Letter to the editor | Difference of opinion among the Allies regarding recognition of Armenian Genocide
The United States agrees with its largest ally in the Middle East, Israel, on most global political issues—except for the Armenian issue.
On April 22, 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan referred to the Armenian massacres committed by the Ottoman Turks against the Armenian people between 1915 and 1916 as a “genocide” in a comparison to the Holocaust, stating: “Like the genocide of the Armenians before it…the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”
On March 4, 2010, the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs recognized the massacres of 1915 as genocide. The legislatures of all 50 U.S. states have issued individual proclamations recognizing the events of 1915 to 1923 as genocide, with Alabama in 2019 and Mississippi in 2022 being the last to do so.
On Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day in 2021, President Joe Biden declared in an official White House statement that the United States considers the massacres “genocide,” formally equating the atrocities perpetrated against Armenians during World War I with those committed in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.
To this day, even after Biden’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Israel—the United States’ closest ally in the Middle East—has not followed suit. Instead, on the same day, Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it “recognized the terrible suffering and tragedy of the Armenian people” but stopped short of recognizing the World War I-era massacres carried out by the Ottoman Empire as genocide. The statement added: “In these days in particular, we and the nations of the world have the responsibility to ensure that events like this do not occur again.”
As a descendant of an Armenian Genocide survivor, I appreciate—and am proud—that the Jerusalem municipality recently named a small, modest square in the Muslim area of East Jerusalem after Elia Kahvedjian, an Armenian photographer and genocide survivor. During the British Mandate and Jordanian rule, Kahvedjian dedicated himself to documenting historical and religious sites in Palestine in general and Jerusalem in particular.
Some Armenian activists, including new immigrants to Israel from Armenia with mixed backgrounds, claimed that this naming constituted Jerusalem’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide. I would like to emphasize that this does not amount to recognition by the Jerusalem municipality or the State of Israel, as long as the Israeli government has not issued an official statement to that effect. Rather, it serves as a symbolic gesture that, to some extent, masks the hostilities that have been and continue to be committed against the Armenian people in Jerusalem and in Artsakh. Armenian activists in Jerusalem have struggled for decades to urge Israel to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide, but to no avail—while others have succeeded in securing recognition in many countries around the world.
Dr. Gaby Kevorkian
Armenian Quarter, Jerusalem
