A Jewish-American perspective of the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
By: Todd Emoff, May 24, 1999
The Clinton administration is using the memory of the WWII Holocaust,
the systematic destruction
of the Jewish people, in an unseemly campaign to justify the
utterly failed and illogical policy of
bombing Yugoslavia into giving up it’s province of Kosovo. It
is offensive and demeaning to the
memory of those six million innocent Jews who died at the hands
of the Nazis and Nazi
sympathizers to use their deaths to incite war fever against
the Serbs. Clinton/NATO have
advanced this comparison to try to win over Jewish and general
public sympathy for the bombing
of the Serbian people into submission. They use the terrible
images of the ethnic Albanian
refugees-and this is a terrible tragedy (exacerbated by our bombing)
that the refugees are
enduring-as fodder for a propaganda campaign to tug at the heartstrings
of Western public opinion
by invoking the memory of the Holocaust. Why? Because the awful
bombing and killing of the
Serbian people is in no way in the national interest of the U.S.
Therefore, another justification must
be presented to justify the horrific death and destruction caused
by our bombs. Comparing the
Serbs to the WWII Nazis and using the desperate images of the
Albanian refugees is the only way
to get public opinion to support the war. Without this, support
for the war collapses totally.
Regrettably, the Clinton spin machine (unquestionably the best
spin machine in the world since TV
was invented) has had some success in using the Jewish Holocaust
to evoke an emotional response
from people in NATO countries, enabling the populations of these
countries to tolerate what the
majority of these populations would not normally tolerate. They
tolerate the indiscriminate killing of
Yugoslav men, women and children, including cluster bombing of
civilian areas of cities. They
tolerate widespread destruction of the economic infrastructure
of an entire country. All in the name
of stopping another Holocaust. There is only one problem. Comparisons
of the current situation to
the Holocaust are not valid. The facts do not support such comparisons.
Here are three of the
many major differences between then and now:
1.In Germany in the 1930’s there was no armed Jewish group
that went about killing German
police, funding itself with profits
from drug dealing operations, or accepting weapons from
outside powers to fight German authorities.
There was no terrorist JLA. Jews were simply
everyday law-abiding citizens. In contrast,
the KLA has been killing and terrorizing the
Serbs of Kosovo for over 6 years now.
Many ethnic Albanians have also been killed by the
KLA during this period, especially those
that work in Government jobs like the forest
service or the post office. They are
killed to be “examples” and a warning not to work in any
capacity that could be seen as conducive
to maintaining Yugoslav control of the province.
All Western countries, including the
U.S., are on record acknowledging that the KLA is a
terrorist organization.
2.The Jews in pre-war Germany were not demanding to have
a designated area comprising
about 10% of the land of Germany designated
as an autonomous region for the Jews in
preparation for slicing off that portion
of Germany as an independent Jewish country. The
U.S./NATO demand on Serbia is that they
allow in foreign armies to ensure that the ethnic
Albanians are given autonomy for 3 years,
and be allowed independence at the end of that
period.
3.German policy in the early 1940’s was the total annihilation
of a whole people, throughout
Europe (and the world, if possible).
All Jews were to be found and killed. Trainloads were
sent to factories of death. In the death
camps, medical experiments without anesthesia were
performed on them, they were worked
to death, they were systematically and methodically
killed by various methods including
mass gassings with zyklon B. Killed by the thousands,
by the tens of thousands, ultimately
adding up to the millions. This was genocide. What is
happening to the ethnic Albanians today
in Kosovo is not genocide. The human misery of
the ethnic Albanians is awful, the death
and destruction there is to be condemned, but it is
not of the scale, scope or intent as
the genocide that was the Holocaust. There are 200,000
ethnic Albanians living securely and
comfortably (as comfortably as possible under NATO
bombing) in the Belgrade/northern Serbia
area today. If it were genocide you would not find
this to be the case. Even if you accept
as fact that the 800,000 refugees were forced out by
the Serbs (other reasons for leaving
include heavy bombing of Kosovo by NATO, lack of
water and food in the province, forced
conscription by the KLA, the prospect of being in a
hellish killing zone should NATO invasion
occur) they are still alive. They were not put into
mass death camps and exterminated. It
is a grotesque distortion of the truth to compare the
experience of the ethnic Albanians to
that of the Jews in WWII.
