Israeli President implicitly recognizes Armenian Genocide during General Assembly Holocaust memorial.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday that “cynical” accusations against Israel of genocide and war crimes harm the world body’s ability to fight the real thing, Haaretz reports.
Speaking at the assembly’s ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Rivlin mentioned the 1915 Armenian Genocide – the killing of more than one million Armenian nationals by Turkey – which is not recognized as genocide by Israel.
Rivlin called on the United Nations to set red lines beyond which it would intervene to stop acts of genocide. He then said:”At the same time we must remember that the setting of red lines requires us to stop diluting and cynically exploiting them in the name of pseudo objectivity, as is done in the rhetoric of human rights with the use of terms such as ‘genocide’ for political purposes.”
Citing the “disgraceful” UN resolution, later struck down, that equated Zionism with “its greatest enemy” racism, Rivlin continued:
“Nonetheless, absurd comparisons such as this one, which we as Israelis are exposed to constantly… not only confuse the ally with the enemy, but they undermine this house’s ability to effectively fight the phenomenon of genocide.”
Speaking about the events of 1915, teh Israeli President said: “In 1915, when the members of the Armenian nation were being massacred, Avshalom Feinberg, a leading member of Nili, the Jewish underground which cooperated with the Allies during the First World War, wrote the following and I quote, “My teeth have been ground down with worry, whose turn is next? When I walked on the blessed and holy ground on my way up to Jerusalem, I asked myself if we are living in our modern era, in 1915, or in the days of Titus or Nebuchadnezzar? Did I, a Jew, forget that I am a Jew? I also asked myself if I have the right to weep ‘over the tragedy of my people’ only, and whether the Prophet Jeremiah did not shed tears of blood for the Armenians as well?
Avshalom Feinberg wrote that exactly one hundred years ago, one hundred years of hesitation and denial. But in the Land of Israel of that time, in the Jerusalem in which I was born, no one denied the massacre that had taken place. The residents of Jerusalem, my parents and the members of my family, saw the Armenian refugees arriving by the thousands – starving, piteous survivors of calamity. In Jerusalem they found shelter and their descendents continue to live there to this day.”
