"Stopping the War in Yugoslavia"

Yohanan Ramati

This article appeared in "Midstream - A Monthly Jewish Review" in April,
1994. Yohanan Ramati is director of the Jerusalem Institute for Western
Defense.

The civil war in Yugoslavia continues, with untold suffering on all sides.
The media report the suffering of the Muslims in gruesome detail. The
suffering of Croats at Muslim hands gets little attention. The suffering of
Serbs is ignored. So it will surprise large sections of the American public
that some 600,000 refugees from Croatia and Bosnia have saught refuge in
beliguered Serbia deprived of food and fuel by UN dictate during the deadly
winter.

The media in the Western world, the Muslim world and Israel treats us to a
regular dose of tearjacking hate propaganda. We see women and children in
Sarajevo - the Muslim quarters of Sarajevo - with terrible wounds seeping
blood and shattered limbs, to the accompaniment of shells and small arms
fire. We do not see the killing and maiming of Serb women and children by
Muslim fire in Bosnia or by Croat fire in Croatia. And when Croat women and
children are brutally murdered by Muslims, or vice versa, the media response
is sporadic and no conclusions are drawn.
This organized anti-Serb and pro-Muslim propaganda should cause anyone
believing in democracy and free speech serious concern. It recalls Hitler's
propaganda against Allies in World War II. Facts are twisted and, when
convenient, disregarded. The selectivity in reporting and comment is far too
blatant to be accidental. The Western governments do not control their media
sufficiently to be responsible for it. So who is? Who is bankrolling and
masterminding the vast effort to destroy a people the United States, England
and France have no reason to hate in order to establish a second Muslim
state in a Balkan province where Muslims are minority?

Part of the answer is provided by a revealing interview by Mr. James Harff
(director of Ruder & Finn Global Public Affairs) given to Mr. Jacques
Merlino in Paris in October 1993. Ruder & Finn are public relations company,
currently registered as foreign agents. Here are Harff's statements,
slightly abridged.

-----

Harrf: For 18 months, we have been working for the Republics of Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as for the opposition in Kosovo. Throughout this
period, we had many successes, giving us a formidable international image.
We intend to make advantage of this and develop commercial agreements with
these countries. Speed is vital, because items favourable to us must be
settled in public opinion. The first statement counts. The retractions have
no effect.

Marlino: How often do you intervene?

Harff: Quantity is not important. You have to intervene at the right time
with the right person. From June to September, we organized 30 meetings with
the main press agencies, as well as meetings between Bosnian officials and
Al Gore, Lawrence Eagleburger and 10 influential senators, among them George
Mitchell and Robert Dole. We also sent out 13 exclusive news items, 37
last-minute faxes, 17 official letters and eight official reports. We placed
20 telephone calls to White House staff, 20 senators, and close to 100 to
journalists, editors, newscaters and other influenctial people in the media.

Question: What achievement were you most proud of?

Harff: To have managed to put Jewish opinion on our side. This was a
sensitive matter, as the dossier was dangerous looked from this angle.
President Tudjman [of Croatia] was very careless in his book "Wastelands of
Historical Reality". Reading this writtings, one could accuse him of of
antisemitism. In Bosnia, the situation was no better: President Izetbegovic
strongly supported the creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state [there] in
his book "The Islamic Declaration". Besides, the Croatian and Bosnian past
was marked by a real and cruel anti-semitism. Tens of thousands of Jews
perished in Croatian camps. So there was every reason for intellectuals and
Jewish organizations to be hostile towards the Croats and Bosnians. Our
challenge was to reverse this attitude. And we succeded masterfully.

At the beginning of August 1992, "New York Newsday" came out with the affair
of [Serb] concentration camps. We jumped at the opportunity immediately. We
outwitted three big Jewish organizations - B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation
League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. We
suggested to them to publish an advertisement in the "New York Times" and to
organize demonstrations outside the United Nations.

That was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game
on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs
with the Nazis in the public mind. Nobody understood what was happening in
Yugoslavia. The great majority of Americans were probably asking themselves
in which African country Bosnia was situated. But by a single move we were
able to present a simple story of good guys and bad guys, which would
hereafter play itself. We won by targeting Jewish audience. Almost
immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with the use
of words with high emotional content, such as "ethnic cleansing",
"concentration camps", etc., which evoked images of Nazi Germany and the gas
chambers of Auschwitz. The emotional charge was so powerful that nobody
could go against it.