The only similarity between the current situation in Kosovo and
the Jewish Holocaust is that it
shows that there are still mean, brutal people in the world.
This applies equally to KLA terrorists,
Serb paramilitaries, U.S. cluster-bombers (those that order,
approve or condone the use of
anti-personnel bombs in cities), Croatian neo-Nazi groups, and
dozens of other groups worldwide
that are motivated by hate. Obviously, mankind is still not fully
civilized.
There is another reason that use of the Jewish Holocaust to drum
up support for bombing and
killing the Yugoslav people is abhorrent to Jews. It is well-known
historical fact that during WWII
Serbian Jews were sheltered and protected by the Serb population
from the Nazis to the extent
possible. This was unique among East-European Nazi occupied countries.
Jews were hidden, fed,
and housed by Serbs. Serbians “married” Jewish people that they
didn’t even know in arranged
marriages to save the new “spouse” from a trip to the death camps.
Jews were accepted into
Serbian resistance units. Jews and Serbs were killed together
in the death camp at Jasenovac, and
died side by side fighting in the resistance groups against the
Nazis.
In the quintessential irony of this insane bombing campaign, one
of the architects of the raining of
death on the Serbs is Madeleine Albright. Albright was born Jewish,
her family fled Prague in 1939
ahead of the Nazi invasion and went to live in Belgrade. In 1941
the Nazis invaded and conquered
Yugoslavia and 5 year-old Madeleine was sheltered for 6 weeks
by – yes – a Serb family! She
and her family were then smuggled out to London. Because of the
Serbs little Madeleine lived,
eventually became an American, and culminates her career by killing
Serbs by the hundreds, no, by
the thousands in the name of NATO and the Holocaust. Incredible.
In contrast to the Serb
behavior vis-à-vis the Jews, the Albanians formed two
SS divisions under the Nazis. One of these,
the infamous 21st Waffen SS “Skanderbeg” division (composed mostly
of Gheg Albanians from
Kosovo and northern Albania) spent the latter stages of the war
hunting down Jews to be killed at
Jasenovac, and committing mass killings of Serbs.
The Jewish people owe a huge debt to the Serbian people for their
actions in helping us during that
time. How can we repay such acts? By standing up for them today
and doing what we can to stop
this sickening bombing campaign by U.S./NATO. Calling, writing,
and meeting with our
Congresspeople, Senators, and the media, educating them to the
truth of the situation. Many Serbs
risked (and sometimes lost) their lives helping us. We need do
nothing so dangerous or costly to
pay them back. Making a few dozen phone calls, writing a few
letters, and scheduling a few
meetings with our elected representatives and opinion makers
is the least we can do to help them
now. We must explain to them that blowing up Yugoslavia, ruining
it’s ecology, and killing it’s
people is not helpful for any of the ethnic groups that live
there. Thousands of Jewish people live in
Yugoslavia, 4000 in Belgrade alone. I wonder how they are faring
as their businesses, schools and
neighborhoods are bombed and their children terrorized. We must
stop our tax dollars from being
used to kill the Yugoslavs and destroy their country.
The idea that the United States of America should kill the Serbs,
kill the Serbs, and then kill more
Serbs (and some Albanians, Gypsies, Jews, Hungarians, Croats,
and others living in Yugoslavia
along the way) until they let us administer part of their country
is morally bankrupt. In our darkest
hour the Serbs were there for the Jews. Now it is their darkest
hour. We should be there for them.
Above all, we must reverse the hijacking of our Holocaust. We
should not allow our Holocaust to
be twisted by the Clinton spinmeisters into the reason that we
are killing men, women, and children
in Serbia or anywhere else. We must take the Jewish Holocaust
back from them and proclaim,
loudly, that the memory of the six million is not to be used
for this purpose. Ever. This is our
responsibility. We cannot shirk it.