Avigdor Lieberman's public remarks are damaging to Israel's reputation and disrespect the efforts by prominent Jews from around the world to prevent the genocide of Bosnia's Muslims between 1992 and 1995 and their support for the victims.

Dear Minister,

You have described Bosnia and Herzegovina as a potential breeding-ground for terrorist recruits to Al-Qu'aeda, the notorious fundamentalist organisation.

In his telephone conversation with you, the Bosnian Minister for Foreign Affairs Sven Alkalaj, himself of Jewish origin, made it clear to you that this view is without foundation. What his divided country needs is support, advice, reintegration and reconciliation, not defamation.

We deplore the disrespect your absurd remarks have shown for the unstinting, often effective, efforts of prominent Jews to prevent the genocide of Bosnia's Muslims during the period between 1992 and 1995. When Serb militia forces were imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Bosniaks in concentration camps, thousands of Bosnian women were being held captive in rape camps, besieged towns and cities like Sarajevo were being bombarded day in, day out for four years, 8376 men and boys from the town of Srebrenica were being summarily killed and hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Muslims were being forced to flee their country, Elie Wiesel, Simon Wiesenthal, Roy Gutman, Marek Edelman, Abraham H. Foxman, George Soros, Ignaz Bubis, Ernst Tugendhat, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Milan Stern, Alain Finkelkraut, Bernard Levy, André Glucksman, Susan Sonntag, Henry Siegman, Alfred Grosser and many other individuals spoke out, launched initiatives in support of the victims and drew appropriate conclusions from the horrific experiences of the Holocaust. Speaking on behalf of many fellow Jews, Marek Edelman, the recently deceased commander of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance fighters, declared that "Europe has learned nothing from the Holocaust. Nothing has been done to stop the killing. What has been taking place in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a posthumous victory for Hitler."

Yours sincerely,

Tilman Zülch

President of GfbV/STP Göttingen

Sharon Silber

Jews against Genocide, New York

David Kamhi,

Board Member, GfbV/STP Bosnian Section, Member of the Jewish Community of Sarajevo