European rabbis cancel Sarajevo event after minister's boycott call
The Conference of European Rabbis (CER) has cancelled its upcoming meeting in Sarajevo after a minister called for a boycott of the event, the organization's president said on Wednesday.
Calls by Adnan Delić, the labour minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), led the hotel hosting the event to cancel the booking, CER President and Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt said.
The FBiH is one of the two political entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, alongside the Republika Srpska.
In a post on Facebook, Delić denounced Israel's role in the war in the Gaza Strip and demanded that Sarajevo not become a "venue for supporting genocide."
"We have been made unwelcome, and this last-minute, ministerial boycott of Jewish European citizens, dedicated to purely to promoting Jewish life in Europe and furthering dialogue and democracy across the continent, is disgraceful," Goldschmidt wrote in a statement.
He thanked the German city of Munich for agreeing at the last minute to host the meeting, planned for June 16-18.
During the Bosnian war from 1992-95, 11,000 citizens lost their lives in Sarajevo, when the city was besieged by Serbian troops. The war killed almost 100,000 people and displaced 2 million.
Today, Bosnia and Herzegovina is home to large populations of Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats.
Delić wrote that the CER had misused Sarajevo as a place "to send a message legitimizing the occupation and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people."
Goldschmidt rejected this, emphasizing that CER events promote dialogue and calling the cancellation "Sarajevo's loss."
The CER has around 1,000 members and 800 active rabbis in its ranks. According to its own statements, it advocates for the religious rights of Jews in Europe and is committed to religious freedom and interfaith dialogue with other faiths.
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