In August 2025 podcast host Patrick Bet-David asked Binyamin Netanyahu the following question: ‘Why haven’t you yet recognised the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides that the Turkish did to that community’? ‘Yeah, I just did. Here you go,’ the Israeli prime minister replied. For his recognition to be official, it would have had to take the form of a bill approved by the Israeli Knesset. Nevertheless, this response makes Netanyahu the first Israeli head of government to publicly acknowledge the Armenian genocide.

Why such a delay, over a century after the events ? Bet-David suggested that, in light of Israel’s history, this recognition could have come earlier. But Israel has traditionally maintained good relations with Turkey, which was the first Muslim-majority country to recognise Israel back in 1949. Tel Aviv’s silence was a way of staying on good terms with Ankara.

The refusal to recognise the Armenian genocide also reflects Israel’s desire for a monopoly on the crime of genocide. ‘We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations,’ explained Israel’s then [foreign minister Shimon Peres during a visit to Turkey in 2001. ‘Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. What the Armenians suffered was a tragedy, but not a genocide.’ Equating the Nazi regime’s extermination of the Jews with other genocides would ‘relativise’ it, weakening its role in legitimising the Zionist project.

Relations between the two countries have now significantly deteriorated. Israel is committing its own genocide in Gaza, denounced as such by Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Netanyahu’s statement came in response to this accusation. The Israeli prime minister has defended himself by drawing a distinction between genocides and the mere ‘war’ he claims to be waging against Hamas. Recognising the Armenian genocide, for him, amounts to downplaying his own crimes in Gaza.

What sets the denial of the 1915 (…)

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(3) According to figures from Israel’s finance ministry, consulted by Shalom Akhshav (Peace Now), and reported by the organisation Who Profits, which also identified €1m in government subsidies received by Psagot since 2018, www.whoprofits.org/companies/company/4149/.

(5) See psagotwines.com/en/about/.

(7) eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/israel/documents/press_corner/20130719_faq_ guidelines_eu_grants_en.pdf/.

(11) See the film by Ian McGonigle, Redemption: Wine and Prophecy in the Land of Israel, 2021.