Jewish Affairs - South African Jewish Board of Deputies

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JEWISH AFFAIRS ROSH HASHANAH 2012OBSERVATIONS ON SERBS, JEWS ANDISRAELIS: A PLEA FOR UNDERSTANDING*Richard BurnsThe geo-historical zone of the Balkans isnotoriously full of contradictions. Yet, a fullerunderstanding of current and recent attitudes andpolicies in each of the Balkan nations vis-à-visboth Jews and Israel is called for. In order tocreate an intelligible composite picture, it isnecessary to develop a series of studies of each ofthe Balkan nations, including and most importantthe newly independent political entities thatemerged during the 1990s on the ruins ofYugoslavia.As if anyone needed reminding, theparadigmatic relevance of the Balkans to globalpolitics is indelibly marked by the fact that theWorld War I was triggered in 1914 by theassassination of the Austrian Archduke FranzFerdinand by the Yugoslav nationalist GavriloPrincip on a Sarajevo street corner. In whatfollows, however complex the issues, it is arguedthat the Balkans needs to remain a key region forIsrael-watchers to watch, especially bearing inmind the expansion of strict Wahabi and extremistIslam in Bosnia-Hercegovina since the 1990s.When it comes to the Balkans, there has neverbeen much value in making sweepinggeneralisations. For example, truths that apply tothe contemporary (Former Yugoslav Republicof) Macedonia are evidently irrelevant tocontemporary Bosnia. Details, even if not exactlypossessors of proverbial devils, are vitallyimportant both historically and in thecontemporary context and should never beunderestimated or dismissed as ‘merely local’phenomena. The Balkans have always been apatchwork quilt, and therefore notoriouslydifficult to understand in terms of languages,religions, cultures and politics. And never moreso than today, for the evident reason that, sincethe collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, theBalkans have been systematically re-balkanised,both by their indigenous political leaders and bythe strenuous efforts of the determiners of NATOpolicies.I believe that to build up such an understanding,Richard Burns is a UK-based writer, editor, poetand lecturer, who has lived and worked for asignificant period in the Balkans. His first book ofpoetry, The Easter Rising, was published in 1967.He was educated at University College – Londonand lectured at Cambridgeshire College of Artsand Technology (now Anglia Ruskin University).state-by-state, is of crucial importance not onlybecause of the geographical proximity of theBalkan Peninsula to Israel, but because each oneof the various independent political entities andcorresponding nationalisms that have emergedsince the fall of Yugoslavia impinges in a slightlydifferent way both on Israel and on Jewsthroughout the world. The situation is made allthe more complex by the rapid and almostsynchronous collapse, in the early 1990s, of allCommunist regimes throughout the region,especially the fall of NicolaeinRomania in December 1990. Hence the need toexamine changes in attitude and policy in bothRumania and Bulgaria too.Various current Western myths also needquestioning and exploding, and complex situationsthat have been oversimplified in a facile manner,possibly for ephemeral political convenience, needto be accurately restated with proper recognitionof their intricacies. Aside from the deliberateconstruction of myths for ideological purposes,even dialectical thinking that is honourablymotivated by the search for truth all too easilygets distorted by simplification. What followscan be no more than a set of preliminary forayswith these factors in mind.Since the early 1990s, when several of theleading NATO powers were actively fosteringthe dissolution of Yugoslavia, notably the USAand Germany – culminating in the RambouilletAgreement in 1999 – Serbia has tended to bemisunderstood and maligned in the Westernmedia; and an antipathetic, even evil stereotypehas been fostered in the popular European andAmerican imagination, with Slobodanfiguring as the prime bogey, and the Bosnian Serbmassacre of Bosnian Moslems at Srebrenica asthe main emotive trigger. Since ’s deathin 2006, this bugbear-figure has been replaced byanother, also a prisoner of the International Courtin The Hague, the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan. Atrocities committed by Serbs inKosovo and Bosnia are undeniable. However,their opponents in the various conflicts of the1990s have also been responsible for war crimesranging from rapes, murders and beheadings (inBosnia-Hercegovina), to desecration of religioussites (in Bosnia and Kosovo) and forced migrationof entire communities (in the Krajina). However,for reasons that in retrospect appear no lessirrational, prejudiced and hard to explain than the26
