The Secret Handshake with the Snake

source: b92.net

Hashim ‘’The Snake” Thaci is a war criminal and a terrorist, according to Serbia’s government and probably every Serb this side of Nataša Kandić agrees with this assessment.  President Tomislav Nikolić has reiterated that, while being aware that the official Belgrade must continue talking with the Kosovo Albanian secessionists, he refused to meet with the suspected war criminal sitting in the chair of the so-called Kosovo Prime Minister. On Friday, however, a bombshell piece of news broke the Serbosphere: Ivica Dačić, Serbia’s Prime Minister, just finished meeting with Hashim Thaci in Brussels! No announcement in Serbian media, no hint that this is the new official course Serbia is taking towards the Kosovo secession issue, just a “this-just-in” news report of the event that just happened, followed with cries by the patriotic side of the Serbosphere, accusing Dačić of treason, his Socialist Party spin masters patting their leader on the back for carrying the “heavy burden” and dealing with the Kosovo issues resolutely and the co-opted Serbian media following suit.

I will not delve into the implications. I want to dwell on the reactions to the actual meeting from both Serbs and Kosovo Albanians.

First, let’s look at how one would expect either side to react.

Thaci was arrested in Budapest in 2003 and let go immediately after the intervention of the then-UNMIK head Michael Steiner. The arrest was based on Serbia’s international arrest warrant from 1997, which hasn’t been withdrawn by as late as 2010, according to Snežana Malović, Serbia’s Minister of Justice in the Mirko Cvetković cabinet. All reports point towards it still being in effect. The well-publicized report to the Council of Europe by the Swiss Deputy Dick Marty put Thaci squarely at the center of the organ extraction and trafficking operations, but the failure of the Hague Tribunal’s investigators to even touch the subject was as glaring an evidence as any of Thaci being protected from high circles of European politics. The Interpol does not list him as a person wanted by Serbia, but Malović accused the international police agency of refusing to list him claiming he enjoys diplomatic immunity. He is a diplomat of which internationally recognized country or an intergovernmental agency exactly? In any case, Thaci is considered a criminal in Serbia, a leader of the Albanian takeover of Kosovo and a devil himself. Yet, in the face of the sentiment that should be grounds enough to refuse any dealing with Thaci and to renew the calls for his arrest, Dačić allows himself to be summoned to Brussels by Catherine Ashton and to shake hands with the symbol of Serb suffering and the dismemberment of Serbia.  If Barack Obama even floated the idea of meeting Osama bin Laden, instead of assassinating him (reportedly), Joe Biden would be nesting behind the big desk in the Oval Office now and the Clintons would laugh. Yes, Thaci is the Serbian Osama bin Laden and it would be reasonable to expect that a meeting with him at the highest level would cause riots in Serbia.

On the other hand, one would expect the Kosovo Albanians to gloat over the fact that Serbia was forced to place the resolution of the status of their secession as the top national priority by Belgrade and that the Serbian Prime Minister himself was forced to have a sit-down with their warlord and the drug cartel master. Borislav Stefanović, the former negotiatior of technical terms, was an emissary, an apparatchik who signed off on all the Albanian demands that his boss, Boris Tadić, had agreed to from Belgrade. Forcing Dačić, however, to stoop down to Thaci’s level must be a reason to gloat, right? Wrong.

Let’s now see how diagonally opposite to the expectations the reactions have been.

source: b92.net

On Monday, while Belgrade was peaceful, as it was the entire weekend and as if its Prime Minister didn't just shake hands with the Snake, Priština was rioting! The followers of Albin Kurti, the leader of the Self-Determination Movement, clashed with police, trying to overrun the Kosovo Parliament in a protest over the meeting. They accused Thaci of treason and carried banners calling for a cessation of talks with Serbia and a move towards unification with Albania. Kurti and his movement are an ultranationalist challenge to the rule of Thaci’s crime ring and this wasn’t the first time they used force against the Thaci regime. But an instance in which Thaci, despite the war crimes and terrorism baggage, got to sit at the same table with Serbia’s Prime Minister in the process of what might end up being a recognition of Kosovo’s independence, was not likely to become a cause for a protest by radical ultranationalists. Yet it was.

In Serbia, only one political party – the extra-parliamentary and now largely irrelevant Serbian Radical Party – openly accused Dačić of treason. While the Albanians consider any conversation with Serbia a treason, Serbs haggle over banalities such as whether Dačić shook Thaci’s hand – allusion to Tadić’s embarrassing handshake with Thaci in Croatia after his presidential election loss – instead of asking the Prime Minister, the President and their media the only legitimate question here: When exactly has it been decided and to whom exactly was it announced that the new official course in “defending” the southern province was embarked onto? Why was the meeting kept secret until it ended? And why was Serbian media playing deaf-mute? If the Prime Minister is meeting with Thaci, that’s a new, self-depreciating, shameful course for Serbia. But even Vojislav Koštunica’s Serbian Democrats characterized the meeting only as “damage to Serbian national interests.”

The media, most of which is still controlled by the Democratic Party-imposed cadre, has done a great job of misinforming the Serbian public and minimizing the effects and reverberations such a colossally important event was bound to cause. The fact that no media outlet – to my knowledge – announced the meeting is indicative of the confluence of interests that created the context. Serbian media’s pro-Western editors, ever trigger-happy when a chance to embarrass the new government presents itself, stayed embarrassingly quiet and passed on the chance to call Dačić out in the run-up to the meeting.  I can understand why the outlets close to the government or inching towards its good graces kept they air waves and presses shut, but I can only explain this momentous development on the former Tadić regime media side by pointing towards their cue givers in Brussels who wanted nothing to undermine the preparations for the historic event. They couldn't afford to allow a negative reaction in Serbia a week before the meeting to shake Dačić's resolve. I mean, why would, otherwise, the outlets such as Blic or B92 spare Dačić? Only a week or so before these same outlets blasted Dačić for misspeaking at a German World War II victims’ commemoration, when he blamed “criminals” who have murdered Serbs in the past for blocking Serbia's EU bid today. Now, this is attack-worthy and the Thaci meeting is not? It wasn't a big deal that no one informed the Serbian media that there was going to be a meeting of historic proportions? The media spin that followed was best depicted in the quote they beat us over the head with: ‘’’I told him (Thaci) that Kosovo is as much mine as it is his, I was born in Kosovo,’ noted the premier.’’ You officially met with the war criminal, unannounced, almost secretly, without regard to the official policy of the rest of your government, that’s what you did. Who cares what you told him?...

