Bosnian genocide survivors see Israel repeating deadly history in Gaza

By Semir Sejfovic

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina (AA) – Many around the world, including top UN experts, see Israel’s war on Gaza as no different from past genocides and massacres

“Genocide is a process, not a single act. It must be prevented but in Gaza - as in Sebrenica and Rwanda before - the world is just letting it happen,” Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, said on X in December.

Her words resonated with many, but none more so than the people who lived through the horrors of Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo.

For them, the atrocities Israel continues to commit against Palestinians are a jarring repeat of history and the very darkest of humanity.

Adel Sabanovic was just 8 years old when Bosnian Serbs and Serbian paramilitary forces invaded his village of Vlasenica, killing dozens of people.

He escaped to Srebrenica, but 22 of his family members were executed in the Srebrenica genocide.

“For almost 80 years, Gaza and Palestinians have endured relentless attacks and destruction, with women, men and children all being killed,” Sabanovic said in an interview with Anadolu at his home in Sarajevo.

“Zionist officials are saying openly that these people don’t deserve to live. This is a clear genocide, and it happening before the eyes of the UN, Europe and the West, who supply the weapons.”

Sabanovic is particularly critical of the role of global powers, saying they are showing the “same hypocrisy.”

“In 1992, the international community placed a weapons embargo on Bosniak Muslims, waiting for us to be killed. In 1993, the UN sent a battalion to protect Srebrenica, but they simply stood by and watched while over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered,” he said.

“Today, the international community is supporting Israel … They are complicit in the ongoing war crimes against Palestinians, which are meant to exterminate them as a people, just like they were complicit in the Srebrenica genocide.”

Nations and organizations like the US, France, Germany, UN and EU have “no right to preach to anyone about human rights or international law,” he said.

“They themselves are violating these laws … They do not care about the Palestinian children being killed or the children and minors who have rotting away for years in Israeli jails,” Sabanovic added.

- ‘Humanity has failed’

During the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo, an average of 329 shells hit the city daily, killing at least 11,541 civilians, including 1,601 children, and injuring more than 50,000 people.

In Gaza, Israel has killed more than 14,000 children since last October, while aid group Save the Children has reported at least 17,000 more “are believed to be unaccompanied and separated and approximately 4,000 children are likely missing under the rubble, with an unknown number also in mass graves.”

Fikret Grabovica knows the “indescribable pain” of losing a child, as his 11-year-old daughter Irma was killed by Bosnian Serb shelling on Sarajevo in March 1993.

“In the 1990s, criminals and fascists intentionally targeted our innocent children, and we see the same in Gaza. My child was killed, others lost two children or their partners, and some saw their entire families executed,” Grabovica, who now heads a group supporting bereaved parents, told Anadolu.

“This nonstop killing of children is horrific and impossible to understand … Humanity has failed to protect the innocent, especially the innocent children of Gaza.”

In the “true tragedy” of Gaza, the world is seeing once again that “no lessons have been learned from the past,” he said.

Grabovica also holds those in positions of power responsible for Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, saying they are indifferent to the killing of innocent children because their own families are safe.

“They only care about their own interests and the interests of these big powers. They do not care about Palestinian children because it is not their own children being killed by Israel,” he said.

“Their families are safe and far away from the violence and bombs. If they were affected, we would never have seen this go on for more than 75 years. What we see in Gaza is clearly a genocide.”​​​​​​​