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What
really happened in Bosnia? Historical and Investigative Research, revised 19
Aug 2005 1 | 2
| 3 2. Painting fascists as victims, and
their victims as fascists. The mainstream media turned Bosnia
upside down. Table
of Contents █ Introduction █ Izetbegovic openly
resuscitated fascist symbols █ Izetbegovic had been a violent
anti-Semitic █ How to clean up a fascist who
hunted Jews? Easy: Ignore the facts and call him a victim of fascists. For
good measure, compare him to Jewish victims of Nazi violence (the propaganda
of Bernard Henri-Lévy) █ The other side of the coin: the
Bosnian Serbs were falsely accused of being monsters Introduction HIR has charged that, in Bosnia, the US and its NATO
allies deliberately trained, financed, and politically supported a faction of
Muslim fundamentalists whose goal was to create -- through violence -- a
fascist-clerical state. This is what caused the Bosnian civil war. Put bluntly, what happened is that NATO supported a
campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against innocent Bosnian Serb
civilians, and then NATO blamed the victims, as if they had been the
ones carrying out a genocide. Are we right about all this? In the first part of this
series I showed that Alija
Izetbegovic espoused a violent Muslim fundamentalist ideology. This I did by
quoting directly from Izetbegovic’s own book: ‘Islamic Declaration,’ where he
explains very clearly that Muslims may not organize under any secular system
and that the only proper behavior towards ‘infidels’ is violence.[0] Alija Izetbegovic did not speak for all Bosnian Muslims.
In fact, he spoke for a minority of them, as we shall see. Despite Izetbegovic’s violent writings having been
famous from the start (in Yugoslavia, and in the Muslim world), this is how
the New York Times described him in April 1992: “The Bosnian President, Mr.
Izetbegovic, a Muslim Slav regarded by Western diplomats as a moderate…”[1] And then on May 8th, the New York Times
wrote: “…President Alija Izetbegovic, a moderate
Muslim Slav…”[2] In just one month, Izetbegovic’s supposed moderation
went from being vouched for by Western diplomats to become a simple and
obvious fact of the world which the Times could state with zero comment.
Propaganda moves faster than the speed of light. The question of when Izetbegovic wrote his Islamist
manifesto is important of course. Since he wrote it around 1970, it is in
principle possible that by 1990 his views had changed. But this case has to
be made in a decisive way, naturally, before anybody calls Izetbegovic a
"moderate." The violent fundamentalism he espoused in 1970 would
not cease to be relevant, and any responsible journalist would have to explain
with facts why people should not be concerned that Alija
Izetbegovic might still be a dangerous fanatic. And yet the New York Times
did not even bother to attempt such an explanation when defending Izetbegovic
as a supposed moderate. What the New York Times did, rather, was omit saying
anything about Izetbegovic's past writings, and in this way it gave its
readers the appearance that the label "moderate" could be applied
to this man with zero controversy. But matters are worse. It turns out that Izetbegovic did not win the 1990
elections in Bosnia. So he proceeded to seize it illegally from Fikret Abdic, the
non-fundamentalist and pro-Yugoslav Muslim who was (1) allied with the Serbs;
(2) more popular than Izetbegovic; and (3) who had defeated Izetbegovic at
the polls.[3] What does this reveal? Well, if the most popular
Bosnian Muslim leader, Fikret Abdic,
was allied with the Serbs, then most Bosnian Muslims were not interested in
fighting the Serbs -- on the contrary: they wanted to preserve a united
Yugoslavia. But this in turn implies that the Serbs were not trying to
exterminate the Bosnian Muslims, as the Western media repeatedly claimed,
because if they had been, why would most Muslims be
allying with them? Finally, it is obvious from this that the multiculturalist
and moderate Bosnian Muslim leader was Fikret Abdic, not Alija Izetbegovic,
as the media claimed. There was never any question about this, in fact.
The reason Izetbegovic was famous for having published Islamist writings in
the 1970s is that such activities got Mr. Izetbegovic tried and imprisoned in
Yugoslavia, for a few years, on the charge of inciting dangerous and
fanatical ideas.[3a] And the key
point is this: Izetbegovic re-issued "Islamic Declaration"
in 1990 -- the same year that he ran for the presidency of Bosnia and lost
the election to Fikret Abdic.
