A garden in memory of the victims of the Khojaly tragedy was opened today in Israel in the Chaim Weizmann forest.
613 trees were planted in memory of all those who were killed 24 years ago.
There is nothing surprising about the fact that the Israelis commemorated the victims of the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly. Jews know better than any other people what grief means for innocent victims who were killed only because thugs don't like their nationality. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, speaking at the UN General Assembly on the International Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, spoke about the Khojaly tragedy as one of the acts of genocide of the current period of time.
The initiator of this action was Aziz, the International Association of Israel-Azerbaijan. The idea was supported and helped to be implemented by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, the international campaign Justice for Khojaly and Keren Kayemet Le-Israel, the Jewish National Fund.
A meeting was held by the director of the CIS Department JNF-KKL, Yigal Yassinov, prior to the tree planting ceremony.
Azerbaijan was represented by Milli Majlis deputies – a member of the Committee on International Relations and Interparliamentary Relations (including Israel) Rasim Musabekov and the deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee on labor and social policy, Rauf Aliyev.
The Israeli side was represented by the chairman of the inter-parliamentary group of Azerbaijan-Israel Avigdor Lieberman and the director of the Azerbaijan Cultural Center at the Association Aziz, Yegan Salman.
A greeting from the vice president of the Jewish National Fund, Zeev Neuman, was read out for the audience at the meeting. "We are gathered here today to commemorate the victims of a monstrous massacre. Let these trees become a symbol of the people of Israel's solidarity with the families of the victims and all the people of Azerbaijan. Solidarity with basic human values ... Our dear Azerbaijani brothers! We, Jews and Israelis, understand your feelings. We also paid a high price for the independence of our state, and we continue to pay it up to this day. During the War of Independence we fought on these hills. Here we broke through the blockade of Jerusalem. Khojaly was also under siege, like Jerusalem.''
Then a memorial plaque was officially unveiled, after which the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and the Aziz International Association Israel-Azerbaijan were awarded special certificates of JNF-KKL.
Then Rabbi Shmuel Simantov with his older sons read a prayer-blessing for the planting of the trees, after which Yigal Yasinov invited the organizers and guests of the event to take part in planting seedlings, the Aziz press service reports.
