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Holocaust and Srebrenica survivors launch Jewish-Muslim effort to prevent genocides
(JTA) – To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day this weekend, several prominent Holocaust survivors and Jewish leaders headed to the site of a different genocide — that of Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s.
They were there alongside Bosnian Muslim leaders to launch a new initiative aimed at advocating for peace and preventing future genocides.
“While we here today cannot change the past, we can and we must do all in our collective power to change the future,” Menachem Rosensaft, a professor at Cornell Law School who was born to Holocaust survivors in a displaced persons camp in Germany, said at the ceremony.
The event took place Sunday at the Srebrenica Memorial Center, a museum marking the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered by Bosnian Serb forces in the summer of 1995. Survivors of the Bosnian genocide attended the event, according to organizers.
Jacob Finci, president of the Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said he hoped the United Nations would declare July 11 as a remembrance day of the Srebrenica massacre, just as it eventually declared Jan. 27 to be the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust.
“Our initiative today will help in that,” said Finci, who was born in a concentration camp in Italy in 1943.
The initiative comes amid intense tensions following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s military response in Gaza. Those tensions have increased as Israel has fended off allegations that it is committing genocide in Gaza, where, according to Hamas data that Israel does not dispute, more than 26,000 people have been killed during the war there.
Participants in the event decried the Oct. 7 attack, in which about 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 24o taken hostage, while also emphasizing that the toll on Palestinians in Gaza must be considered.
“We must condemn and repudiate the savagery perpetrated by Hamas against Jewish men, women, and children on Oct. 7,” Rosensaft said. “And at the same time, let me state equally clearly and equally unambiguously here today that we must not, we cannot be indifferent to the deaths and displacements endured by Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” who are “victims of a war for which they bore no responsibility whatsoever.”
Husein ef. Kavazović, grand mufti of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, called the initiative “our humble contribution to building peace and better understanding.”
“Resistance to occupation cannot be a justification for committing crimes, just as calling for a fight against terrorism cannot be a justification for killing civilians and collective punishment,” Kavazović added.
Kavazović and Rosensaft signed a memorandum that cited Jewish and Muslim traditions, according to which anyone who saves a single life has saved the whole world.
“The significance of this initiative is far reaching,” said Germany’s high representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Сhristian Schmidt. “By building bridges between historic experiences of their communities, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders show the way towards mutual respect and peaceful coexistence.”
Schmidt said he hoped the initiative “finds followers, may I say, including the Christian community, who will spread this message all across the country and beyond.”
Also speaking at the event were Emir Suljagic, director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, and Johann Satler, head of the European Union mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mujira Subašić, president of a group representing the mothers of the man killed at Srebrenica, also participated.
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UN Security Council Meets on Iran as Russia, China Push for a Ceasefire
Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The U.N. Security Council met on Sunday to discuss US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites as Russia, China and Pakistan proposed the 15-member body adopt a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Middle East.
It was not immediately clear when it could be put to a vote. The three countries circulated the draft text, said diplomats, and asked members to share their comments by Monday evening. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China to pass.
The US is likely to oppose the draft resolution, seen by Reuters, which also condemns attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and facilities. The text does not name the United States or Israel.
“The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States marks a perilous turn in a region that is already reeling,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Sunday. “We now risk descending into a rathole of retaliation after retaliation.”
“We must act – immediately and decisively – to halt the fighting and return to serious, sustained negotiations on the Iran nuclear program,” Guterres said.
The world awaited Iran’s response on Sunday after President Donald Trump said the US had “obliterated” Tehran’s key nuclear sites, joining Israel in the biggest Western military action against the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution.
U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council that while craters were visible at Iran’s enrichment site buried into a mountain at Fordow, “no one – including the IAEA – is in a position to assess the underground damage.”
Grossi said entrances to tunnels used for the storage of enriched material appear to have been hit at Iran’s sprawling Isfahan nuclear complex, while the fuel enrichment plant at Natanz has been struck again.
“Iran has informed the IAEA there has been no increase in off-site radiation levels at all three sites,” said Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran requested the U.N. Security Council meeting, calling on the 15-member body “to address this blatant and unlawful act of aggression, to condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
Israel‘s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement on Sunday that the U.S. and Israel “do not deserve any condemnation, but rather an expression of appreciation and gratitude for making the world a safer place.”
Danon told reporters before the council meeting that it was still early when it came to assessing the impact of the U.S. strikes. When asked if Israel was pursuing regime change in Iran, Danon said: “That’s for the Iranian people to decide, not for us.”
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Israel Rejects Critical EU Report Ahead of Ministers’ Meeting
FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Israel has rejected a European Union report saying it may be breaching human rights obligations in Gaza and the West Bank as a “moral and methodological failure,” according to a document seen by Reuters on Sunday.
The note, sent to EU officials ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, said the report by the bloc’s diplomatic service failed to consider Israel’s challenges and was based on inaccurate information.
“The Foreign Ministry of the State of Israel rejects the document … and finds it to be a complete moral and methodological failure,” the note said, adding that it should be dismissed entirely.
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Pope Leo Urges International Diplomacy to Prevent ‘Irreparable Abyss’
FILE PHOTO: Pope Leo XIV holds a Jubilee audience on the occasion of the Jubilee of Sport, at St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican June 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi/File Photo
Pope Leo on Sunday said the international community must strive to avoid war that risks opening an “irreparable abyss,” and that diplomacy should take the place of conflict.
US forces struck Iran’s three main nuclear sites overnight, joining an Israeli assault in a major new escalation of conflict in the Middle East as Tehran vowed to defend itself.
“Every member of the international community has a moral responsibility: to stop the tragedy of war before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” Pope Leo said during his weekly prayer with pilgrims.
“No armed victory can compensate for the pain of mothers, the fear of children, the stolen future. Let diplomacy silence the weapons, let nations chart their future with peace efforts, not with violence and bloody conflicts,” he added.
“In this dramatic scenario, which includes Israel and Palestine, the daily suffering of the population, especially in Gaza and other territories, risks being forgotten, where the need for adequate humanitarian support is becoming increasingly urgent,” Pope Leo said.
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