13 March 2026, the Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has accused Croatian President Zoran Milanovic of anti-Semitism following his recent statements about Israel and the war in the Middle East. Sa’ar posted a message on the social network X, strongly condemning Milanovic’s remarks, calling them unacceptable and crossing the line into political criticism.
“The offensive rhetoric of the Croatian president is unacceptable. His hateful language towards Israel and Zionism reflects an anti-Semitic approach,” Sa’ar wrote.
The Israeli minister recalled that Croatia is a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an organisation that promotes education, research and remembrance of the Holocaust and the fight against anti-Semitism.
“The ambassador of Israel, Gary Koren, said that there is a terrorist den in the Iranian embassy in the middle of Zagreb. We don’t need that kind of harassment of the Croatian public. We don’t want foreign infections and bacilli in Croatia, neither Iranian nor Israeli. Let the gentlemen behave accordingly. This is Zagreb, brothers, not Tel Aviv”, said the President of the Republic, Zoran Milanović, on March 11, 2026, commenting on the invitation to the Israeli ambassador, Gary Koren, for an interview in the Office of the President of the Republic due to his earlier statements.
“Croatia belongs to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and has committed to opposing anti-Semitism. The president has failed in these commitments,” Sa’ar said. His reaction also comes after Milanovic’s recent statements criticising Israeli moves in the current conflict in the Middle East.
The thing that really bugs me personally is that Sa’ar, and Koren for that matter, has never supported research into the historical truth of the World War Two Jasenovac Camp, to correct the lies communist Yugoslavia had written about it, blowing up the numbers of victims of the Holocaust and others to ludicrous proportions. If anything, Sa’ar and Koren, with their deafening silence, stood on the side of those in Israel (allies of the communists) who labelled such attempts of historical research as revisionism and Holocaust denials! If someone does nothing to help the full factual truth regarding the Holocaust rise to the surface, then, in my view, that person has no right to point fingers at others on matters such as anti-Semitism. With the benefit of following much of the mainstream media, it would seem that the “jury” of the world is still out regarding whether criticising the government of Israel, as opposed to targeting Jewish faith per se, can be called anti-Semitic at all!
“We don’t really have any special relations with Iran, but Iran is a member of the UN that was attacked without a UN mandate. Indeed, when it comes to the Middle East, just like Israel, Iran is prone to certain terrorist methods. What is killing in Gaza but terrorism, and what is the survival of Israeli soldiers but terrorism? However, when it comes to Europe, Iran does not act as a terrorist in Europe, at least as far as I know. All terrorism in Europe is Sunni, not Shiite. So far, Iran has not targeted terrorist activities in Europe against our civilians, our citizens,” President Milanovic added.
Regarding the Croatian Minister of Defence, Ivan Anusic’s visit to Israel last week, the President commented: “I cannot forbid him from going somewhere, but I will not refrain from commenting when I see that something is harmful and immoral. He may be a colleague, but in the command structure and hierarchy, the commander-in-chief is the commander-in-chief. We are not at the same political level; we are not interlocutors. The Prime Minister is another matter. As for the minister, let him continue his travels,” said President Milanovic.
Minister Anusic said that the key reason for the trip to Israel was the advanced Trophy protection system for Leopard tanks. “This system makes the Leopard the best tank in the world because it protects against anti-tank weapons, thus saving both the tank and the crew.”
He added that Israel had brought into question the issuance of an export license for the system due to “certain political statements” from Croatia. The Minister was obviously alluding to President Zoran Milanovic’s statements around that time, that the Croatian Army would not cooperate with Israel. “Through diplomatic channels, the Government of Croatia, the Ministry of Defence and our ambassador in Tel Aviv, we managed to resolve the problem. We convinced them that we had nothing to do with these political statements, and we received the export licence,” said Anusic. He further emphasised that the visit to Israel was important not only for the Trophy system but also for broader cooperation with the Israeli defence industry. He also said that while in Israel, he had to explain that we, the government of Croatia, had nothing to do with President Milanovic’s statements!
But President Milanovic would have none of that. As far as he is concerned, the Minister’s visit to Israel had a hidden agenda. He had previously said that Anusic went to Israel because of the Ustasha salutes: “There is too much shouting and screaming at cultural and public events, and some kind of shouts, salutes, from World War II (e.g. For home ready/ Za dom spremni), so repentance for sins is associated with that. We have no one to answer to outside of Croatia. Whose sins do I need to cleanse? The sins of the pro-Hitler regime from 1941? They are not mine. Israel is not the right address.”
Here, I must agree with President Milanovic. Israel has not done anything to help the plight of the Croatian people in setting the World War II records straight via research. If anything, it has stood firmly, in word or in silence, by those in Israel who supported lies and fabrications that came from Serbia, as well as the former Yugoslavia. Even, I have it on good authority, refused to grant Blessed Alojzije Stepinac a place among the Righteous Among Nations when historical research proved unequivocally that Stepinac saved thousands of Jewish lives during the war!
As for the Prime Minister (Andrej Plenkovic), the President said: “He has decided that this system suits him. In diplomacy, he has fixed the personnel structure with the former President and he does not want to change that. There is nothing that threatens him politically or consequentially, he can simply do as he pleases. It is an abuse of the system, but without consequences,” said Milanovic.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said the Adriatic nation is free to pursue cooperation with Israel, rejecting his president’s refusal to back any such military deals.
The premier has repeatedly locked horns with Zoran Milanovic since Milanovic’s election as head of state in 2020 over issues such as aid to Ukraine and support for NATO expansion and I have written about that tragedy for the nation several times. But the spat between Plenkovic and his main political foe came to the fore as Defence Minister Ivan Anusic visited Israel, seeking to strengthen cooperation between the defence sectors. But, given that Israel has been engaging in vicious offence rather than defence in the Middle East for the past couple of years, one wonders how useful to Croatia is anything Israel would have to say on defence, bar “hit someone who hit you tenfold harder”. But then again, perhaps scouting of sorts is in place for how the former communists of Yugoslavia can overthrow the values of Croatia’s 1990s Homeland War and take over completely!? The Premier, Andrej Plenkovic, must have a hidden, suspect dark agenda for not introducing fresh blood into Croatia’s consular and diplomatic corps, while keeping the same set of Ambassadors for about the past eight years now. The political clarity for such a status quo in diplomatic echelons would surely be in the fact that most if not all Croatian Ambassadors have during those years accelerated a wicked practice of ignoring, excluding from their events and even insulting, by for example using deceit trying to pin on them the label of neofascism or neo Nazism, the patriotic Croats in the diaspora who were most active during the 1990s in pursuits of extracting Croatia from communist Yugoslavia as a sovereign and democratic country.
All this and more, especially the devaluing of the Homeland war and the ignoring of justice for victims of communist Yugoslavia crimes, has turned Croatia into a political quagmire that threatens peace within its own borders. Ina Vukic
Croatia, the War, and the Future 
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