There’s a hot exclusive on Engage today. Jovan Byford of the Open University reveals that a leading member of the legal team defending Bosnian Serb butcher Radovan Karadzic not only believes in the authenticity of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”: she claims as well that said “Elders” are still active.

Smilja Avramov is a ninety-year old professor of international law who enjoyed a close relationship with the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, the main architect of the ethnic terror which consumed Bosnia between 1992-95. Avramov is also a staunch defender of Karadzic, who is now at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague charged with eleven counts of war crimes, including genocide.

In July 2001, Byford met with Avramov in her Belgrade apartment to interview her for his PhD thesis. The following conversation took place:

“J.B: In your book you also mention the Elders of Zion…

Avramov: Yes.

J.B: …and you mention that they are no longer…

Avramov: …no, they are active… I merely said when they were founded. I did not go into the Elders of Zion, but they are… I think that I mentioned it in a single sentence that they are still operating. In fact they are the most secret of all secret organisations, you know… The most interesting thing, which to me is completely unclear, is that these Jewish organisations were in fact terribly Serbophobic. The main anti-Serbian campaign was led by Jewish organisations in America and France. What is the cause of this, I still don’t know…”

Byford correctly observes:

“The professed ignorance about the reasons behind the apparent Jewish ‘Serbophobia’ is interesting because Avramov falls short of attributing the causes directly to a Jewish conspiracy or to the machinations of the Elders of Zion. Nevertheless, the fact that she mentions Jewish ’Serbophobia’ in response to the specific question about the Elders of Zion, indicates that behind the apparent ’anti-Serbian campaign’ initiated by ’Jewish organisations’ she sees the kind of causality characteristic of the most infamous example of the antisemitic conspiracy tradition.”

Byford’s exchange with Avramov becomes all the more striking when one recalls that, through the Milosevic years, some Serbian nationalists portrayed their own experience as intimately connected with that of the Jews. Sometimes it involved a faux spiritualism: Kosovo, they would say, is “our Jerusalem.” More often, it was historical: like you Jews, they would say, we Serbs also suffered under the Nazis and the Croatian Ustase.

Notwithstanding the brutality of the Nazi regime and its local allies in the so-called Independent State of Croatia, which also annexed Bosnia, there was something deeply suspicious about this identification of Serbs and Jews. Antisemitism was the basic worldview of the Nazis, the raison d’etre of Hitler’s regime. What Avramov calls “Serbophobia” was never as ideologically privileged.

One of the strangest organizations to emerge under Milosevic was the Serb-Jewish Friendship Society. Its leader was a woman named Klara Mandic, another shadowy figure with close relations with Milosevic. Mandic was also an admirer of Zeljko Rajznatovic - aka Arkan - a former bank robber wanted by Interpol. Arkan formed a vicious paramilitary unit called The Tigers who raped and murdered their way across Croatia and Bosnia. Mandic, for her part, preached a message of Serb-Jewish unity and was outraged when outside Jewish organizations, particularly in the US, energetically condemned the Serb ethnic cleansing campaign.

One of the characteristics of Serbian nationalism during this period was its overlap with the criminal underworld. For years, rumors circulated about Mandic’s unsavory connections. In May 2001, she was found dead in her apartment in mysterious circumstances, having been shot in the head. Arkan had been shot dead the previous year while standing in the lobby of Belgrade Intercontinental Hotel - in pulling the trigger, the gunman, another criminal, ensured that Arkan would never stand trial at the Hague.

The flip side of Mandic’s approach is best represented by Avramov’s remarks above - the copious love can easily turn to distrust, even hatred. Indeed, this was an attitude I came across many times on visits to Belgrade which I undertook as a journalist in the region between 1992 and 2000. Initially, my Serbian interlocutors would be very pleased to learn that I was a Jew. But when I made my opposition to the Serbian nationalist project clear, their friendly demeanor would turn to annoyance. I would be asked questions about Jewish power and financial influence that carried an undertone of resentment.

Of course, Serbia was not the only Balkan state where I encountered this sort of prejudice. It was just particularly resonant there because of the determination of Serb nationalist propagandists to make common cause with the Jews - something which they manifestly failed to do.