And just to touch on the actual implications of the meeting… Whoever waves this meeting off as a chess move, know that Serbia is several moves behind and very uncomfortable with the clock. Talking with Kosovo Albanian officials is one thing and regardless of the context in which the Serbian public places the Kosovo secession, their attitudes are a reality and cannot be ignored. Talking with Hashim Thaci, on the other hand, is out of question as a circumstance resulting from any kind of strategic maneuvering, because it not only sends contradictory message from the very top of the Serbian government, one that shows no coherence and no elements of leadership, but it also departs from the set bargaining attitude, however feeble, and, more importantly, from the self-respect position that every negotiator must establish and project.

Treason or not, Dačić’s handshake with the Snake charts a new course in Serbia’s politics: one that opens Serbia up for anything, one that has no aces up its sleeve, one that goes all in against the weathered Brussels big stack bullies who brought Serbia to its knees in the first place and who don’t even have to hide behind a poker face anymore.

Generals and Efendis: Leveling the Field of Sins

source: serbianna.com

Among other well-publicized issues, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić drew more positive attention to himself in the past few days by calling to accountability a fellow minister who participated in the ceremony of unveiling of a commemorative plaque in honor of a well-known Fascist from the World War II era. Namely, Minister Sulejman Ugljanin, a Bosniak from the Raška region, was present at the commemoration of one Aćif Hadžiahmetović, better known as Aćif Efendi, in Novi Pazar. Vučić asked for a special meeting in which the rest of the cabinet criticized Ugljanin for supporting a local move that showed disregard for the anti-Fascist tradition of the Serbian people and for the victims of the Fascist militia leader in question. The cabinet decided it wanted  the plaque removed. Ok, there you go, problem solved. 

Well, hold your horses, this is the Balkans where no solution is quick...

Some of the Western-collaborationist Serbian media characters drew a parallel between Vučić criticizing Ugljanin and his support for the rehabilitation of the Serbian Chetnik commander, general Draža Mihailović, whom the media-dominating Western puppetry in Serbia still considers a Nazi collaborator, based on the Yugoslav Communist determination that Nazi collaborators were all who didn't join the Partisans. Of course, I expected nothing less from the anti-Serb foreign-sponsored cohorts of Serbia's NGO world, but regardless of their quickness to justify any anti-Serb action, a thorough historians' effort should finally be undertaken to clarify who's who of Serbia's World War II bloody waters. Now, I and many other Serbs know a hero of two world  wars and the first resistance fighter against Hitler in the occupied Europe cannot be equated with a Fascist crony, but the Serbian nation, for the sake of understanding its own role in the recent European history and to shut the mouth of the anti-Serb agitators, has to get this part of their history straight. 

Vučić and Ugljanin aside, ghosts of the World War II German occupation of Serbia and the civil war that ensued parallel with the anti-Fascist resistance haven't stopped roaming its mountains and valleys since one side in the conflict, Tito's Communists, was brought into power by the Red Army and Winston Churchill. The Allies won, and the Communists won, and they each wrote a version of history that glorified their noble purposes and vilified their enemies. Fine, every victor in history has done that without much regard for facts or justice. The evil of Italian Fascism and German Nazism was defeated and the Nuremberg trial told the story of the war as the offspring was supposed to learn it. The offspring of the warring South Slavic factions, however, learned several different versions of the story and the fall of Yugoslav Communism in 1990 opened a Pandora's box of unresolved historical disputes that very much affected the state-building and reconciliation processes. 

source: teslasociety.org

Without going into the well known historical detail, I want to stick with Aćif Efendi's case versus the cases of Serbs accused by the Communist regime of collaborating with the Nazi occupier. Who he was, the history knows. Tito's Communists executed him for ''collaborating with the occupier'' which was a vague qualification. The local Serbs see Aćif Efendi as an enemy whose  Fascist Sandžak Muslim Militia killed thousands of Serb Orthodox peasants in the Raška region (or Sandžak, as local Muslims call it). This Sandžak Muslim Militia fought as a Nazi paramilitary appendix until it was defeated. It targeted Serbs, without differentiating their Royalist or Communist allegiance. To be clear, the Nazi Germans were the aggressor and the occupier of Yugoslavia as well as the dominant military force, capable of committing the most severe atrocities of all the warring factions. Those who fought alongside it were its appendices with similar capabilities, incomparable to the lesser capabilities of the resistance fighters, either the Communists Partisans or the Royalist Chetniks. These two were just guerrilla, fighting the Nazis and their domestic collaborators such as the Croats or the Sandžak Muslims, as well as each other. To fight each other, each side on more than occasion put aside the fight against the Germans. Aćif Efendi was, no doubt, a German helper and a fighter against the resistance movement of both varieties, enabled to commit mass murder on a scale his Nazi mentors were notorious for. And his Sandžak Muslims had every right to form their own fighting units and side with whoever they thought would further their causes. The Raška Muslims have every right to decide whether the likes of Aćif Efendi were their heroes. They just have be considerate of the feelings of the Serbian majority.

Here I have to introduce the key question: what is the sin, being a Fascist, a collaborator or a loser of the war? Were the traitors those who joined the occupiers, those who collaborated with them, those who turned against the king and the exiled government, or those who simply ended up losing the war?

When Harry Truman decorated general Dragoljub Mihailović, commander of the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland, a.k.a. the Serbian chetniks, secretly so he didn't have to explain himself to the new Communist government of Yugoslavia who executed Mihailović two years earlier, it was understood at the time that an American president  wouldn't award the Legion of Merit to a Fascist collaborator, but to a proven anti-Fascist. In the middle of the American anti-Nazi war, Hollywood, ever ready to side with the ideals projected by Washington, made a movie about general Draža, called Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas, and the Time Magazine put the famed warrior on its front page, celebrating him as the only anti-German fighter in the entire occupied Europe. Thus, Draža was definitely anti-Fascist not only because some Serbs thought so, but because his important contemporaries conceded so and supported him as such. If he was a Nazi collaborator, I doubt the Americans would side against their interests and recognize Draža. Although the Communists, the victor in their rebellion against the legitimate Yugoslav government, executed both the general and Aćif Efendi, their judgement should solely be analyzed from the perspective of them winning and exerting a retribution on the losers. Aćif Efendi was not a Fascist because the Communists executed him, but because he fought alongside the Germans and the Italians. Draža fought against both occupying armies, and the mere fact that his Communist enemy sentenced him to death doesn't make him a collaborator with the occupier but simply the enemy of the Communists.

