Israeli Foreign Minister Sa’ar to bring Armenian Genocide recognition bill to parliament

Nate Ostiller

Ottoman military forces march Armenian men from Kharput to an execution site outside the city. Kharput, Ottoman Empire, March 1915-June 1915. Photo courtesy of the Armenian National Institute/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has said he plans to introduce a bill in the country’s parliament to officially recognise the Armenian Genocide.

In a post on X, Sa’ar said he would bring the resolution to parliament ‘at its next meeting’.

‘Recognising the genocide perpetrated against the Armenian people in the final years of the Ottoman Empire is both a moral and historical duty. We must also firmly condemn any denial, minimisation, or distortion of the historical truth’, Sa’ar wrote.

Armenian Genocide recognition has remained a highly politicised issue for Israel, due to its complex relations with Turkey, which, as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies that the genocide took place. Others have argued that Israel’s recognition would diminish the status of the Holocaust as a historically unique genocide in terms of number of victims. A third factor is Israel’s close ties with Azerbaijan, which explicitly denies the genocide occured and has, along with Turkey, lobbied against its recognition.

Armenians demonstrate in front of the Turkish consulate to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, in Jerusalem in April 2015. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

In 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he recognised the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as a genocide in an interview with controversial American podcaster Patrick Bet-David, who is of Armenian and Assyrian descent. Bet-David is a highly controversial figure, known for spreading conspiracy theories and platforming Holocaust deniers.

In the same interview, Netanyahu falsely claimed the Israeli Parliament had already recognised the genocide, but was apparently referring to the Israeli Parliament’s Education, Culture, and Sports Committee’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide back in 2016, which does not constitute an official recognition at the state level.

There have been previous attempts to pass a bill to officially recognise the genocide in the Israeli Parliament, but they all have failed to be adopted.

Nate joined OC Media as an editor after a year at The Kyiv Independent, where he covered Ukraine, Russia, and the South Caucasus. He has a background in grant writing and reporting on post-Soviet geopolitics, with a focus on conflict-sensitive journalism and human rights.