Last week, Israel marked Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, to commemorate the genocide and murder of six million Jews by the Nazis. Newspapers, TV shows and radio airwaves were filled with stories of the survivors—and the country paid attention, The Jerusalem Post wrote in an editorial.
“It makes sense. The story of the establishment of the State of Israel is intertwined with the Holocaust. Survivors flocked to the country after the war, helped build it, fought for it in subsequent wars and deserve a large deal of credit for Israel’s spectacular success.
Last Sunday, though, a day was marked around the world, that went largely unnoticed in Israel. It was the 107th anniversary of the start of the Armenian Genocide that commemorates the 1.5 million Armenians who were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination by the Ottoman Empire.
US President Joe Biden issued a statement to commemorate the massacre, which he termed a ‘genocide’ for the first time last year, in line with a promise he made on the campaign trail.
Israel was noticeably quiet, and it is a silence that is a stain on the Jewish state. It shows how once again Jerusalem is preferring diplomatic and security interests over standing up for what is true and right, especially being a people that knows genocide firsthand.
As Prof. Israel Charney, one of the founders of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, wrote in these pages last month, Israel should not fear Turkey.
The continued Israeli refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide comes as Jerusalem is renewing diplomatic ties with Turkey. President Isaac Herzog recently visited Ankara and Israel obviously does not want to undermine those efforts.
In 2019, after the US Senate recognized the genocide, Yair Lapid—then in the opposition—called on Israel to follow suit. He even proposed a bill that would obligate Israel to mark the day.
‘It’s time to stop being afraid of the Sultan in Turkey and do what is morally right,’ he tweeted at the time.
Is doing ‘what is morally right’ no longer the right thing to do?
The answer is obvious. What is easy to push for in the opposition is harder to do when you are foreign minister,” The Jerusalem Post added, in particular.