source: pogledi.rs

It is time to introduce another key character, way more fitting this discussion. General Milan Nedić collaborated with the Nazis as he hesitantly accepted his appointment to head the provisional government of the German-occupied Serbia. Even he is still on a level of collaboration below Aćif Efendi because Nedić did not contribute a single fighting unit to the German war efforts against the Allies. Nedić's sin was in that he did not join the resistance against the Germans, effectively impeding it through the German-controlled Serbian Volunteer Corps, thus rendering himself a traitor to the Serbian cause, although his mere position as a collaborator helped save hundreds of thousands Serbs escaping Croatian genocidal policies. Considering this, as well as the fact that the German official retribution policy in the occupied Serbia mandated the execution of 100 Serb civilians for one German soldier killed by the resistance fighters, on one level Nedić cannot be blamed for disregarding the geopolitical and imperial alliances between Great Powers to try and save lives of the Serbian people facing extermination. To save the Serbs, Nedić sold out on his World War I hero reputation. Outside of the fact that Nazism turned out to be an absolute evil, Nedić's blame has to be revisited and analyzed more honestly. Was it better that he accepted the position to act as Hitler's puppet or that the Germans allowed Croat and Bulgarian Fascists to overrun Serbia? He had no obligation to fight for the imperial causes of Stalin, Roosevelt or Churchill at the expense of the Serbian nation, just like Aćif Efendi had no obligation to join Partisans or Chetniks. If Nedić didn't succumb to the Nazi pressure, I wonder how many Serbs would have survived the occupation. While Mihailović is slowly being legally rehabilitated in Serbia, Nedić's rehabilitation is a national taboo. 

One conclusion is that Aćif Efendi is nowhere near the Mihailović comparison and whoever compares the anti-Nazi fighter with a Nazi crony is deluded or malicious and doesn't have the truth and the reconciliation at heart. General Mihailović should be taken out of this discussion altogether. If there are heroes, he is a hero to the Serbian people, no question about that. But if Aćif Efendi joined the Nazis to better the chances of his Muslim brethren in cleaning the area of Serbs or protecting his people against the Communists or the Chetniks, this should be stated and analyzed from the appropriate angle. If he was perhaps wrongly accused of , this should be revisited too. Even if this wouldn't remove the Fascist label from his name, but it would enable Serbia and its Muslim minority to open more honest discussions, desperately needed. 

If Croats can glorify their Fascist past unimpeded and be accepted and protected by the EU as such, then the table in the Fascist-anti-Fascist debate have turned in the whole of Europe and Europe is not so anti-Fascist anymore. Then Serbia has to look past the Communist-borne notions and decide how it wants to view its World War II past. It has to decide whether its Muslim minority can be allowed to celebrate its anti-Serb Fascists. If a case is made that they could, then Serbia should have no regard for those offended by a Nedić rehabilitation either.  Any discussion of a rehabilitation of Fascists like Aćif Efendi must be predicated on the rehabilitation of the Serbian Nazi collaborators like Milan Nedić, Dimitrije Ljotić or Kosta Pećanac. If the Bosniak minority in Serbia is justified in offending the sentiments of the Serb majority by glorifying Fascists, then the Serb majority should start looking at its own Nazi collaborators who saved Serbian lives under a different light. Nazi or Fascist collaboration is in no way greater a sin than actually being a Nazi or a Fascist.

It is just for Serbia to start looking at its own past and teach its own offspring the truth without much concern for geopolitical and ideological mandates imposed by foreign, often anti-Serbian, interests and doctrines.

Neglected by Croatia: The Realities of Dubrovnik

source: hu.wikipedia.org

The political battle to build the Pelješac bridge that would connect the Dubrovnik region with the rest of Croatia has taken on a new dimension: the Free Dalmatia newspaper from Split published a story (link in Croatian) warning of the increase in the separatist mood among the Dubrovnik population due to the negligence of Croatia's authorities towards this remote region.

How is this a topic for the Serbian Roundup, you ask. Dubrovnik was a Serb-inhabited medieval city whose survival through centuries of foreign occupation of other Serb lands ensured the survival of great historical and cultural heritage, invaluable to Serbdom. Since its inclusion in the Croatian Banovina in 1939 and in the Independent State of Croatia, it's been divesting itself of its Serb Dalmatian character. Now it is a part of the Republic of Croatia and almost no Serbs live there, but it is still a part of the Serb cultural heritage and one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. The mere fact that it belongs to Croatia as of lately cannot erase the Serb millennium of its ethnic character and its political independence. As a historic Serb city, it is, of course, of interest to the Serbian Roundup.

Now, this is not a call to return Dubrovnik to its Serb origins in any way. Serbian dreams and Dubrovnik realities diverged significantly after the Croat genocide against Serbs of 1941-1945, perhaps even before that. After Napoleon Bonaparte abolished the Dubrovnik Republic in 1808, according to the local lore the Dubrovnik gentry decided to stop having children as they refused to raise offspring without freedom. Many did heed that call and entire noble families died out. The Croat genocide against the Serbs did not exclude the Dubrovnik area and most of the Serb inhabitants were eradicated from the city and from the vicinity. The Austro-Hungarian abolition of Serb rights in 1908, the croatization of the Serb Catholics, the influx of Croats from other parts of Dalmatia, the genocide against Serbs and the revival of Croat ultra-nationalism and chauvinism of the 1990s turned Dubrovnik into an all-Croat area. Serbs can't stake a claim to it anymore and, obviously, Dubrovnik is neither a Serbian problem nor on the radar as a Serbian political issue.

source: forum.krstarica.com

Although this article in Free Dalmatia was clearly a lobbying effort aimed at Croatia's government to push through with the stalled building of a bridge to the Peljesac peninsula, probably aided by financial interests that are in a hurry to make good on their investments, it cited some definite reasons for dissatisfaction in Dubrovnik, which, coupled with Dubrovnik historic statehood and independence, can indeed increase separatist tendencies. Namely, the Dubrovnik coast, since it is not a Croat historic land, is geographically isolated from the rest of Croatia, with very weak transportation connections, which, according to Free Dalmatia, significantly deteriorated after Croatia's independence in 1992, mainly due to neglect. It is not easy for Croatia to maintain the connection with Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik was an independent merchant state, a rival of Venice, and its overland trade networks, as well as other relationships, ethnic and cultural, were mainly leaning on its most natural logistical partner, the Serb hinterland of Herzegovina, Bosnia, Zeta and Rascia. The inhabitants of Dubrovnik were mostly Serbs of Hum (Herzegovina) and their descendants, the most famous of them being Ruđer Bošković (Ruggero Boscovich), one of the most important European astronomers of the 18th century. The Ottomans, after the conquest of the Serb hinterland, knowing the significance of Dubrovnik's Western connections allowed its trade with the hinterland to continued unimpeded. All this has been well-documented in the Dubrovnik Archive, one of the most precious resources for students of Serbian history. Dubrovnik is simply not near the rest of Croatia and that, apparently, is a problem.

