Apr 28, 2014

At the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, the message of condolence issued by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the Armenian people on April 23, the eve of the 99th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, was closely examined. What will Israel do now? Will it continue to fence-sit on the issue of recognizing the disaster that befell the Armenian people, caught between taking a moral stand and avoiding angering the Turks? If Erdogan can afford to change the Turkish attitude toward this sensitive issue, perhaps it’s time for Israel to adopt a clearer and more decisive stance.

On the other hand, how will it look for the Israeli government to be dragged along in the wake of a Turkish leader who doesn’t miss a chance to lash out at it? How will the Foreign Ministry explain a decision to recognize the Armenian genocide, after arguing for years that one must examine this sensitive issue “through an open debate based on data and facts, and not on political decisions or declarations.” This is what Likud Minister Gilad Erdan said in a 2009 speech delivered at the Knesset, asking in the government’s name to remove from the agenda the issue of recognizing the Armenian genocide.

At that same debate, Erdan said, “Israel asks not to determine conventions as to what occurred, since these are … supporting the political position of one of the sides.” Is the slaughter of the Armenians in fact a political matter? Twenty-two years ago, the deputy foreign minister in the national unity government of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and President Shimon Peres said, “There are things that go beyond politics, and there are things that go beyond diplomacy. Holocausts of nations are a clear case in point.” These comments were made in response to a question by then-Knesset member Yair Tzaban of the now-defunct Ratz Party. He was seeking the government’s reaction to reports that Israeli officials were cooperating with Jewish-American organizations to derail a congressional initiative to mark the commemoration of the Armenian genocide in the United States. That deputy foreign minister who answered the question on the part of the government was none other than current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Several months later, in April 1990, it turned out that for the Foreign Ministry, the genocide committed against the Armenian people was most certainly a diplomatic issue. Under pressure from the ministry, Israel's public television station backed out of its plan to air Theodore Bogosian’s documentary “An Armenian Journey.” Following the uproar that ensued, the board of directors of the Israel Broadcasting Authority ordered that the film be screened. Representatives of the establishment appealed the decision and the film was shelved.

Despite pressure from successive Israeli governments, leftist politicians led by Tzaban and former Minister Yossi Sarid and a handful of right-wingers, among them Knesset members Benny Begin and Reuven Rivlin, refused to drop the matter. In 2011, Tzaban, this time as a private citizen, was invited to the Knesset to take part in a debate on the subject of the Armenian genocide, held by the Knesset’s Committee on Education.