After the break-up of Serbia, I did a lot of research and came to the conclusion that Serbia was unjustly maligned. The Muslims were fighting them to achieve ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and ultimate secession. There was no massacre in Srebrenica as alleged. It was a major propaganda complaint that conned the world. Sound familiar? That’s why Freund talks about “Allegations of war crimes”. The sooner we restore relations the better. Of added interest is the fact that Russia has close ties with them and is developing closer ties with Israel. Ted Belman
How Serbia Could Emerge as a Bridge
By MICHAEL FREUND, Special to the NY Sun
Imagine a country with a long and proud history that is regularly vilified by the international press. It faces mounting pressure to concede its ancient heartland and turn its back on a central part of its cultural and spiritual heritage.
Surrounded by numerous foes, in a region where ancient hatreds run deep, this diminutive but intrepid people perseveres, standing firm on principle rather than selling out its age-old patrimony.
As familiar as this reality may sound to our Israeli ears, there is a country in the heart of Europe which would find it no less resonant: Serbia.
And given the close ties that existed between Serbs and Jews throughout much of the past thousand years, it behooves Israel and world Jewry to forge closer bonds with Belgrade.
Of course, for much of the past two decades, Serbia was viewed by many Jews as a pariah because of the Balkan wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Allegations of war crimes committed in Bosnia stirred up public opinion in America and the West, tarnishing the image of the Serbs and setting the stage for the subsequent confrontation over the status of Kosovo.
As a result, the age-old Serbian-Jewish relationship was nearly torn asunder, as many American-Jewish organizations and spokesmen chose to side with the Bosnians and the Kosovars in their struggle against the Serbs.
But the Serbia of 2012 is not the same as the Serbia of two decades ago. The country has changed course, leaving behind the authoritarianism of its past and fully embracing democratic values and norms. It has taken great strides to mend relations with its neighbors and extradited war crimes suspects to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
As a result, the European Union recently agreed to grant Serbia’s request to be an official candidate for membership, bringing it one step closer to full integration with the rest of Europe.
To be sure, Serbia continues to reject the idea of independence for Kosovo. But who can blame them? After all, history is clearly on their side.
By the end of the 12th century, Kosovo was serving as the administrative and spiritual center of Serbia. It remained so for two centuries until the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, when Ottoman Turkish invaders defeated the Serbs and their allies. Over time, Kosovo’s Serbs were largely displaced by Albanians, who now make up the majority of the province’s population.
But numerous medieval Serbian churches and monasteries that dot Kosovo’s landscape stand as tangible proof of the area’s historical identity.
So it is no wonder that successive Serbian governments have refused to countenance the idea of capitulating on the territory’s status.
However the Kosovo issue eventually plays out, Israel and world Jewry should seize the opportunity now to rekindle a stronger relationship with Belgrade.
From the start, the relationship between Serbs and Jews was shaped by a sense of humanity. In the 14th century, Jews fleeing persecution in Hungary found refuge in the Serbian kingdom.
And even after Serbia was defeated by the Ottoman Turks in 1389 and subsequently subjugated, the Serbs nonetheless welcomed Spanish and Portuguese Jews who were exiled from Iberia a century later.
The Serbian town of Zemun, on the outskirts of Belgrade, played an important role in the Zionist movement.
Rabbi Shlomo Alkalai, an early religious-Zionist visionary, preached there in the 19th century, and a Jewish couple grew up there whose grandson, Theodor Herzl, would later alter the course of Jewish history.
More recently, during the Holocaust, Jews and Serbs found themselves the targets of their Croatian fascist neighbors, the Ustashe, who were allied with Hitler and proved to be energetic executioners. The Ustashe slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews and more than half a million Serbs in an orgy of violence and terror that left deep scars throughout the region. That sense of shared suffering is one that Serbs continue to feel towards Jews, and it underlines their strong sense of solidarity with Israel and the challenges that it faces.
Indeed, in a August 3 interview I conducted with Serbian Ambassador to Israel Zoran Basaraba, which appeared in The Jerusalem Post , he highlighted what he described as “a natural affinity” between Serbs and Jews. This affinity, he believes, can serve as the basis for further enhancing ties between the two peoples.
But in order for this to happen, I believe that Israel and world Jewry must move now to embrace Serbia and to stop viewing the country solely through the lens of the Bosnian war and the Kosovo conflict.
The fact is that Serbia is uniquely positioned to serve as an important bridge between East and West. It has longstanding historical and ethnic ties to Russia, and it is poised to join the EU in the near future.
In the coming years, once its economy stabilizes and emerges from the doldrums, Serbia’s strategic and diplomatic importance will only continue to grow. And with militant Islam actively seeking a foothold in Europe – particularly in places such as Bosnia and Albania – Serbia will undoubtedly play an increasingly significant role on the front-lines of the war on terror.
