Armenian Genocide Recognition Postponed Again; ‘Too Busy Not Valuing Lives Of Israelis Near Gaza’

“We’re really busy getting this abdication of our responsibility just right.”

Jerusalem, June 28 – The Knesset’s Legislative Committee took a bill off the table this week for the fourth time, a law that would declare Israel recognizes the genocide of Armenian Christians during the First World War by the Ottoman Empire and its emerging successor state Turkey, with the explanation that the political leadership has no time to address such matters while it must devote most of its attention to failing to protect communities, farms, and nature reserves in the south from incendiary balloons, kites, and other attacks from Gaza.

Government representatives initially explained the postponement of the Armenian Genocide bill in terms of Turkey’s elections, not wishing to make a diplomatically provocative move so close to the vote, lest nationalists in Turkey seize on it. However, behind closed doors, officials acknowledged the lameness of that public rationale, and disclosed that the real factor in the removal of the proposal lies in ministers, lawmakers, and the defense establishment already have their hands full letting Hamas burn down hundreds of acres of farmland, brush, and forest.

“To be honest, not doing anything convincing about the attacks from Gaza is taking up most of our time,” admitted one senior Ministry of Defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We can explain it in terms of not wanting to get dragged into an escalation with Hamas, not wanting another war, or whatever, but the bottom line is it takes an awful lot of planning and resources to ascertain that a Hamas commander’s car is empty before we give authorizations to destroy it. If we cared about deterring these arson attacks we might go full speed ahead and not make such determinations, but that’s not the case right now. We’re really busy getting this abdication of our responsibility just right.”

A second official added more detail. “We’ve ordered the army to shoot near incendiary kite- and balloon-launchers, but not directly at them,” he noted. “Perhaps the government can follow a similar prudent course of action concerning the Armenian genocide: recognize that a systematic extermination effort took place ‘near’ the Armenians of a hundred years ago. Of course such a move would demand time and focus we don’t have at the moment, given that we’ve got to concentrate on sitting on our hands while the south burns, so I guess it will have to wait until this crisis passes.”

“I wish we knew who could do something about it to make it pass sooner,” he added.

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