Milorad Dodik’s pilgrimage to Israel is a dire warning from history

Above: Bosnian Serb leader Dodik and Israeli PM Netanyahu at the Anti-Semitism Conference in Tel Aviv. Source: https://x.com/kos_data/status/1905355003767693492  

When a head of state facing an international arrest warrant and Western sanctions lands in Israel to pay homage to Holocaust memory, something has gone terribly awry.

Last week in Jerusalem, Milorad Dodik – the president of Republika Srpska, a Serb-dominated region of Bosnia and Herzegovina – attended Israel’s high-profile International Conference on Combating Antisemitism.

He arrived as a self-styled champion against hatred, but with considerable baggage in tow.

Just as Dodik was glad-handing at the conference, a court in Sarajevo issued an international warrant for his arrest on charges of undermining Bosnia’s constitutional order​.

“For good measure, Dodik has already been sanctioned by the United States for corruption and peace treaty violations, and by the United Kingdom for threatening Bosnia’s stability,” noted Reuters, while jpost.com pointed out that “In any other context, a fugitive politician might be shunned.

Instead, Dodik found a receptive audience – and even a photo opportunity with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – in a nation that prides itself as the “guardian of Holocaust remembrance​”

At first glance, Dodik’s trip had the trappings of a routine diplomatic outreach. He visited ostensibly to show “solidarity” with Israel and decry rising antisemitism​.

But the visit quickly morphed into a masterclass in historical whitewashing and political theatre. Within hours of his arrival, Israeli officials quietly grew uneasy; Dodik briefly left the conference after learning of the Bosnian warrant, only to return later​.

Incredibly quoted timesofisrael.com, he portrayed the drama as proof of his own martyrdom. “The Muslims from Sarajevo… want to punish me because I came here to Israel supporting Israel,” Dodik told reporters, dismissing the charges against him as ‘politically motivated​’.

In one breath, he reframed his defiance of Bosnia’s rule of law as a valorous stand with the Jewish state – casting Bosnia’s Muslim Bosniak leadership as ‘extremists’.

The brazenness of this narrative flip would be astonishing if it were not part of a familiar pattern.

History as a Political Weapon

The spectacle of Dodik in Jerusalem lays bare how World War II history – and the Holocaust in particular – is being appropriated by contemporary political actors to serve nationalist agendas.

Dodik is hardly a natural ally of historical truth. A chameleon of Balkan politics, he went from being lauded as a moderate in the late 1990s to becoming an unabashed ultra-nationalist​.

Over the past decade, he has openly denied that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims was a genocide and has even celebrated convicted war criminals like Radovan Karadžić as ‘heroes’​.

Above: During World War II, Serbian Jewry was almost annihilated, many by Serbian collaborationist forces. Only 5,000 of the 34,000 Jews in Serbia, then part of Yugoslavia, survived the Holocaust. Source: https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/

This is a man who has bent history to suit his needs – negating the crimes of his own side while invoking the suffering of others when convenient. Now, with his power threatened at home, Dodik seeks redemption abroad by cloaking himself in the moral grandeur of the Holocaust.

In an interview during his Israel visit, Dodik drew parallels between himself and Netanyahu. “Both Prime Minister Netanyahu and I are being targeted – not because we’ve done something wrong, but because we won’t bow down,” he said​.

However Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel asked in 2010, “How can you ever adequately punish a man who is guilty of ordering the assassination of 8,000 human beings [in Srebrenica]?” – a question that has never been put to Dodik.

The implication of this visit was clear: like the Israeli leader, Dodik portrays himself as a bulwark for his people’s right to “exist and decide independently”​, besieged by nefarious global forces.

Never mind that Netanyahu’s “targets” include Israel’s own independent judiciary, or that Dodik’s legal troubles stem from defying the very peace accords that ended Bosnia’s ethnic war.

By conflating his predicament with Israel’s struggles, Dodik cynically wraps himself in the Holocaust’s legacy of survival against annihilation. It is historical inversion of the highest order – the kind that turns perpetrators into victims and the guardians of memory into unwitting props.

Dodik is not alone in this manipulative pageant. In recent years, a host of illiberal and far-right figures have sought to launder their reputations through ostentatious displays of Holocaust remembrance.

They declare themselves friends of Israel and the Jewish people, all while stoking nationalism or whitewashing their own histories of prejudice. At the Jerusalem antisemitism conference, Dodik shared the stage with European party leaders whose political forebears once colluded in horrific Nazi crimes​.

​Noted by a range of news outlets including worldcrunch.com, these figures, including France’s National Rally and Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, have reinvented themselves as defenders of Jews – but often only insofar as it serves their anti-Muslim or anti-liberal agendas​

Above: Jewish family in Belgrade, 1939 / Source: Yad Vashem.

Many have conveniently forgotten their nations’ complicity in the Shoah, focusing instead on casting present-day adversaries as the new Nazis. The result is a grotesque paradox: a conference ostensibly about combating antisemitism became, in part, a platform for those trafficking in other hatreds and revisionist history says worldcrunch.com .

The Holocaust in German-occupied Serbia / Wikipedia.

Little wonder say news outlets like apnews.com that prominent Holocaust scholars and Jewish leaders boycotted the event in protest​.

Israel’s Moral Crossroads

Israel, which has long seen itself as the steward of Holocaust memory, now faces a moral crossroads. By extending its embrace to leaders like Dodik, Israel’s government risks surrendering control of the very narrative it seeks to preserve.

This is especially true in the Balkans, where “Serb mythomania” — the tendency among Serbian nationalists to frame history in ways that underscore national strength, endurance, or victimization — has disturbed the delicate tension in the country’s demographic accounts, particularly when viewed alongside other historical realities.

