Note from Emperors-clothes.com: The following was written in 1995, during the bombing of the Bosnian Serb Republic by NATO but everything said here applies to the present. The letter represents the views of the Jewish community in Yugoslavia today and Yugoslav Jews living in Israel and elsewhere.

Open letter to the American Jewish Commitee
by Danon Cadik, Chief Rabbi of Yugoslavia, et. al.
(See full list of signatories at end of letter).

Gentleman,
The actual air attacks on Bosnia kill innocent people, fan the war, and definitely thwart the peace efforts. The civil war in former Yugoslavia is entering its fifth year are immense in a population with one out of seven mixed marriages. This disastrous war can not be stopped by wrong means, in a wrong way, by wrong intentions and by wrong approaches. The background for all those mistakes and failures is an unrestrained anti-Serbian propaganda, raging during all this war, following the Nazi model, but much more efficient means and in a much more sophisticated and more expensive way. Even American Jews were not able to withstand this propagandistic poison, although they were especially expected to resist. Unfortunately, they did not recognize the Nazis and racist nature of the Serbophobic dogma. They did not identify Serbophobia as a twin sister of anti-semitism, this being not unknown in the United States.

In the third wave of Serbs going into exile from Croatia, now in August, and this time from a region known as Serbian Krajina (pronounced .Krayenah) - the former border area between the Austrian and Ottoman Empires - more then 200 thousand people left their homes and land, where they lived since the seventeenth century. Two previous dislodging moved large masses of Serbs, numbering many tens of thousands of people from north-west and west Slavonia - not to be confounded with Slovenia - also old-timers since the days of the Austrian Empire, and transformed them into homeless, desperate families. For them all, only Serbia is the sole safe refugee, although poor and plundered by the economic sanctions as imposed by the Security Councel of the United Nations.

After World War Two, today in the second half of the twentieth century, this is the biggest human tragedy in Europe. If you have even only basic knowledge of Jews in contemporary history, notions such as "Endloesung" (final solution) and "Judenrein" or "Judenfrei" (without Jews) can not be unknown to you. Time has come to introduce new an expression into our and your vocabulary, namely, "Serbenfrei", meaning "without Serbs". Concurrently, the word "Endloesung" is receiving an extended meaning: in Croatia there are no more Serbs than there are Jews in Germany or Poland. Now you see "ethnic cleansing" - as used in the media and contemporary politics - with its most telling, most pure, and most comprehensive content.

While enjoying the contentment and safety of the highest living standard in the world, instead of pretending to be fighters for the security of Israel, and for human rights abroad - in a foreign country where they are not less than in yours - you should strictly avoid assisting arms dealers, as well as war-mangers in fanning war against the already persecuted and tortured people in former Yugoslavia. Your Jewish ethics would better be presented and asserted by looking at 700 thousand refugees in Serbia, and 500 thousand elsewhere in Europe, as well as by providing adequate humanitarian aid for their survival and rehabilitation.

Assist your Government and the Congress to understand that the economic and political sanctions against Yugoslavia are in the first instance an expression of double standards; also, that they are the main obstacle in implementing peace in Bosnia and Croatia; in the third place they are cold silent genocide of the Serbian people; and last but not least, they are the shameful background for the impudent plunder of people some 20 times poorer on an average than yourselves, by a pack of deeply corrupt international trade and traffic supervisors and national customs officials at the borders of our country.

How shall we explain and convince the Yugoslav and Balkan Christians and Muslims that our Talmud is a treasure-house of human wisdom and utterly noble ethics, rather than a textbook of hypocrisy and hatred against Gentiles, as stated in the "Protocols of the Elders of the Zion", that notorious, pernicious and hard-dying forgery since the turn of the century; how shall we stop those pogrom calls from the "Protocols" if such a mighty and elitist organisation as the American Jewish Committee advocates a continuation of non-Jewish bloodshed in the Balkans. Please understand that your calls for air-force attacks against the Serbs and for lifting the arms embargo in order to assist the Muslims and Catholics are perceived only in this way within the whole Christian-Orthodox world. Incidentally, the arms embargo has been a sheer fiction ever since the start of the civil war in Croatia and Bosnia, a fact which since this summer can no longer be concealed in any way.

Here in Yugoslavia we know that there are various streams among American Jews in reading and interpreting the Torah and Talmud teachings, as well as in observing the practices. But we can not understand how anybody may study and discuss Tanakh topics on Erev-Shabat after the Arvit service in the synagogue, and two days later succumb to a richly paid propaganda by war-mangers and ideological forerunners and followers of Nazism. Incautiously you have accepted a glut of lies, as well as propaganda fabrications and manipulations, especially from the television screens, because of ignorance about the Serbs and the real conditions in the Balkans. Two civilizational delimitations, indeed, have appeared there for the last five centuries: namely, one between Islam and Christianity; and the other within the latter, between Catholicism and Christian Orthodoxy.

Your past and recent actions, based on neglect of the very Jewish ethics and the rich but bitter historical experience, already provoked clear early signals of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism in a country which was free of these plagues and European ignominy.

We call on you to stop all further developments in this treacherous direction. Please take into consideration that your organization - because of ignorance and prejudice on this side, but also because of the similarity of names - is regularly confounded with the American Jewish Congress, and this one again with the World Jewish Congress, and finally all together with some imaginary world Jewry.

Please take a very serious second look, and come here in order to see the true facts. Only by respecting the truth and justice can you stand up for basic human rights, as stipulated in the Charter of the United Nations, and the General Declaration on Human and Civil Rights.

The Jews in Serbia appeal to you not to force the Serbs to become enemies of the Jews. They have been proven friends during the whole twentieth century, and they still wish to maintain this attitude. Shalom!

Sincerely yours,
Danon Cadik, The chief Rabbi of Yugoslavia
Prof. Dr. Andrija Gams
Prof. Dr. Marko Anaf
Prof. Dr. Andrija Preger
Ing. A. Mozic
Aleksandar Demajo
M. Altarac
Prof. Dr. Nikola Rot
Enriko Josif

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