The Israel Ambassador to Serbia’s statement given to the Russian news agency Sputnik, denying the genocide in Srebrenica, has provoked reactions in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, including that of the Foreign Minister, Elmedin Konakovic, who called Ambassador Yahel Vilan a "human disgrace." Several days later, a prominent law professor and descendant of Holocaust survivors, Menachem Rosensaft, condemned the statements of the Israeli official and accused him of joining the "disgraceful ranks of Srebrenica genocide deniers."

“Vilan, perhaps in an effort to enhance Serbia’s support for the far-right policies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, has now joined the inglorious ranks of Srebrenica Genocide deniers and has become part of – or allowed himself to become part of – a concerted campaign to derail and sabotage the U.N. resolution. It must not be allowed to succeed,” Rosensaft wrote for Just Security.

He highlighted the President of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska (RS) entity Milorad Dodik as the most prominent among them for labeling the statements of Bosnian politicians as “extreme lies” and “utterly hypocritical.” Rosensaft also criticized Israeli academics and activists who, in their public appearances, denied the Srebrenica genocide.

“I fully understand why Dodik and others in Republika Srpska would want to enlist malleable Israelis to provide them with purported ‘Jewish’ cover for their Srebrenica Genocide denial,” he said, adding that he finds it offensive that some of them are now willing to do so.

Such statements by Dodik are not only blatantly false but also hypocritical in the extreme, Rosensaft said, adding that in a July 2008 interview, Dodik said unequivocally that “I know perfectly well what happened: genocide happened in Srebrenica. That was the ruling of the Hague tribunal and this is an undeniable legal fact.”

“Dodik’s genocide denials and others often seize on statements or writings of Israeli academics or activists such as Gideon Greif and Efraim Zuroff for support. Greif, for example, is a controversial Israeli academic with a record of exaggerated pro-Serb writings who chaired a self-styled Internal Commission of Inquiry on Srebrenica at Dodik’s behest. When Greif and his commission issued an utterly spurious 1,106-page-long report in 2021 denying categorically that what occurred at Srebrenica was a genocide, I debunked the report’s shameless ‘manipulation of the truth’ and dismissed it as ‘a document that deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of history, used only to demonstrate the moral failing of individuals — the proverbial ‘useful idiots,’ as it were — who engage in genocide denial and distortion’,” Rosensaft wrote.

You can read the entire op-ed at this link.