Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Jerusalem (Agenzia Fides) - The Israeli Parliament rejected a bill, which would have recognized the "Armenian Genocide". Sponsored by Yesh Atid party chairman Yair Lapid, the bill was rejected in a preliminary vote which took place on Wednesday 14 February. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, Tzipi Hotovely, declared that Israel will not take an official stance on the matter of the Armenian Genocide, "in light of its complexity and diplomatic repercussions.
On April 26, 2015, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin hosted a commemorative event at the Presidential residence in Jerusalem to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the planned extermination of Armenians that had occurred a century before in Anatolia. During that ceremony, President Rivlin recalled that the Armenian people were "the first victims of modern mass exterminations", but he had avoided using the word "Genocide" to indicate the massacres in which more than one million and 500 thousand people died.
Also US President Donald Trump, on April 24, 2017, dedicated an official pronouncement to the planned massacres suffered in the Anatotic Peninsula by the Armenians in 1915, but avoided adopt the definition of "Armenian Genocide" to those systematic massacres, following the line of his last 4 predecessors, also in order not to provoke resentful reactions from Turkey. (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 20/2/2018)
ASIA/TURKEY - For the first time in the history of the Turkish Republic, an Armenian becomes Governor of a district
ASIA/LEBANON - "We are not celebrating two dead, but two risen in Christ". Lebanese Christians celebrate the beatification of Capuchins Leonardo Melki and Thomas Saleh, missionaries and martyrs