The Israeli government recognizes the Armenian Genocide: the Spanish government avoids the issue

The Armenian Genocide, perpetrated between 1915 and 1923 by the Ottoman Empire and Türkiye, has been recognized today by one more country.

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The Israeli government, at the initiative of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, has issued a statement joining the 32 countries that already officially recognize the Armenian Genocide, perpetrated against the predominantly Christian Armenian population of Turkey. For many years, Turkey has pressured other countries and international organizations not to recognize this genocide.

Like other countries, Israel has waited a long time to issue this recognition in order not to distort its relations with Turkey, which was the first Muslim country to recognize the State of Israel in 1949. This eagerness has been met with Turkish government Erdogan’s support for Hamas terrorists. This has definitively changed Israel’s attitude on the matter.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has taken a historic step today that Spain has yet to take. In 2011, the PSOE, PP, CiU, and UPN parties refused to recognize this genocide, a recognition that has still not come to pass and is now unlikely, given the strong support of Pedro Sánchez’s government for Erdogan’s government. However, currently 6 autonomous communities and 42 Spanish cities have already officially recognized that genocide.

The statement issued today by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs can be read here. For your interest, I reproduce it below:

“The resolution that I am bringing to the government today constitutes the formal recognition by Israel of the genocide committed against the Armenian people during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The Armenian Genocide began on April 24, 1915, with the arrest, deportation, and murder of hundreds of Armenian clergy, leaders, and intellectuals in Constantinople. After the elimination of the community’s leadership, the Ottoman government began the systematic elimination of the Armenian population. Men were conscripted for forced labor, and subsequently murdered. Women, children, and the elderly were expelled from their homes and sent on long death marches across the Syrian desert, during which they were exposed to mass murder, rape, and deliberate starvation and thirst, ultimately leading to the deaths of approximately 1.5 million people, and the destruction of thousands of years of cultural and historical heritage in the region of Anatolia.

Despite the extensive and unambiguous historical documentation, the Armenian Genocide remains to this day the subject of an institutionalized campaign of denial and minimization, including a manipulative rewriting of history, mainly by the Turkish government.

It is widely believed that the Ottoman Empire committed crimes amounting to genocide in a systematic manner, with the aim of destroying the Armenian people.

So far, 32 countries have recognized the Armenian Genocide, including: the United States (in several resolutions of the House of Representatives and the Senate from 1920 to 2019 and also in President Biden’s declaration in 2021), Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Canada, Russia, Greece, Cyprus, the Vatican, and also: Lebanon and Syria.

Most of them did so in resolutions through their houses of representatives. A minority – through legislation (such as in Argentina, Uruguay, France).

There were statements in the past, including those by Prime Minister Netanyahu and then Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

The Zionist Organization also decided, about a decade ago, to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

There were attempts in the past to pass resolutions on this matter in the Knesset (for example, during the period of Speaker Yuli Edelstein), but they did not come to fruition.

In the summer of 2016, the Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee, headed by MK Mergi, announced that it recognized the Armenian Genocide and called on the government and the Knesset to recognize it.

It did not happen then.

I think the time has come for Israel, as a Jewish state, to formally accept this position.

At this time, the question – why hasn’t this happened yet? – is less important to me. It is never too late to do the right thing. It is important that we do it now so that we do not continue to be asked in various places why we are avoiding it. This is both a moral and historical duty. And in my opinion, there is no strong reason to be avoiding it.

This is not an “act of retaliation” for the open hostility, along with the terrible rhetoric and the hostile actions of Turkey, under Erdogan’s leadership, towards Israel.

Furthermore, the fact that Turkey promotes false narratives against Israel, does not grant it immunity from historical truths.

I would like to inform the government that I have received a letter of appreciation from the Armenian Church and the Armenian community in Jerusalem on Friday.

The Armenian diaspora is approximately 7 to 8 million people, which constitutes most of the Armenian people (in Armenia, there are less than 3 million Armenians).

The prominent communities in the diaspora were established mainly in the wake of the Armenian Genocide and include significant centres around the world: in the USA, Russia, and in France. There are also significant Armenian communities in Lebanon and in Iran. And, in South America too – in both Argentina and Brazil.

In Israel, there is a community of thousands, most of them in the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem.””.

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