Israel’s silence on Armenian Genocide emboldens aggressors, memorial speakers warn

JERUSALEM—Israel’s failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide has emboldened dangerous and aggressive rhetoric by Turkey’s leadership – threats that reverberate to Jerusalem itself, said the keynote speaker at a memorial service in the Armenian Quarter on Friday.

Father Aghan Gogchyan warned that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s boasting about Turkey’s recent conquests in Nagorno-Karabakh and Syria, “while suggesting further invasions like this toward Jerusalem, reveal the danger of unchecked rhetoric.”

“Menacing words like these emerge more easily when earlier crimes against the Armenians are denied, excused or forgotten. A perpetrator who sees that yesterday’s crimes and atrocities are forgotten starts thinking about the crimes and atrocities he may commit tomorrow,” Gochyan warned.

Armenian Genocide Memorial Day is observed on April 24, commemorating the 1.5 million Armenian Christians systematically killed in Ottoman-era Turkey – the first genocide of the 20th century, which remains widely unrecognized by many nations, including Israel.

“When historical crimes against humanity remain unrecognized, their perpetrators gain strength,” Gogchyan said. “When historical truth is concealed for the sake of contemporary political strategy, we know that the aggressors of those crimes grow bolder.”

In Jerusalem, where Armenians have maintained a continuous presence for 1,700 years, the community – many of whom are descendants of survivors – marked the occasion with a march through Jerusalem last Thursday and a memorial service at the Armenian Convent on Friday.

Armenian Ambassador to Israel Arman Akopian attended the memorial in a personal capacity.

“As the grandchild of a genocide survivor, I’m very emotional and moved and honored to be here,” he told ALL ISRAEL NEWS. “For me its not political, it is part of my personal history. I’m not here as much as an ambassador as the grandchild of a genocide survivor.” 

Several Israelis joined the observances to express solidarity with Armenians. Yaron Weiss, an Israeli pro-Armenian activist, attributed Israel’s lack of recognition today not to Turkey, but to the Jewish state’s robust relations with Azerbaijan. 

“Azerbaijan committed an ethnic cleansing of 150,000 Armenians, is destroying churches there and is essentially erasing the Armenian presence that existed for thousands of years in Nagorno-Karabakh,” he told ALL ISRAEL NEWS. “These are issues that need to be confronted.”

Weiss drew parallels between the tragedy of the genocide and events that have unfolded in recent history, +when Azerbaijan took over Nagorno-Karabakh – land occupied by Armenians for more than 2,000 years – in 2023 after a war won partially with the help of Israeli weapons and following a 10-month blockade on the region. 

“As a proud Jewish person, it saddens me that the Jewish state blessed Azerbaijan’s victory when it was actually an ethnic cleansing,” he said. “Now Azerbaijan is trying to rewrite history. 

Weiss called on the Israeli government to redefine its policy to be more mindful of moral values. 

“Despite the business temptation of Israel's rapprochement with Azerbaijan, past experience has taught us that in the long run it is better to avoid ‘embracing’ dictators and favor cultivating ties with democratic states like Armenia,” he said.

Manu Uran, a religious Jewish Israeli dressed in the colors of the Armenian flag, traveled from Ramat Gan to attend the memorial service. Uran described Armenians and Jews as brothers bound by similar histories of statehood, fate, faith and survival. 

“The Holocaust could have been prevented if the Armenian Genocide would have been recognized,” he said, referencing a quote attributed to Adolf Hitler suggesting that because no one remembered the Armenian Genocide, he could get away with his plans to exterminate the Jews. 

Moral obligations should factor more heavily than diplomatic relations and economic ties with Azerbaijan and Turkey, Uran added.

“Now Turkey wants to annihilate us anyway,” he said. “That’s why we need to take significant steps to improve our ties with Armenia and to declare what needs to be declared. Oil, no oil – there are other morale and humane issues that we should be concerned with.”

On Thursday, a few hundred Armenians marched from the Old City around downtown Jerusalem carrying flags and signs calling for recognition. Serop Sahagian addressed a crowd of Israelis that gathered to watch near the Mamilla Mall.

“Turkey will never be a friend to the Jewish people. Despite Israel’s economic, business and political relations with the Turks, at the end of the day, the Turks have always betrayed Israel,” he said in Hebrew, warning of Turkey’s posture toward the Jewish state.

Sahagian noted that of all the Muslim nations, “Turkey is the only one whose leader ever said he will conquer Jerusalem.”

At the memorial service, Gogchyan implored the Jewish state to honor history and officially recognize the Armenian genocide.

“No people could know of our historical suffering better than the Jewish people who endured the Holocaust,” he said. 

“The recognition of the Armenian genocide stands as an act of justice consistent with the deepest lessons drawn from Jewish suffering,” he said. “It says that the destruction of one people concerns all peoples. It says that historical truth belongs to no single nation. It says that our historical memory cannot be selective.”

In 301 A.D., Armenia became the first nation to declare Christianity as its national religion.