Free Dalmatia sources cited not only a lack of transportation connections, especially during the off-season months between October and April when Dubrovnik is not as important to Croatia's economy as during summer, a lack of drinking water, sanitation services, including the sewer system, and the increased transfer of local institutions of political and economic self-governance out of Dubrovnik and into Split and the port of Ploče. Corruption and budget misappropriations are rampant, according to the article. Now, we are not talking about some fishing village where tourists like to come, bathe and eat figs; this is Dubrovnik, whose Old City - under UNESCO protection - is one of the pearls of the Mediterranean and whose history and architectural beauty transcends politics of Zagreb or Split. Increasingly a remote province and a milking cow, Dubrovnik and its citizens like artist Davor Lucianović, who contributed to the Free Dalmatia story, are right to feel aggrieved.

The Free Dalmatia article suggested: if you don't build this bridge, expect Dubrovnik to request more autonomy. Since Dubrovnik's history of independence is much longer than Croatia's own, this would not be an unreasonable request even if Free Dalmatia's only motivation was to lobby for the bridge.

Even if Dubrovnik became completely croatized during the fascist Independent State of Croatia, it is not unreasonable to find popular dissatisfaction in this historically independent region, especially with the prospects of economic prosperity an increased independence would carry. A renewal of the spirit of independence among the people of Dubrovnik would, due to its traditional outlooks and geographic position, also renew its historic role as a cultural and economic bridge between the quarreling states of the Southeast Europe. Croatia supports secession in neighboring countries, and although one shouldn't deduce too much from one article, I'm sure the region wouldn't stand in the way of Dubrovnik gaining more independence from Croatia. A case in point is the international affair surrounding the very bridge that started all this, with Istanbul, I mean, Sarajevo, conveniently invoking an agreement between Franjo Tuđman and Alija Izetbegović to block Croatia from connecting with Dubrovnik.

Kill the Beast: Grading the Regime Change in Serbia

source: vestinet.rs

Surrounded with cheers, hope, suspicion, hypocrisy, sycophancy, indifference, loathing and fear, Ivica Dačić and Aleksandar Vučić have grabbed the levers of state power in Serbia with a necessary resolve in the past week. The road from a Milošević protege who narrowly escaped lustration to the Prime Minister of Serbia was long for Dačić. The road from a Šešelj protege to the state intelligence czar and the Minister of Defense was even rougher and longer for Vučić. Who would've thought on the eve of the parliamentary election on May 6th that these two men would stand together in the ouster of the corrupt regime of Boris Tadić, which, in its own blinded self-righteousness, thought it was destined to rule Serbia into the ground?

To round up all the twists and turns in Serbia's post-election coalition building, dismantling, patching and finally corralling, one would be remiss to start with May 6th, let alone on May 20th. If I wanted to analyze the fall of Boris Tadić's Western client regime, I'd had to revisit the December 9th rejection of Serbia's EU candidacy and the subsequent humanitarian sortie of Russian Ambassador Konuzin into North Kosovo, i.e. the EU-Russia Summit in Brussels that accompanied it. If we look at this series of events as a watershed moment, the victory of Tomislav Nikolić should be seen as the spring of the river that is Serbia liberated from Boris Tadić.

Since the Fifth of October of 2000, Serbia hasn't seen a change so dramatic. When the election fraud not only marred the results but also to devalue the democratic process and to discourage any hope for a regime change in Serbia, the unexpected victory of Nikolić unleashed a chain of events that can hopefully provide a chance for Serbia's salvation and recovery. The victory wasn't unexpected because Nikolić was an underdog, but because Tadić was inclined to steal the election.
From this perspective, wiser by a couple of months, there are several questions that must be answered before Serbia can grapple with the effects of the regime change.

First, how much of a regime change was it really?
Commentators on both sides of the aisle question, for differing reasons, the direction of a regime change in which almost half of the previous administration remains in office and in which some of the most reputedly corrupt public figures of the past 12 years get to not only go unpunished, but to stay in power. Mlađan Dinkić, for example, served as the Governor of the National Bank of Serbia, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Economy in previous administrations - all positions of key relevance to the economy that is lying in ruins as a consequence. Dačić himself was the key ally to Boris Tadić since 2008. On top of these two, an array of former Tadić allies has crossed over to the winning team. What the hell is Vučić, the new head of Serbian Progressive Party, thinking taking in all these no-good appendices of the corrupt regime he invested 12 years into beating? Well, whoever thought the Progressives, the plain-clothed derivative of Vojislav Šešelj's Radicals with 25 percent of popular support, can just barge in and bring down the system created by a corrupt regime with such a firm hold of the state and economic power, was plain naive. Tentacles of the power Tadić's Democratic Party was an umbrella for extended much deeper than the power to simply cut them off at will. The Democrats were the octopus, even if all the tentacles were not their own, e.g. Dinkić and his clique. To change the regime, one had to kill the beast at its helm and it does appear that the Democrat beast is not only out of power on thenational level and gradually being pushed out in most municipalities it had held, but its nervous system has become a wreck due to betrayals of allies and infighting. If the ouster of the ruling party is a regime change, then the Progressives, with the willing cooperation of the former junior partners in the regime, did pull it off. Just compare the power of Boris Tadić and his cohorts before and after May 20th.

source: novosti.rs

Second, outside of a violent street uprising or a coup d'etat, how does one conduct a total regime change? Gradually, of course.
Nikolić and Vučić correctly understood that the election victory was just a ticket into the fray, not a championship belt. If the goal was to kill the beast, one had to be a fool to engage it in a hand-to-hand combat, but had to instead utilize everything at his disposal, even Mlađan Dinkić, if that's what it took to cut the legs from underneath the beast. And it did. What were the alternatives? Street protests over the well-documented election fraud, which could have led to instability, unpredictable outcomes and more suffering of the people quick to demolish, but slow to build. Co-habitation, meaning Nikolić as an ineffective president with constitutionally limited power, ignored, sabotaged or smeared by the Democrat-led cabinet, Democrat-controlled institutions and Democrat-owned media. If the Progressives abstained from coalition-building out of moral considerations, Boris Tadić would've kept on destroying the country. It wasn't much of a choice, one had to admit. It's better to have Dinkić as a junior, junior partner than Tadić as the Prime Minister.

