Who am I to be answering this question?  I am neither an Israeli nor an Armenian.  And I am not a Jew.

But I am a Christian Zionist scholar who visited Armenia in September and came away with this question.  The two countries have solid reasons to distrust each other.  But it struck this outsider that they have more in common than not.

I remember having lunch with a wiry 60-year-old village leader in southern Armenia where Muslim Azerbaijan is threatening to invade.  I asked him what he would do. Without hesitation, he smiled and said, “We will fight!”

That’s exactly what Armenians have been doing since a few years before 1991, when they gained their independence after the fall of the Soviet Union.  At least 35,000 Armenians have been killed in fighting a succession of wars in the last thirty years to defend their ancient land against an Islamic nation that claims its territory.

That should sound familiar to Israelis.  Another similarity is this ancient nation’s connection to its religion.  96% of the Armenian people call themselves Christian and consider their religion inseparable from their land.  They are proud of their identity as the first Christian nation (301 CE).  And like Jewish Israelis, they are willing to shed their blood for their nation.

Another tragic similarity is that both Jews and Armenians have suffered genocide.  Armenians started being massacred by Sultan Abdul Hamid II toward the end of the nineteenth century when he used Turkish soldiers and Kurdish irregulars to slaughter nearly 200,000 Christians, mostly Armenians. Then, after 1915, the genocide became more systematic. Helped by Germans who wanted Turkey to join Central Powers in World War I, the Turks exterminated 1.5 million more Armenians by 1923. To this day, Turkey refuses to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide and jails Turks who mention it publicly.

Perhaps because of these shared horrors, Armenia and Israel have recently taken baby steps toward each other.  In June 2026, the Israeli cabinet approved a resolution to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide. Armenia’s Foreign Ministry in April 2026 congratulated Israel on its Independence Day. This was after the foreign ministries of both nations announced late-2025 consultations on joint efforts in agriculture, software development, healthcare, and tourism.

But Israel remains wary. Armenia has long developed both diplomatic and economic ties with Iran, the only Muslim state not hostile to it, but arguably the Jewish state’s greatest enemy. Since Israel gets half its oil imports from Azerbaijan and uses the Muslim state as both a listening post into Iran and a waystation for IDF aircraft, Armenia’s defensive wars against the Azeris threaten Israeli security needs.  

Armenia’s 2024 recognition of a State for Palestine added diplomatic insult to Israel’s existential anxieties.

Armenia has her own reasons for distrust. She remembers that Israel helped Azerbaijan seize pocket after pocket of her ancient territory. In 2020, Azerbaijan attacked both Armenia proper and Armenian-populated Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), with Israeli weapons providing the key to their victory.  Five thousand Armenian casualties resulted. In 2023, Azeris drove 120,000 Armenians from their historic homes after a nine-month siege. The Azeris seized the land and destroyed Armenian churches and cemeteries.

Azeri ethnic cleansing and occupation of internationally recognized Armenian territory continue to this day.

In Jerusalem’s Old City, residents and clergy in its Armenian Quarter complain that they face frequent verbal abuse, spitting on them and their property, and physical assaults from extremist Jewish individuals.

I return to the title of this article: Can Israel and Armenia become frenemies? 

Perhaps they can take a page from the Abraham Accords, where traditional enemies stepped into new relationships because of common threats.  

Today, a common threat is Turkey.  Since Erdogan’s regime has become the newest regional threat to Israel, the Jewish state might appreciate having another enemy to her enemy. Armenia on Turkey’s eastern border is an obvious choice. She shares with Israel an existential fear of the Turks going back to the 1915 genocide, reinforced by Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan in the 2020 war and its ongoing aggressions.

Of course this pattern is nothing new in military and diplomatic history. But it might be helpful for Jews and Christians to remember that it is an oft-repeated theme in the Bible, from Jacob and Esau to Joseph and his brothers, to Jonathan with Saul and David, to Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar. 

Today, when Israel and Armenia are ancient peoples in their ancestral lands facing Islamist enemies bent on their destruction, it seems to this foreigner that becoming frenemies might be worth considering.

Gerald McDermott is the author of Israel Matters and editor of Understanding Jewish Roots of Christianity.