L’Armenia deve cedere se stessa all’inesistenza?

Amazing article and should be a required reading for every Armenian. It starts from the recent destruction of the Artsakh Republic and then delves deeper into the historical context:

>Two thousand years ago, Armenia was significantly bigger, encompassing even modern-day Azerbaijan within its borders. Then the Turks and their offshoots (e.g., Azeris) came riding in from the east, slaughtering, enslaving, terrorizing and stealing the lands of Armenians and other Christians of the region in the name of jihad.

>Anyone who doubts this should consult the Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa (d.1144). According to this nearly thousand-year-old chronicle, which is near coterminous with the events it describes, it was not until 1019 that “the first appearance of the bloodthirsty beasts … the savage nation of infidels called Turks entered Armenia … and mercilessly slaughtered the Christian faithful with the sword.”

>Within 30 years, the raids were virtually nonstop. In 1049, the founder of the Turkic Seljuk Empire himself, Sultan Tughril Bey (r. 1037–1063), reached the Armenian city of Arzden, west of Lake Van, and “put the whole town to the sword, causing severe slaughter, as many as one hundred and fifty thousand persons.”

>Other contemporaries confirm the devastation visited upon Arzden.

>”Like famished dogs,” writes Aristakes (d.1080) an eyewitness, the Turks “hurled themselves on our city, surrounded it and pushed inside, massacring the men and mowing everything down like reapers in the fields, making the city a desert. Without mercy, they incinerated those who had hidden themselves in houses and churches.”

For brevity, I won’t cite other similar passages.

>Such “was the beginning of the misfortunes of Armenia,” Matthew of Edessa concludes in his account: “So, lend an ear to this melancholy recital.” This has proven to be an ominous remark; the aforementioned history of blood and tears was, indeed, just “the beginning of the misfortunes of Armenia,” whose “melancholy recital” continues to this day.

>**Why did the Turks so ruthlessly attack Armenia? What “grievance” did they have? Simply put: Armenia was Christian and the Turks were Muslim — and Islam makes all non-Muslims enemies to be put to the sword, until and unless they submit to Islam.**

>During the aforementioned sack of Ani, a Muslim fighter climbed atop the city’s main cathedral “and pulled down the very heavy cross which was on the dome, throwing it to the ground,” wrote Matthew. Made of pure silver and the “size of a man” — and once broken, symbolic of Islam’s might over Christianity — the crucifix was sent as a trophy to adorn a mosque in, ironically enough, modern-day Azerbaijan.

…

>**This unrelenting history of hate makes one thing perfectly clear: All modern-day pretexts and “territorial disputes” aside, true and permanent peace between Armenia and its Muslim neighbors will only be achieved when the Christian nation has either been conquered or ceded itself into nonexistence.**

…

>**Armenia — the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity — is a holdout, a thorn in Islam’s side, and, as such, can never know lasting peace from the Muslims surrounding it.**