Israel's Tense Trip to Bosnia

Israel played a competitive soccer match against a nation with a large Muslim population for the first time in more than a decade when it faced Bosnia & Herzegovina on June 12 in a vital 2016 European Championship Qualifier.

Security was an immediate concern. At a pro-Palestinian rally in Vienna last April, media reports spread that dozens of Bosnian football fans, who were in the country to support their national team playing Austria in a friendly, started chanting "kill the Jews" in Bosnian. A video emerged which confirmed the report and showed Bosnian fans waving Bosnian and Palestinian flags and chanting "kill the Jews" over and over.

Israel determined that they needed a high level of security for the European qualifier.

Israel was welcomed into Sarajevo on June 10 by dozens of policemen, who looked more like SWAT officers and were equipped with automatic weapons and pistols. Their goal was to intimidate as much as protect. Later, reports surfaced in the Bosnian media that snipers watched the Israeli team while they practiced.

As is often the case with Israeli security measures, the intense security and intimidation sent a complicated message to the locals—people all too familiar with the consequences of ethnic hatred. As my cab driver navigated the 50 miles from my hotel in Sarajevo to where the match was played in Zenica—an industrial city near the Bosna River—I saw not only the picturesque mountains mentioned in every tourist guide, but hundreds if not thousands, of white, worn down looking graves jumbled together on the side of the road. The more we drove, the more graves we passed. The graves were not in traditional cemeteries. They were behind houses, next to work buildings, basically anywhere there was a large enough space of grass to put them. My taxi driver noticed I was looking at them and explained that to this day, people are still missing.

Bosnia's declaration of independence in 1992 following the fall of Yugoslavia led to a war fought among three large ethnic groups: the Croats, Serbs, and the Muslims. Approximately 50,000-100,000 Bosnians were killed in the conflict, which lasted until the winter of 1995.

On July 11, 1995, the Republika Srpska army led by Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, entered the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Over the next 48 hours, 8,000 Bosniak—Bosnian Muslim—men and boys were slaughtered by Mladic's army simply for being Bosniak. To this day, it is considered the single largest massacre in Europe since the end of World War II.

"We try and live every day happily," my young, laid back and optimistic cab driver said on the drive to Zenica. "We are very open people and believe that everyone should be treated equally. But at the same time we must never forget what happened."

One very friendly and chatty coffee shop owner was puzzled by the amount of security surrounding the Israeli team.

"The amount of weapons we are seeing on the streets of Zenica are reminders of the war and that is something no one in this country ever wants to feel again," he said. "Why do they need so much security?"

Once I arrived at the stadium, I was told that the ultra supporters of the Bosnian national team, the BH Fanticos, had begun marching in the streets of Zenica chanting, "Palestina, Palestina, Palestina."

Regrettably, things would only get worse.

Boos and whistles kept the Israeli players from hearing their national anthem. Also, according to FARE—an organization driven to combat inequality in football and to use the sport as a means for social change—several monitors on the ground reported hearing anti-semitic chants.

Fare can confirm our observer at Bosnia vs. Israel reported several clearly anti-Semitic (not anti-Israel) chants during the match. 1/2
— Fare (@farenet) June 16, 2015

"It's definitely not an anti-semitic country," said a member of the BHDragons—an English-language forum for Bosnian fans—who wished to remain anonymous. "We are not aware or have heard these 'chants' but we also heard rumors. The majority of fans simply support Palestine and wanted to vocalize this, maybe there was one or two idiots but this is normal in any scenario, they don't represent an entire nation."

Despite the behavior of some of the fans, the majority came to the match to support their national team and not deal with the politics.

Nearly all 13,000 Bosnian fans stood on their feet and chanted in support of their team for the entire match. This was a type of intensity rarely seen at a soccer match.

Sasa Ibrulj, a prominent Bosnian journalist, tried to explain why the Bosnian fans are so passionate.

"People are proud of their team and glad to be identified with it," he said. "After years of being famous by a bloody war, people started to recognize us through football. Ask any British football fan about Bosnia and he'll tell you about Edin Džeko first, not the war."

Immediately after the match, Israel national team manager Eli Guttman told the small Israeli press corps that Bosnian Football Federation officials apologized for the fans' behavior. Also, he said that Bosnia manager Mehmed Baždarević personally apologized to him.

Despite the apologies, UEFA began a disciplinary proceeding against the Bosnian Football Federation, which was charged with disrupting the national anthem, setting off of fireworks, and for general racist behavior.

Bosnia & Herzegovina won the match 3-1. The final fallout resulting from the match is not so clear.