Yet another unconscionable denial of the Srebrenica genocide

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs doesn’t appear to be teaching its employees the old adage that it is sometimes better to keep one’s mouth shut and let people think you’re stupid than speak and remove all doubt.

Yahel Vilan, the departing (may it happen speedily in our days) Israeli ambassador to Serbia caused some consternation earlier this year in the run-up to the United Nations General Assembly’s vote establishing July 11 as the official international day to commemorate the 1995 Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia by telling the Russian State-owned news agency Sputnik that he did not believe that the massacre of thousands of Bosniak – that is, Bosnian Muslim – men and boys  at the hands of Bosnian Serb paramilitary thugs constituted genocide.

Never mind that a succession of trial and appellate panels of the International Military Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia as well as the International Court of Justice have consistently held that the Srebrenica killings were a genocide under international law and as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Now Vilan, on the eve of leaving Belgrade for a new assignment or perhaps pasture, has doubled down by declaring yet again that Israel has “never accepted the term genocide according to what happened in Srebrenica,” and that while “a very serious war crime definitely happened there . . . from the Israeli point of view, it does not represent the term genocide.”

Vilan’s comments brings to mind one of the most famous apologies ever uttered. After Charles Finley, the owner of the Oakland Athletics major league baseball team, referred to baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn as “the village idiot,” Finley publicly apologized “ to all the village idiots of America. He is the nation’s idiot.”

Vilan may have placed himself on an international level.

Why do I care? Why should anyone care what a low level diplomat has to say on his way out of town?

Because someone speaking in Israel’s name should not be working overtime to disparage or minimize another people’s national tragedy. Vilan is only the latest in a series of Israelis, including the Wiesenthal Center’s Ephraim Zuroff, to carry water on behalf of Milorad Dodik, the pro-Putin strongman of Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity that sees itself as the successor to the perpetrators of the Srebrenica genocide.

And Vilan clearly doesn’t seem to care how his words impact the small Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina whose leaders – such as Ambassador Jacob Finci and Vladimir Andrle – work closely with the Srebrenica Memorial Center in commemorating the Srebrenica genocide.

Israelis and Jews around the world rightfully take umbrage anytime the Holocaust is denied or distorted. We should be equally outspoken in recognizing and commemorating those genocides – Srebrenica, Rwanda, Darfur – where Jews were not the victims.

To be fair, Vilan’s comments, problematic as they were, were not the most offensive made by Israeli officials in recent months.

Not even National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s endorsement of Donald Trump – pot meet kettle – has that distinction.

This particular prize goes to Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli who endorsed the ultranationalist, anti-immigration  Marine Le Pen – considered by many to be the head of a sanitized fascist party and movement – as the future president of France.

“It is excellent for Israel that she will be the president of France, with 10 exclamation marks,” he declared.

This is the same Marine Le Pen who wants to ban Muslim women from wearing veils and Jewish men from wearing a kippah, or skullcap, in public places, saying that “Obviously, if the veil is banned, the kippah should be banned in public as well.” Le Pen also opposes serving kosher and hallal food in schools and wants to outlaw Jewish ritual slaughter (shechita) in France.

But I guess that doesn’t matter to Chikli. As long as Le Pen’s extremist far right views align with his.

Israelis tend to be extremely sensitive, even prickly, when non-Israelis, including Diaspora Jews, express criticism of Israeli government policies. They might consider occasionally weighing their words a bit more carefully before expressing opinions that are designed to interfere in, if not cause actual damage to, Jewish communities in different parts of the globe.

Menachem Z. Rosensaft is Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He is the author of the forthcoming Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz (Ben Yehuda Press, 2025).