Electronic Magayine on Global Politics

Back in February, we warned about the prospect of Israel selling F-16s to Croatia, a state in which WWII revisionism and Holocaust denial are running rampant, and memories of the Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia are routinely glorified. In the meantime, that has become a done deal. But there is more. Not only will Israel sell half a billion dollars worth of fighter jets to Croatia, but on August 5, three Israeli F-16s, crewed by Israeli pilots, took part in a parade to celebrate the 23^rd anniversary of the “Operation Storm,” in which more than 2,300 Serbs were killed, including more than 1,200 civilians, among which more than 500 women and 12 children, and which forced the exodus of a quarter million Serbs from their ancestral homes in this former Yugoslav republic, reducing their numbers from the pre-war 600,000 to fewer than 190,000 today.

EuroCroatia today

As the Serb civilians retreated, Croatian fighter planes bombed and strafed the refugee columns, killing many, even those that had already crossed into neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H). Some of the refugees were met by Croatian mobs hurling rocks and concrete at them. Compiling accounts from various, mostly Western news reports, Gregory Elich put together a harrowing account of the Croatian military operation, with full US and NATO support:

“A UN spokesman said, ‘The windows of almost every vehicle were smashed and almost every person was bleeding from being hit by some object.’ Serbian refugees were pulled from their vehicles and beaten. As fleeing Serbian civilians poured into Bosnia, a Red Cross representative in Banja Luka (B-H) said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. People are arriving at a terrifying rate.’ Bosnian Muslim troops crossed the border and cut off Serbian escape routes. Trapped refugees were massacred as they were pounded by Croatian and Muslim artillery… The Croatian rampage through the region left a trail of devastation. Croatian special police units, operating under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, systematically looted abandoned Serbian villages. Everything of value – cars, stereos, televisions, furniture, farm animals – was plundered, and homes set afire. A confidential European Union report stated that 73 percent of Serbian homes were destroyed. Troops of the Croatian army also took part, and pro-Nazi graffiti could be seen on the walls of several burnt-out Serb buildings.

Massacres continued for several weeks after the fall of Krajina, and UN patrols discovered numerous fresh unmarked graves and bodies of murdered civilians. The European Union report states, ‘Evidence of atrocities, an average of six corpses per day, continues to emerge. The corpses, some fresh, some decomposed, are mainly of old men. Many have been shot in the back of the head or had throats slit, others have been mutilated… Serb lands continue to be torched and looted.’

Following a visit in the region a member of the Zagreb Helsinki Committee reported, ‘Virtually all Serb villages had been destroyed…. In a village near Knin, eleven bodies were found, some of them were massacred in such a way that it was not easy to see whether the body was male or female.’”

Croatia’s then president, notorious WWII revisionist Franjo Tudjman, triumphantly celebrated the expulsion of the Serbs and the fact that they “disappeared… as if they have never lived here… They didn’t even have time to take with them their filthy money or their filthy underwear!” This was the same man who had stated in 1990, at the beginning of his presidency, that he was “glad my wife is neither Serb nor Jew,” and, as the renowned Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal charged, claimed that only 900,000 Jews had perished in the Holocaust.

But this did not much faze Israeli officials playing their own version of the Art of the Deal. On August 5, 2018, as the Croatian daily Vecernji list gleefully announced, “Operation Storm has at last been given the stamp of approval of its allies – the USA. and Israel,” adding that the overflight by Israeli F-16s carrying the Star of David represented a “symbolic act of international recognition of the ethical soundness of military operation Storm,” which Croatia had been seeking “since August 1995.” Obviously, half a billion dollars buys quite a lot these days, Star of David and all, even for Holocaust deniers.

In a statement to the Times of Israel, Serbia’s ambassador in Tel Aviv said that his country was “deeply disappointed about the participation of Israeli pilots and fighter jets,” stressing that Operation Storm was a “pogrom” and “the biggest exodus of a nation since the Second World War,” and that Israel’s participation in Croatia’s victory celebration “is not a friendly gesture toward Serbia.”

