On Sunday, June 28, the Israeli government unanimously voted for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide as such. This comes after long decades official Israeli denialism, and rejection to qualifying the deportations and massacres of Ottoman Armenians by the Turkish nationalist government during the First World War as genocide.
The recognition by Isreal of the Armenian Genocide has nothing to do with the Armenians. In fact, Israel has been actively hostile against the Armenians, and especially in the context of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, where it sided with Azerbaijan. Israeli government provided massive amount of armament that were decisive in the 2020 war, enabling Azerbaijani forces to destroy obsolete Armenian anti-air defences. Israel also provided Azerbaijan with lobbying in the US capital, introducing Azerbaijan to higher spheres of American decision-making circles. Only three years back, Israel was actively supporting Azerbaijan in its policies of conquest, destruction, and ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Nor does the Israeli recognition of the Armenian Genocide have anything to do with sense of justice. In a time when Israeli government is engaged in genocidal destruction of Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and destruction of hundreds of villages in South Lebanon, recognition of a past genocide sounds hollow and hypocritical, to say the least.
Then, what is this belated and strange recognition about? To unpack, one must understand why Israel resisted the recognition of the Armenian Genocide for so long. It had two reasons: one was Israeli alliance with Turkey. For decades, Israel provided lobbying service to Turkish government, especially in the US, at the detriment of Armenian demands for recognition and justice. Second and more important was internal politics, as Israeli leaders insisted that nothing should be compared to the Holocaust. Recognition of the Armenian Genocide, then, meant that Israel was not “unique”, that the suffering of European Jewry was preceded by comparable historic events.
Therefore, the recognition of the Israeli government of the Armenian Genocide is meant to serve as a weapon by Israel against Turkey in the context of rapid deterioration of their mutual relations. This means that Israel has declared that it will no longer lobby in favour of Turkish denialist policies, on the contrary, it might use the Armenian Genocide as an additional means to put pressure on Ankara. But this policy turn comes with a price: Israel is abandoning its “Holocaust-only” policy by recognizing Armenian Genocide, with unknown long-term consequences.
Whatever the impact of the Israeli policy choices, Armenian politicians have no interest in associating with them in any form. Israel is using the victimhood of the Armenians in its new power-struggle with Turkey, a policy that might change with changing circumstances. On the other hand, this shift reveals the limits of Turkish denialist policies. Turkish leaders had several occasions in addressing their own past record, during the rule of Turgut Ozal, or when Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed his 2014 “condolences” to Armenian victims. Each time, Turkish leaders backed away and returned to their denialist policies, preserving this major problem to future opportunists to exploit.
