The journalist starts the article, titled “Israel’s Refusal to Recognize the Armenian Genocide is Shameful and Immoral” [later the title of the article has changed into Israel’s Refusal to Recognize the Armenian Genocide is Indefensible], with the visit to the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial. He says despite the shared experience of genocide, Israel and Armenia are worlds apart today.
“Israel has consistently refused to acknowledge that what happened to the Armenian people was a genocide. This decision doesn’t derive so much from a desire to monopolize victimhood and portray the Holocaust as a unique and unparalleled historical event. It is primarily a cynical political ploy. For many years, Israel feared Turkey’s wrath if it recognized the genocide”, the journalist writes. Yossi Melman states since the late 1950s, Turkey had been a strong strategic ally of Israel. There were close ties between the two nations’ intelligence and security establishments. “Whenever Israeli parliamentarians, human rights activists, and historians called for recognition of the Armenian genocide, the initiative was blocked by the government”, he says.
But in the past decade, relations between Turkey, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Israel have deteriorated. Moreover, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his son Yair regularly exchange nasty verbal blows over Twitter with Erdogan, calling each other “tyrant,” “murderer,” and more.
“Yet Israel remains adamant in its refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide. These days, there is a new excuse: Azerbaijan”, the journalist writes, stating that Israel has ...
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