Serj Tankian spoke out against Benjamin Netanyahu for using the genocide of the Armenian people during WW1 for Israel’s own “political advantage.” According to NME, the System of Down frontman made a video on Monday criticizing the Netanyahu administration’s recent acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide after their longtime resistance to recognizing the event as such.
In his acknowledgement speech, the Israeli prime minister stated that they have “fulfilled a moral duty by recognising the historical truth, and rejecting attempts to deny it.” Israel previously avoided recognizing the atrocity for fear of straining their relations with Turkey. Tankian—whose grandparents were all survivors of the massacre that claimed between 664,000 and 1.2 million Armenian lives—called out Israel’s previous resistance, highlighting the event’s crucial historical context, preceding the Holocaust. The frontman also called out Israel’s relations with the United States’ prolonged silence on the matter.
“For many years, Israel’s government used AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] to lobby the US Congress to not recognise the Armenian genocide, to prevent Congress from recognising the Armenian genocide, due to their relationship with Turkey, their intelligence sharing with Turkey, et cetera,” he said. “Today, the Netanyahu cabinet decided to recognise the Armenian genocide of 1915 — a genocide that led Hitler thinking that he could do what he could do to the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s.”
The United States only officially recognized the 1915 genocide in 2021, under former President Joe Biden. For this, System of a Down publicly thanked the president. Tankian criticized Netanyahu’s acknowledgement, however, as a political weaponization, saying, “The fact that this government is already committing genocide in Gaza and Lebanon decided to recognise the genocide of my grandparents is the worst fucking thing that they could have done to Armenians — by using our history, our genocide, our pain to their political advantage. Fuck you.”
BREAKING: System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian blasts Netanyahu’s government, saying “Fuck you!” for using the Armenian Genocide for political advantage. pic.twitter.com/XilFyFaBbA
— Kegham Balian (@kbalian90) June 29, 2026
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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