Israel's new Ambassador to Armenia Shmuel Meirom submitted his credential to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan last week. The submission of credentials, as a rule, is seen as a usual protocol event, but in this case, it was a bit more.
The political accents of the appointment of a new Israeli ambassador to Armenia fit well into the context of fundamentally new regional realities, namely, sharp complications in Turkish-Israeli relations.
At present, the situation in the region is such that Israel and Armenia have a common adversary – Turkey.
In this sense, the relationship between the two states could theoretically reach a new perspective level. In particular, the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States could theoretically back the Armenian resolutions on genocide and thus undermine the Turkish positions in the international political arena.
The Central Jewish Resource www.sem40.ru says: "Turkey may forever lose the support of the powerful Israeli lobby in the United States and its efforts to block the adoption of an Armenian Genocide resolution."
In an article in The Washington Times under the headline "American Jewish community ends support of Turkish interests on [Capitol] Hill" Eli Lake wrote that it was impossible to expect a different result of the strong reaction from Ankara to Israeli actions against this spring's "Freedom Flotilla".
He reminds that in 2008, leading Jewish organizations decided no longer to block the adoption of the Armenian Genocide resolution in Congress, which, in the opinion of the journalist, was a response to the worsening Israeli-Turkish relations.
Meanwhile, still in 2002, Israel's Ambassador to Armenia Rivka Cohen stated in Yerevan that "nothing, including the tragedy of the Armenians, could be compared with the Holocaust." In that connection, Armenia's Foreign Ministry even sent a note of protest to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and said that Armenia considered any attempt to deny or diminish the fact of the Armenian Genocide, for whatever motivation it was made, to be unacceptable.
The statement of Israel's official representative then elicited a wide response among Armenians. Harout Sassounian, the publisher of The California Courier, wrote then that "the denial of the Armenian Genocide by the Israeli ambassador was done within the position of his government. One thing is clear: Israel's leaders are ready to sacrifice historical truth for the sake of their strategic relations with Turkey."
However, the situation today is different. This is due to the sharp complication of the Turkish-Israeli relations.
October 30, in connection with the new appointment of the Israeli ambassador to Armenia, the Central Jewish Resource wrote that "for more than two decades before the eyes of the whole world, Turkey and Azerbaijan continue to maintain the blockade of the Republic of Armenia."
The same web portal reminds that "the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) distributed a memo for the U.S. Congress, which accuses Turkey of applying double standards. ANCA stresses that Turkey is the last country that has the right to sermonize to other countries. The memo lists all acts of violence and aggression committed by Turkish leaders both at home and abroad for a hundred years."
Another Israeli portal IzRus notes: "Perhaps for the first time an Israeli ambassador to a former Soviet country, who usually combines diplomatic activities in several states, is proposed to focus on Armenia."
Meirom is a career diplomat with more than 30 years of experience. He is the former head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry department for CIS countries, and in recent years was Israel's ambassador to Croatia.
In handing his credentials to the Armenian president the diplomat said that "cooperation between Armenia and Israel can contribute to peace and prosperity in the region" and for the first time assured the Armenian leadership that "Israel wants to raise bilateral relations to an excellent level."
Armenian News
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