Image Control: When a Genocidal State Recognizes Another Genocide

Israel just recognized the Armenian Genocide. You just can't make this stuff up.

There is something so incredibly dark about a state that is actively carrying out a genocide formally recognizing the genocide of another people that happened over a 100 years ago. It should be obvious to all but the willfully obtuse and sycophants that this move by the Israeli Knesset to recognize the Armenian genocide is only to deflect from their own murderous atrocities and to take a jab at Turkey.

To most historians, what happened to the Armenians was a crime against humanity. A genocide. But none of this about honouring the victims of that crime. It is a cynical and political pantomime. A farce in a ghoulish geopolitical kabuki theatre.

In recent months, several high-ranking Israeli officials have openly stated that Turkey is a threat to their country. That it will be “next,” after it launched an unprovoked war on Iran. It is unsurprising that in this the post-truth era, a genocidal apartheid regime thinks it can launder its bloodstained image by pretending to care about human rights and dignity. But even in this absurdist geopolitical landscape, these stunts fall flat.

A recent UN report exposed how Israel deliberately targets children. How it deliberately maims, bombs, burns, shoots, starves and murders them. And it is still incinerating families in their tents in Gaza, conducting pogroms in the occupied West Bank, and blowing up entire villages in southern Lebanon.

Nothing Israel does now will erase the crimes it is committing from the public memory. Not the baseless smears. Not melodramatic screaming tirades at the UN. Not the buying up of social media platforms and news companies. Not the grifting of vapid celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow or Bill Maher. And certainly not a desperate attempt at image restoration by recognizing atrocities that took place over a century ago.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, June 2026

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