This was an election that coincided with a political crisis about the future
of Bosnia, so Izetbegovic was obviously using his violent book to define
himself as the leader of a movement that meant to turn Bosnia into a Muslim
fundamentalist and racist theocracy. It is the height of scandal, therefore,
that the New York Times should neither mention this book nor give an
explanation when it calls Izetbegovic a "moderate." But matters are, in fact, worse still. Having taken the stance that Izetbegovic was a
supposed moderate and multiculturalist democrat (they stopped short of
calling him a saint), the New York Times, without blushing, allowed itself to
paint the accusations of the Bosnian Serbs against Izetbegovic as baseless
and hysterical myths: “Essentially,
the Serbs there were told that they faced resurgent Croat fascism and, from
the Muslims, Islamic irredentism. In [Bosnian Serb leader] Mr. Karadzic's
political lexicon, Alija Izetbegovic, the Bosnian
President, has been cast as an apostle of Islamic fundamentalism, and his
followers as potential fanatics reminiscent of Iran and Libya. To
non-Bosnians [i.e. to Westerners, supposedly -- FGW], the image of the quiet
Mr. Izetbegovic as an ayatollah seems incongruous, a sad misrepresentation of
the leader of a cultured, almost languid Slavic people who converted to Islam
under the Turkish occupation. But Mr. Karadzic is insistent. ‘Mr. Izetbegovic
intends to dominate the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not just the Muslim
parts, and make it a platform for the development of Islamic regimes in
Europe,’ he said. It is a conviction that stalks the towns and villages of
Bosnia, making a self-fulfilling prophecy of Mr. Karadzic's belief that Serbs
cannot live peacefully with Croats and Muslims, unless walled off in
territorial enclaves.”[4] Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was simply
telling the truth: Izetbegovic was a dangerous fanatic. The New York Times by
contrast simply lied. The Times pretended that the accusations against “the
quiet Izetbegovic” were “incongruous,” as if Izetbegovic had not written an
entire book explaining himself in detail, as if the book itself were not
famous in Yugoslavia (and elsewhere), as if Izetbegovic had not served time
in jail for his inflammatory writings, and as if Izetbegovic had not used his
"Islamic Declaration" as a political flag in the Bosnian elections
(all of which the New York Times, of course, knew perfectly well). By
painting Karadzic’s perfectly just accusations as the hysterical myths of a
warmonger, the NYT got to blame the entire conflict on the Bosnian Serbs at
the very point that this conflict started. But the Times was not
alone. The Washington Post made no reference to
Izetbegovic’s violent tract except when portraying Izetbegovic as a supposed
political martyr: “…Izetbegovic…spent
two stints in prison under the old communist regime for his political
beliefs….In ‘Islamic Declaration,’ which cost him five years in jail,
Izetbegovic argued for revitalization of Islamic practices here, but he says
the call was made not so much to praise Allah as to preserve a separate
Muslim identity here.”[5] Not only does the Washington Post refer to
Izetbegovic’s fanatical outbursts tamely as a call for “revitalization of
Islamic practices,” but it proceeds to use Izetbegovic as a character witness
for his own book, taking him at his word that he was just writing about “a
separate Muslim identity.” But to see that the book foams with violent
fundamentalism all anybody had to do was open
it.[5a] And then the Washington Post published this
editorial: “…some members
of the U.S. Congress…maintain that there is growing Islamic extremism in
Bosnia… …critics point to several indications…including…the secret arming of
the Bosniaks [by fundamentalist Iran]
and the continued presence of Islamic [mujahideen]
fighters from other countries.[5b] The concerns these factors raise are,
I believe, unwarranted. Those who fear a radical Islamization of Bosnia often
point to the politics of Alija Izetbegovic…who
authored the 1960s treatise ‘Islamic Declaration’ and…is viewed by some as
having an Islamist ‘agenda.’ In reality, Izetbegovic and his supporters are
themselves wary of extremism.”[6] If the author conceded that Izetbegovic was
importing foreign mujahideen (Islamic
fundamentalist ‘holy warriors’), then how could he simultaneously claim that
Izetbegovic was “wary of extremism”? And yet matters are even worse. Why? Because the New York Times and the Washington
Post are hardly alone -- far from it. The portrayal of Izetbegovic as a
‘moderate’ recurred in most of the Western mainstream media outlets, and it
has remained remarkably consistent to this day. Let us fast forward to the present -- to Vanity
Fair’s January 2003 issue, which has a fawning portrait of the famous and
politically influential French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy,
who, we are told, was “the first and loudest champion of Bosnia’s Muslims and
their president Alija Izetbegovic,” and who lobbied
President François Miterrand successfully on their
behalf. Lévy,
after complaining that “religion has become ideology” (perhaps that makes
sense in French), explained to Vanity Fair what he saw as the solution: “The
only hope, he said, was in the birth of modern, secular Islam, which is what
he had found and admired in Bosnia.”[7] Is there any such thing as "secular
Islam"? Of course not. That is a contradiction in terms because the
meaning of 'secular' is 'non-religious' and Islam, of course, is a religion.
