The Anatomy of Hypocrisy: Sarajevans Rescued the Haggadah from Dodik’s 'Heroes'!

"Ratko Mladić is a hero to Serbs, and nothing can change that," stated Milorad Dodik, the President of the ruling Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) and former President of the Republika Srpska entity, in November 2017, glorifying a war criminal sentenced to life imprisonment for the genocide against Bosniaks.

A year earlier, sometime in March 2016, Milorad Dodik opened a student dormitory in Pale and named it "Dr. Radovan Karadžić," elevating the political leader of the rebel Serbs—a butcher also convicted of genocide against Bosniaks and numerous crimes throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Karadžić’s Heir

He continued doing so years later, with the same passion with which he had sent the "heroes" Mladić and Karadžić to The Hague in earlier years and spoke of their criminal enterprises.

"I am Karadžić’s successor," Dodik would conclude his trajectory in early 2024.

In a conversation between Karadžić’s minister Momčilo Krajišnik and Branko Kvesić, a representative of Mate Boban’s government in Grude, a new "nice" Sarajevo was announced. "And these old synagogues and mosques – we have to change the architecture and everything," says the recording of the two "allies" from the early nineties, accompanied by a sinister smile.

More than 30 years later – the goals are the same. The story is different.

Just as he ingratiated himself with Washington in the early nineties, playing the famous role of a "breath of fresh air" from the Balkans, and then for two decades the "unknown Serbian hero," during which his family's wealth grew to unimaginable heights, today this Banja Luka recidivist slimy ingratiates himself with the Israeli leadership, offering them the "return" of the Sarajevo Haggadah. One of the symbols of Bosnia and Herzegovina's plurality and values that the politics of the politician from Laktaši can hardly ever understand.

There is no doubt that Amir Gross Kabiri has a hand in this, a close associate of Dodik’s old ally Dragan Čović (who knows at what price for the RS and BiH), with the tacit approval (išaret) of official Zagreb, for whose team Mile has long been playing.

Meanwhile, a terrifying truth remains in the shadows. Dodik’s "heroes" Mladić and Karadžić are the ones who fired upon the Sarajevo Haggadah, while the citizens of Sarajevo saved and hid it from the evildoers from the surrounding hills.

The very same citizens of Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina whose ancestors saved the Haggadah from the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust, earning the honour of the Israeli Righteous Among the Nations.

Who Saved the Haggadah?

The Sarajevo Haggadah was saved from the National Museum, under the strikes of Dodik’s "heroes" – by name and surname – by Prof. Dr. Enver Imamović, his colleague, the conservator Hasan, and three members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

They risked their lives to save a work of priceless historical and cultural value – from those very same ministers of Karadžić, like Momčilo Krajišnik, who wanted to build a "new Sarajevo" that would have neither synagogues, nor mosques, nor the Haggadah... What cynicism, what terrible insolence lies in the fact that this and such a successor of Karadžić and member of the war assembly of the "Republic of the Serbian People," the notorious Milorad Dodik, today offers mediation in "delivering" a work that Sarajevo has guarded for centuries!!!

Such a gesture can be on the level of the hypocrisy of Dodik’s ally Dragan Čović, who for more than 20 years literally kept streets in Mostar named after the creators of Ustaše racial laws and Jewish torturers in Jasenovac and other execution sites – only to then, with his aforementioned Kabiri (freshly arrived from Russia?!), present gifts to Jewish victims, while imputing antisemitism to Sarajevo and Sarajevans.

The Haggadah as Collateral Damage

Dodik’s latest provocation – which has obvious Islamophobia in its subtext – however, has a wider "use value."

It is not just an insidious strike on the values of our capital and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It is important to understand the moment when it comes. At a time when Dodik – with the wholehearted help of Čović – not only blocks the European and Euro-Atlantic path of our country, but also the Southern Gas Interconnection project between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, which neither Dodik, nor Čović, and by God, nor Amir Gross Kabiri can allow. Clearly – on behalf of their bosses from Moscow.

Since the Donald Trump administration is showing determination through a diplomatic offensive and sees the new pipeline not only as an opportunity for the energy diversification of Bosnia and Herzegovina but also as a hub for this part of Europe, it is essential to portray Sarajevo as "anti-Jewish," "anti-Israeli," a Sarajevo that has "imprisoned" the Haggadah, a Sarajevo of the "Muslim Brotherhood"... And that as such, it cannot and must not be a partner, nor can or should the entire energy project be led from Sarajevo. Yet Dodik and Čović are somehow suitable for such projects?!

It is a broad game aimed at further blocking and diluting a significant project, and the Haggadah and the Jews are just another victim of political games.

The authorities in Sarajevo are shrugging their shoulders at all this anyway.

They are not interested in these "broader topics," but rather in the General Elections and a political fratricidal war of extermination.