From the Editor

Aftermath of Clinton's War

From the outset, when enthusiasm for NATO's attack on Yugoslavia was all but universal (especially among Jews), we at AFSI were highly critical of the campaign. Under Clinton's leadership, 19 nations, including the world's most powerful, pummeled a weak state to force it to relinquish sovereignty over a province that was integral to its history. The result was to convert a relatively low grade civil conflict into a humanitarian disaster as Albanian Kosovars were pushed out by angry Serbs ("You wanted NATO. Go to NATO" was the refrain many of the refugees reported hearing) and the population (Serbs and non-Serbs alike) of Yugoslavia suffered enormous economic damage.

Now, too late, some Jews at least are beginning to recognize they were "had." An article in the Jewish Week (July 23) carries the headline "Were We Duped?: Holocaust Imagery in Kosovo Now Seen as Manipulation." The article goes on to quote the UN's Paul Risley, a member of the war crimes tribunal, in USA Today as saying the portrayal of Kosovo as an inferno was "a trip up of the Western media and the Western governments." Even with the NATO-precipitated hostilities, current reports put the total number killed as 10,000, as the Jewish Week story notes "a slow week for a dozen other ethnic wars in this decade alone."

What is already absolutely clear is that Kosovo, in the aftermath, will be nothing like the stable, safe, democratic haven-for-all promised by Clinton and NATO. The New York Times of July 29 reports that the Kosovo Liberation Army has taken control of Kosovo, while the UN administration that was supposed to take over the province is nowhere in sight. The Serb minority is the first victim with looting, burning, kidnapping, and mass murder encouraging those who did not flee in the first days to flee now. Clinton will have made Kosovo, the birthplace of Serb national identity, "Serb-rein." Nor are Serbs the only victims. The Times notes that under KLA control, Kosovo is "slipping into the kind of gunslinging lawlessness that has characterized Albania in the last few years." Baton Haxhiu, editor of an Albanian-language daily in Kosovo, is quoted as saying "Each day it is becoming more dangerous to think and speak independently." Ibrahim Rogova, who headed the nonviolent movement of resistance to Yugoslav authority in Kosovo, returned to Italy after a brief visit to Kosovo made it clear to him that his life would be in danger if he returned. He has since made another attempt to go back. One businessman whose store and car have been confiscated by the KLA told the Times: "I am afraid. I survived Serb occupation to be destroyed by my own people."

Don't hold your breath waiting for Clinton to say "mea culpa" for bringing chaos and tyranny to Kosovo any more than for the KLA to turn over their weapons (as promised) to NATO forces.

Shimon Says

The ineffable Shimon is at it again, this time, it appears, plagiarizing his effusions. Speaking at an International Alliance for Arab-Israeli Peace held in Cairo on July 6 (duly reported in Ha'aretz of July 7), Peres announced: "The last two millennia were millennia of borders. The new millennium will be a millennium of horizons." Jerusalem resident Harry Melkman wrote to Ha'aretz to complain that Peres had lifted this from Pope John XXIII when he introduced Nostra Aetate in the Conference of Cardinals in 1963.

Pope John could afford to speak of vast horizons. He was referring to the Vatican's hope to re-evangelize a great section of the world. Shimon, on the other hand is busy making sure that Israel will soon lose its borders (to a Palestine that will know how to value them), leaving the Jews to contemplate, like their impelled-to-wander ancestors in the diaspora for two thousand years, a great many distant horizons.

Clinton's "Toy"

When Barak visited Washington in July, an enthusiastic Clinton exclaimed concerning the forthcoming talks: "I'm eager as a kid with a new toy." There's the rub. For Clinton the peace process is a toy, a game, a set of puzzle pieces he can manipulate. For Jews, Clinton's "toy" is the death of their two thousand year old dream of restoration, the death of the state and all too probably, the death of much of the Jewish people.

Outpost               - 2 -               July-August 1999