But what survives the contradiction is the portrayal of Izetbegovic and his
followers as Muslims who lead a secular political movement. The mind boggles
at this because Mr. Lévy, being French, can no
doubt read the French language. Therefore, being a high-profile intellectual
supporter of Alija Izetbegovic, he must have read
that man’s book, which is available in a French translation distributed in
Paris by Editions El-Bouraq (the edition I use is
this very French translation). So I find it astonishing that Lévy should pretend that Izetbegovic stood for secular
politics when the latter expressed himself unequivocally on this point: “There is no
secular principle, and the State must be for Muslims the scrupulous
expression of the moral and conceptual pillar of the religion.”[8] That's pretty clear, isn't it? Shame on Lévy for
defending this man. In doing so, he spits on the mass graves of his Jewish coethnics who were murdered in World War II. Why? Because
the man Lévy defends, Alija
Izetbegovic, proudly re-created in Bosnia the Nazi
SS Handzar Division.
The original Handzar
Division was organized by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al
Husseini, founder of the Palestinian movement and Arafat’s hero.[9]
Hajj Amin was an ally of Hitler’s and attained cabinet-level rank with the
Nazis during WWII. Among other barbarities, the Mufti was responsible for the
slaughter of 400,000 Hungarian Jews.[9b] He
also made himself enthusiastically helpful to the Nazis by organizing the
Bosnian Muslim allies of Hitler to hunt down Jews, Serbs, and Roma,[9c] to be
murdered in their homes or sent to the death camps of the Croatian Ustashe, where they suffered orgies of racist violence
that according to some “appalled even the [German] Nazis.”[9a] As
written in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust: “…[The
Mufti Haj Amin al] Husseini made his contribution to the axis war effort in
his capacity as a Muslim, rather than as an Arab leader, by recruiting and
organizing *in record time* [my emphasis], during the spring of 1943, Bosnian
Muslim battalions in Croatia comprising some twenty thousand men. These
Muslim volunteer units, called Hanjar (sword), were
put in Waffen-SS units, fought Yugoslav partisans in Bosnia, and carried out
police and security duties in Hungary. They participated in the massacre
of civilians in Bosnia [Serbs, Jews, and Roma] and volunteered to join
in the hunt for Jews in Croatia... [my
emphasis]. The Germans made a point of publicizing the fact that Husseini had
flown from Berlin to Sarajevo for the sole purpose of giving his blessing to
the Muslim army and inspecting its arms and training exercises.[10] Visit this page to see pictures of the Handzar division in its full Nazi regalia: It was not pretty. But don’t tell that to
Izetbegovic. In a 1993 article entitled “Albanians And Afghans Fight For The
Heirs To Bosnia’s SS Past,” the Daily Telegraph reported on how the modern
Handzar Division, lovingly resuscitated by
Izetbegovic, carried itself. This article was one of a sprinkling of reports
telling the truth about the Sarajevo regime that managed to make it through
the censorship screen (the bracketed text below appears in the original): [Start Daily
Telegraph Quote] “Different,
and alien forces are now in charge -- some of the lowest in the Bosnian
Muslim army. These are the
men of the Handzar division. “We do everything with
the knife, and we always fight on the frontline,” a Handzar
told one U.N. officer. Up to 6000 strong, the Handzar
division glories in a fascist culture. They see themselves as the heirs of
the SS Handzar division, formed by Bosnian Muslims
in 1943 to fight for the Nazis. Their spiritual model was Mohammed Amin
al-Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who sided with Hitler. According to
U.N. officers, surprisingly few of those in charge of the Handzars
in Fojnica seem to speak good serbo-croatian.
