De: "Julie Wornan" <juliewornan@...>
À: chomsky@...
Objet : Srebrenica and honesty
Date : Tue, 4 Jan 2005 23:04:53 +0100
Dear Mr Chomsky,
I am always happy to read the sensible things you say about US
policy, Iraq
and Palestine. But your position on some other subjects leaves
me
frankly
bewildered.
In an
interview conducted by Junaid Alam and published in Left
Hook,
December 17, 2004, you wrote,
"Srebrenica was an enclave, lightly protected by UN forces,
which was
being
used as a base for attacking nearby Serb villages. It was known
that
there's
going to be retaliation. When there was a retaliation, it was
vicious.
They
trucked out all the women and children, they kept the men
inside, and
apparently slaughtered them. ...."
Surely, you know that the attacks on the Serb villages were
themselves
retaliation for the Serbian siege of Srebrenica. Thousands of
Bosnian
Muslims from the surrounding villages had been driven from their
homes
by Serbian terror squads. They fled to Srebrenica, whose population
was
multiplied several times and subject to siege resulting in much
hunger
and
deprivation. If "retaliation" sweetens or almost-condones or at
least
explains the Serbian atrocities, why don't the Bosnian Muslim
attacks
on
Serb villages deserve the same perspective? Moreover, if
"retaliation"
accounts, in part, for the Serbian impulse to murder Muslims,
why do
you
neglect to mention the "ethnic cleansing" that was Serbian
policy from
the
start of the war - from the first Serbian attack on peaceful
protesters
in
Sarajevo? Does that motive suddenly disappear when "retaliation"
can
be
blamed? (It makes me think of the way Israeli attacks on
Palestinian
populations are usually billed as "retaliation" for some
incident,
although
in the global context it's clearly Israeli policy to terrorize
these
people
so as to reduce their will to resist the occupation, or incite
them to
pack
their bags). - And when you say "*apparently* slaughtered them",
you
seem to
imply that there are grounds for doubt - despite the mass graves
and so
many
survivors' accounts. Have 8000 men and boys been hiding in the
woods
for 9
years?
I cannot believe you are ignorant of the facts about Srebrenica
and the
Yugoslavian wars. You've devoted your life to uncovering
hypocrisy and
dispelling ignorance. So how am I to understand your bias in
this
matter?
Sincerely,
Julie Wornan
(member of
Americans Against the War, France )