Looking Back in Pain: Jews and Kosovo
By Helen Fein
Why should American Jews care about what NATO does in Yugoslavia and what the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia does in Kosovo? And what are they really doing? How much can we believe of what we read that the US and NATO say and what we see on CNN?
We care for several reasons: we are human, we are Americans, we are Jews. We have been strangers and are instructed not only to care for strangers because we know the heart of a stranger, but also not to do to others what we would not have done to us and to love our neighbors like ourselves. And we care because we have been expelled many times and have been the victims of genocide in this century. So there is another injunction: act like you would like to have others act toward your people when they were threatened.
While there are valid differences of opinion about what policies and strategies the US and NATO should have applied to Yugoslavia in the last ten years, these differences do not make them responsible for President Milosevic's policies in Kosovo. In response to ethnic friction between Albanian Kosovars and Serb Kosovars, Serbia took away autonomy from Kosovo and imposed severely discriminatory policies against the Albanian Kosovars in the last decade, extinguishing hope. The influx of arms from Albania after its breakdown of authority in 1997 to Kosovo led to the formation and growth of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Their attacks against Serbs and Serbian forces provoked collective retaliation against Albanian Kosovars, which escalated last winter to massacre. The cease fire agreed to by Yugoslavia last year, bringing in the international monitors to Kosovo, was broken almost immediately. The steady escalation of repression and "ethnic cleansing" led to NATO's attempt to impose a peace plan and the current bombing. This seems to have led Serbia to rush and expand a process which had already begun in Kosovo.
What is Serbia doing in Kosovo? "Ethnic cleansing" -- an abominable term -- begins with expulsion of the civilian population at the point of the gun, itself a crime against humanity, and may be a substitute or precedent or may co-exist with genocide. According to the Convention On The Prevention and Punishment of The Crime of Genocide (passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, ratified in 1951), "genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part..."
We are witnessing genocide-in-the-making. Officials of the US, Britain, Germany, and NATO have come to this conclusion. Refugee testimony of massacres (and one videotape) provide direct evidence of this. Although NATO has made errors (in one case falsely reporting that an Albanian Kosovar leader was executed), this does not indicate there is a campaign of misinformation or that their interpretation of Serb policy is incorrect.
It is also clear that the Serbs' destruction of identity documents (passports, visas, marriage and property records) are elements in their campaign to reform Kosovo demographically -- that is, to solve their Albanian problem by getting rid of the Albanian Kosovars (Yugoslav citizens) and preventing their return. Like many other users of genocides, they seek to annihilate or expel groups who do not fit.
This bestows upon the international community the responsibility to prevent further genocide, enable the refugees to go home under secure conditions, and punish the perpetrators.
The Institute for the Study of Genocide signed a statement on April 1 with nine other human rights and humanitarian groups appealing to the Clinton administration and to allied government "to immediately deploy a NATO protection force: to remove all Serb police and military forces from Kosovo before they execute those Kosovar Albanian civil society leaders who are still alive and kill or forcibly displace the remaining population from their homes and villages; to create a safe zone for refugees and displaced [peoples] to return home and to aid local and international humanitarian organizations to assist them in rebuilding their homes and communities...and to punish those responsible for genocide."
Military intervention on the ground is seen as undesirable by many. But the alternative is worse. In the long run, we need either an international or NATO (and other regional) volunteer rapid reaction force to deter and stop genocide, but we cannot wait for the long run now.
Of course, as Jews, we look back at this season of the year to the Exodus and to the Holocaust. The causes of Kosovo and response are different; indeed, each genocide is different. But while the motives of the oppressor is something we infer in each case, the pain of the oppressed is something we know.
So I offer a post-Pesach and pre-Holocaust commemoration midrash today.
There was one Pharaoh, but pharaohs reoccur throughout history and commit great wrong: slavery, planned famine and genocide. The plagues occurred because Pharaoh was intransigent, did not respond to warnings, did not keep his promises. Today, 30 generations later (at least), we cannot rely on God if we do not do our part. We can not stand by and keep watching this unfolding and say again, "Never again." The first plague -- air power -- is not working. All military authorities (and NATO planners) have said or know that it will be necessary to bring in ground troops at some point, if only to create a safe haven to enable Kosovars to return. Now, humanitarian intervention means war and war is another plague. Yet it is better to intercede now than to enable the perpetrators to get away with it. There is no promised land for the victims if they cannot return to their homeland.
The Pharaoh suffered from a hardened heart. We cannot wait for the hearts of pharaohs to soften. We have to respond to the victims whose right to live is threatened and make such pharaohs stop now.
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