JERUSALEM – Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic began a two-day visit to Israel on Monday by meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres, with whom he talked about the historically good ties between the Serbian and Jewish people and possibilities for expanding economic and scientific cooperation.
In Jerusalem, Nikolic spoke in favor of strengthening economic cooperation between Serbia and Israel, and thanked the country for its principled support to Serbia’s stance on the unilaterally proclaimed independence of Kosovo-Metohija, expressing hope that this position will be maintained.
Nikolic said his visit to Israel is an expression of Serbia’s and his personal gratitude for Israel’s consistent and principled position, and invited Peres to visit Serbia.
“…I am very happy that the EU is now seriously considering the possibility of accepting Serbia as a new member state. I am also very glad about your dialogue with Kosovo. All conflicts should be resolved through dialogue,” Peres said.
“History constantly tortured us and brought us together. Our two nations and the Roma suffered terrible pogroms during World War Two,” said the Serbian president.
Nikolic said the Jewish community in Serbia today is small, because many left in search of a better life, but those who left consider both Serbia and Israel their homeland.
Nikolic expressed understanding for the security issues Israel is facing, but said Serbia cannot choose a side in the Middle East.
“Today I am a leader of a Serbia which cannot choose sides in this. We understand your problem completely, but we have also had a huge burden placed on our shoulders. We can hardly carry this burden by ourselves, because we have been surrounded by rockets, which struck our people and our country and we can never be sure it will not happen again,” said Nikolic.
President Peres said Israel has learned a few things from the former Yugoslavia and Serbia. The first thing is Zionism, which emerged there [indeed, father of Zionism Theodor Herzl’s parents were from Serbia], but also the fact that a country such as the former Yugoslavia in fact dissolves through internal discord.
We learnt from Yugoslavia that it is better to create several states in which people will be able to live in peace and cooperate than to keep them artificially in a single multiethnic and multi-confessional country. The thing that breaks up a country is internal discord, said Peres.
On Monday, Nikolic also toured the Museum of Israel and laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem memorial center to the victims of the Holocaust.
After visiting Israel, the Serbian president will proceed to Palestine, where he will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
RAMALLAH — Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić late on Wednesday arrived in Palestine, where he was greeted with top honors and the sounding of anthems.
“Serbia just never let anyone threaten our integrity and humiliate us, and President Abbas will not let that happen to the Palestinian people,” Nikolić said.
[Abbas said,] “…[Y]our country was one of the first to host an early dialogue between the Palestinians and Israel.” …He emphasized that Serbia “will be in the EU” because it is deserved this as a democracy with the rule of law, and that Serbia has many friends outside the EU.
I’ve been meaning to address the Serbian vote at the UN in December in favor of a Palestinian state, which Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic claims was made out of some kind of “feeling.” (Though a byproduct of the vote was that it bought isolated Serbia some political capital with the Palestinians, so certainly that’s something for Nikolic to make use of.) In fact, voting Yes to the resolution would make it easier to give away Kosovo, which Nikolic was in the process of doing at that moment; voting for “Palestine” is also voting for the even more fictitious nation of “Kosova.” Because both have been illegally self-proclaimed. Serbia’s vote wasn’t about hurting Israel, it was about getting Serbia to hurt itself. And because the government is almost entirely controlled from the outside, that wasn’t exactly difficult.
One should also consider Serbia’s lack of incentive to take a principled (and at the same time U.S.-pleasing) stand on the issue, given that a lack of principle was employed in the parallel case involving Serbia, in favor of her adversaries. And so one is merely voting for consistency, and at the same time making a point about the domino effect created by breaking the principle.
Although officials in Jerusalem expressed disappointment that Germany – which often votes for Israel in international forums – abstained, there was satisfaction that certain other countries did abstain, first and foremost Albania, which is a Muslim country with whom Israel has developed close ties over the last couple of years.
While Israel was disappointed at how the EU voted, especially Italy which voted for the Palestinians, 12 EU countries did abstain. With the exception of Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, all the other abstentions came from the former Iron Curtain countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Another nine non-EU European states also abstained: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Monaco, Montenegro, Moldova, San Marino and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
In Africa, Israel took some comfort from that fact that five countries abstained: Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Rwanda and Togo, whose president was in Israel last week.
As for Serbia, how big a halo does the world expect to find over demon-Serb heads? Aside from the fact that rejection by the Free World has forced Serbia to cozy up to the very Muslim world that pulled the West’s strings in the 90s, it’s certainly understandable that Serbia would take a rare opportunity to rebel against its Washington masters, by signing onto a UN resolution that the U.S. is against. Especially to demonstrate the germane point all along: YOU, America, set this precedent in 1999; we’re just being consistent with YOUR policy — the one that Israel correctly feared would come to be used against it. The effect, of course, hurts Israel while getting back at the U.S., something Russia is prophesized to do in a much bigger way in our lifetimes. It’s all the more unfortunate, given that the U.S. is no friend of Israel, and so hurting Israel…is just hurting Israel.