Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Željka Cvijanović addressed the JNS International Policy Summit this evening, an event also attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
We are publishing the address of Željka Cvijanović in full:
Dear guests, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,
It is a great honour to address this conference and to be in Israel, a country whose history, resilience and determination represent a powerful symbol of survival and perseverance in human history.
I come from Republika Srpska, one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, carrying a message that is both political and deeply human. It is a message about freedom and sovereignty, about the weight of historical memory, the strength of identity and our responsibility to defend ourselves against forces that threaten peace, stability and even our very existence.
We live in a time of profound geopolitical change. The assumptions upon which the post-Cold War international order was built are being challenged. Security threats that were once considered regional have now become global.
In such times, every state is expected to answer fundamental questions:
Who are we? What values do we defend? What lessons have we learned from history? How far are we willing to go to preserve our freedom?
Israel has faced these questions since its very founding. Surrounded by hostility and persistently challenged by those who question not only its policies but also its very right to exist, Israel has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to remain a democratic, innovative, prosperous and free state, even while facing constant security threats.
Through centuries of persecution, the Jewish people learned that survival requires strength, unity, self-confidence and a clear distinction between good and evil, between those who seek coexistence and those who seek destruction.
The history of Israel carries an important lesson that is very close to Serbs in Republika Srpska. A people must never become passive spectators of history while others decide their fate.
Our histories are different, but our experiences are strikingly similar. Both the Jewish and Serb peoples have endured periods of suffering, persecution, displacement, demonization and attempts to erase or rewrite their historical experiences.
Both peoples learned that historical memory is not a burden but a necessity. Both learned that freedom cannot be entrusted to someone else for safekeeping. And both learned that sovereignty is not an abstract legal concept, but an essential condition for political and national survival.
Freedom was not given to us as a gift; we have always paid for it through sacrifice. Freedom is not secured once and for all. It must be defended continuously – politically, morally, institutionally and, when necessary, physically. Every generation must earn the right to preserve it and pass it on honourably to future generations.
Perhaps this mutual understanding is most clearly reflected in the tragedies of the twentieth century. The Jewish people endured the Holocaust. The Serb people suffered genocide in the Independent State of Croatia.
In places such as Jasenovac, one of the most horrific concentration camps in occupied Europe, Serbs, Jews and Roma were systematically exterminated solely because of who they were. The victims belonged to different peoples and communities, but the evil that persecuted them was the same.
The twentieth century taught both Jews and Serbs a painful truth: hatred begins with words, evolves into discrimination and ends in violence.
The road to Auschwitz and Jasenovac did not begin with the deportation of the first victims; it was paved long before that. This shared suffering forged a lasting bond based on mutual understanding.
A people that forgets its victims is condemned to see tragedy repeated. Memory is not only about the past. Its purpose is to teach future generations to recognize evil before it returns in a new form.
For the Serb people, remembering Jasenovac is not merely a reminder of events during the Second World War. It is also a reminder that, during the conflicts of the 1990s, there were forces that sought to complete what had begun there – to physically erase us from the face of the earth.
Today, some seek to achieve similar goals through political means: by weakening our institutions and identity and by challenging our constitutional rights.
History changes its methods, but not necessarily its intentions.
After the horrific attacks of October 7, it was reasonable to expect all democratic societies to condemn them unequivocally.
However, we witnessed a deeply troubling phenomenon in many parts of the world, including the Bosniak-Muslim political space in Bosnia and Herzegovina: the relativization of the massacre, the justification of its perpetrators and even the distortion of reality, where blame was shifted onto the victims.
Instead of standing unequivocally with innocent civilians who were murdered, kidnapped, tortured and subjected to terror, many, driven by ideological motives, sided with the perpetrators.
Demonstrations presented as expressions of political opinion often crossed the line and evolved into open hostility toward Israel and, in some cases, toward Jews themselves.
Republika Srpska chose a different path. Our institutions, political leadership and people understand the security challenges Israel faces because we respect one simple principle: no nation can survive if it is expected to tolerate those who seek its destruction or if it must ask its enemies for permission to exist.
We, the Serbs, remain firmly committed to preserving our identity and exercising the rights guaranteed to us by the Dayton Peace Agreement and our Constitution.