‘Many of them are Albanian, whether from Kosovo [the Serb province where
Albanians are the majority] or from Albania itself.’ They are
trained and led by veterans from Afghanistan and Pakistan, say U.N. sources.
The strong presence of native Albanians is an ominous sign. It could mean the
seeds of war are spreading south via Kosovo and into Albania, thence to the
Albanians of Macedonia. Pakistani fundamentalists are known to have had a
strong hand in providing arms and a small weapons industry for the Bosnian
Muslims. Hardline
elements of the Bosnian army, like the Handzar,
appear to have the backing of an increasingly extreme leadership in Sarajevo
represented by Mr Ejup Ganic, foreign minister, Mr Haris Silajdzic, prime minister
and Mr Enver Hadjihasanovic, the new army chief.” [author's
note: Siladzic and Hadjihasanovic
were Izetbegovic's men].[11] [End Daily
Telegraph Quote] Everybody knows that it is not good public relations
to look like a Nazi. The fact that Izetbegovic and his fundamentalist
followers resuscitated the Bosnian SS Handzar (or ‘Handschar’) Division suggests that they are genuinely
proud of it -- that is, they are unapologetic fascists who are so committed
to their cause that they ignore the possible public relations costs. In fact,
as the Daily Telegraph states, “Their spiritual model was Mohammed Amin
al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who sided with Hitler,” and who was
a jihadist and genocidal monster.[12] And notice that members of the Handzar
division proudly explained that “We do everything with the knife…” In a world of modern automatic weapons, what does
that mean? Clearly one cannot “do everything with the knife” in modern
battles. This is not the 7th century. So this must have a different, more
sinister, meaning: attacks against civilians, butchery, and torture -- in
other words, a campaign of terror. Actually, the proud boast by the modern Handzar members that “We do everything with the knife…”
is a direct flashback. As historian Rafael Medoff
explains, excited Nazi underlings hoped to titillate Adolf Hitler with the
exploits of the original SS Handzar. For example,
SS Brigadefuhrer Hermann Fegelein
explained about the original Handzar ‘soldiers’: “They kill
[the enemy] only with their knives. There was one man who was wounded. He
allowed his arm to be bandaged and then went on to finish off 17 of the enemy
with his left hand. Cases also occur where they cut the heart out of their
enemy.”[12a] It is this one-on-one, contact-weapon messiness that
these original fascists employed in their various forms of literal butchery,
often involving torture before death, that
supposedly "appalled" the German Nazis. It was not the genocide
that appalled them, but the carnival disorder with which it was done; the
Nazis preferred to be somewhat more businesslike in their mass killing.[13]
The slaughters which the fascist Croat, Albanian,
and Bosnian Muslim allies of the Nazis carried out in Yugoslavia during World
War II were fond memories for Izetbegovic. At the time of the World War, he
was just a teenager, but a precocious one, as the publication Young Muslims
Canada proudly explains: “In 1940, at
the age of 16 [Izetbegovic] co-founded the Young Muslims, a religious and
political group modeled on Egypt's Ikhwan al-Muslimeen. Six years later he and his friend Nedzib Sacirbey were jailed by
the communist government of Yugoslavia for helping publish the journal ‘Mujahid.’”[14] ‘Mujahid’ means ‘Holy Warrior,’ and Egypt's Ikhwan al-Muslimeen is the ‘Muslim Brotherhood.’ The Muslim Brotherhood was a fascist and Islamist
organization that cooperated with the German Nazis, that
still exists today, and that continues to be extremely powerful.[15] Now, 1) if
Izetbegovic, at the time of WWII, co-founded the ‘Young Muslims’ in imitation
of the ‘Muslim Brotherhood,’ which organization enthusiastically worked with
the Nazis. 2) if Hajj Amin
al Husseini was the go-between for the Nazis and the Muslim Brotherhood[17]; 3) if
Izetbegovic reveres Hajj Amin for having created the original SS Handzar Division; 4) and
if Izetbegovic recently recreated the Nazi SS Handzar
Division; then
one hardly needs to imagine what Izetbegovic was up to during World War II. So what do we have? That the Bosnian Muslim faction led by the man who
earlier had been a leader of fascist and Islamist movements from the tender
age of 16, who wrote and re-issued a book which positively foams at the mouth
with fundamentalist fanaticism, who re-released that book as his political
platform in the Bosnian elections of 1990, and who recently recreated the SS Handzar Division in fond remembrance of his WWII
participation in Nazi crimes in occupied Yugoslavia ... the government
created by this man is what Bernard-Henri Lévy
described as an example of “modern, secular Islam.” The mind reels. Lévy is
not merely a famous philosopher -- he is supposedly Jewish.
