Published: 24 May 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
We learned that Israel’s Arab citizens experienced a catastrophe, known in Arabic as the “Nakba,” when the state was established 70 years ago and they were uprooted from their homes.
We were told that the use of the term “Shoah,” Hebrew for “Holocaust,” to characterise atrocities committed after World War II does a moral and historic injustice to the six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis.
However, a sea change has now occurred, and senior elected officials have ceded the Jewish monopoly over the Holocaust. On May 16, Education Minister Naftali Bennett used “Shoah” in calling on Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein to “promote Israeli recognition of the holocaust against the Armenians carried out by Turkey.”
Last month, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan of the Likud used the same term in urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognise the "Armenian Holocaust."
FULL STORY Israeli right shifts stance on Armenian genocide amid Turkey spat (Al-Monitor)
AND SEE Knesset approves motion on recognising Armenian genocide (Jerusalem Post)
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Photo: Members of the Armenian community attend a memorial march marking the 100th anniversary of the mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces, Jerusalem's Old City, April 23, 2015 (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
