Zuroff: There was no genocide in Srebrenica, US and EU made that up

TEL AVIV - No genocide was committed in Srebrenica in 1995, but a war crime, says Israeli historian Efraim Zuroff, noting that the genocide narrative has been made up by the US and the EU for political reasons to appease the Muslims.

"Any country that faces a tragedy wants to claim that their tragedy fits the word genocide, because that is the 'gold standard' of tragedy. But in the case of Srebrenica, it is a joke, and a bad joke at that," Zuroff, who is also director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, has told Tanjug in an interview.

"In Srebrenica, there were 33,000 people - 28,000 of them went home, they were not harmed. Serb troops let all the children, all the women, all men who were not soldiers to go home in peace without being harmed at all. So, 28,000 out of 33,000 people are saved, that is a genocide? That is ridiculous. So, this is only to appease the Muslims. This is why the Americans did it, this is why the EU did it, it is all fake," he said.

He noted that he defined the events in Srebrenica as a war crime as several thousand combatants were disarmed and killed.

"That is a tragedy and it is a war crime, but is certainly not a genocide, that is ridiculous. But it is all politics and it has nothing to do with the truth," Zuroff added.