For decades, others have attempted to define who the Serbs are, what Republika Srpska represents and what place it should occupy within Bosnia and Herzegovina.
We reject such an approach. Our position is defined by the Constitution. We will not allow it to be determined by those who demonize us. It is our right to define our own identity, our values and our future. A people that abandons its right to self-determination will sooner or later abandon its right to govern itself. This principle is of particular importance for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Thirty years after the Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina still faces questions of sovereignty, legitimacy and democratic accountability.
The international community too often focuses only on the consequences of political crises in Bosnia and Herzegovina while ignoring their causes.
The truth is that Bosnia and Herzegovina remains the only country in contemporary Europe where an unelected foreign official claims the authority to impose and amend laws, remove democratically elected representatives from office, restructure the constitutional order, sanction political parties and deny citizens the right to challenge such decisions before a court.
Some of our experiences would be difficult to imagine in democratic societies:
- Electoral rules have been changed on the very day elections were held.
- Constitutional arrangements have been altered in order to create a preferred governing coalition.
- Democratically elected officials have been removed from office through politically motivated procedures lacking any constitutional basis.
- Political parties have been subjected to financial sanctions outside normal democratic procedures.
- Criminal legislation has been amended so that elected political leaders could be prosecuted for refusing to comply with decisions imposed by foreign officials.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Such practices would be unthinkable in Israel, the United States or any European country. Yet when they are applied in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they are often justified as necessary. When Republika Srpska opposes such measures, we are portrayed as a disruptive factor undermining Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Republika Srpska consistently advocates dialogue, constitutional order and respect for the Dayton Peace Agreement. We believe that lasting solutions can be achieved only through internal agreement, never through external imposition.
Beyond the constitutional debate, there is another challenge that requires honest reflection. The difficulties facing Bosnia and Herzegovina today cannot be fully understood without examining the legacy of radical Islamist movements that entered the country during the wars of the 1990s.
Thousands of foreign mujahideen arrived from the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, and many chose to remain after the conflict ended. Some even obtained citizenship.
The networks they established did not simply disappear with the signing of peace agreements. Their ideological influence continued long after the war, shaping segments of social and political life in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The problem does not lie in religion itself. The problem lies in radical ideologies and political extremism that use religion as a tool for mobilization, radicalization and conflict. The objective of such movements is to transform religion into a political ideology and the state into an instrument of religious domination. Bosnia and Herzegovina is not unfamiliar with this challenge.
The ideological roots of such a vision can be found in the ideas of Alija Izetbegović, the Bosniak-Muslim leader of the 1990s, who wrote that there can be neither peace nor coexistence between an Islamic political order and non-Islamic institutions.
Such a concept is, of course, fundamentally incompatible with the principles of pluralistic democracy. Yet some Western policymakers unfortunately continue to try to convince us—and perhaps themselves—that such movements can be moderated or brought under control. Experience, however, demonstrates the opposite: wherever radical Islamist movements emerge, they undermine democratic institutions, spread intolerance and bring violence and instability.
Israel understands this reality because it confronts it every day. Yet this challenge extends far beyond the borders of any single state. It is a struggle between civilization and extremism, between free societies and violent ideologies. It is a choice between those who seek coexistence and those who seek domination, between those who defend life and those who glorify death.
For this reason, democratic societies must cooperate more closely than ever before. They must share intelligence and strengthen security partnerships in order to dismantle extremist networks.
From painful experience, the Serb people know that those who seek to erase us rarely disappear on their own. They simply change their methods. In one century they attempted to destroy us through camps and massacres. In another, they seek to achieve the same goal through political engineering, historical revisionism and efforts to strip us of rights guaranteed by the Constitution and international agreements.
That is why Republika Srpska remains committed to defending its identity, constitutional position and democratic legitimacy.
Not because we seek conflict, but because history has taught us that freedom survives only when we are prepared to defend it. Both the Serb and Jewish peoples understand this truth well.
It is our duty to shape our own future, preserve our values and work together to build a safer world for future generations.
Let us stand against antisemitism and extremism. Let us stand together in defence of freedom. The future belongs to those who are prepared to defend it.
Thank you.
Source: RTRS