During the 1990s, many American Jews rallied behind Bosnia and Kosovo, in effect viewing Serbia as a lost cause.
But in light of everything that has happened in the interim, it is time that we “find” Serbia again – both for their sake and our own.
Click on the map at this link to enlarge it. You will see that area of Europe was given to the U.S. in 1952. More on that here: In 1952, The Illuminati Planned to Station American Troops in the Balkans and Yugoslavia [Serbia, Macedonia, Boznia-Herzegovina]. One of those links speaks of Russian troops in the Southern US States.
eckleburg Said:
Yes. This is also strange. Belgrade.
Ex 23:22 But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries.
Gosh, wasn’t it a strange coincidence that just as Clinton was being impeached for the Monica Lewinsky affair he decided to bomb Belgrade.
Julia Gorin:
“The exhibit repeats the catchy statistic that Albania was the only European country to have more Jews after the war than at the beginning. Not only did Spain, Sweden and Finland all have more Jews after the war than at its outset, but the Albanian spin is careful not to mention Kosovo, where Albanians helped round up its Jews for its Nazi masters. More Jews were rounded up in Kosovo than existed in Albania before the war.
There were righteous among all the nations of Europe. Germans and other nationalities also saved many Jews. By that standard there is nothing distinct about the Albanian character although the exhibit would have us believe otherwise. Further, the propaganda of the exhibit wants one to assume that individual Albanian efforts were somehow unique in Yugoslavia, implying a contrast to Serbs. However, not only were Serbs the only Balkan people to be consistently anti-Nazi, but thousands of Serbian families risked all to save Jews. There are only about 150 Serbs documented among the Righteous at Yad Vashem, mainly because Serbs didn’t promote their good deeds after the war. Even so, 150 Serbs are still more than the 60-some Albanian Righteous documented at Yad Vashem and getting all the attention.
In a July 1997 letter to the Washington Times, retired Air Force Colonel George Jatras wrote, “Serbian families took in Jewish children as their own in order to protect them from the horrors of Croatia’s death camps. Upon being discovered protecting these children, entire Serbian families were executed… ‘In the Serbian mountains Jews were welcomed by the Serbian partisans with open arms.'” The Serbs did not foresee that an expansionist rival would use its own Jew-saves as a weapon against them to advance a political objective.
When dealing with questions of Albanian righteous and Serb righteous there must be a historical context. Jews and Serbs were both targeted in World War II, and both are targeted today. Albanians were not targeted then, and are not imperiled today. On the contrary, they are expanding – and getting a second state. While the righteous are best remembered as individuals, the stigma of what different societies did during the war remains.
In more recent history, when Jews lined up with Albania’s carve-out of Kosovo from Serbian territory, John Ranz, chairman of Survivors of Buchenwald, USA, called what the west’s historically shallow Jews helped do to Serbia “our greatest shame.” ”
In essence, Besa and similar revisionisms are being marketed by the global forces behind the Kosovo narco-terrorist state.
Yamit,
The Germans in Serbia rounded up Jews, not the Serbs in Serbia.
Albania supported naziism then, and supports it today, where their lobby supported the theft of Kosovo from the Serbs. You are correct that there is *bigtime* money and effort going into the whitewashing of Islamic naziism from WWII.
And it’s a lie, both with regard to the Jews and with regard to the Serbs.
Julia Gorin has explained this ‘besa’ campaign rather well. Don’t believe the hype.
http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2485
Read thru her links. There are no NGOs funding Julia Gorin. The ‘international community’ is not sending any money her way. In essence, the Hajj Amin al Husseini movement against the Serbs (a movement supported by US policy) is no less evil and wrong than the same movement when killing Jews.
@ jrob:
How many Jews survived in Sebia?
How many Jews survived in Albania and kosovo?
Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II
Albania had more Jews after the war than before the war. Not a single Jew is known to have been betrayed or turned over to the Nazis!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD7gxkL13m8&feature=bf_next&list=PL6E7E4B965F4CEB5C
@ warren raymond:
Isn’t ignorance wonderful and safe?
CBS Special on Jewish in Albania
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG9FHWx6cQU&feature=bf_prev&list=PL6E7E4B965F4CEB5C
@ warren raymond:
Why should US media celebrate the handful of Muslims that acted human instead of the many thousands of Serbs that not only acted human, but fought back against the 3rd Reich??
The Serbs ousted their quisling Nedic. All statements that entail the revisionist whitewashing of Albanians should be rejected. I know that Julia Gorin has researched and written on the ’rounding up’ of the Jews of Serbia. This was done by the Germans that were in Serbia, not by the native population.
http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2849
Some might say: how can I trust her account?? Her account becomes increasingly ‘on the mark’ as one reads encyclopedias and such going back to WWII, not to mention that there is a global movement to whitewash and lie for the movement of Hajj Amin al Husseini, who not only hated the Jews of palestine, but also hated the Serb enemies of his nazi masters. To disbelieve Gorin is to say, ‘well I guess I can believe the Husseiniphiles when it comes to the Serbs’. She and others have spent years pouring through the old newspapers and texts and it all exonerates the Serbs.
