Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin met with Armenian community leaders in Jerusalem on Sunday in a first-ever commemoration by an Israeli head of state of some 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks a century ago.
In a statement on the meeting, Rivlin’s office carefully avoided the word “genocide” in reference to the 1915 mass killings and deportations of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. It said the meeting with the Jerusalem-based Armenian Patriarch Nourhan Manougian and other prominent members of the Armenian community in Israel marked “100 years since the Armenian tragedy.”
“The Armenian people were the first victims of modern mass killing,” Rivlin was quoted as telling them. “We do not seek to put the blame on any specific country, but rather identify with the victims and the horrible results of the massacre.”
“Two weeks ago, we the Jewish people commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day,” he said. “After this horrible Holocaust, commemorating the tragedy of the Armenian people is our Jewish obligation; a human and moral one.”
“I am proud to host you here in the President's Residence to mark this day with you,” added the largely ceremonial president.
Armenia’s honorary consul in Israel, Tsolag Momjian, was reported to describe the meeting, also attended by several Israeli scholars, as “historic” and thank Rivlin for organizing it. But Archbishop Aris Shirvanian, a top aide to the Armenian patriarch, criticized the Jewish state for its continuing refusal to formally recognize the Armenian genocide.
“At the end of the meeting, the President stated that he had noted this criticism, and that he believed that Israel's leadership must do more to raise the issue of the murder of the Armenian people,” Rivlin’s office said.
Successive Israeli governments have opposed such recognition lest it antagonize Turkey, until recently a major security partner of Israel. This policy is increasingly criticized by Israeli politicians and public figures.
In what may have been a response to that criticism, Israel sent a delegation of two Israeli lawmakers to Friday’s official ceremonies in Yerevan that marked the centenary of the Armenian genocide. One of those lawmakers, Nachman Shai, said ahead of the trip that Israel must finally term the Armenian massacres a genocide.
Rivlin similarly advocated genocide recognition when he served as speaker of the Knesset in 2012. He reportedly reaffirmed his view on the subject in a closed session with journalists in Jerusalem earlier this month.
“The Nazis used the Armenian genocide as something that gave them permission to bring the Holocaust into reality,” Rivlin said, according to TheTower.org.