Third, are the Progressives, combined with Dačić's Socialists and Dinkić's United Regions, ideologically and behaviorally more of the same in comparison to Tadić's regime? In short, no.
Some commentators tend to base this notion on the EU-related rhetoric. True, the Progressives are stuck on the pro-EU rhetoric as well. True, the Socialists have been beating the EU drums, although a lot more shyly than the Democrats, for the past four years. True, Dinkić, with his ideologically amorphous coalition/party, has been in the service of EU and every other foreign interest in Serbia for as long as the Democrats have. It is also true that this time around, Dinkić is showing significantly less inclination to act independently, out of fear of falling out of the line with the coalition and falling victim to the Vučić-promised anti-corruption offensive, or due to an inexplicable change of heart (just kidding). It is also true that Dačić finds himself in an ideologically way more comfortable coalition this time around, due to his somewhat nationalist leanings and a chance for his Socialists to actually replace the Democrats as the main ostensibly leftist party on the political scene. (If you wonder how a party can be nationalist and leftist at the same time, it is time for you to stop thinking about Left and Right in the conventional terms and start observing the dichotomy as merely elementary to the globalist-anti-globalist spectrum.) Finally, we'd be fools if we thought that it is enough for Šešelj's disciples to change their party emblem and to declare themselves pro-EU, to actually and completely abandon the Radical pillars they had been building themselves for two decades. When Dačić made the last-minute deal with Tadić in 2008, breaking the coalition promise to Nikolić and Vojislav Koštunica, it became clear that the West will never allow the Radical Party to get into power and that some kind of transformation was necessary. Now, I'm not saying Nikolić and Vučić would absolutely reveal their true Radical self once they took the helm. This game is way more serious than that, the powers that are may be weaker than in 2008, but will not allow Serbian nationalists to play them for fools. The line Nikolić and Vučić are walking is very thin. Still, if we base our conclusions in the rhetoric only, Nikolić and, to a slightly lesser degree, Vučić, have shown significantly more of a nationalist strain than it could have been expected from someone who'd continue Tadić's anti-Serbian policies.

source: tanjug.rs

To make any sustainable improvements, the new administration had to wrestle away the control of the levers of power from the corrupt, but deeply entrenched Democrat machine. It was neither an easy task, nor would it be smart to kid oneself that it is a finished task. At this point, nothing is more important for Serbia than to minimize the influence of the Democrat Party and the foreign-sponsored NGO networks in Serbia. To actually judge the new administration against the old one, the public needs to be fully apprehensive of the fact that Serbia cannot hope to improve without halting the downward spiral first. It would be a grave mistake to expect miracles, economic, Kosovo-related or in foreign policy, from this administration; if they prevent the crash which the Tadić Democrats have pushed the country very close to, that will be a miracle enough. Although there are more important issues than corruption, if ten corrupt politicians or businessmen actually end up going to jail, and both God and the entire Serbia know there are hundreds who should, I'll take my hat off to Dačić and Vučić. Low expectations? Not at all. Serbia is not stagnating, it is sinking fast, not unlike the rest of Europe.

The election of Tomislav Nikolić on May 20th and all the developments stemming from it, including the Constitutional Court decision on the Vojvodina Statute and today's change at the helm of the insofar uncontrollable National Bank of Serbia, instill hope that the reversal of the sinking trajectory is possible. I'm willing to criticize the new leadership for their failures, but every Serb is obligated to give them time to fail or succeed.

I know one thing: I'll take President Nikolić and the cabinet led by Dačić and Vučić over Tadić as the dictator usurping all the power any day and it's not even a choice of a lesser evil. The failure of democracy on May 6^th was somewhat vindicated on May 20^th and although the Nikolić victory cannot erase the injustice of the electoral fraud, it did default at less than a maximalist democratic ambition would desire and under the circumstances unfavorable to any kind of a democratic outcome. In other words, it was as much of a victory for democracy as pre-May 20 Serbia could yield.

Crimes against Kosovo Serbs: Burning the Evidence

The news on war crimes against Serbs could be considered rare news in the Western media. On the burning of the remains of Serb miners in a Kosovo mine, killed in June of 1998, the basic Google search produced this one UPI article. Is it a lack of newsworthiness, a busy news week or something else that prevented news media from reporting on the fires that have most likely devoured the remains of 12, perhaps more, Serb miners, thrown by Albanians in the mine pits near Obilić, in the NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija?

source: smedia.rs

Not only that the so-called "international justice system" has been indifferent, even ill-disposed, to the suffering of Serbs in the wars of Yugoslav succession, conveniently positing them as the all-guilty side despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but it has allowed even the most obvious and best documented cases of terrorism and war crimes against Serb civilians to be ignored, excused, tampered with, hidden in plain sight and the evidence most blatantly destroyed. To an informed Serb, it is needless to prove that the Western-imposed justice is but a justice of a mace and, as such, it should have no moral or historical bearing on the future and the consciousness of the Serbian nation. However, since a lot of Serbs, out of a specific ideological proclivity, a base material interest or mere ignorance, simply accept the imposed and unwarranted blame in the most masochistic of ways, the struggle to keep educating Serbdom and its friends on the truth of the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s is ongoing and perhaps harder than ever. 

In a continued effort to inform and educate, I am relaying here my translation of the text of the latest press release of the Serb National Council of North Kosovo and Metohija, the local organization of the North Kosovo Serbs, led by Milan Ivanović, on the subject of the burning of Serb remains in the mine pit. The publishing of the translated press release on the Serbian Roundup has been approved by the organization. The Serbian original is posted here.