On the other hand, according to the same report, Brigadier General (Ret.) Mishel Ben Baruch, head of the Israeli defense ministry’s International Defense Cooperation Directorate, said that it was “an honor to be able to participate” in the 23^rd anniversary of Operation Storm. In addition, the Israeli embassy in Belgrade defended the participation of its warplanes in the celebration, stating that it was “entirely connected with the announced purchase” of the planes, that it carried “no political elements or any connection to the historic relations between Serbia and Croatia,” and that the “solid friendship” between Israel and Serbia “will never be jeopardized in any way.”

Serbian foreign minister Ivica Dachich was, however, not impressed, referring to the participation of Israeli jets as “immoral to their own people, the Jewish people, because so many Jews had perished in the Jasenovac [death camp], and the Croatian regime relativizes the Jewish victims,” adding that he “could not understand” the presence of the Israeli flag at the celebration, and that it would be a “mark” that the Israeli state would henceforth carry.

The Belgrade Jewish Community issued its own statement, saying that the celebration of Operation Storm was “neither the time, the place, nor the destination for Jewish pilots,” that “Jews remember their horrible suffering from World War II, when, just like the Serbs, we were victims of a terrible pogrom,” and that “absolutely no concession should be given, not even a thousandth of a millimeter, to the rehabilitation of either that or, unfortunately, the present-day glorification of the ‘success’ of Croatian soldiers.”

Croatia’s President in the 1990s

Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, tweeted the following just before the event: “Very upset that Israeli AirForce jets will be flying in event to mark “Operation Storm” during which Croatia expelled 250,000 Serbs from their homes in Croatia. Until today no foreign country has ever participated!!”

Ironically, just days before the Israeli pilots joined in the celebration of Croatia’s “final solution” to its Serbian problem, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin paid an official visit to Croatia and, during a visit to the notorious Nazi-era death camp, Jasenovac, often referred to as “Croatia’s Auschwitz,” urged Croatia to “deal with its past… and not to ignore it,” (not so) subtly referring to, as Zuroff put it in a recent Jerusalem Post column, Croatia’s “failure to sincerely and honestly confront” the crimes of its Nazi-collaborating Ustasha movement and regime, which “has plagued Croatia since it obtained independence” in 1995.

Strangely, instead of continuing to hold Croatia to account, the Israeli government and armed forces have chosen to legitimize that country’s glorification of slaughter and ethnic cleansing, built on a foundation of Holocaust relativization and WWII revisionism. While helping fortify modern Croatia’s foundations, Israel’s leaders have just managed to shake their own.

Originally published on 2018-08-09

About the author: Aleksandar Pavić is an independent analyst and researcher.

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

EuroCroatia in August 2018: “Kill the Serb” inscription on Serbia’s car-pate in Split

READ MORE!

Kosovo: Hillary Clinton’s Legacy of Terror

Kosovo is Clinton Country: a 10-foot-high statue of Bill overlooks “Bill Clinton Boulevard” in the capital city of Pristina. Hillary is also memorialized in what has become the crime capital of Europe: right off the street named for her husband is a store named “Hillary,” featuring women’s clothing modeled after the putative Democratic party nominee for President. Pantsuits figure prominently. As Vice puts it: “While former President Bill Clinton has had a boulevard named after him, it’s without a doubt that his wife’s the real star out here.” Why is that? As Gail Sheehy pointed out in her biography of Hillary, ...

Criminal Nation: Obama and Trump Both should be Jailed for War Crimes

It is as if the Gambino and Genovese crime families were arguing their turf disputes in the courts and the news media. The Democrats are screaming bloody murder over President Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey, whom Hillary Clinton still blames for her defeat at the polls and whom the bipartisan War Party has never forgiven for Comey’s earlier hesitancy to blame the Russians for the same offense. Now that Trump has cut Comey loose — ostensibly for his handling of the Clinton emails scandal, according to three letters sent by Trump and his two top Justice Department officials ...

The USA Bombing List: The Democracy World Tour

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

When the Cowboy-Actor Star Brings Democracy: The 1983 Grenada Case

Grenada is an independent state, a member of the U.N., located in the southern portion of the Caribbean Sea very close to the mainland of the South America (Venezuela). The state is composed by southernmost of the Windward Islands combined with several small islands which belong to the Grenadines Archipelago, populated by almost 110,000 people of whom 82% are the blacks (2012 estimations). The state of Grenada is physically mostly forested mountains’ area (of volcanic origin) with some crater lakes and springs. In the valleys are bananas, spices and sugar cane grown. The country is out of any natural wealth ...

