Posted on 08/05/2008 5:10:26 PM PDT by Diocletian
Imagine what would happen to a handful of Jewish veterans of the Israel Defense Forces who tried to move from Tel Aviv to an Arab country to open a bistro and bar. In only a few countries could they even get through the airport without being deported or, more likely, arrested. If they were somehow able to finagle a permit from the bureaucracy and operate openly as Israelis in an Arab capital, they wouldn’t last long. Somebody would almost certainly kill them even if the state left them alone.
Kosovo is a Muslim-majority country, but it isn’t Arab. The ethnic Albanians who make up around 90 percent of the population reject out of hand the vicious war-mongering anti-Semitism that still boils in the Middle East. Israelis can open a bistro and bar in Kosovo without someone coming to get them or even harassing them. Shachar Caspi, co-owner of the Odyssea Bistro and the Odyssea Bakery, proves it.
Caspi’s bistro is in the hip, bohemian, and stylish Pejton neighborhood in the city center of Kosovo’s capital Prishtina. A huge number of café bars that look expensive but are actually cheap make up the core of the area. The hyper-local economy in Pejton is apparently based on fashionably dressed young people selling espresso and alcoholic beverages to each other. If you ever visit Prishtina, book a hotel room in that neighborhood.
An Israeli woman who manages the Odyssea Bakery didn’t feel like being interviewed, so she directed me to her boss Caspi at the Odyssea Bistro around the corner. “He will be more than happy to talk to you,” she said. “He will tell you anything you want to know.”
She was right. I showed up at the bistro unannounced and introduced myself. “Let’s sit at the bar,” Caspi said. The bartender served me an espresso with milk on the house.
“So how did you end up in Kosovo?” I said.
“It started in about October of 2005,” he said. “I came to work for an Israeli businessman. He has a big company that he wanted me to work for. After a year we thought there was a good potential in the food business, so I contacted a friend in Israel – he is one of my partners – and we started with a small coffee place with two local partners. But we didn’t get along too well, so we went our separate ways and we sold our part. The next thing we got another local partner and another partner from Holland who is a silent investor. And the four of us established this company. And now we have this bistro, and now we have the bakery, and another sandwich bar in the EU building. This concept is very similar to what we have back home, that is why we did it. This looks very similar to places in Tel Aviv.”
“I notice that a lot of places in Prishtina remind me of Tel Aviv,” I said.
Though the aesthetic is similar, the building materials in Kosovo are of a bit lower quality than what’s available in Israel. Restaurants in Prishtina – aside from Caspi's – are not designed to resemble those in Tel Aviv on purpose, but the resemblance is incidentally there nevertheless. (The aesthetic in Serbian restaurants and bars, meanwhile, reminded me of those in Lebanon. And, yes, that is a compliment. The Lebanese have more style than just about anyone.)
The Israeli contribution to the local food and drink scene isn’t a secret. I found Caspi’s establishment in the Bradt Guide which lists Odyssea as Israeli-owned. I knew already that Kosovo is friendlier to Israel than most countries in the world – especially compared with other Muslim-majority countries – but I was still slightly surprised to see this. It only takes one Islamist fanatic to blow up a bistro. And it would only take a small amount of the right kind of threatening pressure to drive Caspi, his business partners, and his employees out of town or at least underground. But nothing like this has happened.
“People know you are Israeli?” I said.
“Of course,” he said. “Of course. Everybody knows we are Israelis.”
“Nobody cares?” I said.
“On the contrary,” he said, “people like it. They come to speak to us. They want to be in contact. Here I didn’t see anybody that was negative. On the contrary the people are very warm, very nice. They take Islam to a beautiful place. Not a violent place. When they hear I am from Israel they react very warmly.”
Lots of Kosovar Albanians confirmed what Caspi is saying.
“Kosovars used to identify with the Palestinians because we Albanians are Muslims and Christians and we saw Serbia and Israel both as usurpers of land," a prominent Kosovar recently told journalist Stephen Schwartz. "Then we looked at a map and woke up. Israelis have a population of six million, their backs to the sea, and 300 million Arab enemies. Albanians have a total population of eight million, our backs to the sea, and 200 million Slav enemies. So why should we identify with the Arabs?”
“Israelis are okay,” said a waiter named Afrim Kostrati at a cafe named Tirana. “The conflict is not our problem. We are Muslims, but not really. We have respect for Israelis because of the U.S. I have good friends from there.”
“Albanians everywhere are aware that Jews want to help them in this conflict,” said Professor Xhabir Hamiti from the Islamic Studies Department at the University of Prishtina. “And Jews are aware and thankful to Albanians for saving their lives during the Second World War. So we have our sympathy for Israel. I don't think the Muslims here are on the side of the Palestinians.”
When working in other countries I sometimes have to wonder if my interview subjects are only telling me what they think I want to hear. It happens sometimes, especially in the Arab world – not so much because Arabs want to be deceitful but because they want to be polite and agreeable. Caspi's ability to work openly as a Jewish Israeli bistro owner in Kosovo, though, is strong evidence that the Kosovars I spoke to about this weren't just telling me what they thought I wanted to hear. Besides, invective against Israel and Jews is not something many Arabs feel they should have to conceal from reporters.
