NOTES

  1. Allison Kaplan and Tom Tugend, `US Jews Call for Action against Serb Atrocities', The Jerusalem Post, 6. Aug. 1992.
  2. Moshe Zak, `Bosnian Lessons for the Golan', The Jerusalem Post, 22 July 1995.
  3. `Srbi u Hrvatskoj: zakletva novog predsjednika' [Serbs in Croatia: Oath of the New President], Danas (Zagreb weekly), 10 March 1992.
  4. Politika (Belgrade daily), 18 July 1994. Mr David Sasson, Israel's ambassador to Serbia, keeps voicing similar pro-Serbian voices; see NIN (Belgrade weekly), 17 Jan. 1997; Pogledi (Kragujevac weekly), 25 June 1997.
  5. Roger Faligot, `Mossad Helped Jews to Flee from Serbia', The European, 3-6 June 1993.
  6. See Tom Savicki, `How Are Bosnian Serbs Getting Israeli Arms?', The Jerusalem Report, 26 Jan. 1995, Igor Primoratz, `Israeli Shells on Sarajevo', ibid., 9 Feb. 1995.
  7. For example, Teddy Preuss in Davar, 14 May 1992.
  8. For example, Yosef Lapid in Ma'ariv, 9 Aug. 1992.
  9. For example, Payit Ravina in Davar, 18 Feb. 1994; Yohanan Ramati in The Yerusalem Post, 17 April 1995.
  10. Quoted in Yated Hashavna, 14 Aug. 1992.
  11. On Serbian historical revisionism, see Cohen [1996].
  12. On Croatia, see Primoratz [1991-92]; on Bosnia-Herzegovina, see Cigar [1995]; on mass rapes, see Stiglmayer (ed.) [1994]; on the camps, see, for example, Hukanovic.
  13. In this connection, three exceptions should be noted. Prof. Naomi Chazan, a Meretz party member of the Knesset, initiated a condemnation by women Knesset Members of Serb mass rape of Bosnian women and other atrocities. They, together with other women's groups and organizations in Israel, subsequently submitted a protest to the UN Secretary General. Lapid (Torch) - a non-governmental organization for education the public about the Holocaust - staged a small demonstration in front of the Serbian embassy in Tel Aviv, together with the youth wing of the Mapam (socialist) party. And the Jerusalem-based Citizens' Committee for Bosnia - a small group of Hebrew University students - organized a couple of public debates. None of this made much impression on the government or the public at large.
  14. Yosef Goell, in The Jerusalem Post, 10 Nov. 1994, 21 Nov. 1994, 11 Aug. 1995.
  15. At this point two objections are likely to be made by adherents of the conventional Israeli line on the Palestinian refugee problem:
    (1) In 1948-49 the new-born state of Israel was attacked by its Arab neighbours and Palestinian militias, and had to fight a war of self-defence. What happened to the Palestinians should be seen in this context. This is true, but irrelevant. Both western moral tradition and international law distinguish between the morality and legality of a decision to go to war (jus ad bellum) and the morality and legality of various policies adopted and actions performed in the course of waging war (jus in bello). A state may be fighting a war that is legitimate in terms of its cuase, that is, in terms of jus ad bellum, but that does not give it the right to fight in any way it chooses. It is still bound by the restrictions regarding the methods of fighting, the targets that may be attacked, the immunity of civilians, etc., that make jus in bello. Attacking a civilian population, or dispossessing and expelling it, is no less a moral wrong and a war crime when committed by a side whose cause is just than when committed by a side whose cause is not just.
    (2) In the course of the 1948-49 war and in subsequent years, Israel admitted and absorbed Jewish immigrants from a number of Arab countries. Their number is comparable to that of Palestinian refugees and expellees. Moreover, many of them were fleeing from discrimination and persecution at the hands of Arab majorities in their countries. And some of them were settled on properties left by the fleeing Palestinians. Again, true but irrelevant. Two wrongs do not make a right. And the Palestinians can be held responsible for the wrongs that Iraquis or Moroccans inflicted on their Jewish minorities only by first subsuming them all under the general heading of `Arabs', and then deploying the notion of collective biological responsibility described earlier.
  16. On the history of the idea and practice of `ethnic cleansing', see Grmek, Gjidra and Simac [1993].
  17. Important exceptions include Israel's `new historians', such as Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, or Tom Segev, but they are a recent phenomenon, whose presence is filet mostly in academic circles. So far they have had hardly any influence on the way Israeli society thinks of itself and its history.
  18. Gideon Levy, `Higia ha'zman lesaper' [It's Time to Tell], Ha'aretz, 25 May 1997. See also his `Eimat ha'shiva' [The Dread of Return], Ha'aretz, 17 Aug.
  19. This, of course, does not help explain Israel's pro-Serbian stance in the war in Croatia.
  20. I wish to thank Professor Noami Chazan, MK, for valuable information about the Knesset debates, and two anonymous referees for this journal for their comments and suggestions for revision.

References

  • Cigar, N. (1995): Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of `Ethnic Cleansing', College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.
  • Cohen, P.J. (1996): Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History, College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.
  • Gajic-Glisic, D. (1992): Iz kabineta ministra vojnog. Srpska vojska [From the War Minister's Office: The Serbian Army], Cacak: Marica i Tomo Spasojevic.
  • Grmek M., M. Gjidra and N. Simac (eds.) (1993): Le Nettoyage ethnique, Documents historiques sur une idéologie serbe, Paris: Arthème Fayard.
  • Honig, J.W. and N. Both (1996): Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
  • Hukanovic, R. (1997): The Tenth Circle of Death: A memoir of Life in the Death Camps of Bosnia, trans. C. London and M. Ridjanovic, London: Little, Brown & Co.
  • Morris, B. (1987): The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-49, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Rieff, D. (1995): Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West, London: Vintage.
  • Stiglmayer, A. (ed.) (1994): Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, trans. M. Faber, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

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