite boring, Ani and I watched Eurovision taking place this year in Switzerland, a country known for precisely three things, banking crimes, chocolate, and Nate. Exactly. And that one time that Celine Dion represented. Yeah. And we had to switch.

Eurovision, yeah. We had to switch Nate out, or we had to switch Celine Eurovision. Yeah, we had to switch Nate out or we just switched Celine Dion out for Nate because he moved there and I don't even think Celine Dion is Swiss. I don't think she is. She's like a Eurovision mercenary. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was a mercenary. But during Eurovision last month you may have caught something making its rounds on social media, probably social media to be fair, that maybe caught your attention, because I know I did.

And that was the Israeli national broadcaster, Khan, once again not being able to help itself, and as an office of the Israeli government, being racist as fuck. Now this probably doesn't surprise you, but the target of the racism may have surprised you, and that was Armenians. We just keep catching strays.

This year it was because the Armenian singer, this year a man named Parg, or goes by Parg, was on stage singing his admittedly very bad song and the Khan broadcaster lamented that he couldn't believe that Israel, quote, gave these people a quarter in Jerusalem. It's like get fucking lost. You know what? Like first of all, yeah, didn't love the song. However, it was an all right song for a very, very bad Eurovision year. And he was good. He's a nice dude.

He's good looking. He's dancing. He's running on a treadmill and he's performing way better, much better than whatever Israel brought this year. I mean, aside from the fact that they should not be there, they should be banned. I would contend that Israel did bring something very interesting this year. And that is what is probably the most thorough wrecking of the voting process in Eurovision history.

But we don't know that. We don't know that. You fucking sue me. Probably. I mean, that doesn't really seem like their thing. Their thing seems like my house will be destroyed. And they shout out to Eurovision this year. They did do one thing I thought was impossible, and that was making Armenian man do cardio

by running on the treadmill. Now, Khan being racist isn't news to me. I'm sure it's not news to you. It's probably not news to anybody listening. I think I'm more surprised that they took time away from supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza to just fire the world's weirdest stray at an Armenian man who isn't a Jerusalem Armenian, and more on that history in a second, he is from Armenia, he has no connection to the Armenian quarter whatsoever. He has as much connection to the Jerusalem Armenia

as either of us do, which is none. But when you look at the comment a little closer, you see how Khan joked that they gave the quarter to Armenians. And that is a little bit more revealing. I think it was like, I can't believe we, we gave a quarter to Armenians. Never mind. Like, Armenians have been there since like 638.

Before that. Yeah. But the quarter has, the first patriarch was appointed that year. There's a reason for that and we'll get there Yeah, we'll get there The fact that like I mean first of all like just please bother to learn your own history Which is as a state not that long so shouldn't take that much time That's a bit of the problem here is because it goes into the concepts of of the problem here is because it goes into the concepts of settler colonialism and Zionism and any nationalist project cannot be holding hands with historical truth, right?

Absolutely not. And also we should like very well understand that Khan is like, these all should be public broadcasters, but what that means in the sense of, you know, Europe in the sense of Israel, what not, like these places are funded by the budgets that government is allocating to them. So like this is basically, you know, this is basically a TV station that belongs to the government in a way. So like we should not be surprised at all

that like racism bullets are being fired left and right. It's not even the worst thing they said that day, I'm sure. And it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Israel is, no matter what you believe about its founding or its ethical and moral standing as an entity, it is currently an aggressive expansionist colonial power who is once again, and I cannot stress this enough, committing a genocide in Gaza.

That is not just me saying this as a genocide scholar and a historian, this is virtually every human rights organization on earth, every international legal body on earth, and most people with eyes and ears. Including the one in The Hague. They're simply using the actions of the October 7th terror attack, which are obviously horrible,

to finally have an excuse to wipe out the population of Gaza and resettle it with the help of, it seems, most of the world at this point. And with everybody paying attention to that, you may have forgotten that Israeli expansionism and colonialism has always been in the cards for the state since its establishment through the laws it has passed since that point. This all leaves a very small but incredibly interestingly historic population of Armenians caught in the middle of all of it in a very very small corner of Jerusalem called the Armenian Quarter in the Old City. Now,

rightfully, I should make sure that I point out here the attention that these crimes are getting, that being the genocide are getting, that being the genocide in Gaza, that's what they should be. They should be getting more. You should be locked on to the Palestinian victims of the Israeli state. That's where they should be. But what we're not doing here is saying, oh, what about us? We're being forgotten. We're not doing that thing. We aren't playing atrocity Olympics here. There's no competition. Most Armenians and surely all of the ones that work for us here, that being Ani and I, we are on the side of the Palestinians in this conflict.

And we should say that more needs to be done to stop that what is happening here. Every eye in the world should be looking at these crimes directly in the face and demanding that their government put a stop to them or at the bare minimum stop supporting them. It is the greatest crime that has been committed and continues to be committed in both of our lifetimes and I assume in most of our listeners lifetimes. Rather, the story of the Armenian quarter is yet another smaller chapter in the creeping violence of Israeli colonialism that can and does take shape in other ways. It doesn't always look like an F-16 bombing

someone's house or a shithead fucking conscript posting their war crimes to TikTok. Yeah, because there isn't necessarily a need for that. Exactly. Now, the history of Armenians in Jerusalem goes all the way back to the beginning of organized Christianity. To make a very long story short, because we actually have talked about this before, the Kingdom of Armenia converted Christianity in 301 AD. But depending on which academic theory and sources you subscribe to, it actually could have been earlier in 288. Generally, the date that everyone has memorized in their head that was 301. I think it was like around the time of the third, who was the king at the time. And like that's what we learned in school.

Yeah, and it depends on, because he was also king during this other period and it could have been either or. It doesn't really matter. The first Christian church is established immediately thereafter with the king naming Gregory the Illuminator as the first patriarch of the church. Virtually as soon as the Armenian church is established, the first clergy make their way to Jerusalem with their families and very loyal congregates in tow. And this would eventually become known as the Armenian quarter, kind of sort of established

but not officially in the fourth century. With monasteries, scriptoriums, schools and houses quickly following. And after this first wave of Armenians, soon lay people like tradesmen, craftsmen, all the people that kind of make a society followed in their wake and made their home there. So it's very early on in the history of Jerusalem as a whole. The Holy Land, Armenians, very Christian at the time. Like in that part of sort of society, most people still would be very, very pagan, but those are not the people making the trips. Yeah, there's still some resistance

to this whole conversion thing. This medieval period of Jerusalem was one of the relative peaceful and harmonious times in its history as much as it's ever been there. And Armenians coexist perfectly fine with their neighbors and the dominating empires of the day, whether it be Roman or Byzantine, it really didn't matter. And over the years, other Christians kind of trickle in, whether it be Greeks, Chaldeans, you name it. They all just kind of nestle in next to one another. And while the Armenians and the Armenian Church lived, worked and oftentimes worshiped alongside these other Christians,

they always remained a very separate entity, both linguistically and culturally. They absolutely refused to assimilate with their Christian neighbors, which probably comes as zero surprise to either of us. But at the time, Christian belief was kind of just one thing. There was no real fractures yet. There wasn't these lines dividing people up into different sects. A bit later than that. Yeah.

I think about like 100 or 150 years later than that.