Serb National Council of North Kosovo and Metohija

Press Release

June 16, 2012

In the makeshift coal mine of the village of Žilivode near Obilić, fires have been burning for the third day in the pits in which the Albanian terrorists had thrown bodies of 12 Serb miners, kidnapped on June 22, 1998. Outside of these confirmed findings, it is believed that the Albanians had thrown 14 additional bodies of Kosovo Serbs in the mine pits.

To thwart the already started exhumation of remains of the ill-fated Serbs, local Albanians filled the pits with large amounts of gasoline-soaked rugs and burned them two days ago. The fire which engulfed both the coal and the bones of the kidnapped Serbs is burning for the third consecutive day. However, neither the Albanian authorities nor KFOR and EULEX moved to send emergency fire units to Žilivode, because the morbid cover-up of the crimes against Serbs did not bother them, to say the least.

Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General, will most likely not be informed of the fact that Albanian terrorists are unimpeded in killing the 12 Serbs for the second time ahead of his visits to Belgrade and Priština, since he expressed his ''concern'' only over ''the security situation in the North of Kosovo'' and praised the efforts of KFOR and EULEX aimed to ''calm the situation,'' not even mentioning the unprovoked armed attacks of KFOR against the barehanded Serb civilians.

In accord with the famous saying: ''After me – the deluge,'' there has not been even a formal reaction by the technical cabinet of [Serbia's] Democratic Party and its Ministry for Kosovo and Metohija on the repeated killing of the 12 Serbs in Obilić, which is, mildly put, a moral crime of the outgoing government.

Dr Milan Ivanović

President of the Serb National Council of North Kosovo and Metohija

And while the evidently orchestrated events the Western media called "the Račak massacre'' served as a pretext for NATO to bomb Serbia in 1999, this crime, committed by the local Albanian terrorists six months prior to the Račak hoax, has never been punished and, as things stand, no Albanian will ever be held accountable for it, since NATO and EU occupiers of Kosovo gave their Albanian proteges a free hand in destroying the evidence.

The Right to Seek the Truth against the Srebrenica Myth

source: vaseljenska.com

It appears the Serb Republic-funded Srebrenica Historical Project has been doing a good job of providing evidence and arguments that the allegations of genocide committed in and around Srebrenica in July of 1995 have been standing on a shaky ground all along. How do I know this? Well, if Michael Dobbs, a watchful anti-Serb pundit writing for Foreign Policy magazine goes on the offensive against Stephen Karganović and his project, that means Karganović has made progress dangerous enough for the continued standing of the myth Bosniaks and their allies like to call “the Srebrenica genocide.”

Before I get into the argument, I want to underline a couple of technical issues. I am not a genocide "denier" because it is impossible to deny something that doesn't exist. I am a Srebrenica “truther” and the truth about Srebrenica encapsulates historical developments stretching from 1992 to 1995 that can in no way be limited to July of 1995. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the Srebrenica “mythers,” whose version of events currently “prevails” with the North Atlantic community’s interested public. The difference between the “truthers” and the “mythers” is in the fact the “truthers” are willing to seek the truth, while the “mythers” are only obstinate in defending the myth they have fabricated to favor their political agenda. And the litmus test for "mythers" is their complete denial of more than 3000 Serb victims in and around Srebrenica at the hands of Naser Orić and his "unarmed" cohorts. The very basis for the Srebrenica myth is the monopolization of victimhood by the Bosnian Muslims. 

Dobbs has been performing an unofficial function of the public advocate for the anti-Serb Republic interest, with the Srebrenica genocide allegations being the central theme of his watchdog career. He is a typical “myther” of a Western variety. Karganović, on the other hand, is a Serb-American lawyer who heads the Srebrenica Historical Project, funded by the government of the Serb Republic. This project was undertaken to seek the truth and challenge the myth surrounding the Army of the Serb Republic’s capture of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, fabricated by the Sarajevo government and its Western allies. These two men, one on a serious mission of defending the legitimate interest of the Serbian people to free the besieged truth, the other seriously attempting to undermine that defense, were bound to clash. 

source: kurir-info.rs

In a “revolutionary” turn of perfidious events, Dobbs triumphantly ''uncovered'' that the Serb Republic is actually financing Srebrenica Historical Project! Well, I ask you, Mr. Dobbs, if someone accuses you of committing a crime you know you haven’t committed and based on that accusation your entire existence is being threatened, wouldn’t you try to defend your claims? 

It was about time the Serb Republic has encouraged projects such as this one to finally and decisively clarify the events surrounding the capture of Srebrenica to the Serbian public. The leadership of the Serb Republic would be committing injustice towards generations of young Serbs who would have to learn their history from the decisions of a foreign court, evidently hostile to Serbs, if it has not attempted to seek the truth in a non-compromised way.

Since he cannot produce any substantiated offense against Karganović’s findings other than the reiteration of the very genocide qualifications Karganović has been arguing against, Dobbs tries to appear understanding by seemingly allowing the disagreement and differing interpretations of the events, but expressing outrage at what he called “the unsubstantiated challenges to underlying facts that have been proven beyond reasonable doubt.” This construction is a spin in itself because it doesn’t make logical sense to not mind dissent on one end but to disprove of the right to express the substance of that dissent on the other. On a more important note, Dobbs cunningly slips in expressions like ‘’proven beyond reasonable doubt’’ or, in another place “suppressing the truth,” instituting the acceptance of what he wants the reader to believe is the truth. Not many allegations related to Srebrenica have been proven beyond reasonable doubt and no one honestly seeking the truth can afford to claim so. By doing this, Dobbs sets the audience up for denying the Serb Republic a right to challenge what the “mythers” established as “the truth.” In their eyes, there can be no truth but their truth and people like Karganović and, by implication, Milorad Dodik, are, in such a twisted paradigm, naturally branded ‘’deniers’’ of such a truth. By extension, this qualification applies to the entire Bosnian Serb population. He finishes with a punch, best he could muster, err, parrot: 

“For the government and parliament of Republika Srpska to finance such outlandish theories makes the Bosnian Serb statelet complicit with efforts to suppress the truth about the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.” 

What kind of a “myther” would Dobbs be without the Amanpourian references?

source: glassrpske.com

Instead of me boring you with intepretations, I’ll quote Karganović is his response to Dobbs’ panicked finger-pointing:

“…we receive a grant which is voted by the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska. Those deputies are elected by the people of the Republic of Srpska. The people of the Republic of Srpska are not complaining, presumably because they regard our work as worthwhile. So why is Dobbs unhappy? Is he a Republic of Srpska taxpayer? He unctuously claims that 'I have no objection at all to a vigorous and open debate about the evidence presented to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, which deserves to be fully scrutinized.’ So even if he were personally contributing to our budget as a taxpayer shouldn’t he still be expected to be consistent and to put his money where his mouth is?”

Enough said.

The leadership of the Serb Republic owes the search for the truth to the men and women who bled to build the Republic, as defenders of their own, not as genocidal killers the ‘’mythers” and the overzealous Western anti-Serb crusaders made them out to be. The Banja Luka government owes to these people the truth they could continue to build their Republic on. Moreover, whatever the truth turns out to be, children of the Serb Republic must learn it from their parents and their teachers, not from their war enemies, malevolent foreign agents, anti-Serb trial chambers and the prosecutors of the Republic’s founding fathers.

The Final Ahtisaari: No 1244, Just Juggernaut

source: fi.wikipedia.org

The Kosovo paradox peaked on Monday; nothing out of the ordinarily deviating path, but a development nevertheless. The International Steering Group (ISG), a self-appointed group of Western countries that "supervised" the so-called independence of the rogue state of Kosovo, declared the end of that supervision. According to the decision, the International Civilian Representative (ICR) for Kosovo, Peter Feith, will close his office in Priština in September, a move that will supposedly remove the babysitting element from the Kosovo Albanian attempt at statehood. All of this sounds fine, right? Wrong.

The end of the supervision is just the latest in the series of illegitimate moves by a group of countries that have recognized Kosovo's independence from Serbia. Although these countries, including the United States and most of the European Union members, called themselves ''the international community,'' there was nothing as global about them as the moniker leads one to believe. The attempt to add weight to Kosovo's illegitimate independence by backing it with an "international" support can indeed fool a lot of observers. This "international" community, consisting of only 25 countries, excluded two permanent members of the UN Security Council, China and Russia and five EU members. It was not a UN body; these countries simply decided they had enough power to carve a new map of Europe, like Hitler thought he could do in 1938. 

Namely, the ISG is a creation of the Ahtisaari Plan, a failed 2007 attempt by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari to impose a complicated anti-Serbian solution for the occupied southern province of Serbia. Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize for this plan, despite the fact that the plan failed miserably. But hey, other people have received the devalued prize for nothing, too. 

Ahtisaari does not matter, but his plan does. The Plan, or the draft Settlement, as it ended up being called, proposed creating provisional governing structures that would in effect serve as a transitional mechanism towards Kosovo's statehood. Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica rejected the Plan, claiming it violated the UN Charter and undermined Serbia's sovereignty, seriously deviating from the UNSCR 1244, which governed the relationships since the occupation of Kosovo and Metohia by NATO in 1999. Instead of the Plan dead-ending there, the Western countries that would go on to recognize Kosovo a year later, actually went ahead and began implementing it in cooperation with the Kosovo Albanian leadership. Thus, the ISG and the ICR were created. This failed and utterly one-sided proposal ended up clearing the path for Kosovo Albanians' declaration of independence a year later. Serbia's disagreement counted for nothing; Serbia had no say in it, despite its sovereignty and territory being blatantly ripped away from it. The North Atlantic community, led by the United States, disregarded the UN Security Council again, just like in 1999 when it attacked Serbia and occupied Kosovo and Metohia, and implemented a proposal that sides did not agree upon, in order to grant independence to the rogue Kosovo Albanian state.

source: rtvbn.com

In Vienna on Monday, the gang of 25 just finished the job. Serbia, still stuck on the UNSCR 1244, did not even react. How could it? For the official Belgrade, even if it had a standing government, Kosovo's independence is illegal and illegitimate, regardless of what a bunch of Western countries decided. However, the reality on the ground, just or not, legitimate or not, denies one after another of Serbia's claims to its occupied southern province.

I know might makes right. I also know that no matter what the Albanian sponsors unilaterally decide, Kosovo is Serbia until Serbia decides it isn't, even if it can't effectively control the province. But the blatant disregard of the United States and NATO for the internationally accepted norms and standards, not only in respect to Serbia, leads me to believe that the world order in which the UN Security Council served as a hub for global political communications and conflict resolution is over. There are no more conflict resolution forums of the kind and the North Atlantic alliance's steamrolling through the Kosovo case, imposing solutions favorable to one side and carving new states out of the existing UN members, is only the latest example of the intent to dominate at all costs. A complete disregard for the complexity of the problem, which the recurring attacks against the North Kosovo Serbs by NATO remind us of a couple of times a month, shows the world what NATO countries really are: an aggressive military juggernaut bent on obliterating every opposition it isn't afraid of. 

The Monday decision in Vienna is a relatively insignificant one in terms of the developments in the Kosovo case, but it does show the intent to further the agenda, to keep pushing forward. Camp Bondsteel is staying put, so it is not like NATO is withdrawing. Ending the supervision only attempted to give the further legitimacy to Hashim Thaci's government, the legitimacy that upholds the reality on the ground, very unfavorable to Serbia and, more directly, to the Kosovo Serbs. The ISG countries did not pretend to trust the Albanians with governing themselves, but the prolonged official babysitting would not make anyone look good.

One question remains unanswered: how long can Serbia ignore the reality and play the Euro-integration game in denial of the hostilities the EU countries and the United States would not stop bombarding it with? 

Revising History for the Holocaust Leverage

source: en.wikipedia.org

Whether it was the words out of Stuart Eizenstat’s mouth or it was, as Julia Gorin claims, Haaretz’s “strained insertion,” the article published in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper on Friday did accuse Serbia of participating in the Holocaust and did call on the European Union “to exact the maximum amount of leverage” against countries applying for membership, namely Croatia and Serbia, to coerce them “to take responsibility for their roles in the Holocaust.” Those were loaded words regardless of who spoke them. They were loaded on many levels.

It would not be the first time a newspaper with agenda puts words in people’s mouth to “set the mood” for furthering that agenda. However, Stuart Eizenstat is not just anybody. Before he was a lobbyist for Covington and Burling and a senior strategist for APCO Worldwide communications consultancy firm, Eizenstat was, among other things, the U.S. Ambassador to the EU (1993-1996). In this capacity, he served as a kind of a Holocaust compensation czar, i.e. he was one of the foremost agents of what Norman Finkelstein famously branded “the Holocaust industry.’’ Namely, Eizenstat went after selected European countries, beginning with Switzerland, who ostensibly profited from the persecution of Jews. With Switzerland in particular, Eizenstat negotiated a $1.5 billion payout to Jewish organizations that represented victims. Similar efforts against countries like Poland and Belarus appear to be ongoing.

I will not get into Finkelstein’s criticism; you can check The Holocaust Industry online. I can’t even say that I am against the shakedown where it is proven to be warranted, although there is a question of reverse injustice. This mini highlight reel of Eizenstat’s career should just serve as the backdrop for his motivation for the Haaretz statement. It is neither unexpected nor unusual for Eizenstat to engage in such rhetoric and it is almost certain that Eizenstat did point the finger at Croatia and Serbia as potential targets for a restitution shakedown and that Haaretz dutifully relayed it. Even outside the official capacity, Eizenstat is continuing his mission; if there are more countries to shake down, the agenda is set and he is on top of it. Eizenstat is lining up targets, that’s all. But to line Serbia up next to Croatia is not only outrageous, but very devious on his part.

Forget about the fact that Serbia - the political entity - did not exist during the Holocaust even as a German puppet, but as a divided, occupied and ever-restless region whose guerrilla brigades tied up in fighting a disproportionate number of Nazi troops that would otherwise be adding to the German power at Stalingrad. Forget about the fact that the largest part of what is Serbia today was under direct occupation of Wehrmacht. Forget about the fact that Srem was annexed to the Independent State of Croatia; that Bačka was annexed to Nazi ally Hungary; that Banat was under a direct control of the Volksdeutsche, its German minority; that Kosovo and Metohia were under the fascist Albania and that southern parts, today’s Macedonia, were annexed to Nazi ally Bulgaria. Forget about the facts that Serbia accepted Jewish refugees prior to the Nazi occupation, at the time when FDR was turning away from the U.S. coast the ships with fleeing Jews and when American companies were enjoying great business relationships with Adolf Hitler’s government. Historical findings and analyses cemented the notion that Serbs were the primary victims of genocide on the territory of Kingdom of Yugoslavia and that Serbia, which did not exist as a separate political entity since 1918, could not be held responsible for crimes against Jews committed by German, Croat, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Albanian fascists on its territory at the time these same occupiers committed the same horrible crimes against the Serbs. How could the occupied Serbia be responsible for crimes against Jews when it didn’t even possess so much power to prevent the German policy of executing 100 Serbian civilians for every German soldier killed by the Serbian anti-fascist guerrilla on its territory? Germany had allies and puppets; Serbia was neither. Serbia was a German, Croat, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Albanian-occupied, torn up land with citizens bleeding and dying without discrimination. The Semlin death camp, the largest death camp in the territory that is Serbia today was a Croat-run camp, in the Croat-occupied Srem, to which Serbs, Jews and Roma alike were brought to die.

source: rts.rs

It is especially egregious that Eizenstat puts Serbia into the same basket with Croatia. If there is a moral or legal ground to go after the Republic of Croatia for crimes committed by Croat fascists in the World War II, it is at least helped by a proven fact that the genocide committed against Jews, and especially Serbs, on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia was indeed committed by Croats, not by Germans or Italians. The Croatian defense against the shakedown attempts is entirely up to the Croats. Two things are certain: Croatia committed the genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma and it was a country ruled by Croats. There is a catch in Eizenstat’s proposal, though. Leveraging, the key word he used, will not be possible with Croatia, because Croatia’s membership in the EU has been approved. The levers can only be pulled in the case of Serbia, who is only a candidate and whose membership is very uncertain and far down the road, at best. I am sure Eizenstat would like to shake any country down indiscriminately, but in this instance, the general idea of his proposal allows only for Serbia to be blackmailed in such a way. Of my particular concern is not whether Serbia’s road to the EU membership would be impeded by a sudden condition from EU related to the restitution. As a eurorealist, I advise against Serbia even encroaching on the suicidal path towards the EU membership. I am alarmed by the grave danger of Serbian history being revised to accommodate Eizenstat’s vision, equating victims of the genocide with the murderers.

Eizenstat’s “advice” to the European Union is a matter of policy that he and his cause can utilize, it is not about history. However, without revising history, the policy he proposed can neither be implemented nor can the Jewish organizations utilize it for their ends. Unfortunately, policymakers that ostensibly aim to rectify past injustices rarely consult historians in good faith, other than those who are willing to manufacture “findings” in service of the set agenda. To hold Serbia responsible for Holocaust, the policymakers Eizenstat tries to influence have to undertake a serious revision of history of the World War II. Revising history in any way that paves the road for holding Serbia responsible for Holocaust would mean equating victims and the perpetrators. Such a revision would not only leave Serbia open for a shakedown; it would unjustly negate the historical role Serbia and the Serbs played in the anti-fascist struggle, including the salvation of fleeing Jews at the time it was still possible to do. It would negate the fact that the first uprising against Hitler's rule in the occupied Europe was started in Serbia and by the Serbian Royalists of general Draža Mihailović. It would open a Pandora’s box of radical misinterpretations that would further strain Serbian wits and deeper distort the consciousness about the just struggle Serbs embarked on in service of anti-fascism and freedom.

George Orwell famously wrote in 1984: “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past.” A conscious and forward-looking Serb cannot afford any further revision of the Serbian history by self-serving agents of foreign interests consistently seeking leverage to undermine Serbian defenses or simply to increase their own gains, even if those gains are tied to a righteous cause on some level, as is Eizenstat’s motivation. Eizenstat is justified to seek revenge against the injustice committed against his Jewish brethren and he has no obligation to feel sympathy towards the Swiss or the Croats, if he feels their governments had a hand in it. But by going after the nations that suffered under the same fate as his Jews, Eizenstat’s cause loses the high moral ground it operates on. Finkelstein would negate the existence of the high moral ground in the first place, but I will not. To each his own.

Holding Serbs responsible for Holocaust opens a door into future in which anyone, without exceptions, can be held responsible for the World War II genocides committed against Jews, Serbs, Russians, Poles, Roma and every other European and non-European people. Once you equate victims and perpetrators, anyone can fall into either group and no one can monopolize either group.