What will happen if Israel recognizes the Genocide, will it radically change it?

Israel and the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. In a post titled “Between Realpolitik and Moral Considerations”, Russian analyst Sergey Markedonov referred to the issue of Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide, which has been actively discussed in the press and on the Internet in recent days.

Markedonov first informed that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar took the initiative to recognize the tragedy of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century as genocide, one of the leading Israeli periodicals, “The Jerusalem Post”, dedicated a special article to this topic, and the minister himself wrote the following on his X social network page on June 25: “The recognition of the genocide committed against the Armenian people in the last years of the Ottoman Empire’s existence is both a moral and a historical duty.” Therefore, he also made it clear that if Saar’s initiative is approved at the session of the Israeli government, it will be put to the vote of the Knesset.

Markedonov presented a remarkable detail. the Israeli political discourse is built on the principles of the exclusivity of the Jewish historical experience.

According to him, as a rule, justifying this or that ideas and decisions, Israeli politicians refrain from referring to other cases. However, the above article in The Jerusalem Post has a striking sub-headline announcing that as of 2026, 32 countries, including the US, Canada, Russia and Germany, have recognized the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

The topic of recognizing the Armenian Genocide is not new for Israel. According to Eldad Ben Aharon, a well-known expert on this issue, this issue came to the fore in 1982, when Turkey pressured the Jewish state to cancel a conference dedicated to the Holocaust and Genocide. At the time, Israel agreed to demand that the organizers cancel the event in order to ensure the safe exit of Jews from Iran and Syria across the Turkish border. It was then that the Israeli unofficial approach was formed. in society and in the academic environment about the topic, the possibility of wide discussions without official recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

Even before the establishment of Erdogan’s “Justice and Development” party (which ideologically represents a combination of “democratic Islamism”, neo-Ottomanism with shades of imperial resentment and the principles of Turkish solidarity) in the Turkish political Olympus, the Ankara-Tel Aviv strategic axis had cracked. During the last quarter of a century, relations between Turkey and Israel have experienced ups and downs. But every time the curve went down, the politicization of the Armenian question rose in the Jewish state. Relevant bills have been submitted to the Knesset several times. In this context, the initiatives of deputies Tamar Zandberg, Yair Lapid and Gideon Saar can be mentioned.

In 2025, the “heavy artillery” of Israeli politics went into action. Benjamin Netanyahu himself announced during an interview with the famous American businessman and podcaster Patrick Bet-David that he recognizes the events of the 20th century in the Ottoman Empire as the Armenian Genocide. However, words are not state-formulated decisions. In any case, today, when the relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv have descended into another sharp decline, there are more opportunities for new words in Israeli politics.

Nevertheless, it would be obvious simplistic to reduce everything to exclusively cynical calculations, although it would certainly be foolish to deny them. But in the Israeli human rights and academic community, an opinion has long been formed in favor of the recognition of the Armenian Genocide and the condemnation of the practices of the Ottoman authorities towards the various peoples of the empire. Let’s take even the scientific works and public activities of Professor Yair Auron. The authorities also have to take into account the moral aspects of the problem,” Markedonov elaborated.

He emphasizes that if Israel becomes the 33rd state to recognize the Armenian Genocide, will it radically change the situation in the Caucasus and the Middle East?

“The answer is negative. Such recognition will not destroy the Azerbaijani-Israeli strategic relationship. And the United States will do everything to put out the fire in the relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv. However, the most important thing is that the concept of “Real Armenia” of Nikol Pashinyan and his supporters does not focus on the traumas of the past, and the struggle for the recognition of the genocide is not Yerevan’s foreign policy priority today, Markedonov believes.

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