Here you have the poignant and telling summary of one troubled Jew who is forced by NATO's war in Kosovo to confront the Jewish leadership and come to grips with their lack of ethics and morality in spite of their facile platitudes so easily and frequently mouthed.
Another reality check - for yet one more thinking Jewish intellectual!
My only question is: Why did it take so long?
This letter was sent to the Zundelsite via Truth-in-Media <timed@mail.djurdjevic.com> reporting on the Kosovo War:
"An Open Letter to My Jewish Friends"
BOSTON, May 5 - ". . . just as we finished it, we received "an open letter to my Jewish friends," written by David Mladinov, the Cultural Arts Director of the Leventhal-Sidman JCC, and Artistic Director of the Jewish Theatre of New England. Here are some excerpts from it:
"Since the beginning of the attack on Yugoslavia, the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress in Boston gave their full support of the NATO's bombings. It is hard to tell whether their endorsement is an act of opportunism or ignorance. It is definitely not the expression of high moral standards they would like us to believe.
I am not familiar with the decision making process of their main offices in New York. For that reason I will limit my remarks to the actions of their Boston representatives in this open letter.
I have known Ms. Sheila Decter the Director of the American Jewish Congress in Boston for more than 20 years. We collaborated on many occasions on the variety of cultural programs. I cooperated frequently with Lawrence Lowental, the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee. Together we introduced the film "The Righteous Enemy." A segment of the documentary deals with the Italian occupation of the Croatian province of Dalmatia where my entire family was killed during the Second World War.
As a child of the Holocaust survivors and with my own personal history of victimization, when at 12, a group of Croatian youths almost killed me and tried to burn me in a school stove, I am very sensitive to any kind of religious or racial intolerance. I am opposed to persecution of civilians, as much as the directors of the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee are. Still, I do not hold all Germans or all Croatians responsible for the fate of my family, or for my personal experience.
Since the beginning of the ethnic fighting in Yugoslavia eight years ago, both the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee have taken one sided and partial view of the conflict. The organizations have distorted the truth, have refused to hear the grievances of the other side, and have suppressed information they possessed, all in order to support their preconceived notion of who the innocent victims are, and who the murderers in the civil war. It might have been easier to sell this black and white picture to their members, but the picture in no way reflects the facts. Throughout the conflict militias and paramilitary forces belonging to all sides have committed atrocities against civilians and other ethnic groups. To single out only the Serbs, and especially all Serbs is not only incorrect, but immoral.
I strongly believe that all those responsible for the war crimes should be brought to justice by impartial international courts, regardless of their nationality. I also believe that international order should be upheld by the UN and World Court to prevent the small and weak nations from being destroyed by either evil or self-righteous empires. I also believe, as naive as it may sound, that all nations and all conflicts should be judged by the same standards while ethnic strife should be resolved peacefully, through negotiations and not ultimatums and bombs.
After reading that the American Jewish Committee was a strong supporter of the bombings, I called Mr. Lowental. When I asked him why his organization did not endorse an intervention in Sudan where two million people have been killed in a civil war, or Rwanda where 600,000 were killed, as compared to 2,000 in Kosovo, Mr. Lowental responded that we (Who are we? Jews? Americans? NATO?) did not have any strategic interests in Africa.
How about East Timor (250,000 dead) or Sri Lanka (80,000 dead)? No strategic interests. How about China (1,500.000 dead), Kashmir (300,000) or Chechnya (250,000 dead)? His answer was that those countries had atomic weapons. We have been repeatedly given similar explanations by the US media and the US Government.
This means that our high moral standards apply only if the victims are Europeans, and if the perceived perpetrators do not have atomic weapons, or are not the American NATO friends, like Turkey. If that is the case, then it is understandable that the NATO attacked Yugoslavia.
Mr. Lowental pointed out to me that the American Jewish Committee could not stand silent while the ethnic cleansing was going on. Why was the Committee silent when 200,000 Krajina Serbs (out of total of 900,000 ethnically cleansed Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia) were expelled from Croatia four years ago? Mr. Lowental could not remember the incident.
Well, let me remind him. While the 150 miles long column of refugees in tractors and cars was harassed in Croatia, the US government sent a stern statement to Yugoslavia warning them not to settle the expelled refugees in several Serbian provinces with large minorities in order not to tilt the ethnic balance there. We have had a chance to hear many cynical pronouncements during the civil war in former Yugoslavia, but this one definitively tops them all. It would be pity for Mr. Lowental's checkered memory not to remember it, despite the fact that there is nothing the American Jewish Committee can do about that incident of ethnic cleansing now. [...]
