Israel/Hezbollah vs. Kosovo War

 

Israel/Hezbollah vs. Kosovo War Part I

July 25th, 2006

Those of us intimately familiar with the 78-day 1999 Clinton/Blair war against Serbia recognize many similarities with the ongoing Hezbollah/Israel air war. For those of us who have experienced bombings as innocent civilians in our childhood, even if bombings date back to the WWII, the TV pictures of civilian sufferings on both sides are causing an outrage and a profound disappointment that such civilian sufferings are tolerated by the international community in the 21st century. Here are some notable comparisons between the Israel/Hezbollah and the Kosovo air wars.

Hezbolllah vs. KLA

Both Hezbollah and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are terrorist organizations. President Clinton’s special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, said: “The UCK (KLA) is without any question a terrorist group.” Hezbollah is a first tier world terrorist organization with Al Qaeda being only the second tier. Iran created Hezbollah in1982. Iran and Syria have enormous influence as they provide hundreds of millions of dollars in military and economic aid but Hezbollah is nobody’s puppet as President Bush and Israel have claimed. Despite its terrorist tactics Hezbollah has successfully recast itself as a legitimate political party. Its candidates advocate civic duty and responsible governance. Hezbollah enjoys support from 40% Lebanese Shiite population. It also has various supporters in Lebanese diaspora mainly in the South and North America. The KLA, a paramilitary wing of the Albanian mafia on the other hand, was supported by the government of Albania, Albanian narco-mafia, Albanian diaspora; Radical Islam such as Al Qaeda, government of Iran, various Saudi and other Wahhabi organizations, Organization of Islamic Conference as well as the U.S, British and German intelligence agencies.

Jupiter vs. Oxes

The U.S. not only doesn’t want to negotiate with Hezbollah but it does not want to negotiate directly with the legitimate governments of Iran and Syria despite the fact that Iran is probably the only party that can influence Hezbollah to terminate hostilities. The U.S. can influence Israel to stop slaughter of innocent civilians in Shiite neighborhoods instead of a tokenistic response thus far allowing Israel to “finish the job.” Thus far the legitimate and sovereign Lebanese government has received only lip service and an offer of humanitarian aid.

In contrast the U.S. and Germany exploited almost 100-year Serb-Albanian conflict to wrest the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia (15% of the Serbian territory) for their own purposes to strengthen their position in the Balkans. In order to accomplish this objective the Western alliance sided with the KLA insurrection from Albania into Kosovo and Metohija. From terrorists the KLA were instantly converted into partners and freedom fighters. Albanian terrorism, which as a matter of fact dates back to 1912 when Kosovo was liberated from the Ottoman Empire, was not a crime. When the insurrection was repelled primarily by the Serbian police forces the U.S.-led NATO, that defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot, launched the 78-day air war of infamy against Serbia.

Nebojsa Malic, A tale of Jupiters and Cattle, ably quoted ancient Latin proverb created by Terence, a playwright of the Roman Republic: Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi. What is permitted to Jupiter, isn’t permitted to oxes.  Jupiter is the Roman king of gods, the supreme god, and patron of the Roman state, identified with the Greek god Zeus. This ancient Roman rule is fully applicable for the 20th century as well as in the 21st century: Americans are Jupiter, Israel is Jupiter-light while Serbia and Lebanon are in the ox category.

Casus Belli

As in 1982, the Hezbollah/Israel war started with a minor incident. In 1982 it was a Palestinian assassination of an Israeli diplomat in London. On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah sent his fighters on a cross-border raid into Israel, where they killed eight soldiers and captured two as hostages. In recent years, Nasrallah has mounted several similar raids into Israel. Tough-minded prime ministers of Israel, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, did not respond with an air war against Lebanon.

In contrast with Israel using a pinprick for casus belli there is an example of India. On July 11, Mumbai train bombings terrorist attack killed 207 Indians and wounded more than 800. The suspect is Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic militant group based in Pakistan. India did not retaliate by bombing Islamabad or Karachi but concentrated on the police work that led to arrest of three men ten days later. They have also arrested the organizer and the kingpin of Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Indian-controlled portion of the contested Kasmir province.

While Israel has used pinpricks to initiate wars, President Clinton used fabricated, staged massacres as casus belli both to bomb the Bosnian Serb positions in 1995 and all-out bombings of the Serbian infrastructure and civilians in 1999. Staged massacres and then blaming the Serbs for them were a pattern of Bosnian Muslim war strategy. Combined with highly cooperative partisan media, these staged massacres served as pretense to bomb the Bosnian Serb positions. Similarly in Kosovo, the KLA staged the Racak massacre, which was aided and abetted by the American man on the ground as the chief of OSCE observers, ambassador Walker. The Racak massacre was litigated during the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the ICTY. Milosevic was obviously successful in his defense as illustrated with the fact that the British judge dropped the Racak massacre from the indictment of Milosevic’s successor, Milan Milutinovic, former deputy prime minister, two former army chiefs of staff and two generals. The six accused represent almost all of Serbia’s political and military top leadership in 1999. The judge stated that it “would be too difficult to prove exactly where the responsibility lies


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Israel/Hezbollah vs. Kosovo War Part II

July 26th, 2006

Right of Self-Defense

President Bush has daily stated that Israel has the right to defend itself. The UN charter recognizes that right but does it include launching an air war on civilians and the infrastructure? Did the same right apply to Serbia fighting the KLA terrorists on its own territory rather than the territory of a neighboring state?

