During Tuesday`s special plenary session marking 100 years since the Armenian genocide, Knesset Speaker Yuli-Yoel Edelstein said "It is no secret that the State of Israel has taken an ambivalent position about the genocide. [Various] constraints, political and others, have led to an Israeli stance that has been too hesitant and too restrained." Armenia recently marked the centenary of a mass killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915, at the height of World War I. In his speech, Edelstein said that as members of a nation that suffered a genocide, Jews "cannot turn a blind eye or lessen the extent of the Armenian tragedy." The Knesset speaker called on the State to rethink its official position, "because none of us can change history." Some two and a half weeks ago, MKs Nachman Shai (Zionist Camp) and Anat Berko (Likud) represented Israel at events marking 100 years since the Armenian genocide, in the capital Yerevan. During Tuesday`s session, Shai said "there are similarities and differences between the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. We have reached the conclusion that after 100 years, the time has come for humanity to wake up." Berko said there was "no room for comparison between the Holocaust of Europe`s Jews and the conflict that existed between the Armenians and the Turks." "Facing the Armenian historic memory, I still sense that the wound has remained wide open," she told the plenum. MK Zehava Galon of Meretz backed Speaker Edelstein`s call to officially recognize the Armenian genocide. "This is not a political issue, but a moral one," she said. "Unfortunately, for too many years this issue has been used as a pawn by the foreign policy of the State of Israel, which chooses to sacrifice the truth and the memory on the altar of interests."
