-----Original Message-----
From: Seth Ackerman <SAckerman at FAIR.org>
>You can't generalize about these conflicts: some are truly
>one-sided pogroms; others are tit-for-tat grudge matches that go on for
>1,000 years. The Kosovo conflict is of the latter category.
Well, in Hebron and a number of other towns in the Palestinian Mandate in the 20s and 30s, Palestinians murdered Jews. We can also point to other "tit-for-tat" between the communities over the years throughout the centuries in the Islamic world (with more tats against the Jews in fact.)
Yet I find no justification for the Israeli expulsion and oppression of the Palestinians on that basis.
And the Kurds sought to destroy the Turkish state in its initial years znc ghd killings by the PKK have been horrendous. Yet this in no way justifies the full-scale cultural oppression of the Kurds in Turkey.
The Kosovars were allied with the Serbs during World WarII and any earlier "tit-for-tatting" begins to be a rather hollow justification for indifference. It sounds like rightwing Christian justification for poverty based on Christ's admonition that "The poor will always be among us."
There is reasonable discussion about Kosovar oppression of local Serbs, but there is no possible comparison between those conflicts and the 1000+ Kosovars killed and the tens of thousands driven out BEFORE the NATO bombs began falling. And there is no comparison between the 10,000+ Kosovars killed and the nearly 2 million expelled versus the "dozens" of Serbs killed in recent weeks.
It was interesting travelling in Middle East countries often with little or no sympathy for US military actions; but the attitude was an absolute confidence of the rightness of the Kosovar cause with deep suspicion of NATO's actions. Generally the attitude was the "right actions for the wrong motives"- an analysis I have great sympathy with. That the Kosovars are muslims no doubt explains part of this sympathy but the fact that the United Nations ratified the agreement and peacekeeping forces indicates broader agreement on that judgement.
===Nathan Newman