As long as I can remember, I've known that there was only one unique Holocaust in the history of humankind. We learned that the Armenians had suffered a “genocide” and that “a people’s massacre” had been perpetrated in Rwanda. We learned that Israel’s Arab citizens experienced a catastrophe, known in Arabic as the “Nakba,” when the state was established 70 years ago and they were uprooted from their homes. We were told that the use of the term “Shoah,” Hebrew for “Holocaust,” to characterize atrocities committed after World War II does a moral and historic injustice to the 6 million Jews exterminated by the Nazis.

However, a sea change has now occurred, and senior elected officials have ceded the Jewish monopoly over the Holocaust. On May 16, Education Minister Naftali Bennett used “Shoah” in calling on Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein to “promote Israeli recognition of the holocaust against the Armenians carried out by Turkey.” Last month, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan of the Likud used the same term in urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize the "Armenian Holocaust."

Knesset member Amir Ohana, also of the Likud, drew a direct line between Nazi crimes and the massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenian people by Ottoman forces during World War I. “When Hitler presented the Wehrmacht officers with his plan for mass extermination,” Ohana wrote on Facebook, “he reassured those worried about the reaction of the world by saying: ‘After all, who mentions the extermination of the Armenian people anymore?’" He added, “If for no other reason, that is why we should have already recognized this murder officially.” An original and winning argument? Not really. A quick glance through the Knesset minutes from February reveals that Yair Lapid, chair of the Yesh Atid opposition party, presented this argument virtually word for word three months ago to present proposed legislation recognizing the Armenian genocide.

“The question facing the Knesset today is not a practical one, it is not a foreign relations issue, it is a fundamental moral issue,” Lapid said. “Can we as Jews ignore a holocaust?” Himself the son of a Holocaust survivor, the late Knesset member Yosef Lapid, he added that the State of Israel could not afford to ignore the genocide of another people, the murder of its children, women and elderly. “It is not moral, it is not just and we have a commitment,” Lapid concluded. And how did his fellow Knesset colleague Ohana vote? Like the 15 other Likud members who bothered turning up for the debate, he voted “nay.” So did the Knesset members of Bennett’s HaBayit HaYehudi. Their leader, along with the Likud’s Erdan, skipped the vote altogether. Deputy Minister Michael Oren, who said during a 2015 Knesset debate, “It’s time for us as a state to recognize the massacre of the Armenians and do it justice and close the circle,” also voted against the proposed bill. So did all the members of his center-right Kulanu. The Knesset voted down the proposal to recognize the Armenian genocide by 41 to 28.