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The Israeli Jewish Council on Interfaith Relations (IJCIR) on Monday issued a statement recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide and urging Israel to recognize the Armenian Genocide, according to Christian Newswire. 

“The Israeli Jewish Council on Interfaith Relations (IJCIR) stands together with the Armenian community of Jerusalem. We acknowledge, remember and pay public homage to the horrific genocide that took the lives of 1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey 100 years ago. This genocide is not a matter of "interpretation," but of demonstrable and irrefutable fact.

“The Armenian genocide is officially recognized by more than 26 countries around the world and most of the United States of America. Pope Francis, too, has recently added his voice to those who cry out publicly against the horror of this genocide.

“We urge the government of State of Israel to officially recognize the mass killings of so many Armenians as the genocide that it was. There is no political justification for turning a blind eye to this historical tragedy.

“Jews have a unique responsibility to remember and acknowledge this tragedy. Our experience of the Nazi genocide that took the lives of 6 million Jews of our people occurred only 70 years ago. The Nazis embarked on the Final Solution because they knew that the world stood idly by during the Armenian genocide.

“We stand together in pain with the Armenians. We experienced suffering as did the Armenian people. We have no right to demand that the world remember the genocide of our people, if we remain blind and mute to the fate that befell the Armenian people between 1913-1915.

“We must take to heart our sacred pledge of "never again." If we wish to prevent genocides in the present and the future—to our people and to others—we must be vigilant in remembering and acknowledging the genocides of the past. We must not let the world forget,” the statement reads.

Signatories

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, IJCIR Co-Chair
Rabbi Menachem HaCohen, IJCIR Co-Chair
David Nekrutman, CJCUC Executive Director
Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, CJCUC Academic Director
Rabbi David Rosen, AJC International Director of Interreligious Affairs
Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute
Rabbi Dr. David Golinkin, President of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Dr. Faydra L. Shapiro, Director of the Galilee Center for Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations at Yezreel Valley College in Israel
Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, Kehilat Kol Haneshama
Yehuda Stolov
Debbie Weissman

IJCIR has a seat on International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), which has the official mandate to conduct Jewish-Christian relations and dialogue with the Vatican, the World Council of Churches, and Ecumenical Patriarchate which involves all the Orthodox churches.