Emir Suljagic, the director of the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, said everyone should show an amount of solidarity with the Jew victims of the October 7 Hamas, stressing that some of these crimes remind him of what the Serb forces had done at the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In an article he wrote in response to the criticism coming from pro-Palestinian associations in BiH, who accused the Srebrenica Memorial Centre of being silent while civilians are killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, Suljagic said he “condemn with disgust a cheap abuse of Srebrenica” and “putting our bones and skins under the gears of global crises.”

“One of the first things I saw on the morning of October 7 was a video clip of three Hamas members sitting on a broken and half-naked female body in a trailer and driving through Gaza with shouts and celebrations. The first thing that came to my mind was April 1992, when members of the units of the State Security Service of Serbia occupied Bratunac, and after killing him, tied the body of baker Fejza Raskaj to a car and drove through the city in front of everyone,” Suljagic wrote in an article published on the Istraga.ba web portal.

Suljagic said he and his associates owe nothing to Hamas but only to the victims whose memory they preserve.

He also said he did not see any reaction to the Hamas attack among his compatriots, but he saw how “the crowd attacked a handful of Bosnian Jews almost on command,” including “an eruption of antisemitism among the intellectual and academic elite.”

“I refuse, and I will always refuse, to be in the company of Vladimir Putin, Vojislav Seselj, Noam Chomsky and other friends of Palestine who deny our genocide,” Suljagic stressed in response.

Munira Subasic of the Movement of the Mothers of Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves, as well as deputy mayor of Srebrenica, Hamdija Fejzic, also became the target of attacks by the same associations.

The Palestinian community in Bosnia and Herzegovina accused them of having “mortgaged” the Srebrenica Memorial Centre in support of Israel because of the ties they had previously established with the World Jewish Congress (WJC). Namely, this notable association of Jews expressed clear solidarity with the victims of the Srebrenica genocide which was committed against Bosniaks in July 1995 by members of the Bosnian Serb army under the leadership of Ratko Mladic.

Former senior member of the World Jewish Congress, Menachem Rosensaft, personally attended the commemoration for the Srebrenica victims in July this year, an in an interview with N1 after the October 7 attack Rosensaft called on the public in Bosnia and Herzegovina to understand Israel's position and the severity of the attacks it was exposed to.