Tel-Chai Nation

The Armenian president had a valid point to make about the Israeli government's failure to officially recognize the tragedy of the first world war:

Israel will not win the battle against antisemitism until it recognizes the Armenian Genocide, President Armen Sarkissian told The Jerusalem Post.

Sarkissian, who was in Israel over the past week for the Fifth World Holocaust Forum, which marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, said that most of the Armenian population does not understand the logic behind Israel’s refusal to officially recognize the mass killing of more than 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children by the Ottoman government between 1915 and 1917.

The Armenian Genocide is recognized by more than 30 countries, including the United States as of October 2019, but Israel has resisted formally naming the genocide for what it is.

“A lot of Armenians ask, ‘Why on earth would Israel, a country whose people have seen their own huge tragedy, not recognize the Armenian Genocide?’” Sarkissian said. “There is no logical answer. I cannot say that Israel has relations with Turkey and that is why – I cannot say that.”

But he acknowledged that Israel-Turkey relations, which were formalized in March 1949, are likely the catalyst for Israeli silence.

Needless to say, normalizing relations with Turkey at all costs, and at the expense of one of its victims, obviously caused considerable damage that could've been avoided. Taking such a route also made it look like Israel and the Jewish community only cared about its own plights while others were expendable. And that's a very dangerous approach to take.

He said that recognizing human tragedy is a matter of morality more than anything else, and he can only hope that one day Israel will recognize the genocide and that “human values, moral values and the importance of history will prevail. Recognition will not be connected with this or that interest of the State of Israel or something else that is important only in the moment.”

But he also believes that Israel’s failure to commiserate with Armenia over their comparable tragedies – the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide – is harming Israel and the Jewish people’s efforts to combat an ever-expanding epidemic of antisemitism.

See, that's a legitimate argument right there. The worst part is that racists with repellent visions of Armenians are guaranteed to be among the worst antisemites out there, and they'll exploit the issue until they suck it dry, their support for the Islamic evils notwithstanding. If Israel doesn't make repairs, it won't win the war on antisemitism.

Labels: anti-semitism, Armenia, dhimmitude, islam, Israel, jihad, racism, terrorism, turkey, United States