But...but...Izetbegovic's past was not a secret! Let me make myself clear, however. Lévy didn’t just misportray
Izetbegovic’s regime in a casual way. He fought to clean
Izetbegovic’s image with all his energies.
This is how Vanity Fair describes Bernard Henri-Lévy’s efforts on behalf of Alija
Izetbegovic: “Lévy fought loud and long to bring the world’s attention
to Bosnia. In 1992 he was one of the first four foreigners into the besieged
Sarajevo, where president Izetbegovic told him, ‘We are the Warsaw Ghetto. . .Tell your president,’ which he duly did. In his
book ‘Le Lys et la Cendre’ (Lilies and Ashes), he
describes how, in order to get the message across to a distracted Miterrand, he had to compare Izetbegovic with Salvador
Allende, the Chilean Socialist president, who is a martyr to the left. Four
days later Miterrand flew to Sarajevo.”[7] Pray for Western civilization. 1) Izetbegovic
-- a violent antisemite -- compares his plight to that of the Warsaw Jews. Then, 2) Lévy, a prominent French Jew, compares this violent
antisemite to "a martyr of the Left": Salvador Allende. Does that
make sense? Not if Salvador Allende is held to have been a leftist, which is what the reader is supposed to believe. It turns
out, however, that this "martyr of the Left," according to a recent
book by Chilean author Victor Farías, was himself a
violent antisemite.[17a] Finally, 3) Vanity
Fair, with a straight face, and with perfect contempt for the intelligence of
its audience, explains that these grotesque inversions of the truth were
supposedly crucial in getting French President François Mitterrand’s
attention, and crucial in winning his support for Izetbegovic’s cause. What the reader is supposed to believe, then, is
that Mitterrand, a supposed leftist, was spurred into action to defend Izetbegovic,
a supposed multiculturalist democrat, by comparisons between Izetbegovic to
another supposed leftist, Salvador Allende, and by comparisons between
Izetbegovic's followers to the Warsaw Jews. They might as well have burned all the history
books… François Mitterrand -- in case you didn’t already
know -- was a highly placed collaborator in the Nazi government in WWII
France. This is the government also known as the ‘Vichy regime’ (for its
capital). Miterrand was an intimate friend of René Bousquet, who was nothing less than the secretary general
of the Vichy police.[18] That’s right, the same police that
deported so many French Jews to the slaughterhouse. Mitterrand did not collaborate with the Nazis
because of political expediency following the invasion of France (and that
would have been bad enough). No, matters are much worse. Miterrand
was in fact deeply committed to a fascist anti-Semitic ideology well before
the German invasion, which invasion he welcomed. “Miterrand was an ardent follower of collaborationist
leader Philipe Pétain and
believed in the ‘national revolution’ that begat the strict, anti-Jewish laws
of 1940-41. As early as 1935, Mitterrand participated in an anti-foreigner
rally in Paris.”[19] In those times, “he had close ties with ‘La Cagoule,’
an outlawed extreme-right group that sought to overthrow the republic, and
yes, he never repudiated his friendships with some of its leaders.”[19] As if that were not enough, Mitterrand himself helped
out with the roundup of Jews. “After the
French defeat of 1940, Mitterrand joined the ultranationalist ‘Legion des Combatttants’ (Fighter’s Legion) which later became the
feared militia that relentlessly hunted Jews and Resistance fighters.”[19] The Nazi Vichy regime was thankful: Mitterrand
joined the ranks of the select few who received the ‘francisque’
-- the highest honor bestowed by Vichy. He only joined the resistance in 1943,
when it became obvious that Germany would lose the war. So what do we really have here? Not only does a famous French and supposedly Jewish
intellectual -- Lévy -- pretend not to notice that
a famous fundamentalist and fascist antisemite -- Izetbegovic -- grotesquely
compares his poor military fortunes (in a conflict that Izetbegovic himself
provoked) to the plight of… of the who? Of the Warsaw Jews! Not only that. We are also asked to believe that this
comparison to the Warsaw Jews was meant to make Mitterrand’s heart melt. Mitterrand!
