Three Cheers for Kosova!

A Serbian is driving down the highway in the wrong direction, listening to music on the radio. Suddenly the program is interrupted by an urgent announcement: "Warning! A crazy driver on the highway is going in the wrong direction!"

"Only one?" the Serb exclaims, "All of them!"

"Wow!" the thought crossed my mind when a Serbian friend told me this joke, "How much they resemble us!"

And indeed, much as Serbs are different from Israelis, it seems that we have a lot in common. Both peoples believe that "the whole world is against us". Both are completely convinced that they are absolutely in the right, even when everybody else is telling them otherwise.

Like the Israelis, the Serbs are also immersed in their past. For them as for us, history is more important than the present. The future is a hostage of the past.

Many centuries ago, the Serbs lived in Kosovo. According to them, that patch of ground was the cradle of their nation. There, in June 1389, the defining event of their history took place: the great battle against the Ottoman Turks. The fact that the Serbs were decisively beaten does not diminish the memory. It also does not matter to them that afterwards a people of Albanian descent took root in the country. In their eyes, the people that has now been living in Kosovo for many centuries is "foreign", the country is "the patrimony of our forefathers" and "belongs to us because our religion (the Eastern Orthodox) says so." Doesn't that sound at bit familiar?

In World War II, the feeling of solidarity between Serbs and Jews was cemented. Our heart was, of course, with the courageous partisans. The Jews who succeeded in reaching Tito's liberated areas were saved from the Holocaust. Serbs and Jews were murdered together in the Croatian concentration camps, which were so gruesome that even SS officers shuddered when they visited them.

The death of Tito and the collapse of his regime did not put an end to the feeling of solidarity. On the contrary. Our Rightists fell in love with Slobodan Milosevic. Ariel Sharon supported him publicly. Perhaps he liked the combination of deeply-felt victimhood and merciless brutality.

All this explains the mixed feelings many Israelis have towards the declaration of independence of Kosova (as the Kosovars themselves call their country.)

I am afraid that in this matter, too, my views diverge from those of many other Israelis. My heart was with the masses of Albanian Kosovars who rejoiced and danced this week in the streets of Pristina.

They reminded me of the masses celebrating in the streets of Tel Aviv some 60 years ago, when the UN General Assembly decide to set up a Jewish state (It also decided to set up a Palestinian-Arab state, but that has been well-nigh forgotten.)

This week, people throughout the world are debating the question: do the Kosovars have the right to a state of their own - or not? International law is being analyzed, possible precedents examined, learned arguments raised pro and contra.

To me this seems irrelevant. When a population decides that it is a nation, behaves like a nation and fights like a nation - well, then it is a nation and has the right to its own nation-state.

(I once told this to Golda Meir in the Knesset. She had denied, as usual, the existence of a Palestinian nation, repeating her famous dictum that "there is no such thing". Madam Prime Minister, I answered her, perhaps you are right, and the Palestinians are quite wrong when they believe that they are a nation. But when millions of people erroneously believe that they are a nation, conduct themselves like a nation and fight like a nation - well, then they are a nation.)

That is the only test that counts. And the Kosovars have stood this test. Therefore, there is a Kosovar nation, and it has a right to a state. Long live the Republic of Kosova!

The midwife of the independent Republic of Kosova was the genocidal Milosevic. When he decided to carry out a murderous ethnic cleansing and to drive out millions of Kosovars from their country, he put an end to the right of Serbia to go on ruling Kosova. It proved again how right Thomas Jefferson was when he demanded, in the American Declaration of Independence, "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind".

Milosevic, like his admirer Sharon, had only contempt for the opinion of mankind. They were both wrong, as was Stalin when he asked contemptuously: "How many divisions has the Pope?" The establishment of the Republic of Kosova is a punishment for Milosevic, much as the establishment of Israel was a revenge on Adolf Hitler (even if it was the Palestinians who paid the price).

The conscience of mankind was outraged by the monstrous expulsion, and this time it did have divisions - or at least squadrons. The US Air Force bombed Serbia and compelled Milosevic to stop the despicable operation. The Kosovars returned to their homes, and since then independence was only a matter of time.

(Many of my friends were shocked when I supported the bombing. To their mind, everything that NATO or the Americans did was necessarily bad. I told them that I am allergic to genocide. Even if God himself decrees genocide [as, according to the Bible, he did to the Amalekites, the Canaanites and the Persians of Esther's time], I am against it. In order to prevent genocide, I am even ready to take the devil's side.)

The lesson of the Kosova chapter is simple: since World War II, one can no longer commit genocide without the conscience of the world being aroused and action taken to stop it. Sometimes this happens late, even shockingly late, but in the end the selected victim will stand on his feet again.