Kosovo isn't Gaza, and Gaza isn't Kosovo - comment

• Published date: 25 March 2024
• Author: ALEX WINSTON
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Growing up, a fascination with the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the resulting wars developed, and I discovered a world of drama, pain, and despair that had not been seen in Europe since the end of World War II

I can remember watching the trial of Yugoslav and Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic unfold on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo throughout the 1990s.

My mind was brought back to Kosovo this week as the country – independent from Serbia since 2008 – marked the 25th anniversary of NATO's Operation Allied Force on Sunday, when Kosovo's President Vjosa Osmani laid a wreath at the NATO monument in the capital city of Pristina.

Osmani thanked NATO for "not turning a blind eye to the suffering of the Kosovar people at that time."

Back then, Kosovo was an autonomous republic within Serbia, with a majority Muslim ethnically Albanian population compared with the rest of Serbia, which was predominantly Orthodox Christian. Serbia itself, along with Montenegro, were the remnants of what was once Yugoslavia, decimated through the 1990s after Slovenia, Croatia, and then Bosnia successively declared independence. A series of wars ensued under the guise of "keeping Yugoslavia together," but they ultimately were seen as the Serbs' attempts to create a "Greater Serbia."

The Kosovo War witnessed extensive and systematic violence perpetrated by Serbian forces against ethnic Albanians. This brutality included mass killings, forced displacements, and widespread rape, with large-scale, ethnic-cleansing campaigns targeting Albanian populations to expel them from Kosovo.

Is what happened in Kosovo similar to the war in Gaza?

War crimes. Genocide. Crimes against humanity. These are terms that we have heard bandied about so regularly over the past six months with regard to Israel's war against Hamas in response to the October 7 massacre that eventually, they begin to lose all meaning.

Government officials, UN representatives, student bodies, and allegedly pro-Palestinian protesters have all used such terminology aimed at Israel since the war's start, and the supposed informed reports that one sees plastered over news bulletins or social media prove that if you "repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth."

In January, South Africa accused Israel of "genocide" at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, the same Hague where Serbia's Milosevic went on trial. US Secretary...