Serbia Breaks Ranks with Europe: How It’s Fueling Israeli War Machine on Gaza

While the Israeli war on Gaza rages on, Serbia continues to defy the European stance—offering steady political and military backing to “Israel” since October 7, 2025.

Ignoring Europe’s growing condemnation of Tel Aviv’s war crimes in Gaza and the deliberate starvation of its people, Belgrade instead proudly showcases its close and long-standing alliance with the Israeli Occupation.

A Controversial Alliance

As many countries around the world are pulling away from “Israel” over its devastating war on Gaza, Serbia is moving in the opposite direction. From July 7–9, 2025, President of National Assembly of Serbia Ana Brnabic visited Tel Aviv, openly expressing support for the Israeli Occupation and calling for deeper cooperation across multiple fields.

During her visit, Brnabic met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, and Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana. She emphasized that both sides are currently focused on finalizing a free trade agreement, initially discussed during Herzog’s visit to Serbia in September 2024. Both leaders had pledged to implement the deal “as soon as possible.”

Brnabic also thanked “Israel” for voting against a resolution recognizing the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia as genocide. She offered condolences for the five Israeli soldiers killed in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, during the same month.

“Israel” had abstained from a 2024 UN General Assembly resolution that designated July 11 as the International Day of Remembrance for the Srebrenica genocide. In 1995, Serbian and Bosnian Serb forces overran the town, killing more than 8,000 Bosniaks and raping hundreds of women.

“We were very thankful to Israel that they did not vote in favor of the resolution. I think it was important for Israel and the Jewish people, because next time it could be you subjected to such a resolution at the UNGA, and Serbia will not vote in favor,” said Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in a June 6, 2025 interview with The Jerusalem Post.

Brnabic also raised the case of Alon Ohil, a 24-year-old Israeli-Serbian held by the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza after being captured during the Nova music festival near the Re’im settlement. According to his mother, fellow captives said a 19-year-old stitched his wounds without anesthesia and that he had lost vision in one eye.

Serbia and “Israel” have significantly expanded cooperation in recent years, though Brnabic noted there is still untapped potential in the political and economic spheres.

She described 2024 as a record year for bilateral trade, which reached nearly $200 million—a figure she still called “modest.” 

“With the services exchange, that is 350-360 mln dollars in total, but it was definitely a record year, largely thanks to the opening of a Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia office in Jerusalem in November 2021,” she told reporters.

She said figures from the first four months of this year were even better, indicating growth in bilateral goods and services trade relative to the same period of 2024.

“So, things are going better and better, but there is still much potential to enhance political and economic cooperation,” she said.

Brnabic highlighted the positive tone of her earlier discussions with Israeli leaders, including President Isaac Herzog, who, she said, asked her to pass along his warm regards and appreciation to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic for Serbia’s continued support of “Israel,” particularly since October 7, 2023.

“For all the support and hospitality, starting from sports clubs, which were unable to play anywhere else except in Serbia, where they felt at home,” Brnabic said, adding that her meetings with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana were equally constructive and filled with gratitude toward Serbia.

According to Brnabic, both sides also emphasized strengthening bilateral ties—most notably through the Free Trade Agreement discussed during Herzog’s visit to Serbia in September last year.

Brnabic’s visit wasn’t a one-off—earlier in 2025, Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Duric also traveled to Tel Aviv, underscoring both sides’ shared commitment to strengthening bilateral relations.

Serbia is grateful for Israeli Occupation’s support in securing Belgrade’s bid to host Expo 2027, while “Israel,” in turn, appreciates Serbia’s warm welcome of its athletes and sports teams at a time when other countries are distancing themselves.

Economically, the Israeli Occupation is not among Serbia’s top 30 trading partners. However, in specific sectors, the partnership is strategic—particularly in technology and artificial intelligence.

Vucic recently pointed to “broad opportunities for cooperation” in these areas, including cybersecurity, which he said could attract even more Israeli investment.

In 2020, Serbia’s intelligence agency was listed as a user of the Israeli company Circles’ surveillance system, capable of locating any phone in the country within seconds.

Rights groups Amnesty International and Access Now confirmed that Israeli Occupation’s military-grade spyware Pegasus was used to target Serbian civil society activists ahead of the 2023 general elections.

Military Ties

Military cooperation remains one of the strongest pillars of the Serbia-”Israel” relationship—one that has held firm even as several of Israeli Occupation’s traditional European allies have halted arms transfers amid the genocide on Gaza.

During her visit to Tel Aviv, Serbian Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic made it clear: “Israel will never forget what Serbia has done for it since October 7,” adding that all Israeli officials expressed deep gratitude to Belgrade for its support.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has been even more blunt. In early June 2025, he declared, “Today, I am the only one in Europe who trades military ammunition with Israel. And that's why my colleagues often criticize me.”

“In Serbia, the situation will always remain the same. We will always cherish, respect, and love the Jewish people and Israel. I truly mean that, I truly feel that.”

He reiterated the point during a June 23 press conference, claiming that Serbia was the only European country continuing to export arms to “Israel” after the “Hamas-led attack.”

However, Vucic later clarified that Serbia halted arms exports following Israeli Occupation’s aggression on Iran—a 12-day war from June 13 to 24—implying that the suspension was temporary and directly tied to that episode.

Iran’s Tasnim News Agency had reported that Tehran warned any country supplying military equipment to the Israeli Occupation would be considered as complicit in aggression and a legitimate target. That warning, many observers believe, likely influenced Vucic’s statement—especially as Western reports have cast doubt on whether Serbia actually paused its support.

