DODIK: I SUPPORT ISRAEL, WHICH SHOULD NOT REMAIN SILENT WHEN ATTACKED

BANJA LUKA, SEPTEMBER 25 /SRNA/ - President Milorad Dodik said that Serbs and Jews are connected by their shared suffering during the Second World War, stressing that he supports Israel, which should not remain silent when it is attacked.

Speaking on the "War Zone" podcast hosted by US President's ally and American conservative political commentator Wayne Allyn Root, Dodik said that his relationship with Israel was "a relationship rooted in his upbringing", because he had always known that Serbs and Jews had suffered in concentration camps such as the notorious Jasenovac.

"My family supported Jewish families who lived here at that time, so this has always been in my genes. That brotherhood in suffering is something I learned during the first period of my life," Dodik stressed.

Dodik said there was no discussion of suffering without mentioning the shared suffering of Serbs and Jews during the Second World War.

He said he had always regretted that the authorities in Josip Broz Tito's communist Yugoslavia did not allow Serbs to maintain good relations with Israel.

"But I graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences. I began to study and read, and I realized how much the Jews had been attacked, not only by Nazi Germany, but also in Croatia when the Nazis were in power for four years," Dodik said.

He recalled that Jews were killed in Sarajevo when Muslims were in power and were dominant in the city.

"They would gather Jews and Serbs and transport them to Jasenovac so that they could be exterminated there. There is historical evidence showing that Sarajevo falsely presented itself as a multi-ethnic city. After the Second World War, there were almost no Jews in Sarajevo. A few returned, but in Sarajevo Muslims killed the most prominent Jewish family. Three Muslim mayors had one task during the Second World War, which was to gather as many Serbs and Jews as possible and transport them to concentration camps to be killed there," Dodik noted.

He said that the communist authorities at the time concealed all the facts and did not allow them to become known.

"But my family tradition was that we knew about it. My parents and my grandfather talked about it. They entrusted me with the task of never forgetting it. Therefore, I support the Jewish state and people and their freedom," Dodik said.

President Dodik recalled that in 2008 or 2009, when he was President of the Republika Srpska Government, he was asked whether a two-state solution should be supported and a Palestinian state recognized.

"I said that we should not recognize a Palestinian state, and that was the vote that tipped the balance at the UN Security Council. BiH was not functioning as it should have at the time and could not vote because we said 'no'. Therefore, BiH abstained, while seven countries voted 'for' and seven 'against'. BiH was the only one to abstain because of me, and that is why the Palestinian state was not recognized," Dodik stressed.

Dodik said that "the question is what would have happened if a Palestinian state had been recognized and Muslims had the weapons they could have".

He noted that Muslims in Sarajevo had not allowed the media to report on Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, recalling that the European Conference of Rabbis had been cancelled.

Dodik stressed that he still supports Israel, which should neither suffer nor remain silent when it is attacked.

"Those who killed Jewish children had to reckon with the fact that Israel would strike back," Dodik said.