The man who had himself hunted Jews for the Nazis… But that is not all. We have, furthermore, Lévy’s
absurd claim that in order to get this fascist, Mitterrand, to support this
other fascist, Izetbegovic, he compared the latter to "a martyr of the
left": Salvador Allende. But neither Mitterrand nor Allende were ever
real leftists -- they were both violent antisemites who helped eviscerate the
Left while pretending to lead it.[20] I point out that for anybody paying even the
slightest attention, Mitterrand's ideology was not a secret: “...Mitterrand’s
sympathies with Petain are well-known -- he gave up the practice of laying a
wreath on his grave [as president of France!] only
after years of protests from Jewish groups...”[19] Phillipe Petain had been France’s top Nazi. Let us observe, finally, that Vanity Fair simply prints
all of this with no comment, despite the fact that a well-documented book by
Pierre Péan, which showed that Mitterrand was
always a Nazi from head to toes and never apologized for it, was published
some time ago, in 1994.[21] Perhaps you need to pause. Returning to Izetbegovic, it was not just the media
that portrayed him as a moderate. Academics (or what passes for academics)
did the same. Take Noel Malcolm, whose book ‘Bosnia, A Short History’
received rave reviews in the US press. It also sports on the back cover, for
example, plaudits from the likes of former US ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmerman,
who cooperated in the demonization of the Serbs, the whitewashing of
Izetbegovic, and the destruction of Yugoslavia. (Conspicuously missing from
Malcolm's back cover is the endorsement of even one historian.) Malcolm
defends Izetbegovic as a supposed moderate secular democrat, and accuses that
pointing to Izetbegovic’s writings in order to argue that he is a Muslim
fundamentalist is just propaganda.[22] ‘Propaganda’ is the deliberate spreading of
falsehoods for political gain. Nobody is making up what Izetbegovic wrote
down, and yet Malcolm argues that taking Izetbegovic at his word is
propaganda, whereas defending him as a secular democrat -- in flagrant contradiction
of the man's own written beliefs -- is supposedly not propaganda.
Malcolm excels at what Orwell called ‘newspeak,’ in which one insists that
anything politically meaningful should be interpreted as the opposite of what
it explicitly says. In any case, as we have seen, Izetbegovic didn't
merely write, he took action: the man openly gloried in his resuscitated Nazi
heritage.
The characterization that was rightfully
Izetbegovic’s -- murderous fascist -- was given first to Bosnian Serb leader
Radovan Karadzic and later to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. But
neither man behaved like a fascist. Milosevic was represented all over the
mainstream Western media as “the new Hitler,” a supposedly bloody nationalist
determined to create a ‘Greater Serbia’ cleansed of other ethnicities.
