Israel’s cabinet unanimously approved a proposal on Sunday to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide, sending the measure, introduced by Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, to the Knesset for a final vote.
“It’s never too late to do the right thing,” Sa’ar said after the vote, calling recognition of the Armenian Genocide “both a moral and historical duty” and condemning efforts to deny or distort the historical record.
If approved by the Knesset, Israel will officially recognize the Armenian Genocide for the first time, ending decades of successive Israeli governments avoiding the issue because of strategic and diplomatic relations with Turkey and, more recently, Azerbaijan.
The issue has been debated in Israel for years, with individual lawmakers and parliamentary committees expressing support for recognition. However, no Israeli government has previously approved a proposal that could lead to official state recognition.
Turkey continues to deny that the systematic mass killings, deportations, and persecution of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 constituted genocide. The term “genocide” itself was coined in 1944 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who cited the Armenian Genocide as one of the defining events that led him to develop the concept.