JEWISH AFFAIRS ROSH HASHANAH 2012psycho-political nexus of antisemitism itself,negative prejudice against Serbs has becomestandard in the West. Consonant with this closedcircuit of belief arousing suspicion, suspicionfeeding accusation, and accusation creating morebelief, far less attention has been paid in the Westto atrocities committed by Croats, BosnianMoslems and Albanian-speaking Kosovars againstSerbs. Moreover, Serbs have been said bynumerous influential Western political analystsand journalists to have a ‘persecution complex’,an accusation likely to be quite familiar topolitically astute Israelis, and liable to raisesceptical eyebrows among such observers. 1For these complex and circuitous reasons, inrecent years many Serbs have grown increasinglysympathetic towards Jews and Israel, to the extentthat they have tended actually to identify theirown country’s ostracisation, vilification and even‘demonisation’ – by Western politicians, mediaand political theorists – with traditionalantisemitism. Non-coincidentally, during thisentire period, to the best of my knowledge, Serbiahas striven to foster a philosemitic and pro-Israelpolicy.By contrast, the first President of independentCroatia, Franjo Tudjman, who was never directlyopposed by Western regimes, was an explicitantisemite and Holocaust denier and ran agovernment that was no more democratic thanthat of . His supporters included previousUstaše members in exile in Canada, Australia,Argentina and other countries, and their families,some of whom returned to fight against Serbsduring the collapse of Yugoslavia and haveremained in Croatia since.As for Bosnia-Hercegovina, an internationalMujahedin regiment was assiduously assembledto fight in the Bosnian war, which lasted from1992 to 1995. Their presence was welcomed byBosnian president Alija Izetbegoviæ and there areplentiful records of his meetings with Mujahedin,including members of al-Qaeda. Those Mujahedinwho rallied to Bosnia included radicalised Moslemstudents born and educated in various Europeancountries and bearing passports of EU memberstates, including the UK. Al-Qaeda leaders wereclear in their policy towards the Bosnian war:they treated it as a preparation ground forinternational Jihad. Ayman al-Zawahiri, OsamaBin Laden’s second-in-command, is reputed tohave co-ordinated several Mujahedin operationsin Bosnia-Hercegovina through the fronts ofcharity organisations, and to have visited Sarajevo.His brother Zaiman al-Zawahiri is thought tohave worked for the CIA against the Serbs inKosovo. The most superficial browsing of theInternet indicates accumulated evidence of thiskind, even bearing in mind the necessity forcaution about the reliability of such material. Thefinancing for ’s overall war effort andin particular for Moslem extremists in Bosniaalso needs further investigation and identification.Fairly reliable western investigations point tobanks and NGOs operating in Bosnia, with fundingsources in Islamic countries including Saudi-Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Algeria, Iran andSudan, and with links ranging from al-Qaeda,Hamas, Hezbollah, the Egyptian terrorist groupAl-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and other Moslemorganisations identified in the USA as ‘suspectedof terrorism’, to the Saudi royal family and theIranian Ministry of Intelligence & Security. 2Since the end of the Bosnian war, largeinvestments have been made in Bosnia-Hercegovina by Saudi-Arabia, for example in thebuilding of the large King Fahd Mosque inSarajevo. The previously ‘European’, easy-going,urbane Bosnian version of Islam has beenprogressively radicalised by far stricter Wahabieducational programmes and conversioncampaigns, sponsored primarily by investmentfrom Saudi-Arabia and the Gulf States. 3Because the relevance of these indicators toIsrael cannot be underestimated, especially thosethat reflect the rise of Islamic extremism, it wouldbe salient in a series of studies such as those Ipropose, to explore the histories of the treatmentsof Jewish communities in each of the Balkannations, with respect to patterns of bothantisemitism and philosemitism.In this context, the period of the occupation ofGreece and former Yugoslavia during the SecondWorld War by the Nazis and their Fascist Italianand Bulgarian allies needs special and careful reexaminationand re-analysis. This applies likewiseto the persecution of Jews, Serbs, Roma andCommunists by the Ustaša regime in wartimeCroatia, not to mention the enlistment anddeployment of Bosnian, Albanian and volunteerArab (Moslem) soldiers in Croatia in the 13thWaffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar(1943-44), and the key role in its formation byHitler’s trusted ally, the Grand Mufti of JerusalemHaj Amin el-Hussein, who visited Bosnia onHitler’s instructions in 1943. Properlycontextualised analysis of all these historical factsand their underlying patterns should inform andunderpin current Israeli policies.Here follow some relevant notes on wartimepersecution of Jews in Croatia and Serbia.In the immediate wake of the Nazi invasionand dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941,the ‘Independent State of Croatia’ was establishedas a pro-Nazi government. Its ideology wasconcocted from a mixture of Nazism, ItalianFascism and an extremist local form of RomanCatholic fanaticism. The Ustaša dictatorshipinaugurated its racial policies as soon as it cameinto power. Between August 1941 and April 1945,the systematic annihilation of all Serbs, Jews andRoma living within the Croatian borders, as wellas of anti-Fascists of many ethnicities, took placeat the death camp known as Jasenovac, a complexof five major and three smaller ‘special’ camps,spread out over 240km² in south-central Croatia.27
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