Marlino: But when you did all of this, you had no proof that what you said
was true. You only had the article in "Newsday"!

Harff: Our work is not to verify information. We are not equipped for that.
Our work is to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to us, to
aim at judiciously chosen targets. We did not confirm the existence of death
camps in Bosnia, we just made it known that "Newsday" affirmed it.

Marlino: Are you aware that you took on a grave responsibility?

Harff: We are professionals. We had a job to do and we did it. We are not
paid to be moral.

-----

The American Jewish organizations and leaders outwitted by Ruder & Finn can
now pat themselves on the back. They have played a major role in gaining the
world's sympathy for antisemitic regimes in Yugoslavia. They are
"politically correct".

One small fact remains to be determined: who paid Ruder & Finn? It seems
unlikely that the governments of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia could raise
the money required. Are we dealing here with Arab money? With the money of
US oil companies operating in the Arab states? With the money of
international banks?

Can anybody hire Ruder & Finn? An Israeli who was interested in this subject
when the Likud was in power was told by a public relations company that it
would work for the government of Israel only if it changed some of its
policies. The well-orchestrated and well-engineered demonization of the
Serbs is a warning to all Jews who want Israel to continue to exist. Israle
can become a target.
Why are Muslim states (unless attacked by other Muslim states) usually
portrayed as innocent victims of aggression? why are the outrages they
commit ignored or condoned? Is it because media editors, reporters and
commentators in democratic states are afraid to risk the wrath of financiers
and oil interests sponsoring them? Is democratic public opinion controlled
by the few for their own profit?

For Israelis (and some other people usually at the receiving end of similar
machinations and hate propaganda, like the Maronite Christians of Lebanon or
the whites and the Zulus of South Africa) the answer to this question - i.e.
the nature and motives of the perpetrators - could be a matter of life and
death. Those deliberately promoting radical Islam in Europe will promote
radicalism and Islam everywhere. And the Western parterns in this venture
believe in the power of money far too much to realize that they are creating
a menace that will eventually eliminate them too.

The sanctions against Serbia are a disgrace to humanity. Orthodox Serbs were
the majority in Bosnia-Herzegovina before the Serb decimation at the hands
of the Croat Ustashis and the Muslim supporters of Hitler in World War II,
and still populated more than half of Bosnia-Herzegovina before the current
fighting began. The Muslims occupied less territory despite being a larger
percentage of the population (48 percent as against 35 percent) as they were
concentrated chiefly in urban areas. To fight in order to escape the rule of
an Islamic fundamentalist despot like Izetbegovic in a country that belonged
to you and was taken away by the fiat of foreigners is the natural reaciton
of any people with an instinct for national survival. To continue fighting
despite sanctions imposed by a cynical "international community" concerned
with business interests - not justice - is a badge of honor.

No sanctions were imposed on Russia when it intervened to remove the
nationalist Gamsakhurdia regime in Georgia and turn Georgia into a pliable
puppet state after a bloody civil war. No sactions were imposed on Syria for
swallowing Lebanon and destroying the Christian power structure there,
supplanting it with a coalition of radicals and Islamic fundamentalists. No
sanctions were imposed on Egypt for invading and annexing part of Sudan in
1993 (very few know this because the world's press and media ignored the
Egyptian invasion, and the UN refused to debate Sudan's complaints). Indeed,
in 1993 hundreds of thousands of people were killed in various parts of
Asia, Africa, Latin America and ex-Soviet Europe without sanctions even
being considered. Seemingly, the "international community" is tough with
radical states only when oil interests are threatened, as in the case of
Iraq in 1990.

But these are not the only reasons why the sanctions on Serbia are a
disgrace. They are also a disgrace because they are the main reason why the
civil war in Yugoslavia has not ended. The endless meetings between Serb,
Croat, and Bosnian Muslim representatives continue because the sanctions
depriving the population of Serbia of food, medicines and fuel also deprive
Izetbegovic of a reason to stop fighting and reach agreement with the
others. The Muslims - not the others - keep rejecting proposals made to
divide Bosnia, which would put under Muslim rule large areas currently
controlled by Serbs. Some of these proposals were endorsed by outside
factors responsible for peacemaking in Yugoslavia, but event this did not
help. Izetbegovic hopes the Serbs will be broken by the UN embargo, so why
make peace with them?

He could prove right. But it may take more than the embargo, Ruder & Finn
and the equivocations of democratic politicians and journalists - among them
some Jews - to break the spirit of a proud people.