On February 28, 1998 in response to killings of four Serbian policemen in the Drenica region of Kosovo the Serbian special police units launched a crackdown on the KLA terrorists. The action was directed at Adem Jashari whose clan constituted the core of the KLA organization. The Serbian forces killed Jashari and destroyed the KLA power base but also killed more than 50 Albanians including women and children. Almost instantaneously the U.S. threatened military intervention even without the UN Security Council approval. Secretary Albright said, “We know what we need to know to believe we are seeing ethnic cleansing all over again.” The Contact Group, representatives of the U.S, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia, announced measures aimed at applying punitive sanctions on Serbia and called for removal of Serbian forces from its own province. What would have happened if the Serbian air force by any chance bombed the KLA bases in Albania (Tropoja, Bajram Curi, Kruma, Peskopeja, Drac, Elbasan) or even pulverized Tirana, the Albanian capital? A textbook example of Jupiter vs. Oxes.

Disregard for Human Life

The terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, KLA and others have obviously no respect for innocent human life and that is why they are characterized as terrorists.  However, both Israel and the U.S.- led NATO have also exhibited a disregard for innocent human life and civilian infrastructure despite intensive PR campaigns to prove to the contrary and using the collateral damage terminology, the term I resent from the bottom of my heart. In the military lingo these are called strategic bombing campaigns aimed to flatten key economic resources and are usually designed to bend the targeted government to the will of the attacker or turn the populace against the government. The U.S. is one of the chief proponents launching campaigns in Vietnam, Iraq and Serbia. The U.S.-led NATO air campaign had an objective not only to punish Milosevic but also to teach Serbian people a lesson. Likewise Israel is teaching Lebanese people a lesson.

Use of U.S.-designed precision-guided bombs plus selection of strictly military targets should have avoided human tragedies like the one in Tyre where 72 victims of airstrikes were buried in a mass grave so that hospital can hold other bodies. One woman lost 24 members of her family. Israel bombed the Lebanese northern city of Tripoli, which has no conceivable relationship to Hezbollah. General Clark, supreme allied commander, bombed the Novi Sad bridges in Northern Serbia hundreds of km from Kosovo. He would have bombed the Belgrade bridges as well had it not been for the French president Chirac who saved them. The Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was even bombed. Similarly Israel bombed the UN border post killing four monitors. The UN Secretary General plus foreign ministers from China, Japan, South Korea and the 10 nation ASEAN bloc claimed that the attack was deliberate.

The effect of Israel strategic bombing campaign is likely to be much the same as General Wesley Clark’s in Serbia where the Serbian forces in Kosovo were not defeated and that in the Islamic world the growing numbers of civilian casualties are likely to turn Arabs and others against the Jewish state and its key ally, the U.S. and still not fatally wound Hezbollah. Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, said that Israel’s furious response was recruiting millions of new enemies. Similarly, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has recruited millions of other enemies.

For most policymakers and people, moralization stops once they make up their mind as to who initiated the fight so that regard for human life during the fight is a nonissue. This is why the NATO governments and the media were so adamant in convincing the world of Serb atrocities so that once the fighting starts all moralization is out of the window because the belief as to who is guilty has already been settled.

Exodus of Civilians

The UN has estimated that 600,000 Lebanese civilians were uprooted in the first 12 days of Israeli aggression. They have been fleeing from Israeli bombs and responding to Israeli leaflets dropped by aircraft urging them to flee from Southern Lebanon.

The ICTY prosecutors claim that Serbian forces expelled some 800,000 Kosovo Albanians who fled into Macedonia and Albania. In his defense Milosevic claimed that the bulk of them fled from NATO bombs and in response to leaflets dropped by NATO urging them to flee. Local radio stations, including Radio Tirana, joined in. The exodus of civilians in Lebanon provides yet another piece of evidence that the Serbian forces in Kosovo couldn’t have had a monopoly on deportations as the ICTY indictment claims. Perhaps the judge will determine the blame allocation for the exodus!
 
Personal Criminal Responsibility

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour stated in Geneva that both sides could bear “personal criminal responsibility” for their assaults. “Indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians. Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged military significance, but resulting invariably in the killing of innocent civilians, is unjustifiable.” While serving as the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Ms. Arbour did not condemn both sides when NATO indiscriminately shelled the Serbia cities, including capital Belgrade, and killing civilians in houses, apartments, fleeing refugees, in hospitals, the Belgrade TV studio, on a pedestrian bridge, on a bus, in a car on unpaved mountain road, in a prison, etc. Furthermore, she did not condemn NATO bombing causing ecocide with long-term detrimental health effects to the population as a result of daily attacks on chemical, petrochemical and pharmaceutical plants, plastic factories, refineries, fuel storage tanks, the electric power grid, etc. Ms. Arbour had the power to indict NATO generals, like General Clark, but had no clear conscience to do so. Ms. Arbour was a servant to the Jupiter then. Under the orders from Jupiter she issued an arrest warrant for the first head of state even while the war was still in progress. For her obedience and outstanding services to the Jupiter she was first appointed to the Canadian Supreme Court and then to the present position of the UN Human Rights Commissioner.

http://serbianna.com/blogs/joksimovich/