I think the West showed great hypocrisy on the issue of Gaza, said Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Zeljko Komsic in an interview with Anadolu Agency.

Komsic said that what happened in Bosnia and Srebrenica can be compared to what is happening today in Gaza.

“They can be compared because it is an action of the state apparatus aimed at erasing parts of a nation from the face of the earth. That happened in Srebrenica, that's what's happening now in Gaza. That cruelty that we have the opportunity to see every day. Maybe we in BiH have an excess of emotions when it comes to this because we can’t look at it the way it is seen in Europe or the West. We still feel solidarity with the people who are being wiped off the face of the earth,” the Croat Presidency member noted.

“For us, that is the line where everything begins and ends. Regardless of what it is about and how it came about. This is not done to human beings, regardless of who we’re talking about, it can’t be done to anyone. It couldn't be done to us, but it was done. It can’t be done to the Palestinians, but it is being done to them. There should be no dilemma as to whose side you are on when it comes to that. I'm not even going into how it happened, however, it happened, no reason gives you the justification to trample and wipe out an entire nation off the face of the earth just because you think that entire nation is guilty. The people cannot be blamed for what happened on October 7,” Komsic added, referring to the cross-border attack by Palestinian group Hamas.

He noted that “there is no dilemma [regarding everything he said earlier], neither human, nor moral, nor political, whether someone likes it or not”.

“I know whose side I'm on. I can’t be on the side of someone who has the force and uses that force to wipe civilians and an entire nation off the face of the earth,” Komsic stated.

He also spoke about the European countries that did not condemn the Israeli attacks in Gaza, but also about the West that did not react, as was the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 90s.

“I think the West has shown great hypocrisy on the Gaza issue. True, some countries corrected their stance. What Hamas has done does not justify wiping out an entire territory and physically exterminating people from that territory. There is no right to such a thing, nor can anyone give it to anyone. I was shocked by what I could see in the West as a reaction to everything that is happening in Gaza. Somehow we expected that in the name of some systems of values, freedom, right to life, and equality of people, and we see it and at least we thought it exists in the West, they would take a different position when it comes to everything that is happening in Gaza. Maybe we in Bosnia and Herzegovina are a bit more sensitive to that than they are because we went through something similar,” Komsic concluded.