From: aaldoubo@copper.denver.colorado.edu (Anisa Alnoor Aldoubosh)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,soc.culture.arabic,talk.politics.misc,soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Alan Dershowitz on Bosnia
Date: 6 Oct 92 02:59:11 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.mideast
Organization: University of Colorado at Denver

I came across an interesting newspaper article recently on the conflict in
Bosnia, from the most esteemed writer, Alan Dershowitz:

	"What's happening in Bosnia is horrible, but it's no Holocaust"

"David Brinkley reports that 'they' are saying 'it's worse than Nazi
Germany'.  Margaret Thatcher tells millions of American television
viewers that what is occurring in the former Yugoslavia is 'just about
the worst of Stalin and Hitler'.

"Both Brinkley and Thatcher are old enough to know that they are grossly
exaggerating, but most of their viewers do not remember the Holocaust or
Stalin's genocidal campaigns.  There is a great danger that these viewers
will actually believe that the Holocaust was no worse than the terrible
things that are now being done to civilians in Bosnia.

"The truth is that there is absolutely no comparison between the horrors
of the Holocaust and the brutality of the Serbs.  Even if every single
report of Serbian atrocities is credited, the worst we are seeing is the
wholesale detention of tens of thousands of adults and the retail murder
of hundreds or perhaps thousands of adults and a lesser number of children.
That is bad enough, but it does not compare to Hitler's 'final solution',
pursuant to which 6 million Jews were systematically shipped to death camps
and placed in gas chambers where they were suffocated to death.

"The real question is why do intelligent people always seem to have made
comparative assessments of brutality, and why do they always compare
current abuses to the Holocaust?  This is not the first, nor will it be
the last time this comparison will be offered.

"Sometimes, it is done for crass political purposes, such as when Arabs
compare Israel's relatively benign occupation of the West Bank with the
horrors of Auschwitz, or when some anti-abortion zealots call abortion
the 'Holocaust against the unborn'.  Sometimes it is done out of ignorance,
as it is when some critics of the American detention centers where
Japanese-Americans during World War II use the same term - 'concentration
camp' - to describe the detention centers where Japanese-Americans were
kept for three years and the Nazi death camps from which few survivors
emerged.

"Hitler's Holocaust was unique in the history of the civilized world both
for its scale and for its horrors.  Nothing will ever compare to it, and
nothing should be compared with it.

"Having said that, we should consider the brutality in former Yugoslavia
on its own terms.  In so doing, we should look not only at the Serb
detention camps in Bosnia but also at the Croat camps in Croatia.  It is
crucially important not to confuse the political controversy with the
human rights violations on both sides.  Seeking the right political ends
does not justify inhuman means.

"In a recent book, current Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, justified
'genocide' as 'a natural phenomenon', which is 'permitted, recommended,
even commanded' by the Bible.  Nor was he speaking in an historical
vacuum, since many Croatians participated actively in the Nazi genocide
while Croatia was a Nazi puppet state.

"There have been human right violations committed by several sides to
this bloody ethnic conflict, and the civilized world must focus
attention on all such atrocities.  It should neither ignore or justify
'retaliatory' or 'counter' atrocities.  Already we are hearing calls
for revenge against innocent civilians whose only crime is that belong
to an ethnic group, some of whose members have carried out horrible
crimes.  Guilt must be individual, not collective, if the rule of law
is to prevail during times of terrible strife.

"The world community must act now, not only to prevent further human
rights violations in Yugoslavia, but to prevent their spread to other
parts of Europe and Africa in which ethnic warfare endangers innocent
civilians.  But let us not exaggerate the current and political
problems, serious as they are, by repeating false assertions that 'it's
worse than Nazi Germany'."

End of article.

Is it an ethnic group or religious group?

Wasn't the principle the same though, as in Nazi Germany, to destroy and
disempowering a specific religious group?

Maybe Alan is just focusing too much on one side to be able to clearly
see what the 'conflict' is really about, and how the daily massacres
and starvation of this certain religious minority is very similar to
the crimes and atrocities of Nazi Germany.

We shouldn't compare on the same level, but we should not reduce
the severity of it either because it is not at the same level.

Anisa
 
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast