Worldwide Java Jag: 2008-06-22

Monday, June 23, 2008

TRUCE AND CONSEQUENCES

There were two major events in the world last week. One received front-page attention; the other was buried, meriting a paragraph or two and little on-line action. The first, of course, was the truce between Hamas and Israel over Gaza. The second was The Hague lawsuit brought against the U.N by the survivors of the massacre at Srebrenica Bosnia in 1995. You may recall that Bosnia Serb soldiers systematically slaughtered over 8,000 Muslim men and boys while they were supposed to be in a U.N. protected “enclave.” Instead, according to Rizo Mustafic, an electrician whose entire family was murdered, Dutch troops under the U.N. flag just “handed them over to the Serbs.” Further, according to the lawsuit, this happened “before the eyes of the whole world.

There is a straight-line connection between Hamas, the Serbs, and the European reaction and behavior that weighs unconsciously on every Israeli. Without understanding and exploring that connection you cannot see the whole of Israel’s response to Gaza, Hezbollah or Iran in a clear light.

Look at the insight gleaned from Srebrenica. The brutality of the Serbian war against its Muslims is well documented. Murder, organized mass rape, ethnic cleanings and torture were everyday occurrences. This all happened right under the eyes of its European neighbors, a day’s drive away. I remember flying over Croatia on my way from Germany to Greece at the time and shuddering. I remember watching a plane full of unconcerned people, eating and drinking. I thought of the horrors taking place beneath me while Europe and the world stood by. I remember reflecting that this was how the world ignored the Jewish plight in Germany. It took the United States under Bill Clinton to put an end to the Bosnian misery and genocide.

Listen to the statements, read the position papers, the daily briefings, the newspaper interviews coming from Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani in Iran, Nasrailla of Hizzbollah in Lebanon, and Meshal of Hamas in Damascus and Gaza, and you will hear the same goal clearly articulated: the wish for a genocidal solution to the war for Palestine. The language is unambiguous, the vision graphically described, the threats unvarnished. The united aim of all three is Jew-free Palestine. Their military preparations parallel these statements. All three groups are armed to the teeth. The Gazan smuggling of ever more advanced arms is in high gear. Hizzbollah has rearmed its rocket launching capabilities at levels far greater than before and Iran is openly taunting the whole world to stop them from racing to build a nuclear bomb.

The European reaction is very muted -- more talks, more incentives, more failure to stop the Iranians. Their sole arsenal is more dialogue, more attempts at mediation. They cannot see the consequences of their own passivity.

One has to be very thankful for the litigants against the U.N. for bringing the failure of European military will to the world’s attention once again. The Europeans, always marchers for human rights, violated the most basic rights of the Bosnian Muslims … to live. It is not hard to picture what would happen to the Israelis if its enemies got the upper hand. You only have to go back to 1995 Srebrenica, not 1941 Kiev and Russia’s eastern front.

We all want an end to rockets and bombs. Truces are a nice thing, as are prisoner exchanges and talks between warring states. We all wish for peace and happiness. But if you live in Israel and you wake up in the middle of the night with dark thoughts about other countries’ will to defend you, it probably helps to go back to sleep by knowing you can defend yourself.