The influential Israeli left-wing newspaper Haaretz analyzed the recent visit of the member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Željka Cvijanović, to Israel.
Journalist Esther Solomon is the author of the analysis, i.e. the text entitled “FlagGate: How Israel Set Off a Storm by Hosting a Separatist Genocide Denier”.
“These days, the great powers do not really want to visit Israel for a friendly photo shoot and to deepen economic and diplomatic ties. This has forced senior Israeli officials to create the appearance that they are still employed and in demand, welcoming new foreign leaders who are still motivated to come to Israel or hosting them with excessive pomp and ceremony. The welcome was for the president of Somaliland, a country recognized by only one country – Israel. Celebrate a new “golden age” in relations between Israel and Fiji, a country of 950,000,” Haaretz writes.
However, the lavish reception in Jerusalem earlier this week for yet another seemingly esoteric foreign official raises significant questions about what motivates what remains of Israeli foreign policy and provides an uncomfortable insight into the depth of the (Benjamin) Netanyahu government’s diplomatic doublespeak.
Željka Cvijanović is a member of the three-member Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Serbian people, in the country established by the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the bloody war from 1992 to 1995.
She is also the former president of Republika Srpska, an entity with a majority Serb population, which is part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Therefore, Cvijanović is at the head of the state precisely because of her position as the representative of the Bosnian Serbs in the three-member Presidency. Her colleagues represent Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats.
However, when Prime Minister Netanyahu and Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar gave a ceremonial welcome to Cvijanović, the large flag displayed behind the handshake place, as well as the flags on the meeting table, were the flags of RS, not Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A diplomatic blunder? Heavy. This was a deliberate attempt to raise the entity of Bosnian Serbs to the level of a state, which is factually incorrect, through an act of political provocation.
The fragile Bosnian state is under pressure from the ultra-nationalist, secessionist leaders of the RS, who strive for unification with neighboring Serbia. To this end, they like to portray themselves as Christian victims of Bosniak Muslims, whom they characterize as jihadists linked to Hamas, ISIS and Iran.
This is about twisting the facts. During the war, Bosnian Serb forces committed mass murders, including the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, which the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice qualified as genocide, the worst crime against civilians in Europe since the Holocaust.
Prominent RS leaders deny the genocide in Srebrenica while at the same time intensifying the Satanization of Bosniaks, which, especially for many Bosnian Muslims, echoes like incitement from the 1990s. Cvijanović herself is under sanctions from Great Britain for “glorifying war criminals and denying the genocide in Srebrenica”.
Even for the Israeli government, which has ravaged the Gaza Strip and is threatening to raze Lebanon to the ground, it still seems a little too obvious that such ardent irredentists and genocide deniers are getting such a warm reception in Jerusalem. At least the meeting was not scheduled at (Holocaust museum) Yad Vashem.
In a post on the X social network that Cvijanović shared again, Sa’ar wrote that “they discussed the need to protect Christian minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
There is almost no end to the hard-to-digest ironies in the idea that Israel is a natural partner in the defense of Christian minorities (while the facts are unnecessary distractions, the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost exactly half Christian and half Muslim, which means that a “Christian minority” does not exist at all).
It might be worth asking the Catholics in the Gaza Strip, whose only church was bombed in an attack by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in July 2025, when three people died, or the Greek Orthodox, whose church was bombed just a week after the start of the war, when 18 people died.
Or the Maronites (Christian population) in southern Lebanon, whose priest was killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.
Or Christians on the West Bank in Taybeh, who are exposed to organized violence by (Israeli) settlers, supported by the indifference or tacit participation of state institutions.
Or the religious men and women who are exposed to daily abuse in the old city of Jerusalem, where the police prevented the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a decision that Netanyahu reversed only after an international protest.
Behind the call to the defense of Christians hides the usual matrix of Israeli and Serbian hyper-nationalism, also a favorite topic of Viktor Orban in Hungary, which serves as a well-known fuel for the American right’s support for Israel.
It is the idea that both countries are the last line of defense of the Judeo-Christian West against a hostile Muslim invasion, that they are victims, not aggressors, and that in such existential circumstances the usual rules of warfare are mere toys, not necessary principles.
This is the message explicitly stated in the commentary on the meeting, which was presented by Marc Zell, the chairman of the branch of the (American) Republican Party in Israel, who conveniently (simultaneously) works as a registered lobbyist on behalf of the RS.
Boasting that he played a key role in organizing the meeting between Netanyahu and Cvijanović, Zell calls the staunchly pro-Putin RS “a Christian-democratic bulwark between radical Islam and the heart of Europe and one of the most consistent friends of Israel in the world.”
Zell’s announcement, demagogic in tone, transactional in nature, is perfectly aligned with the broader connection between Israel and Serbs, especially across the border, in Serbia.
Foreign Minister Sa’ar celebrated “a huge step forward in our strategic relations” when Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić visited in April, declaring a year before: “We will always stand by Israel and the Jewish people.”
Behind friendly words is a friendly calculation (benefit). The already close defense ties have intensified since October 7, 2023. Serbian arms exports to Israel increased by as much as 42 times, to $130 million (223 million KM) in 2025, while Israeli arms sales to Serbia also approached $2 billion (3.44 billion KM) in 2025.
These deals were potentially facilitated by Israel Einhorn, a close associate of Netanyahu and Vučić, who is wanted by Israel for questioning in connection with the Qatargate (corruption) scandal, but he is still alive and well in Belgrade.
As for the affair with the flag, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Elmedin Konaković, sent an official protest due to Israel’s “serious” protocol irregularities, pointing to the “disrespect for sovereignty, constitutional order and internationally recognized features” of the state represented by him and Cvijanović.
It is unlikely that the Netanyahu government, which is in a series of “recognition of separatists” from Berbera to Banja Luka, but not through Palestine, and which is enchanted by the “Muslim invasion” narrative, sympathizes with genocide deniers and racist instigators, has zero tolerance for the preservation of Israel’s constitutional order, and whose police force arrests Israelis who legally display the Palestinian flag, will apologize for disrespecting a Balkan state. which cannot offer her influence in Moscow, a boost to her re-election campaign, or weapons to replenish her stockpile, it was written by Haaretz.