For Israel’s current leadership, the temptation to welcome any professed “friend of Israel” – no matter their motives – has led to Faustian bargains.

In courting allies among Europe’s far-right and Balkan strongmen, Israel gains diplomatic support, but at the cost of allowing those actors to recast themselves as righteous crusaders against hate.

The Israeli government’s first-ever antisemitism conference, rather than uniting a broad front against bigotry, instead showcased these troubling alliances​.

​It is telling that Israel’s own President stayed away, hosting a separate gathering for dismayed Jewish leaders instead​.

The danger in all this goes beyond one conference or one Balkan politician’s publicity stunt. When custodians of Holocaust memory turn a blind eye to its politicization, they invite a deeper distortion of history.

We see this in countries like Poland, where nationalist governments have sought to criminalize discussion of Polish collusion in Nazi atrocities, straining relations with Israel in the process.

We see it in Hungary, where leaders profess ‘Philosemitism’ in Jerusalem even as they rehabilitate wartime figures who collaborated in the deportation of Jews.

Yet we see it in Russia, where President Vladimir Putin grotesquely misuses the banner of “denazification” – exploiting the moral weight of World War II to justify the invasion of Ukraine. In each case, Holocaust memory is wielded as a weapon or shield, rather than honoured as a solemn responsibility.

Reclaiming the Truth of “Never Again”

History, especially the darkest chapters of it, should never be merely a political prop. The Holocaust’s lessons were written in blood and ash; they belong to no single nation yet demand integrity from all.

As Israel contends with who gets to stand under the mantle of “Never Again,” it must decide what price it is willing to pay to keep that mantle unsullied.

This is not simply about Israel’s image – it is about the credibility of Holocaust remembrance worldwide. If those facing sanctions and arrest can so easily drape themselves in Holocaust symbolism to sanitize their agendas, the global narrative of the Holocaust will slip further from the truth.

Above: Jewish badges from WW2 Serbia. Source: Yad Vashem.

Israel’s founders and survivors understood that preserving the memory of the Six Million was a sacred trust, one that transcends politics. That trust is now being tested. Allowing controversial figures like Milorad Dodik to appropriate Holocaust memory unchallenged is a disservice to both history and justice.

This manipulation has become so endemic and egregious in parts of the Balkans that not only does it denigrate the horror that was the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, but it also has more recent ramifications.

For example, in the 1990s, Serb paramilitaries would regularly invoke this ‘memory’ of their ‘genocide’ in order to justify their own heinous war crimes at places like Srebrenica, Omarska and Vukovar.

A woman walks stands among the graves of victims of the Srebrenica massacre, at the memorial cemetery in Potocari, near Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic) Source:https://osce.usmission.gov/on-the-26th-anniversary-of-the-srebrenica-genocide/ 

This is even more important when one considers that the largest loss of life during World War 2 by percentage in Serbia was that of Serbia’s Jews, many of whom were killed by the Serbian Nazi puppet government of Milan Nedic.”

Moreover, prior to leaving for Israel, Dodik reportedly held a press conference where he repeated the fake claim historical claims of “500,000 Serbs killed by the Ustashi”, a claim that Yad Vashem demolished as recently as 2022.

According to historian Christopher Browning: “Serbia was the only country outside Poland and the Soviet Union where all Jewish victims were killed on the spot without deportation, and was the first country after Estonia to be declared “Judenfrei”, a term used by the Nazis during the Holocaust to denote an area free of all Jews.

Gravestones are seen at sunrise at a memorial complex near Srebrenica, 150 kilometers (94 miles) northeast of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, (AP Photo/Amel Emric) Source: https://osce.usmission.gov/on-the-29th-anniversary-of-the-srebrenica-genocide/

The Holocaust was a singular atrocity, and its memory should unite the world against hate – not be hijacked to advance new forms of it. By giving the benefit of the doubt to demagogues, Israel risks normalizing the very distortions that Holocaust education was supposed to prevent.

Recently, Dodik’s one and only patron, the neighbouring Republic of Serbia came under fire for allegedly falsifying historical population data in an effort to bolster claims of genocidal acts against Serbs.

So perhaps it is high time for Israel and responsible leaders everywhere to reclaim the narrative.

That means shunning those who would abuse Holocaust history even as they profess to honour it. It means speaking out when the legacy of Auschwitz is twisted to excuse authoritarianism or ultranationalism.

And it means reasserting that the vow of “Never Again” applies universally – not only when politically convenient, not only to selected peoples, and certainly not as a get-out-of-jail-free card for embattled politicians.

The memory of World War II’s victims, Jewish and otherwise, is too precious to be bartered away in geopolitical games. If Israel does not set that standard, others will continue to play fast and loose with the truth. The ghosts of the past demand better.

In the end, the struggle over Holocaust memory is a struggle for moral authority. Israel’s moral authority, earned in the ashes of tragedy, should not be lent to those who flout the very principles that “Never Again” stands for.

Above: Mass killings of Bosnians by Serb paramilitary forces, 1992-95. Source: https://srebrenica.org.uk/

As Dodik boarded his plane back from Tel Aviv, triumphant that he has likened himself to a wartime hero in the court of public opinion, Israel must reckon with the precedent it is setting.

The Holocaust has already been politicized enough by those who would distort it. To remain silent now is to let history be hijacked in plain sight.

If that happens, we all stand to lose far more than just an honest account of the past.

We risk losing the lessons that future generations will need in order to fend off the next great lie.

And humanity risks repeating unimaginable horrors that should never be replicated.

By Branko Miletic – Opinion Columnist.