YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. The Israeli President Reuven Rivlin urged the UN member states not to allow the repetition of genocide acts at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. In his speech, Rivlin also reflected on the Armenian Genocide, which took place 100 years ago. As reports “Armenpress” citing Haaretz, Speaking at the assembly's ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Rivlin implicitly recognized the 1915 Armenian Genocide – the killing of more than one million Armenian nationals by Turkey – which is not recognized as genocide by Israel.

Among other things, Rivlin underscored: “In 1915, when the members of the Armenian nation were being massacred, Avshalom Feinberg, a leading member of Nili, the Jewish underground which cooperated with  the Allies during the First World War, wrote the following and I quote, “My teeth have been ground down with worry, whose turn is next? When I walked on the blessed and holy ground on my way up to Jerusalem, I asked myself if we are living in our modern era, in 1915, or in the days of Titus or Nebuchadnezzar? Did I, a Jew, forget that I am a Jew? I also asked myself if I have the right to weep ‘over the tragedy of my people’ only, and whether the Prophet Jeremiah did not shed tears of blood for the Armenians as well? “

Avshalom Feinberg wrote that exactly one hundred years ago, one hundred years of hesitation and denial. But in the Land of Israel of that time, in the Jerusalem in which I was born, no one denied the massacre that had taken place.  The residents of Jerusalem, my parents and the members of my family, saw the Armenian refugees arriving by the thousands – starving, piteous survivors of calamity. In Jerusalem they found shelter and their descendents continue to live there to this day.”

There were two questions reverberating then, whose turn is it next?  And will we Jews weep tears of blood for the tragedy of others too?  The first question was answered by history, some two decades later.  The Jews were next.  We, the members of my people, were next.  In the valley of death of Europe it was the Jewish People who were the victims of a methodical, brutal, perverted and murderous extermination.  Six million people, one-third of my nation, about a million and a half of them children, were killed, slaughtered, suffocated, gassed to death, buried alive, burnt, massacred, died from hunger, from thirst, from disease, and other gruesome kinds of death, in the most horrifying crime ever committed in the history of the human race. The answer to the second question asked by Feinberg.  Truly, shall we weep, each one of us, only for our own nation’s tragedy, or shall we be able to cry also for the tragedies of others; for the tragedy of wounded children from Syria; for the tragedy of the young men and women from Europe, from the Middle East, from Africa and from Asia.  This question still awaits an answer.

Citing the "disgraceful" UN resolution, later struck down, that equated Zionism with "its greatest enemy" racism, Rivlin continued: "Nonetheless, absurd comparisons such as this one, which we as Israelis are exposed to constantly... not only confuse the ally with the enemy, but they undermine this house's ability to effectively fight the phenomenon of genocide."

In his introduction, delivered in English, Rivlin called attention to the current clashes in the north, saying they represented Israel's fight against the global challenge of "terrorism."

"I stand before you at a time of great tension in our region. My heart and my thoughts are with my people in Israel. Terrorism does not distinguish between blood. In this war, all of us, all the nations united, countries of the free world, must form a united front," Rivlin said.

He delivered the body of his speech in Hebrew – "the same language in which my fellow Jews cried 'Shma Yisrael' as they were marched to the gas chambers. The language of my brothers and sisters, whose memory we honor today."