|
NOTES
- Allison Kaplan and Tom Tugend, `US Jews Call
for Action against Serb Atrocities', The Jerusalem Post,
6. Aug. 1992.
- Moshe Zak, `Bosnian Lessons for the Golan',
The Jerusalem Post, 22 July 1995.
- `Srbi u Hrvatskoj: zakletva novog
predsjednika' [Serbs in Croatia: Oath of the New President],
Danas (Zagreb weekly), 10 March 1992.
- 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.
- Roger Faligot, `Mossad Helped Jews to Flee
from Serbia', The European, 3-6 June 1993.
- 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.
- For example, Teddy Preuss in Davar,
14 May 1992.
- For example, Yosef Lapid in Ma'ariv, 9 Aug.
1992.
- For example, Payit Ravina in Davar,
18 Feb. 1994; Yohanan Ramati in The Yerusalem Post, 17
April 1995.
- Quoted in Yated Hashavna, 14 Aug.
1992.
- On Serbian historical revisionism, see Cohen [1996].
- 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.
- 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.
- Yosef Goell, in The Jerusalem Post,
10 Nov. 1994, 21 Nov. 1994, 11 Aug. 1995.
- 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.
- On the history of the idea and practice of
`ethnic cleansing', see Grmek, Gjidra and Simac [1993].
- 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.
- 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.
- This, of course, does not help explain
Israel's pro-Serbian stance in the war in Croatia.
- 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.
Back to
Israel and the war in the Balkans
|