Vucic insisted Serbia was only exporting ammunition, not weapons, and noted that roughly 24,000 jobs in the country depend on the industry.

Earlier in 2025, an investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) revealed that Serbia exported €42.3 million worth of arms and ammunition to “Israel” in 2024—a staggering 30-fold increase over 2023.

In a June interview with The Jerusalem Post from Belgrade, Vucic reaffirmed Serbia’s intention to continue supplying “Israel” with military equipment saying they will always value, respect, and love the Jewish people and “Israel.”

“On the 8th, in the evening, we got a message from Israel. ‘We need this and that. We were not absolutely ready, we need it as soon as possible,’” Vucic recalled to the Post.

“I used to be minister of defense and I know how it goes – licenses from the different ministries, security intelligence agencies, more governmental and nongovernmental bodies [...] And we collected everything within four days, and we did it. It has never been achieved before in this country.”

Unsurprisingly, Serbian officials have remained silent about Israeli Occupation’s ongoing genocide on Gaza—apart from condemning the “Hamas attack” on October 7.

With the United States standing as the sole exception, all major Western allies—including Germany and Italy—declined to provide Israel with ammunition or other vital supplies. In the end, the void was filled by three unlikely sources: Hungary, Serbia, and the Czech Republic, according to a Jerusalem Post report published on July 3.

“Israel’s greatest allies imposed an arms embargo on Israel,” a senior Israeli defense official told the paper, his frustration only partly concealed. “Apart from the Americans, no one would supply us with equipment for offensive operations, or even sell us the parts to produce it ourselves, except Hungary, Serbia, and the Czech Republic.”

The report added that Serbia stood out. Belgrade-based state arms exporter Yugoimport SDPR significantly ramped up deliveries after October 2023. Media outlets in the Balkans tracked a surge in cargo flights between Serbian airports and Israeli Occupation military bases—most of them carrying 155mm artillery shells, the backbone of modern ground warfare.

History of Relations

Serbia occasionally refers to the Israeli Occupation as the “Jewish state” and promises to build one of the strongest partnerships between Belgrade and what it calls “free Israel.”

Looking back at the history of their relationship, it’s marked by both tragedy and strategic shifts. During World War II, the Jews of former Yugoslavia were targeted for extermination by Nazi-aligned forces and their collaborators.

In 1942, Serbia became the first European territory the Nazis declared “Judenfrei”—free of Jews. Of the roughly 80,000 Jews living in Yugoslavia before the war, an estimated 66,000 were killed in the Holocaust, nearly half of them from what is now Serbia, according to the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI).

In a report published on October 18, 2024, the institute noted that after the war, Yugoslavia’s communist leadership initially encouraged Jewish emigration to Palestine, in a bid to redeem itself from “the atrocities of the Holocaust.” Key figures like Mosa Pijade, a close associate of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and himself Jewish, played a role in facilitating that migration.

Serbia was also one of the 15 countries represented in the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in 1947, which was tasked with finding a resolution to “the conflict.” Yugoslavia, alongside Iran and India, opposed the UN partition plan and instead proposed a binational federal state with Occupied Jerusalem as a shared capital. The proposal, however, was in the minority.

Despite that, when “Israel” declared “its independence” in May 1948 (the Nakba) Yugoslavia became, after the Soviet Union, one of the first European countries to formally recognize the “new state,” joining Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Yugoslavia also maintained strong ties with the Arab world. In the 1950s, Tito forged close relations with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser at the time and co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Yugoslavia broke off all diplomatic relations with the Israeli Occupation and backed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) led by Yasser Arafat.

Official diplomatic ties between Belgrade and Tel Aviv were not restored until 1992. As Yugoslavia disintegrated into ethnic conflict, Serbia and “Israel” found new common ground—primarily in arms trade.

In September 2024, when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling on the Israeli Occupation to end its illegal presence in occupied Palestinian territories within a year, Serbia was among the 46 countries that abstained (124 voted in favor; 14 opposed). Serbia also abstained during an October 2023 vote calling for an “immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce” between “Israel” and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (Hamas).

Relations between Belgrade and Tel Aviv were strained in 2021 when Kosovo and “Israel” recognized each other and Kosovo opened its embassy in Occupied Jerusalem. Serbia, which considers Kosovo a breakaway province and refuses to recognize its independence, had earlier signed a deal suggesting it would move its embassy to Occupied Jerusalem—but never followed through.

The fallout from that episode created a period of diplomatic quiet, which began to shift in October 2023 when Serbia appointed a new ambassador to “Israel” after a three-year vacancy.

On a more informal level, Serbia also warmed ties with the Israeli Occupation by hosting Israeli basketball teams in Belgrade for their EuroLeague home games, amid growing reluctance from other countries to do so.

Another signal of the warming relationship came with the appointment of Marko Duric as Serbia’s new foreign minister. Of Jewish descent and a former resident of “Israel,” Duric previously served as Serbia’s ambassador to Washington—a post that positioned him close to U.S. policymaking. His appointment was seen as part of Belgrade’s broader effort to draw closer to the West.

Finally, the growing bond was on display at the UN General Assembly in September 2024, when Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During their meeting, Netanyahu emphasized a shared goal between the two nations: securing the return of all captives held in Gaza—including Alon Ohil, who holds dual Israeli-Serbian citizenship.