Equally unfairly, this portrayal was extended to all of the Serbs in the
former Yugoslavia. Even those with just a passing acquaintance with
current realities in the former Yugoslavia will not fail to be surprised, in
retrospect, by this portrayal. After all, Serbia is the only part of
former Yugoslavia that remains an integrated, multiethnic state. But no
matter: the media insisted with ferocity that the Bosnian Serbs supposedly
cooperated with Milosevic in his supposed dreams for an ethnically pure
‘Greater Serbia,’ and that such dreams caused the Bosnian civil war. Here is
an example from The Financial Times: “As Moslems in
Sarajevo went to prayers yesterday afternoon, Serbs were reinforcing
blockades on the roads leading from the republic’s northern town of Banja
Luka towards the border with Croatia. There, Serbs
backed by the federal army and supported by Mr. Slobodan Milosevic, president
of Serbia, appear determined to lay down the markers for a Greater Serbia,
using an area where they are the dominant ethnic group.”[23] Notice that the Financial Times goes out of its way
to present a contrast: “Moslems…went to prayers” while the “Serbs were reinforcing
blockades.” The Moslems were pious and peaceful; the Serbs warlike. This was
the reliably and massively repeated portrayal. But the followers of Alija Izetbegovic were hardly peaceful. And the Serbs
were their victims. Of course, many Bosnian Muslims were victimized as
well, but not by the Bosnian Serbs. Rather, these Muslims were victims of the
Croatian fascists, or else of Izetbegovic’s Islamic fundamentalists. The
latter demanded total obedience from their co-religionists and were guilty of
spectacular atrocities.[30] The innocent of Bosnia were caught
between competing fascisms: Croatian and Muslim, but not Serbian. The next piece in this series will demonstrate that Alija Izetbegovic started the Bosnian war, that his goal
was ethnic cleansing and genocide, and that the Bosnian Serbs merely reacted
in self defense. The accusations against the
Bosnian Serbs were slanders. Continue to part 3: Footnotes and Further Reading [0] “Moderate Democrat or Radical Islamist?: Who
is Alija Izetbegovic, the man the US sponsored in
Bosnia?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White [1] The New York Times, April
5, 1992, Sunday, Late Edition -- Final, Section 1; Part 1; Page 3; Column 1;
Foreign Desk, 681 words, Bosnia Calls Up Guard and Reserve, By CHUCK
SUDETIC, Special to The New York Times, SARAJEVO, Yugoslavia, April 4 [2] The New York Times,
May 8, 1992, Friday, Late Edition -- Final, Section A; Page 10; Column
3; Foreign Desk, 1058 words, Bosnia's Besieged Government Near
Disintegration, By CHUCK SUDETIC, Special to The New York Times,
SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 7 [3] “Mr
[Fikret] Abdic got more
votes in the 1990 Bosnian presidential election than Mr
Izetbegovic but, under party political pressure, ceded his place to him. He
was pro-Yugoslavia and lukewarm about Bosnian independence.”
[3a] "...The court found the accused guilty because
it held that their activity had been directed against brotherhood and unity,
and the equality of our nations and nationalities with a view to destroying
Bosnia-Hercegovina as a Socialist Republic and thus of undermining the social
order of the SFRY.
[4] The New York Times, May 17,
1992, Sunday, Late Edition -- Final Correction Appended, Section 4; Page 7;
Column 1; Week in Review Desk, 1221 words, Conversations/Radovan Karadzic; Understanding,
and Letting Loose, Historic Hatreds in the Balkans, By JOHN F. BURNS,
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia [5] The Washington Post, July
6, 1993, Tuesday, Final Edition, FIRST SECTION; PAGE A1, 1014 words, Bosnian
Mourns 'Tragic Reality' of Partition, John Pomfret,
Washington Post Foreign Service, SARAJEVO, Bosnia, July 5 [5a] “Moderate Democrat or Radical Islamist?: Who
is Alija Izetbegovic, the man the US sponsored in
Bosnia?”; Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White [5b] “HOW THE U.S. & IRAN HAVE COOPERATED TO SPONSOR
MUSLIM TERROR: (And this while loudly denouncing one another in public...)”;
Emperor’s Clothes; 13 April 2003; by Jared Israel. [6] The Washington Post, April 21,
1998, Tuesday, Final Edition, OP-ED; Pg. A21, 923 words, Scare Talk About
Muslims in Europe, Arslan Malik [7] Vanity Fair. “France’s
Prophet Provocateur.” January 2003. pp. 86+ [8] Izetbegovic, Alija. 1999 [1980]. Le manifeste
Islamique (original title: Islamska
deklaracija). Beyrouth-Liban:
Éditions Al-Bouraq.
