ZEEV ELKIN: KNESSET ARRIVED AT HISTORICAL DECISION

PanARMENIAN.Net
27.03.2008 15:47 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Knesset decided yesterday that a parliamentary
committee will discuss whether to recognize the World War I-era mass
murder of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as Genocide. The government
did not oppose the motion. The Knesset House Committee will decide
whether to hand the issue over to the Knesset Education Committee,
as Meretz’s Haim Oron wants, or to the Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee, as requested by Yisrael Beiteinu’s Yosef Shagal. The latter
generally holds hearings behind closed doors, Haaretz reports.

Knesset Member Zeev Elkin (Kadima) said, "I am proud of our efforts,
which have brought on this historical achievement, and which other
parliaments in the world have succeeded in doing a while ago. Israel
should have been among the first countries in the world to recognize
this genocide."

According to a survey held in autumn 2007 NEWSru.co.il among 509
respondents, the absolute majority (82,5%) agree with the opinion that
the Israeli people, who survived the Holocaust have no right to deny
tragedies of other nations. At that 72,4% think that Israel should
recognize the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey in 1915 as genocide.

43,8% of those surveyed said Israel should recognize the Armenian
Genocide even at expense of breaking off relations with Turkey. 35,2%
said it’s not the price for Israel to pay.

48% think it possible to convince Turkey in the necessity to
acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. 33,2% said it’s unreal.