Israel's President Reuven Rivlin met with Armenian community leaders in Jerusalem on Sunday in a first-ever commemoration by an Israeli head of state of some 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks a century ago.
In a statement on the meeting, Rivlin's office carefully avoided the word "genocide" in reference to the 1915 mass killings and deportations of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. It said the meeting with the Jerusalem-based Armenian Patriarch Nourhan Manougian and other prominent members of the Armenian community in Israel marked "100 years since the Armenian tragedy."
"The Armenian people were the first victims of modern mass killing," Rivlin was quoted as telling them. "We do not seek to put the blame on any specific country, but rather identify with the victims and the horrible results of the massacre."
Armenian News
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