Israeli embassy memo to Bosnia supports anti-Semitism
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The Israeli occupation is siding with far-right nationalists who seek a discriminatory law electoral law that sidelines Jews and Roma people.
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Milorad Dodik, who won the presidency of Republika Srpska on October 7, at a 2016 rally supporting a national holiday that would discriminate against non-Serbs (AP)
Bosnian officials attacked on Tuesday the Israeli occupation over a leaked memo that praised a controversial, discriminatory electoral reform plan supported by nationalist parties.
A leaked document showed the Israeli occupation praising the electoral reform plan, which was heavily criticized by Bosnian Foreign Minister Bisera Turkovic.
Turkovic accused the Israeli embassy in Albania, which is also responsible for Bosnia, of inappropriately interfering in the Balkan state's internal affairs by supporting the aforementioned electoral reform plan.
Critics say the proposed change in the electoral system would minimize the political influence of minorities in the country, including Jews and Roma people.
"It is hard to fathom how the official policy of the State of Israel could be to welcome the discrimination of Jews in not being able to hold office in Bosnia and Herzegovina," Turkovic told Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "The proposed electoral legislation would cement the current discriminatory system towards minorities in Bosnia."
His statement came after a memo "Tel Aviv's" military mission to Tirana, Albania, was widely circulated in the country on Monday, stirring political crises and storms within the Balkan state.
The memo came in response to an electoral plan promoted by the Office of the High Representative, an EU-supported institution created in the wake of the Balkan wars in the 1990s to oversee civilian aspects of the implementation of the ceasefire agreement in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The body can overrule government decisions in Bosnia.
The plan is supported by Croatian and Serbian nationalists, while it is opposed by the current ruling government in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Bosnian political system is based on a power-sharing agreement among the country's three major ethnic groups: Muslim Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs, and Bosnian Croats, who are said to have marginalized more than 100,000 citizens from attaining senior-level political representation.
High-level positions in the Bosnian government and within local authorities are currently distributed among members of its constituent peoples, regardless of the size of their respective populations. However, the change proposed by the OHR would weigh local demographics and subsequently consolidate the power of ethnonationalist parties.
The Israeli occupation's embassy decided to support the OHR's change by writing the note, welcoming "the readiness and proposals of the Croat side, as demonstrated throughout negotiations on change to the electoral legislation".
Turkovic said she was surprised by "Tel Aviv's" response, calling on the occupation to have a "sincere approach and genuine support [...] in order to protect the rights of the Jewish people in Bosnia and Herzegovina rather than heaping praise on those who perpetuate inequality by denying people of other backgrounds, such as Jews, their rights in Bosnia."
She then asked the Israeli occupation government for clarification, stressing that the majority of the Bosnian parties were against the proposed reform.
"Israel" is endorsing a model that had been "abandoned long ago in the world because it is based on systematic discrimination," Croat politician Zeljko Komisc was quoted by Bosnian news website N1 as saying. The system is only supported by "political actors whose policies are based on the denial of genocide, the glorification of war crimes and criminals and on the realization of the goals of adjudicated joint criminal enterprises, which I firmly believe is not the official policy of Israel."
The Israeli memo voiced support for nationalist politicians Milorad Dodik, a Serb, and Dragan Covid, a Croat, for "recent encouraging actions taken by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s institutions with the aim of protecting the Jewish community and its position in the country."
Dodik, one of the men supported by the Israeli occupation, has denied the 1995 Srebrenica genocide that many international tribunals say saw Bosnian-Serb forces killing some 8,000 Bosnian-Muslim men and boys. The bodies were dumped in mass graves that mourners are still discovering and burying to this day.
Check out: What is the Srebrenica massacre?
The Srebrenica genocide is the worst atrocity in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, according to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which saw the killing of around 100,000 people.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry's "undoubted intent to support" Dodik and Covic is "why Turkovic is angry," said former Bosnian Energy Minister Reuf Bajrovic. "We can safely say that this has hurt Israel’s image among the Bosniak population. It came out of left field."
"Why would Israel do this?" he asked. "I can only speculate [...] it is seen as Israel siding with people who want Bosnia gone, far-right genocide."
