Wojciech,
That was a nice article you posted. In regards to our debate concerning Jews, I get the feeling that it is becoming repetitive and that arguments are going in a circle.

Just this weekend I read a book called Origins of a Catastrophe by the last American ambassador to former Yugoslavia, a jew called Warren Zimmerman. His main argument throughout the book is that the country fell apart because of the nationalist leaders who gained control in the republics, primarily blaming Milosevic and Serbian nationalists.

Throughout his book he clearly states his strong opposition to nationalism and makes comparisons to WWII and the Holocaust. For example he makes statements that such ethnic cleansing like the one in Bosnia and the mass exodus of refugees in Europe haven't been seen since the Third Reich and the Holocaust. He compares the leader of Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic and his deputy to Heinrich Himmler and Albert Speer. Also he compares some of the Serbian army's moves to those of Nazi Germany. He calls Vojislav Seselj, the leader of Serbian Radical party a profound Nazi-like racist psychopath. In his analysis Zimmerman includes claims that Serbs ran concentration camps for Bosnian muslims, which were another proven blatant lie, used for propaganda purposes by Bosnian muslims.

Zimmerman's book also contains evident lies, like the claim that Serbs artillery shells fell on the market place in Sarajevo, killing 68 Muslims, thus triggering the Allied bombing. He doesn't even suggest that Alija Izetbegovic had something to do with it (it is a recognized fact that he did it in order to get Nato to bomb the Serbs). Furthermore, Zimmerman speaks of Izetbegovic as if he was the biggest humanitarian next to mother Theresa.

In his brief discussion of the Yugoslav history Zimmerman makes outrages claims that Tito's Yugoslavia was very good for Serbs, a ridiculous statement not even worth expanding on.
At one point he says that Tito's 1974 constitution change which gave Kosovo it's autonomy was bad for the Serbs. However his next sentence was that Albanians suffered in the 1960s at the hands of the Serbs. Zimmerman stated that Albanians in Kosovo made up 90%, but doesn't say anything about the figure (less than 25%) before the WWII. He doesn't say that Albanians are not one of the founding peoples of YU and that they are just a simple minority like the Romanians. Nor does he mention anything about the Albanian aspirations to separate in the early 80's while still enjoying the full autonomy.

In regards to WWII&YU Zimmerman says that almost a million of Yugoslav people were killed at the hands of each other and by the Nazis. Later on he says that tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and unfaithful Croats were killed at the hands of Croat Ustasas, while the real figure was 600-700 thousands. (In my 1600 word essay analysis of the book for school I included all of the things mentioned above and more. In regards to the "tens of thousands" I wrote the following: "I could say the same thing about Holocaust, but we both know that official figures are much higher"(I had to show some political correctness))

Zimmerman also praised Bob Dole who paid a visit to Kosovo before the war in Bosnia as well as the Albanian lobbyist, Joe Diogardi. Just like them, Zimmerman wanted a fast introduction of US force to the Balkans against the Serbs.

Regards,

Milan