Israel has long avoided officially recognizing Ottoman slaughter of Christians during WWI, though PM seems to signal change in stance as ties with Turkey continue to deteriorate
27 August 2025
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday for the first time that he recognizes the genocide carried out by Ottoman Empire against Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in the early 20th century.
Asked by Patrick Bet-David on his podcast why Israel does not recognize the Armenian genocide, Netanyahu said, “I think we have. I think the Knesset passed a resolution to that effect,” though no such legislation has been passed into law.
Pressed on why no Israeli prime minister has recognized the genocide, Netanyahu responds, “I just did. Here you go.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday for the first time that he recognizes the genocide carried out by Ottoman Empire against Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in the early 20th century.
Asked by Patrick Bet-David on his podcast why Israel does not recognize the Armenian genocide, Netanyahu said, “I think we have. I think the Knesset passed a resolution to that effect,” though no such legislation has been passed into law.
Pressed on why no Israeli prime minister has recognized the genocide, Netanyahu responds, “I just did. Here you go.”
Bet-David hails from an Assyrian Christian family from Iran.
Armenians have long sought international recognition of the killings by the Ottoman Empire, which reportedly left some 1.5 million of their people dead, as a genocide. Turkey — the Ottoman Empire’s successor state — strongly rejects the allegation that the massacres, imprisonment and forced deportation of Armenians amounted to genocide.
On April 20, 1965, Uruguay became the first country to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
But the vast majority of the world refuses to formally refer to the events between 1915 and 1923 — during which Ottoman forces massacred Armenian citizens in a systematically planned act of ethnic cleansing — as genocide, out of concern for their ties to Turkey, which maintains the second-largest standing military in NATO and is a powerful, relatively pro-Western Muslim power in the Mediterranean and Middle East.
To date, only 34 governments have recognized the genocide.
Israel, which for years saw Ankara as a key trading and sometime security partner, remained firmly in the majority camp. But ties have reached new lows during the ongoing war in Gaza. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an avowed supporter of Hamas and one of the leading critics of Israel on the world stage, and his country has frequently praised the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack that started the ongoing war, when thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
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