13 War propaganda aimed at Jewish opinion (excerpt)Heather Cottin
& Alvin DorfmanThere is at present widespread support in American public opinion for the policies of the U.S. government in the Balkans. It is a striking and dark paradox that Jewish opinion has played an important role in helping to mobilize that support.
U.S. policy in the Balkans has now carried the United States into direct intervention in two civil wars—one between Croatian Serbs and the new proto-fascist state of Croatia, and the other between the Bosnian Serbs and a Bosnian Muslim government that has become increasingly fundamentalist.
In the first case, the United States helped the new Croatia to plan, organize, and carry out the invasion of the Krajina region in Croatia, which led to the uprooting of more than a quarter of a million Serbs and the slaughter of thousands who tried to remain in their ancestral homes there.
In the second case, the U.S. used NATO, against the advice of many of its allies, to destroy the military infrastructure of the Bosnian Serb army and to shift the balance of power in favor of a minority Muslim government in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This, too, has led to the flight of well over one hundred thousand Bosnian Serbs.
In intervening in this manner, the United States has not just taken sides in an internal European war, it has allied itself with the most reactionary elements in Europe, including a newly expansionist, racist, and increasingly militaristic German government. Worse still, the United States, in order to create a more favorable atmosphere for the re-election of President Clinton, sought to impose an unworkable overall peace "settlement" in Yugoslavia and to enforce it with a NATO task force of sixty thousand, including some twenty-five thousand U.S. troops. Even Richard Holbrooke, the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, admits that this could well lead to another Vietnam.
To anyone who lived through World War II and who still understands the meaning of Nazism—and this applies especially to Jews—all this should be not just astonishing but repulsive. The United States in alliance with the German government is now pursuing policies very similar to those pursued by the Nazis in the Balkans. It was the Nazis who wished to splinter the Balkans in order to dominate the area. It was the Nazis who unleashed clerical fascism in Yugoslavia during World War II. And it was the Nazis who displayed a pathological hatred of the Serbs, as well as of Jews and Romani (Gypsies).
It is difficult to understand how U.S. policy toward the Balkans could have taken such a turn in any reasonably democratic country.
Unfortunately, a large part of the explanation is that public opinion in this matter has been driven into something like a frenzy by what seems to be an officially inspired and large-scale campaign of propaganda. No foreign policy can succeed without public support. And U.S. policy in the Balkans is clear testimony to that fact. Although as recently as four years ago, the American public did not even know the location of the regions known as Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, the Krajina, and Montenegro—and perhaps many Americans still don’t—key individuals and groups in this country were targeted for a propaganda barrage designed to demonize the Serbs, to hide the reality of Croatian fascism, and to canonize the Bosnian Muslims.
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The full text of this chapter is available in the book, NATO in the Balkans. Link here for order information.
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