Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is preparing to bring a resolution before the Israeli government at an upcoming cabinet meeting that would formally recognize the Armenian Genocide — an official acknowledgment of the systematic mass killings of the Armenian people during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.
The resolution puts forward the position that Israel carries both a moral and historical responsibility to recognize the genocide and to stand against any efforts to deny, downplay, or distort what happened.
According to the explanatory text attached to the resolution, the genocide began in April 1915 when hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, community leaders, and educated professionals were arrested, deported, and killed in Constantinople. Ottoman authorities then launched a broader campaign against the wider Armenian population — drafting men into forced labor before executing them, while women, children, and elderly civilians were driven from their homes and forced on death marches toward the Syrian desert. Along the way, victims were subjected to mass murder, rape, deliberate starvation, and dehydration.
The resolution’s supporting text estimates that approximately 1.5 million people lost their lives, and that the campaign wiped out a cultural and historical legacy that had been present across Anatolia for thousands of years.
The proposal also points to ongoing organized efforts to deny or minimize the genocide, singling out what it describes as the manipulative rewriting of history books — primarily by Turkey — despite what it calls extensive and unequivocal historical documentation of the events.
As of now, 32 countries have formally recognized the Armenian Genocide through parliamentary resolutions, legislation, or official declarations, according to the proposal.
Beyond simply recognizing the genocide, the resolution calls on Israel to actively condemn all attempts to obscure, minimize, or deny the atrocities carried out against the Armenian people.
Should the Israeli government vote to approve the measure, it would then be forwarded to the Knesset for additional consideration and approval.
