The death of Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladić–the Butcher of Bosnia responsible for Srebrenica, who died behind bars in the Hague on 27 August–is a sore reminder.
Israel’s increasingly close relationship with both Serbia and Republika Srpska, the Serbian entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, should therefore be sounding alarm bells in national capitals where leaders still value the future of humanity.
At first glance, the tightness between Serbia and Israel has centred on arms agreements and military cooperation. Serbia is set to produce Israeli drones for its ethnic cleansing in Gaza, according to various media.
“In 2026, Belgrade and Jerusalem signed an agreement to facilitate intelligence and defense data exchanges, further deepening the relationship in the security sector,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
Let’s not forget the ideological dimension of this collaboration. Equally significant, Serbian nationalists and Israeli officials openly express mutual solidarity rooted in hatred of Islam.
It’s no accident that in the 1990s the Serbians butchered Muslims, and although not all Palestinians are Muslims, Israel positions itself within a far-right movement that fears Islam is undermining Western civilisation.
Writing for the reactionary free newspaper Israel Hayom, Željka Cvijanović, the Serb member of the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, trolled Israelis for support, noting that Serbs and Jews suffered Croatian fascism together during World War II.
“Our solidarity and mutual support have therefore always been genuine and reciprocal as, tragically, has been our suffering,” she said. “The Ustaša camp at Jasenovac was the largest site of mass execution of Serbs during the Second World War and one of the largest sites of Jewish martyrdom during the same period.”
Indeed, according to the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, “Israeli political echelons often deem Serbia their closest ex-Yugoslav relationship, in part arising from shared Serb and Jewish plights in WWII and the Holocaust.”
However, Cvijanović’s solidarity as World War II victims became tinged with darker elements, particularly regarding the role of Serbians as génocidaires in the 1990s and the continued ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
“Those who, from the comfort of distant offices and the safety of political detachment, seek to dispense moral lessons while diluting the sovereignty of other nations will bear none of the consequences of their actions,” she wrote.
Israel is currently fending off the same kind of accusations Serbia faced three decades ago.
Cvijanović goes out of her way to say that the Bosnian Muslims have supported Palestinians who have resisted their annihilation (a rational observer can see why), while Serbs, both in the recognised republic and in the breakaway nation within Bosnia, stand with Israel.
“[R]allies in support of Palestine and Iran have been organized in Sarajevo, often featuring wartime flags and extremist symbols, while commemorations dedicated to Israeli victims have been denied permission,” she opined.
“Owing to security concerns, the commemoration marking the anniversary of the Hamas attack was relocated to East Sarajevo, in Republika Srpska.”
In an interview with the Jewish News Syndicate, “Cvijanovic was equally direct when discussing the ICC’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu” saying, “I stated very clearly that the decision was evidently being used as a means of political pressure against Prime Minister Netanyahu and that, as such, it constituted an abuse of international law for political purposes.”
According to JNS, “Cvijanovic stressed that Republika Srpska would not participate in the implementation of the warrant within the framework of its constitutional authorities.”
It’s reminiscent of how Serbian nationalists celebrate Slobodan Milosevic’s evasion of justice. Or consider how Mladic’s death has been handled. “Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic accused a U.N. war crimes court…of ‘uncivilised behaviour’ for not letting” Mladic die in Serbia, according to Reuters.
“Serbia‘s Justice Minister Nenad Vujic said…former Bosnian Serb military leader and convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic ‘will receive all the military and state honours to which he is entitled,’” France 24 reported, a slap in the face to Bosnia’s victims.
Writing for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a pro-Israel legal scholar said Mladic was a war criminal, but used his death to thinly assert that labelling the atrocity in Gaza a genocide, as many scholars and human rights groups have done, is a step too far.
In the Jerusalem Post, Marc Zell, chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel and a lobbyist for Republika Srpska, and political analyst Dana Levinson, blasted a bipartisan group of US lawmakers for “pressing the Trump administration to reimpose sanctions on former President of Republika Srpska (RS) Milorad Dodik, whom the State Department delisted from its sanctions list just a few months ago”.
According to Politico, Dodik was removed as president “after a court convicted him of defying the international envoy responsible for overseeing the Dayton Accords, a 1995 peace agreement that ended the Bosnian War”.
But the duo in the Post made this about a religious conflict between Western Judeo-Christianity and Eastern Islam:
“The Trump Administration properly reversed three decades of pro-Bosniak (read: pro-Muslim) US policy by removing the Biden Administration’s draconian sanctions against Dodik,” stating that “Turkey, which for years served as the operational base for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in Europe and the Middle East, has been extending its influence beyond cultural and religious ties.
The growing defence cooperation with Bosnia and Herzegovina predominantly benefits the Muslim entity.”
Being pro-Bosniak was once considered virtuous solidarity with victims. Now the Israeli press wants people to believe they’re the bad guys because of religion.
That certainly sounds like neoconservative, War on Terror fear-mongering about Europe. But there’s more.
Turkey’s Anadolu Ajansı reported in June that “Bosnia and Herzegovina’s largest Bosniak party, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), criticised Israel’s foreign minister…saying his remarks on the need to ‘safeguard the Christian minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina’ amounts to direct interference in the country’s internal affairs.”
According to the SDA, “With the intention of harming Bosniaks, the Israeli minister is also unintentionally insulting Serbs and Croats, because there is no ‘Christian minority’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As stipulated by the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are constituent peoples. Moreover, Bosniaks are not threatening any of these peoples; on the contrary, they are being deprived of their rights.”
The party goes on to say that, “The Israeli minister either does not know or does not want to know that genocide was committed against Bosniaks, who were subjected to mass war crimes, ethnic cleansing and detention in concentration camps.”
The links between Serbian nationalism and Zionism go deeper. Israel continues to deny the genocide in Gaza, while Bosnian Serbs whitewash their genocidal history.
From Middle East Eye:
Unfounded claims about Christians being threatened as a group in Bosnia were part of propaganda that circulated in the lead up to the war in the 90s.
Denijal Jegic, assistant professor at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, told Middle East Eye that Republika Srpska and Israel, which have both faced “scrutiny and isolation”, share numerous parallels.
“Republika Srpska and Israel are natural allies… both entities were built on ethnic cleansing and their identities are constructed on supremacist concepts,” Jegic said.
“Both entities’ existence depends on narratives of ethno-nationalism and self-segregation.”
It is frightening enough that, as Israel bulldozes Gaza and Lebanon, it also openly lauds Serbian chauvinism, historical revisionism and anti-Muslim nationalism, taking us back to one of the darkest moments of the 1990s.
But anti-Bosniak sentiment and Israeli militarism are also united in their hatred of multiculturalism. Before the Serbian siege, Sarajevo was known for synagogues, mosques, and churches standing side by side in peace, and for discussions about art, philosophy and politics flowing in smoke-filled cafes among Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs.
In other words, Sarajevo was home to a truly civilised, cosmopolitan society—exactly the kind of Europe loathed by today’s populists.
Israeli and Serbian nationalists aren’t just drunk on ethnic supremacy, but hatred of coexistence.
Photograph courtesy of Ministerie van Defensie. Published under a Creative Commons license.
