The global Israeli lobby has significantly lessened its previously staunch support of Turkey in preventing foreign parliaments from labeling mass killings of Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans in 1915 as genocide, but there is little evidence that current tensions between Turkey and Israel will ramp up the lobby’s efforts to get the Armenian massacres recognized as genocide.
Israeli parliametary commission started discussing Armenian killings of genocide following a controversial bill the French parliament endorsed last week.
This recent development reinforced an idea that the Israeli lobby is supportive of the Armenian lobby in pushing parliaments to recognize Armenian killings as genocide.
The lower house of the French parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that made it a crime to deny that the World War I-era mass killings of Armenians constituted genocide. Turkey announced a set of punitive measures against France, halting official contacts, recalling its ambassador and canceling planned political, economic meetings. Days later, a committee in the Israeli parliament began debating the Armenian claims of genocide.
The Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee, headed by lawmaker Alex Miller, began discussing the issue at a public hearing. The session was also attended by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin.
The committee considered a proposal to designate a memorial day for the killings and recognize them as genocide.
Rivlin last Monday denied that the move was in response to events in the United States or France and said the Knesset has been holding similar discussions for years.
A strategy for the recognition of the “Armenian genocide” embraced by the powerful Armenian lobby around the world has been pursued through an array of parliamentary initiatives, mostly in Western nations as it is an effective way of irritating Turkey. Support for Turkey by the Israeli lobby against similar initiatives was based on the anticipation that Turkey would maintain its benign foreign policy toward Israel despite its brutal treatment of the Palestinians.
It has become increasingly clear that the Israeli lobby will cease its support for Turkey in blocking recognition of Armenian claims of genocide. But to what extent the Israeli lobby will be supportive of the Armenian genocide claims still remains unknown.
Israeli diplomats in İstanbul said that whereas Israel believes the events surrounding the 1915 incidents should be debated, it is also of the opinion that such a debate should be held in an open forum, an academic atmosphere, based on facts and research.
The diplomats said it is not the position of Israel that any such research should be assisted by political discourse.
“I think it’s fair to say that pro-Israel activists and supporters in [US] Congress will now feel less reticence about backing measures commemorating the genocide of Armenians,” Jonathon S. Tobin, senior online editor of the conservative Commentary magazine, said.
He said most Jews, as well as most Americans in the past, were strongly inclined to back the Armenians but many held back out of respect for Turkey’s alliance with Israel. Tobin noted that although befuddled as most were by what he called the Turkish government’s aggressive stance on the issue, many thought that it made no sense to worsen relations with an ally for the sake of a century-old crime whose perpetrators are long dead.
He added that this led to some intense conflicts within the Jewish community between those who thought a reluctance to back the Armenians was cynical and those dedicated to fostering friendship with Turkey.
Soli Özel from İstanbul’s Kadir Has University said the Israeli Education Ministry earlier wanted to list the 1915 events as genocide in history textbooks but that it was later decided not to do so. Özel warned that escalating the push of the Israeli lobby for recognition of claims of an Armenian genocide won’t be helpful to Turkish-Israeli relations.
In recent years, former parliamentarian Haim Oron repeatedly attempted to raise the issue with the Knesset’s education panel, with government officials moving to cancel the debate. Last year, amid deterioration in Turkish-Israeli ties, Oron was granted approval to discuss the alleged genocide in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meetings.
In 2007, the Knesset decided to shelve a proposal for a parliamentary discussion on the Armenian genocide, in compliance with then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s request.
Kerim Balcı, editor-in-chief of Turkish Review, said that although the Israeli initiative last week was faced again with the Israeli government’s intervention, the Jewish state would continue its bluff with Turkey over the genocide claims.
“Armenian claims of genocide have been a long-standing instrument at the hands of different Israeli governments against Turkey,” Balcı said, adding that when former Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit in 2002 claimed that Israel carried out genocide against Palestinians, the Israeli lobby in Washington stated that they would stop supporting Turkey in their efforts to block Armenian genocide claims to be debated in the US Congress.
Turkish-Israeli relations were badly damaged last year after Israeli naval commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza to breach an Israeli-imposed naval blockade, leaving nine Turkish civilians, including an American citizen, dead. Turkey demands an official apology, compensation for families of the victims and an end to the Gaza blockade. Israel offered only its regrets and says its soldiers acted in self-defense.
Tobin stressed that it is needless to say that the Turkish government’s actions in the past few years have undermined the resolve of those who had opposed Armenian genocide commemoration for the sake of friendship with Turkey.
“Given the sense of betrayal that many pro-Israel Americans -- Jewish and non-Jewish alike -- feel regarding Turkey’s policies, the chances that many will lift a finger to oppose an Armenian genocide measure are slim. The moral dilemma that Turkey’s close ties to Israel posed for those considering the issue is now gone. Where this issue once was considered one of the most agonizing decisions facing community leaders, it is now an easy choice,” he concluded.
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