Germany pulls honor for Israeli historian over Bosnia report

BERLIN (AP) — The German government has dropped plans to give the country's highest honor to an Israeli historian amid criticism of his work on the genocide in Bosnia.

German news agency dpa reported Friday that the Foreign Ministry has withdrawn its nomination for Gideon Greif to receive Germany's Order of Merit. Bosnian news portal klix.ba first reported the decision, citing a letter German officials had sent to a Germany-based historian.

Greif, who has done extensive work on the Holocaust, was part of an international panel of historians who in June published a lengthy report that suggested the 1995 killing of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica didn't constitute genocide.

The report, commissioned by hardline Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, was widely dismissed by other historians.

More than 8,000 Bosniaks, most of them men and boys, were slaughtered around Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces toward the end of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia. The massacre has been declared a genocide by international and national courts, but Serb leaders in Bosnia and neighboring Serbia have downplayed and in some cases denied it, despite overwhelming evidence of what happened.

Greif couldn't immediately be reached for comment.