A hotel in Sarajevo, the Swissotel, chose to cancel hosting the Conference of European Rabbis’ (CER) biannual Standing Committee meeting next week after public pressure from Adnan Delic, the federal minister of labor and social policy for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“Chief Rabbis from all over Europe, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, were due to convene to discuss the most pressing issues facing European Jewish life today and matters of freedom of religion or belief. Shockingly, the hotel has suddenly canceled on us,” CER’s president, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, said in a statement on Wednesday. “This decision to block a European-Jewish conference on European soil is not only alarming but also revealing.”

Goldschmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow, added, “Bosnia and Herzegovina should certainly be canceled and barred from accession to the European Union following this disgraceful castigation of a European faith group. Sarajevo has proclaimed itself a ‘city of openness and tolerance’ for anyone but Jews.”

An open letter from Delic, republished in local media, savaged Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state, and insisted that permitting the conference would signal justification for genocide.

“Sarajevo must not be a stage for supporting genocide,” Delic wrote, apparently referring to the erroneous accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. “As a man living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as someone who believes in the values ​​of truth, justice, and the dignity of every human being, I express my strongest protest against the announcement of the European Conference of Rabbis to be held from June 16th to 18th in Sarajevo.”

Delic called the hosting of the event “illogical, deeply unacceptable, and even morally offensive,” charging that “in Sarajevo, a city that has survived the longest siege in modern European history, a city where children have been killed, hospitals targeted, and markets shelled, a rally is being organized to send support to the occupier who, every day, in front of the eyes of the entire world, commits genocide against the innocent civilian population of Gaza.”

Dismissing the idea that the conference promoted peace, Delic wrote that the conference was “essentially an attempt to send a message from Sarajevo, a symbol of resistance, survival, and human endurance, legitimizing a genocidal entity and its shameful acts of crimes against humanity. It is directly contrary to everything Sarajevo is and has stood for throughout history.”

Delic demanded “in the name of the dignity of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the victims of all sieges, persecutions, and war crimes” and for “all competent institutions to prevent the realization of this gathering, and on citizens and civil society organizations not to remain silent in the face of an attempt to morally humiliate our capital and our country.”

Goldschmidt responded to the open letter, saying that “no other Bosnian Government official has contacted the Conference of European Rabbis. 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.”

Jakob Finci, who serves as president of the Jewish Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, described the cancellation as a “slap in the face that Sarajevo has given itself.”

The conference will now take place from Monday through Wednesday in Munich.

According to the Anti-Defamation League’s Global 100 Survey of antisemitic attitudes in countries across the world, 57 percent of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s adult population — 1.5 million people — embraces animosity toward the Jewish people, supporting six or more bigoted stereotypes. These numbers rank the Eastern European nation at 79th out of 103 surveyed countries and 15th out 17 in the region — some of the highest levels of antisemitism on the planet.

On Thursday, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) released a statement condemning the cancellation.

“For generations, Sarajevo — once known as the ‘Jerusalem of the Balkans’ — was a city of coexistence, where people of different religions could live side-by-side,” the WJC wrote on X. “The decision to cancel the long-planned Conference of European Rabbis meeting at the urging of Minister Delic is a shameful act of antisemitism and an affront to the Bosnian capital’s rich history as a cultural melting pot on European soil. The failure to ensure security for this gathering is an ominous sign for the future of Jewish safety.”

Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism, responded to the cancellation on X, writing that “another symptom of the mainstreaming of a new lethal strain of ever-mutating antisemitism – that demonizes, delegitimizes & applies double standards to ‘the Jew’ among nations – ‘justifying’ the targeting of Jews & threatening Jewish life.”

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