(p.82) To read a comprehensive analysis of Izetbegovic’s ideas please consult
my piece entitled “Moderate Democrat or Radical Islamist?: Who is Alija Izetbegovic, the man the US sponsored in Bosnia?”;
Investigative and Historical Research; by Francisco Gil-White [9] You will
find the most complete documentation on this here:
Some of this material was originally published here:
[9a] Nyrop, R. F. 1982.
Yugoslavia: A country study. Headquarters, Department of the Army, DA Pam
550-99: American Univeristy. (p.68) [9b] "Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin's Role as
Leading Instigator of the Shoah (Holocaust)" [9c] "Anti-Semitism,
Misinformation, And The Whitewashing Of The Palestinian Leadership";
Israel National News; Jun 17, '03 / 17 Sivan 5763; by Francisco J. Gil-White. [10] Encyclopedia of the
Holocaust, Edition 1990, Volume 2, Pages 706 and 707, entry Husseini, Hajj
Amin Al. [11] “Albanians and Afghans
fight for the heirs to Bosnia's SS past,” (London) Daily Telegraph, 12/29/93;
By Robert Fox in Fojnica; bracketed text in
original [12] To learn more about Hajj
Amin al Husseini and the Nazi history of the Palestinian movement, read:
[12a] Quoted in: Medoff, R.
(1996). The Mufti's Nazi years re-examined. Journal of Israeli History:
Politics, Society, Culture, 17(3), 317-333. (p.317) [13] To read about
what Jasenovac, the system of death camps in World
War II Croatia, was like, visit: [14] "Alija
Izetbegovic"; Young Muslims Canada; June 14, 2000; by Ismail Royer. [15] “…as Italian and German
fascism sought greater stakes in the Middle East in the 1930s and '40s to
counter British and French controlling power, close collaboration between
fascist agents and Islamist leaders ensued. During the 1936-39 Arab Revolt,
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military
intelligence, sent agents and money to support the Palestine uprising against
the British, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and "supreme guide"
Hassan al-Banna. A key individual in the
fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin
el-Husseini -- incidentally the later mentor (from 1946 onward) of a young
firebrand by the name of Yasser Arafat.”
[17] “A key individual in the
fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and [Muslim Brotherhood
founder Hassan] al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini,”
[17a] This is documented in Farías's book
"Salvador Allende: Antisemitism and Euthanasia," published by Maye,
a Chilean outfit in 2005. [18] Libertad Digital (Digital
Liberty). Wednesday 25 Septeber, 2002. “Papón The Nazi,” by Carlos Semprún
Maura. [19] The Associated Press,
September 3, 1994, Saturday, PM cycle, International News, 753
words, New Book Reveals Mitterrand's Long-Hidden Wartime
Collaboration, By MARILYN AUGUST, Associated Press Writer, PARIS Full text:
EDITORS NOTE: The book in question is: Péan,
P. (1994). Une jeunesse française: François Miterrand.
Paris: Fayard. [20] Though Time Magazine
incoherently apologizes for him, they nevertheless cannot help saying what
Mitterrand actually did to the French Left: “A staunch defender of the working class [sic!], he presided over a
doubling of unemployment levels, a widening gap between rich and poor. . .A champion of the French left [sic!], he
ultimately marginalized the Communists and plunged the Socialists into
disarray.”
Aah…! Let me see. So
he was a “champion of the French Left” by means of actions that “ultimately
marginalized the Communists and plunged the Socialists into disarray”? That’s
an interesting way of championing the Left. [21] Pean,
P. 1994. Une jeunesse française: François Mitterrand, 1934-1947. Paris: Fayard. [See footnote 19 for a summary] [22] Malcolm, N. (1996). Bosnia,
a short history. New York: New York University Press. (see pages 218-220) [23] Financial Times (London).
July 13, 1991, Saturday, SECTION I; Overseas News; pg. 2, 800 words, Moslems
prepare to resist Greater Serbia, Judy Dempsey. [30] To get a taste for these,
you may read about the exploits of one Naser Oric here: Consider also that the moderate Bosnian Muslims were fleeing
Izetbegovic's murderous Islamist fanatics and taking refuge with...the
Bosnian Serbs! The so-called 'concentration camps' that the Bosnian Serbs
were supposedly filling with Bosnian Muslim victims were really *refugee*
camps were these Bosnian Muslims came looking for protection from
Izetbegovic. |
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