Now there’s the witchhunt against diabolical ‘anti west’ Serb leaders like Mladic. Too bad that so many nitwits need to look to State Department liars to decide who is ‘evil’. Said liars also think that Jewish landowners are evil. Let’s not pick and choose. As long as the State Department and NATO are the gold standard, we might as well not support Israel at all.
@ yamit82:
“Had to do with their code of honor”— must be the honor among thieves, I haven’t found much of that among Albanians.
And yes, Jrob, “big-lie media loves to celebrate the handful of Muslims that saved Jews during WWII”- which is part of giving muslims credit for what exactly? For being human?
About a decade ago I covered an event in Toronto, for a newspaper, where Gen. Lewis Mackenzie was the main speaker. He was the commander of western forces in the Bosnian war. During his speech, although he was careful in his wording, he made it clear that we were on the wrong side. He did not say we should have supported the Serbs but that we should not have been supporting the Bosnians.
It’s shameful how western governments treated the Bosnians like heroic victim. And it’s all being repeated with Israel and the Arabs.
Historical revisionism going on. The Serbs, and only the Serbs fought back. Julia Gorin and Jared Israel (‘Roots of Kosovo Fascism’) more than amply refute the revisionism (which unfortunately is even supported by yad vashem). No other people overthrew their Hitler appointed quisling leader and fought back as the Serbs did.
“The definitive work on Hitler’s “Final Solution” in Yugoslavia [17] estimates that 550 Jews lived in Kosovo when Hitler took over Yugoslavia. 210 of them, or 38 percent, were murdered in Kosovo, mainly by Albanians. In fact, the Skanderbeg division’s first operation was to act as an Einsatzgruppe [18] against the Jews, and its second was a similar extermination foray against the Serb village of Velika where more than 400 Serbians were murdered. [19]
?edomir Prlin?evi?, head of the Jewish community in Priština and an executive of the provincial archives, has explained to Emperor’s Clothes that the Jews who were not murdered outright were sent by the Skanderbeg division to the German death camps Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen. One train, on its way to the latter camp, took the wrong track and was intercepted by advancing Russian soldiers. According to Mr. Prlin?evi?, were it not for that fortunate detour, the entire Jewish population of Kosovo would have been eliminated. [20]
Although KLA supporters now claim that no Jews were killed in Kosovo and that Jews were sheltered by the Kosovo Albanians, such claims are false and should be treated the same way we would treat other Holocaust denials.”
The NATO country big-lie media loves to celebrate the handful of Muslims that saved Jews during WWII instead of telling the truth about the Serbs–who opted out of the savagery entirely.
@ Eric R.:
Had to do with their code of honor in protecting strangers, with their lives if necessary.
I happen to know a few Serb immigrants here from different parts of my life (none of them actually know each other), and they happen to be pro-Israel, probably due to the idea that they view Muslims as the common enemy.
Yes, the Serbs did lead the resistance to the Nazis in Yugoslavia in WW2, and the Croats (because of Jasenovac and the Ustashe) and the Bosnian Muslims (due to the Hanshar SS Division) had worse records when it came to Jews, and the Croats, upon independence in the 1990s, elected the neo-fascist Franjo Tudjman to power.
However…..
the fact is that Belgrade was declared Judenrein within a few months of Nazi occupation (the first city they so declared by Hitler) because there were in fact, quite a few Serbs all too ready to help round up and deport Jews.
Like the Bulgarians (who saved their Jews but deported those of Macedonia), their record in WW2 is comparatively better than their neighbors, but still not all that great.
The Albanians actually did a better job of protecting Jews than did Serbs. This may have been due to their being occupied by Italy rather than Germany, but it is true nevertheless.
Now, Israel is pursuing good relations with Serbia, in part for the reasons described in this article – and these are the same reasons that drive her to improve relations with Greece, Bulgaria and even Croatia. But let’s not whitewash the extermination of Serbian Jews, either.
@ Bert:
LOL
The State Department really lynched the Jews pretty good with this one (with the faux-Jew Albright leading the bloodthirsty rampage). Luckily, the Serbian people actually seem very normal and aren’t actually attacking anyone in response. Albright’s family was saved by Serbs, making her one of the more revolting kapos in world history.
Thank you for this valuable background and suggestions. Israel has to look out for it own interests. I recall that it was Bill Clinton and his Jewish National Security Advisor Sandy Berger who launched a murderous air war against the Serbs. I also recall that Russia was close to the Serbs and very angry at what the U.S. was doing to them. Sandy Berger was the one who stole classified documents with Clinton’s hand written notes in the margins and ‘accidentaly’ dropped them into his socks and walked out with them. No jail time just a fine.