KNESSET PANEL TO CONSIDER RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
By Shahar Ilan

Ha’aretz
/968844.html
March 26 2008
Israel

The Knesset decided Wednesday that a parliamentary committee will
hold an unprecedented hearing on whether to recognize the World War
I-era mass murder of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as a genocide.

The decision to hold a hearing, which was proposed by Meretz Chairman
Haim Oron, was approved by a 12-MK margin. The government did not
oppose the motion.

The Knesset House Committee will decide whether the issue will be
handed over to the Knesset Education Committee, as Oron wants, or to
the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, as requested by Yisrael
Beiteinu MK Yosef Shagal. The latter generally holds hearings behind
closed doors.

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Oron wants the committee to recognize the Armenian genocide, pointing
out that similar recognition has been afforded recently by the French
parliament and the United States Congress. "It is appropriate that
the Israeli Knesset, which represents the Jewish people, recognize
the Armenian genocide," said Oron. "It is unacceptable that the Jewish
people is not making itself heard."

The Meretz MK added that he raises the proposal every year ahead of
Armenian Genocide Day, which falls on April 24.

Minister Shalom Simhon, who represented the government in the Knesset
debate, did not object to sending the issue to committee. Simhon
said the Jewish people have a special sensitivity to the issue and
a moral obligation to remember tragic episodes in human history,
including the mass murder of the Armenians.

Nonetheless, Simhon added that, "in the course of time this has become
a politically charged issue between Armenians and Turks ? and Israel
is not interested in taking a side."

Shagal warned that recognizing the killings as a genocide could have
repercussions for Israel’s diplomatic relations with Turkey, as well
as the fate of tens of thousands of Jews who live in Azerbaijan.