Israel Knesset’s Education, Culture, and Sports Committee Recognizes Armenian Genocide

Urges Israeli Government to Also Formally Recognize the Crime

JERUSALEM, Israel (A.W.)—Israel’s Knesset’s (Parliament) Education, Culture, and Sports Committee announced on Aug. 1 that it recognized the Armenian Genocide and urged the government to formally acknowledge the crime as such.

Chairman of the Education, Culture, and Sports Committee Yaakov Margi in the Knesset on Feb. 24, 2016. (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Chairman of the Education, Culture, and Sports Committee Yakov Margi in the Knesset on Feb. 24, 2016. (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“It is our moral obligation to recognize the Armenian genocide,” said committee Chair Yakov Margi at a committee meeting, reported the Times of Israel. During the meeting, Margi criticized the fact that the State of Israel does not currently recognize the 1915 genocide and urged Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein to officially do so.

Edelstein urged Israel to recognize the genocide earlier this month. “We must not ignore, belittle, or deny this terrible genocide,” Edelstein said as the Knesset discussed the possibility of recognizing the genocide. “We must disconnect the current interests, bound to this time and place, from the difficult past, of which this dark chapter is a part,” he added.

Georgette Avakian, chairwoman of the Armenian National Committee (ANC) of Jerusalem, said that after 101 years, the time has come for the Knesset to join parliaments around the world and the 31 countries who have already recognized the Armenian Genocide. “The Knesset and the President of the State must recognize the genocide of our nation,” she said.

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin was a staunch supporter of Armenian Genocide recognition while he was chairman of the Knesset. At the January 2015 United Nations (UN) General Assembly’s Holocaust memorial, Rivlin recognized the Armenian Genocide while he was defending Israel against what he called “cynical” accusations of genocide and war crimes in his country’s dealing with Palestinians.

“In 1915, the days of the Armenian Genocide, Avshalom Feinberg of the NILI underground [A Jewish spy network in Ottoman Palestine] wrote the following: ‘My teeth have been worn away by anger, who is next? I have walked on sacred and holy ground, on the road to Jerusalem, and asked myself if it is this time that we live in—1915–or in the days of Titus or Nebuchadnezzar? And I asked myself whether I may cry for the hurt of the daughter of My people alone and if Jeremiah did not shed his tears of blood also for the Armenians,” said Rivlin at the memorial.

5 Comments

  1. It would be nice if the parliament of israel would finally recognise the Armenian Genocide, however, there are motives in israel’s parliament and we all know why they continually FAIL to recognise the Armenian Genocide. Let us also NOT FORGET that they supply arms and technical support worth billions of dollars and it is these billions of dollars that is creating massive problems for the Armenians in Nagorna Karabah – no wonder.

  2. I heartily commend the Israeli Knesset’s Education, Culture, and Sports Committee for acknowledging the first genocide of the twentieth century. I’m sure that it took much courage for the committee to make this statement in light of powerful military/economic forces in Israel that wish to continue to trade with and profit from the genocide-denying governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

  3. Oil from and arms sales to Azerbaijan and free Israeli Air Force training within air space over Turkey sadly trump the current Israeli government’s moral values. Had the Ottoman Turks massacred 1.5 million Jews instead of 1.5 million Armenian civilians, I wonder whether Israel would take the same position in it’s stance against recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

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