Israel’s ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Noah Gal Gendler, responded to the Mostar inmates who wrote to him after the embassy’s position supporting Croatian proposals for changes to the electoral law in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The signatory of the letter, Emir Hajdarovic, who is the president of the camp inmates’ association from Mostar, pointed out that he spoke on behalf of those who survived torture and humiliation, as he stated, of the worst kind in the camps of the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) during the open and condemned aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“The war crimes, ethnic cleansing and organization of the HVO camp and the leadership of the parastatal creation of the so-called Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna were characterized before the Hague Tribunal as a joint criminal enterprise. The entire leadership of the HZHB was found guilty and sentenced to several years in prison, which even now some of they are being held in European prisons,” it was noted.
HDZ President and Deputy Speaker of the House of Peoples of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dragan Covic, was highlighted as part of that system.
Mostar inmates are surprised by Gendler’s support for Covic and the HDZ in the changes to the electoral law and if “they (Covic and the HDZ) do not allow access to the places of suffering even after 30 years, even though they showed respect to the victims”.
Israel’s ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina answered briefly, in one sentence.
“We are concerned about the fact that the rights of the Jewish community in the country have been abused in order to block basic internal processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We will not allow such abuses,” said Ambassador Noah Gal Gendler.
However, the ambassador did not comment on what he thinks about the fact that a Jew in Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be a candidate for a member of the Presidency even 13 years after the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights. The implementation of that verdict, as well as some others, has been blocked all these years by those that the Israeli embassy supported, namely SNSD and HDZ.
On the other hand, the rights of Jews in BiH will continue to be unfulfilled in BiH if the amendments to the electoral law proposed by the HDZ pass completely, concretely forcing the story of legitimate representation dominated by the three constituent nations.
If HDZ and SNSD had immediately agreed to implement the verdict in the Sejdic-Finci case, which would have guaranteed political rights to minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then HDZ’s current demands for legitimate representation would have made more sense today.
But in the meantime, what happened was that the HDZ just blocked the implementation of the judgment that protects the Jewish people in BiH because it made its political demands a condition for any judgment from Strasbourg to be implemented.
Consequently, Israel’s ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina should then clarify who, in his opinion, is the main culprit for the discrimination against Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina and where the problem essentially lies, Klix.ba writes.
