URISHLEM (JERUSALEM) — Israel has taken what could become a historic step toward confronting one of the darkest chapters of the late Ottoman Empire, after Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that he will bring a proposal before the Israeli government to officially recognize the 1915 Sayfo Genocide, while a prominent Israeli strategic adviser called for extending that recognition to include the Syriac (Aramean-Assyrian-Chaldean) and Greek genocides.

In August 2025, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already offered his personal recognition of the 1915 Sayfo Genocide in an interview with PBD Podcast host Patrick Bet-David, who comes from a mixed Assyrian-Armenian family from Iran. Asked why Israel, founded in 19148, has not yet formally recognized the Sayfo Genocide while many other countries have and while Holocaust denial is punishable in several nations, Netanyahu responded, “I just did. Here you go.”

Moral and Historical Duty

In a statement published yesterday on his official X account, Gideon Sa’ar said he would present a government resolution recognizing the Sayfo Genocide committed during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. “It is a moral and historical duty to recognize the genocide committed against the Armenian people during the final period of the Ottoman Empire,” Sa’ar wrote in Hebrew. He added that Israel must also condemn “the denial, minimization, or distortion of the historical truth,” noting that the proposal would be submitted to the Knesset for approval.

The Foreign Minister’s announcement marks one of the strongest official signals yet that Israel may reconsider its longstanding reluctance to formally recognize the 1915 Sayfo Genocide, a position that for decades had been shaped by regional diplomatic considerations, particularly relations with Turkey.

Read Also: Netanyahu offers personal recognition of 1915 Sayfo Genocide, absent official recognition by State of Israel

Incomplete Recognition

Shay Gal, an Israeli senior strategic adviser, geopolitical analyst, and former Vice President of External Relations at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), argued that recognition should not stop with the Armenian people but should encompass all Christian communities targeted during the mass atrocities carried out between the late nineteenth century and the early years of the Turkish Republic.

Writing on X, Gal welcomed Sa’ar’s initiative but described recognition limited to Armenia as “incomplete.”

“The Armenian Genocide was not an isolated tragedy. The Assyrian Genocide was not an appendix. The Greek Genocide, including the Greeks of Pontus, was not a footnote,” he wrote.

Gal described the extermination of Syriac Christians, Armenians, and Pontic Greeks as “the Thirty-Year Genocide,” referring to the period stretching from the Hamidian massacres of the 1890s through the rule of the Young Turks and into the early years of the Republic of Turkey. According to Gal, the successive campaigns represented “one historical crime of extermination, dispossession and denial,” arguing that the changing political leadership did not alter what he described as a continuous policy of ethnic and religious persecution.

He further asserted that Israel, as the Jewish state, carries a unique moral responsibility to recognize all the communities that suffered under those campaigns. “No nation has the moral right to recognize only the part of this history that is easiest to name. Certainly not the Jewish state,” Gal wrote.

Shay Gal also referenced members of the Jewish Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaker (NILI) underground group who provided critical military intelligence to the British to help them defeat the Ottoman Empire, including Sarah Aaronsohn and Aaron Aaronsohn, arguing that they understood the implications of the Ottoman Empire’s treatment of Armenians and viewed it as a warning of what could eventually threaten other minorities, including Jews living in the Land of Israel.

The mass atrocities commonly known among Syriacs as the Sayfo (“the Sword”) reached their peak in 1915 and targeted the indigenous Syriac population alongside Armenians and Pontic Greeks. Hundreds of thousands were killed, while many others were forcibly displaced, subjected to mass deportations, forced conversions, and the destruction of churches, monasteries, and entire villages and towns across Anatolia and Upper Beth Nahrain (Mesopotamia). Historians have also documented the participation of local tribal forces allied with Ottoman authorities in many of the massacres.

While numerous countries and several international organizations have formally recognized the Armenian Genocide, recognition of the Syriac and Greek genocides has remained more limited and continues to be the subject of political and historical debate.

Should Israel proceed with formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide, calls such as Gal’s are likely to intensify, urging Israeli leaders to acknowledge the full scope of the atrocities that befell the Armenians, Syriacs, and Pontic Greeks during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire.

For many descendants of the victims, recognition is viewed not only as an act of historical justice but also as a reaffirmation that the suffering endured during the 1915 Sayfo Genocide and the broader campaign of mass violence against the region’s indigenous Christian peoples will not be forgotten.