
Serbia’s Israel Problem
When UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese visited Serbia in March, the government cast her as an interfering foreigner. Yet it was happy to back the Israeli embassy’s campaign to silence pro-Palestinian speech in Serbia.
Filip Balunović is a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade and assistant professor at the Faculty of Media and Communication at the Singidunum University. He is author of Revival of the Left in the Balkans: Counter-Hegemonic Activism and Ideas that Fueled it.

When UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese visited Serbia in March, the government cast her as an interfering foreigner. Yet it was happy to back the Israeli embassy’s campaign to silence pro-Palestinian speech in Serbia.

Student protests in Serbia have challenged an authoritarian government and its sell-off of public assets to multinationals. Far from just a liberal or pro-European movement, it is challenging the ties between Serbian and international capital.