The demonization of the Serbs and Yugoslavia by these two Jewish organizations extends to the Yugoslav Jews as well. During the sanctions, I suggested on several occasions that something should be done for the Yugoslav Jews so they would not feel completely isolated. The suggestion was met with complete indifference, even hostility. Not a single time did they speak to Aleksandar Singer, the President of the Jewish Federation in Belgrade, an Auschwitz survivor who also spent three years in a labor camp under communism, to find out what his views of the conflict were. Had they called Mr. Singer recently, they might have discovered that one of the first bombs dropped over Yugoslavia by the NATO, destroyed the old bridge in Novi Sad and the Holocaust memorial commemorating killing of 1219 people, 809 of them Jews at the site in 1942. They also might have heard that Yugoslav Jews feel perfectly safe in Belgrade, as do the other minorities, except for the NATO bombings. [...]
There is a Jewish saying that one who saves a human life, has saved the whole world. In contrast, to the humanitarian activities of the JOINT Distribution Committee, the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress have become vocal advocates of bombings and further killings, without helping anyone. [...]
Considering that prior to the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, there were no refugees outside of Kosovo, it is clear that it is the bombings that provoked a horrific outburst of ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces. This in no way absolves those committing the crimes from their responsibility.
The alliance's lofty pronouncements that it has nothing against Yugoslav people sound rather hollow in view of the mounting civilian casualties damaged cities and completely destroyed industry. The ecological disaster caused by the oil spillage into the Danube from the repeatedly hit refineries, poisonous fumes released from the chemical plants, use of the cluster bombs and low grade uranium, will be felt in the area for generations to come. Is this what we are supposed to support?
It is no coincidence that the countries closest to the conflict, Greece, Italy, Macedonia and the democratic government of the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, all oppose the NATO bombings as counterproductive.... It is equally understandable that the Yugoslav Jews, along with all other citizens of Yugoslavia, do not see the NATO action as a fight against Milosevic, but as a destructive war with an aim to destroy their country and their very existence. It is hard to fathom the blind arrogance and callousness of those living 5,000 miles away, with no understanding of the area, wishing to perpetuate the killings, in order to justify the disastrous and misguided decision by the US government and its NATO pawns. Is this what Jewish moral response should be according to the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Congress?
It is difficult to believe that only a month has passed since Mr. Lowental and I introduced to over six hundred people at the JFK Library in Boston the film "The Righteous Enemy." The documentary tells a story about courageous Italians, both military men and civilians, who during the Second World War defied their government in order to save thousands of lives. As we all know, it is always safer, more opportune and much more profitable to jump on a bandwagon. I can only wish that the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress might have learned something from this historic example. It is useless to honor the heroic deeds from the past, if we are, by following the stampede, unwilling to show the same compassion and concern for all victims of the conflict." <end>
I asked Ernst for his input on this remarkable letter, and here is his reply:
Now if David Mladinow could only apply his criteria to the whole Holocaust subject! He would really be able to free himself and most of his fellow Jews from the psychological prison the Holocaust story has brought about!
Don't we all know that the American leadership, along with most of the American Jewish intellectual and artistic elite, has taken a one-sided and partial view of the German/"Nazi"--Jewish conflict - not just for 8 years, as in the Serbian conflict, but for almost 70 years!
If, as David Mladinov points out, the Jewish leadership powers "have distorted the truth, have refused to hear the grievances of the other side, and have suppressed information they possessed, in order to support their preconceived notion of who the innocent victims are and who the murderers are..." then I must point out that that is exactly what the Jewish leadership has done to the German nation for 70 years in the so-called subject of the Holocaust and the underlying issues!
Their suppression of an honest Holocaust debate by draconian anti-Revisionist legislation, for which they clamored in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland and soon Canada, is living proof of this deliberate policy!
Their relentless pursuit and even assassination of people like Francois Duprat in France, Alex Odeh in America, the near-murder of Dr. Faurisson, myself, Jürgen Rieger and others for questioning and trying to show the "other side" of the issue is living proof of a deliberate global policy of suppression of Holocaust Revisionism for political reasons!
It is surprising that a Jew of Mladinov's sensitivities and intellect cannot readily see through the Jewish leadership's role in this Holocaust use and exploitation by his own communities' leaders. Only brainwashing and constant reinforcement by the media can possibly account for that.
Why can't Mladinov see that Israel's military and civilian leaders, as well as those of America, Russia, France, England, Poland, Czechoslovakia etc. should long ago have been tried for their crimes against the Palestinians, or the others for their crimes against the Germans immediately after World War II?
They had an instrument in place, even then, in Nuremberg to do ***equal justice***!
Instead, they only tried the vanquished! Talmudic situational ethics reign!
Thought for the Day:
"There are 4,000 ethnic groups in the world large enough to form states, but there are only 181 states in the U.N. - which means there will always be a chance for the proponents of multi-culturalism to enforce their liberal "chimera" with guns and bombs, if they win in Yugoslavia."
(Ernst Zündel)
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