Gideon Sa'ar to seek cabinet recognition of the Armenian Genocide

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar will bring a proposal to the Israeli cabinet at its next meeting asking it to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide. The draft says Israel should do so “on the basis of the moral and historical duty,” and it also calls for condemning denial, minimization, or distortion of the historical truth about the events.

The proposal describes the genocide as the mass killing of about 1.5 million people by the Ottoman Empire. Its explanatory notes say the killings began in April 1915 with the arrest, deportation, and murder of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and leaders in Constantinople. After the community’s leadership was eliminated, the Ottoman authorities carried out a systematic campaign against the wider population.

According to the text, men were drafted into forced labor and killed, while women, children, and the elderly were expelled and sent on long death marches into the Syrian desert. During those marches, they were subjected to mass murder, rape, deliberate starvation, and thirst, leading to the deaths of about 1.5 million people and the destruction of ancient Armenian cultural and historical heritage in Anatolia.

The article says the genocide remains the target of organized denial and minimization, including manipulative rewriting of history books, mainly by Turkey. It notes that 32 countries have already recognized the genocide in different ways, through parliamentary resolutions, legislation, or official statements. About a year ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said for the first time that he recognized it, in a podcast interview with Patrick Bet-David, during a period of severe strain in Israel-Turkey ties after the Gaza war.