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The Netanyahu government recently voted by majority to acknowledge officially and formally the murder of 1,500,000 Armenian nationals by Ottoman Turks during WW I.

The above decision must then be subjected to vote by the Knesset plenum. However, Armenian ecclesiastical authorities anticipate overwhelming support for the bill by Members of Knesset (MKs).

The Armenian government and religious councils are optimistic about Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Both the Armenian and the Jewish people have long histories of nomadism, relatively recent establishment of homelands, and subjection to religious persecution.

Bishop Koryun Baghdasaryan, leader and dean of the Armenian Patriarchate manor in Jerusalem, warmly welcomed Israel as the 32^nd member of the United Nations to recognise the atrocity visited upon the people of Armenia over a century ago.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of the UN defines genocide as “[acts committed with the] intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such.”

The word genocide was coined by Polish Jewish attorney Raphael Lemkin to describe mass killings such as those inflicted by the Nazis upon Eastern and Central European Jewry during WW II.

Bishop Baghdasaryan stated that as Germany chose to be accountable for the abominations perpetrated by some of its citizens during the Holocaust, he is hopeful—even insistent—that Turkey, the “legal heir” of the Ottoman Empire, own up to its massacre of Armenians.

Thus far, the only vocal opponent of Israel’s (and any other nation’s) vote to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide is Azerbaijan, neighbour to both Armenia and Iran, and political and religious ally to Turkey.