Recognition of Armenian Genocide belongs to Israel, not to one government
The Knesset’s postponement need not be a setback. If the next parliament completes the process, recognition of the Armenian Genocide should be completed in order to do the right thing.
The Israeli government’s decision to recognize the Armenian Genocide had begun to remove an unnecessary burden from the relationship between two ancient peoples whose histories have long echoed one another. The hope was that the Knesset would give that decision permanent legislative form, but the dissolution of the Knesset – combined, perhaps, with pressure from outside parties – has postponed that final parliamentary step.
For Armenians and their Israeli friends like myself, this is naturally disappointing – but we of all people know that history rarely advances in a straight line, especially in democracies. What matters is not that recognition has been delayed but that it has already crossed a threshold from which there should be no return.
The unanimous decision of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government last month represented the culmination of decades during which Israeli presidents, ministers, members of Knesset, scholars, writers, Holocaust survivors, and civil society leaders argued that recognizing the Armenian Genocide was consistent with Israel’s deepest moral traditions.
Governments changed, regional alliances shifted, and strategic calculations evolved, yet the conviction that historical truth deserved official recognition – from the Jewish state most of all – steadily gained strength. That threshold was crossed, and the remaining task is to anchor that historic decision permanently in parliamentary law.
An opportunity for the government
There is, in fact, an opportunity hidden within this delay. If recognition is completed after Israelis elect a new Knesset, whatever its political composition, it will be harder than ever to portray it as the initiative of one government or the product of one diplomatic moment. It will instead become what it should always have been: the considered judgment of the State of Israel, representing the people who suffered the most horrendous genocide of all.
Whoever forms Israel’s next government should therefore regard completion of this process as unfinished national business. If the current government remains in office, it should complete the work it began, demonstrating that its decision was never intended as a passing political gesture but as a lasting affirmation of historical truth.
If Israeli voters entrust another coalition with governing, recognition would offer an early opportunity to demonstrate that fidelity to historical truth transcends changes in political leadership.
Indeed, an opposition coalition based on moderation and openness to the world should be determined to complete the task. Different governments may arrive there for different reasons, but they should arrive at the same destination.
The significance for Israel
That would matter not only for Armenia but for Israel itself.
Israel has long asked the international community to understand that confronting historical truth is not an act of political convenience but a moral responsibility. The struggle against Holocaust denial has always rested upon the conviction that memory cannot be subordinated to temporary interests or diplomatic expediency. That principle, when applied to the Armenian experience, is strengthened by consistency.
Israel faces profound threats, yet democracies reveal their deepest character in the way they preserve enduring principles amid crises.
Armenia did not make recognition a precondition for friendship with Israel, even during the many years when successive Israeli governments concluded that strategic considerations pointed elsewhere. Armenians continued to believe that the relationship between our peoples rested upon something more enduring than the calculations of any particular moment. That belief remains justified today.
Jews and Armenians understand one another in ways that few nations can. Both preserved ancient civilizations through centuries without sovereignty. Both endured persecution while refusing to surrender their identities. Both know that memory is not simply about the past but about safeguarding human dignity in the future.
When the next Knesset convenes, regardless of which parties occupy the government benches or the opposition, it should complete the journey – not for the sake of one government or another, nor even primarily for Armenia, but because historical truth deserves the imprimatur of the State of Israel.
The writer is J Street-Israel’s executive director. He has served as an Israeli diplomat in Washington and Boston and as a political adviser to the president of Israel.