President Slobodan Milosevictalking to reporters at the Sava centre, Belgrade, Serbia, in the run-up to elections, Dec 1993., Image: 6033063, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Profimedia, Alamy

How Politicians, the Media, and Scholars Lied about Slobodan Milosevic’s 1989 Kosovo Speech

One of many Serbian Orthodox churches in Kosovo (14th century)A couple of months ago I chanced upon the Emperor’s Clothes Website.I noticed their startling claim that we have been systematically lied to about Yugoslavia, including Slobodan Milosevic. As they told it, he was not guilty of racist incitement and genocide; rather he advocated multiethnic peace. Since their views sharply contradicted my own, I started systematically checking their references by obtaining the relevant original documents. I have yet to find a single claim in error.This was particularly surprising regarding the famous speech that Slobodan Milosevic delivered at Kosovo Field in 1989 ...

America’s Renegade Warfare

Seventy-seven million people in North and South Korea find themselves directly in the line of fire from the threat of a Second Korean War. The rest of the world is recoiling in horror from the scale of civilian casualties such a war would cause and the unthinkable prospect that either side might actually use nuclear weapons. Since the first Korean War killed at least 20 percent of North Korea’s population and left the country in ruins, the U.S. has repeatedly failed to follow through on diplomacy to establish a lasting peace in Korea and has instead kept reverting to illegal and terrifying threats ...

Manchester Terror Act on May 22nd, 2017: Photo Evidence Not Presented on the Mainstream Global Mass-Media (Euronews, CNN, DW, BBC, ABC…)

See photo evidence here: Manchester terror act on 2017-05-22 Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest. Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations. © “Free Media Group” 2017

The US Military Bases Abroad are Disrupting the World Order

In years before 2014, the Afghan think tanks would opine that the US may wind down Afghanistan’s conflict through the end of this year, inferring that the goal of founding the nine large military bases across the country is almost accomplished. Many would delightfully say that Afghanistan is phasing into a new chapter with the flames of war quelled as the US government insisted on troop withdrawal.Entrenching military headquarters in strangers’ territories has no excuse or legal ground under any circumstances. The Afghan nation would cast aside objection to this permanent military foothold thanks in most part to the bitter ...

The U.S. War Crimes against North Korea: Sinchon Massacre by the U.S. Military Exposed

SINCHON COUNTY, North Korea–Over the past few years the Korean people have been able to expose the truth about a number of atrocities by Washington’s military forces during the 1950–53 Korean War. Many others, however, remain covered up and receive virtually no mention outside the Korean peninsula. One such massacre took place in Sinchon, a city located in what is today North Korea.During the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists leadership delegation’s visit to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), we toured the Sinchon Museum, which documents what north Koreans consider the worst atrocity to have taken place in ...

The Relationship Between Washington and ISIS: The Evidence

Reports that US and British aircraft carrying arms to ISIS have been shot down by Iraqi forces have been met with shock and denial in western countries. Few in the Middle East doubt that Washington is playing a ‘double game’ with its proxy armies in Syria, but some key myths remain important amongst the significantly more ignorant western audiences. A central myth is that Washington now arms ‘moderate Syrian rebels’, to both overthrow the Syrian Government and supposedly defeat the ‘extremist rebels’. This claim became more important in 2014, when the rationale of US aggression against Syria shifted from ‘humanitarian intervention’ ...

Hillary Clinton and American Empire

Despite the lack of evidence linking Orlando mass murderer Omar Mateen to Daesh (ISIS) in any operational (direct) sense, the first inclination of U.S. Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was to renew American bombing of Syria, Iraq and Libya— the very nations that were destroyed by U.S. bombs directed by Mrs. Clinton and from whence Daesh arose. In so doing Mrs. Clinton made it evident that she is an unrepentant militarist whose bloodlust, combined with her longstanding interest in promoting American business interests, ties her to the U.S. imperial project of the last century and one-half. The precise moral difference between ...

Proxy Wars: Kosovo and South Ossetia

Yada…yada…yada. The discussion on the unprovoked and planned aggression by Georgia on South Ossetia is futile and moot because Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced last week that the Russian Government would recognize the independence and freedom of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On August 25, 2008, both houses of the Russian Parliament or Duma voted unanimously to recognize the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On August 26, 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that the government of the Russian Federation officially recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Save your rhetoric. Georgia has lost those areas permanently. Ossetians and ...

