Gideon Sa'ar

“Israel is not only Turkey’s problem, and it is not only President Erdoğan’s problem,” the Turkish foreign minister said. “These people have become a burden that humanity can no longer bear."

The moral question, however, never changed. If recognizing the Armenian tragedy is a moral imperative today, why was it not one in 2006, or in 1996?

Israel’s recognition of the genocide has been decades in the making. It's been a strange aspect of Israel’s history that, for many years, the Armenian genocide was downplayed in official circles.

Turkey denies that the massacres, imprisonment, and forced deportation of Armenians amounted to genocide, and Israel long avoided recognizing it as such due to diplomatic sensitivities.

During the press conference, Netanyahu condemned unnamed forces which "want to cause a rift in the people, want to aggravate and deepen the misunderstandings and disagreements and rifts within us."

As of 2026, 32 UN member states, including the United States, Canada, Russia, and Germany, have formally recognized the genocide.

Diplomacy begins with language. Yet language is never merely vocabulary. Every language carries its own history, literature, symbols, and collective memory. Words rarely travel alone.

The Likud is set to meet on Wednesday to discuss the party's future and to debate replacing the primaries with a “selection committee” system.

"We believe in the importance of comprehensive, honest, and open dialogue with the EU," Sa'ar stated. "But 'dialogue' cannot just be one side dictating its political positions."

EU Ambassador to Israel Michael Mann admits Jerusalem ties are strained, but stresses it "would be completely misleading to imagine that we make harsher comments about Israel than other countries."