The explanatory notes to the proposal detail the grim sequence of events that began in April 1915, with the arrest and killing of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and leaders in Constantinople. After eliminating the leadership, the Ottoman authorities turned to the systematic destruction of the population. Men were conscripted into forced labor and murdered, while women, children and the elderly were expelled from their homes and sent on long death marches toward the Syrian desert. During these marches, the deportees were subjected to mass murder, rape, deliberate starvation and thirst, leading to the deaths of some 1.5 million people and the destruction of a cultural and historical heritage thousands of years old across Anatolia.
Armenian genocide (archive). Photo: Wikipedia
Sa’ar’s proposal directly attacks Turkey’s policy, stating that despite extensive and unequivocal historical documentation, the Armenian genocide remains the subject of an institutionalized campaign of denial and minimization to this day, including the manipulative rewriting of history books, primarily by the government in Ankara.
For years, various bills and proposals to recognize the Armenian genocide were blocked due to concerns over damaging relations with Turkey. In August 2025, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated for the first time that he recognized the Armenian genocide in an interview with Patrick Bet-David’s American podcast. The interviewer asked Netanyahu: “If there’s any country I would expect to be on the list that recognizes the Armenian genocide, it’s Israel. Why haven’t you recognized it?” Netanyahu replied: “We did. The Knesset passed a resolution on it.” He then added: “I did it.”
To date, more than 30 countries have recognized the Armenian genocide in various ways, whether through legislation, parliamentary declarations or official statements. They include Austria, Uruguay, Italy, Argentina, the US, Bolivia, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Venezuela, the Vatican, Greece, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Syria, Slovakia, Poland, Portugal, Paraguay, Chile, the Czech Republic, France, Canada and Cyprus.