Al-Qaeda’s Balkan Ties: The Bosnian Connections

Should anyone have had any doubts, the barbaric murder of US photojournalist James Foley fully exposes the true nature of the Islamist terrorists menacing the Middle East. Unfortunately, the savagery exhibited in what happened to James Foley was not unique—beheadings and suicide bombings have become standard tactics in the Islamist terrorists’ way of war. Just weeks before Foley’s murder Kosovo jihadi Lavdrim Muhaxheri posted similar photos of himself “in action” in Iraq. Such Islamist-terrorist ritual beheadings were seen during the Bosnian jihad as well, when extremists would produce “promotional videos” of their efforts showing the decapitation of Serb prisoners, or, in another case, ...

A Short History of Kosovo & Metochia (not approved by Noel Malcolm!)

Dechani monastery in Metochia - one of the most important shrines of Serbian Orthodox Church (14th century) The region of Kosovo & Metohija was a political center of mediaeval Serbia and makes the very essence of Serbian spiritual and cultural identity and statehood since the Middle Ages up today. The biggest and the most important number of Serbian Orthodox mediaeval monasteries and churches (for instance, Gračanica, Pećka Patrijaršija, Bogorodica Ljeviška and Visoki Dečani) are built exactly in Kosovo & Metohija and the headquarters of the Serbian Orthodox Church – Patriarchate established in 1346 was located (till 1766) in the city of ...

Kosovo Wants to Establish its Own Armed Forces

RT: Kosovo wants to establish an army and has received several Humvee armoured vehicles from the USA. Although there was official NATO restraint, how much is the establishment of a Kosovo Army a fixed development?Marcus Papadopoulos: Kosovo is, effectively, a NATO protectorate today – and has been ever since Belgrade lost control of this Serbian province in 1999. It follows, therefore, that the illegal entity which is the Republic of Kosovo will begin the process of creating its own armed forces so that, in time, Kosovo will gain entry into NATO.RT: The EU has rejected the introduction of Kosovo sanctions ...

What Results When the U.S. Invades a Country: “Bring Them Democracy”

The U.S. Government certainly leads the world in invasions and coups. In recent years, it has invaded and occupied — either by military assault or by coup, but in either case followed by installing (or trying to install) a new regime there — a number of countries, especially Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. U.S. propaganda says that its invasions and military occupations (and it denies its coups) are to benefit the people in the invaded and militarily occupied countries, or to bring them ‘democracy’, and are not done merely to benefit the people who control the U.S. Government (which itself is not a ...

What is a Politics?

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

The U.S. Government Backs Ukraine Nazi-Fascists

The Nation published an outstanding article on March 9th, by James Carden, which described the remarkable extent to which the Obama government (and virtually all of the Washington Establishment) are supporting (financially and otherwise) fascists who want to destroy Russia. One such example was a recent event in Washington. According to Carden: It featured the deputy speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament, Andriy Parubiy. According to the program bio, Parubiy served as the “commandant” of the Euromaidan (why did an ostensibly peaceful protest require a “commandant” anyway?) and, later, as secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. The bio provided to attendees might fairly be described as selective. ...

Washington Leads the World to War

What must the world think watching the US presidential campaign? Over time US political campaigns have become more unreal and less related to voters’ concerns, but the current one is so unreal as to be absurd. The offshoring of American jobs by global corporations and the deregulation of the US financial system have resulted in American economic failure. One might think that this would be an issue in a presidential campaign. The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony is driving the US and its vassals into conflict with Russia and China. The risks of nuclear war are higher than at any previous ...

South-East Europe in the International Relations at the Turn of the 20th Century (II)

Part IFrance’s Balkan policy of the status quo The fundamental interest of France in the region of South-East Europe was of the economic nature but not fundamentally of the political one. The region was perceived by the French politicians as primarily significant in the following three points:As a well-suited area for the investment of the French financial capital.As the region which was the most appropriate overland traffic bond with the Ottoman Empire.As a foothold for the French economic domination over the East Mediterranean.[i]In this respect, the French economic penetration into the region, followed by an investment of the French financial ...