{"id":69974,"date":"2013-04-24T23:23:58","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T20:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=69974"},"modified":"2023-04-02T23:36:12","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T20:36:12","slug":"in-israel-both-coalition-and-opposition-urge-remembrance-of-armenian-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/04\/24\/in-israel-both-coalition-and-opposition-urge-remembrance-of-armenian-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"In Israel, both coalition and opposition urge remembrance of Armenian genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Knesset members speak out despite the government’s efforts to achieve a detente with Turkey.<\/h2>\n
By\u00a0Jonathan Lis |\u00a0Apr.23, 2013 | 8:17 PM\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a010<\/div>\n
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A World War Two veteran attends a ceremony marking the anniversary of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, in Yerevan April 24, 2010.\u00a0Photo by Reuters<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Both coalition and opposition members Tuesday commemorated the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks, despite Israel\u2019s efforts to patch things up with Turkey over the raid on the Gaza flotilla three years ago in which eight Turkish nationals died.<\/p>\n

During and after World War I, between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians died; the anniversary of the killings is marked this week. Because of Jerusalem’s past close relations with Ankara, the government has never officially recognized the events as genocide.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many of us are really familiar with the Armenian holocaust? Why are we indifferent when Turkey does not take responsibility?\u201d said MK Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi). \u201cWe must confront our silence and that of the world in the face of such horrors. No country stood by the Armenians. No one cared about the genocide in Rwanda.\u201d<\/p>\n

MK Israel Hasson (Kadima) called on his colleagues to support the Armenian people. \u201cWe\u2019ve formed an Israeli-Armenian friendship association, and I call on any MKs who want to express solidarity to join it, even if the government has difficulty formulating a statement.\u201d<\/p>\n

MK Reuven Rivlin (Likud), a former Knesset speaker, said \u201cTurkey is and will be an ally of Israel. The talks with Turkey are understandable and even necessary from a strategic and diplomatic perspective. But those circumstances cannot justify the Knesset ignoring the tragedy of another people.\u201d<\/p>\n

MK Zahava Gal-On (Meretz) referred to the reconciliation talks with Turkey as \u201can important and strategic process that I wholeheartedly support, but it needn\u2019t influence recognition of the massacre of the Armenian people. It’s not that we have to either recognize the genocide or have relations with Turkey; we can do both. The link between the two harms Israel and its foreign relations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ofir Akunis, a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, said that \u201cas Jews and Israelis we have a moral obligation to remember human tragedies. One of them was the massacre of the Armenian people. The State of Israel has never denied these terrible events.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Akunis, \u201cInvestigating the related events must be done through open debate, not by political declarations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, the MKs decided that the Knesset House Committee would choose which committee would conduct a broader debate on the issue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knesset members speak out despite the government’s efforts to achieve a detente with Turkey. By\u00a0Jonathan Lis |\u00a0Apr.23, 2013 | 8:17 PM\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a010 A World War Two veteran attends a ceremony marking the anniversary of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, in Yerevan April 24, 2010.\u00a0Photo by Reuters Both coalition and opposition members […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":69975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[5588],"class_list":["post-69974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-knesset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}