Yerevan/Mediamax/. Addressing a speech at the UN General Assembly yesterday, President of Israel Reuven Rivlin indirectly mentioned the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

“In 1915, the days of the Armenian Genocide, Avshalom Feinberg of the NILI underground [a Jewish spy network in Ottoman Palestine] wrote the following: ‘My teeth have been worn away by anger, who is next? I have walked on sacred and holy ground, on the road to Jerusalem, and asked myself if it is this time that we live in -1915 – or in the days of Titus or Nebuchadnezzar?”, said the Israeli President, according to Asbarez.

He stressed that Avshalom Feinberg wrote that exactly 100 years ago.

“100 years of hesitation and denial. In the Land of Israel of the time, in which I was born, no one denied the murder that occurred. The residents of Jerusalem, my parents, saw them coming by thousands, starving, burning sticks snatched from the fire. In Jerusalem they found refuge and their descendants live there to this day”, he said.

Mediamax notes that the Israeli President also stated the following in his speech:

“[I]s our struggle, the struggle of this Assembly, against genocide, effective enough? Was it effective enough then in Bosnia? Was it effective in preventing the killing in Khojaly? Of Afghans by the Taliban? Is it effective enough today in Syria? Or in the face of the atrocities of Boko Haram in Nigeria? Are we shedding too many tears and taking too little action?”

Reuven Rivlin who was formerly the Chairman of Israeli Knesset, on numerous occasions encouraged Israeli lawmakers to recognize the Armenian Genocide. In June 2012, when the Knesset once again held discussions on that issue, Rivlin in particular said:

“As Jews, and as human beings, we cannot ignore this issue and we must not turn away from our commitment to morality… As a country struggling in the international arena with Holocaust denial, we cannot deny the tragedy of another people”.