Jews and Israelis in Muslim-majority countries are like canaries in coal mines, as are women in Muslim-majority countries. You can tell a lot about a place by observing how each are treated. The Taliban impose an oppressive dress code on women at gunpoint, for instance, and the Hamas Charter is explicitly genocidal. It's possible to take the radical Islamist temperature of a Muslim society simply by measuring the misogyny and anti-semitism at both the government level and among the general population. The only country in the entire Middle East that isn't anti-semitic at the government level, the popular level, or both, is the state of Israel.
Kosovo is clearly well outside the mainstream of the Middle East. At the same time, it is one of the few countries even in Europe that isn't at least anti-Israel, if not blatantly anti-semitic, at the government or popular level.
“We have very much in common with Israel,” entrepreneur Luan Berisha said. “In Albania and Kosovo we are in support of Israel. I would never side with the Muslim side to wipe Israel off the face of the world. 90% of Kosovo feels this way. The reason why is we sympathize a lot with the people who have suffered the same fate as us. We were Muslims even in the Second World War – stronger Muslims than we are now – but even then we protected them with our lives. Our grandfathers protected the Jews wherever they were in the region.”
Berisha is right. Albanians did shelter Jews during the Nazi occupation, more than any other people in Europe.
More than half survived the Nazi occupation of Kosovo because so many Albanians sheltered them from the Nazi authorities. According to Dan Michman, Chief Historian at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, there were three times as many Jews in Albania at the end of the Holocaust than at the beginning. Albanians were well-known at the time as a friendly population that could be trusted. They refused to surrender Albanian Jews, and they refused to surrender Jewish refugees from elsewhere in Europe.
The dark side of the Nazi occupation of Kosovo were the 6,000 or so ethnic Albanian collaborators who joined the so-called Skanderbeg Division of the Waffen-SS. The Germans had serious problems with them, though. Thousands deserted within the first two months, and the rest were disbanded after a mere eight months of “service.”
I met some Kosovar Albanians who were actually somewhat philo-semitic. One woman who gave me the rundown on local culture and politics showed me a book that I would never expect to see in any Muslim country other than Bosnia (though Bosnia is only 48 percent Muslim.)
It was a copy of the Sarajevo Haggadah.
This book has an interesting history. It's the text of the traditional Passover Haggadah and was written in 14th Century Spain. It made its way to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, possibly when Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition and were welcomed as refugees in the Balkans by the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Muslim clerics saved the book from destruction during the Nazi occupation, and it was hidden in a bank vault during the Serbian Nationalist siege of Sarajevo. It is one of the most valuable books in the world.
It's hard to describe how startling it was to see any book written in Hebrew in a Muslim-majority country. Perhaps I've spent too much time in Lebanon where something like that just would not happen. What ails the Arab world begins to seem “normal,” at least by the standards of the Islamic world, after enough constant exposure. The Kurds are startlingly different. The Albanians are startlingly different. The story behind the Sarajevo Haggadah is especially salient considering where and by whom the original was saved from destruction.
The Arab Middle East has serious cultural and political problems that deeply affect even a large number of Christians who live in the region. Muslim countries elsewhere sometimes reject these derangements entirely. It's strange that a huge number of Christians in Syria support Hezbollah while so many Muslims in Kosovo sympathize with Israel, but that's how it is.
I rented a car in Prishtina so I could meet up with American soldiers at Camp Bondsteel for a brief embed in Eastern Kosovo. And I laughed out loud to myself when I found a CD of Israeli music in the car stereo that the previous customer left behind.
I was obviously not in Syria, nor was I in Gaza.
“They tell me that in the Holocaust they used to keep the survivors inside of shelters,” Caspi said. “And vice versa. In 1999 the first plane that landed in Prishtina for support was an Israeli plane.”
“To support what?” I said.
“The war,” he said.
“Was it humanitarian?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “The plane was medical support and doctors and some security, and they took refugees to Israel. I know some Albanians who live to this day in Israel.”
“Muslims?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “They took them. Most of them came back here. I have talked to more than five people already that lived between 1999 and 2001 in Israel until everything was quiet here. Then they came back.”
Israel accepted Muslim refugees from Bosnia, too. And I know of at least one Bosnian Muslim from a friend in Jerusalem who was rescued from Sarajevo by Israelis and given Israeli citizenship.
“So why did Israel get involved?” I said to Caspi.
“It is like when Israel went to India when they had an earthquake.” he said. “They went to Africa when there was a disaster in Mombasa. This is what Israel does.” He sounded slightly irritated, as though I didn't know this already. I did know this already, I just wanted to hear what he had to say about it. “They send medical assistance to places that have disasters.”
“Arab countries wouldn’t accept help like that,” I said. It wasn't a question.
“No,” he said. “Actually after the tsunami they wanted to send it to Indonesia and they didn’t let them because it was a Muslim country. But Israel and Kosovo have a very good relationship. The prime minister visited Israel a few months ago.”
“Why so you suppose it is different for Kosovo?” I said.
“I think that a lot of people in the world think that the war in Israel is a religious war,” he said. “I don’t think it is a religious war. I think it is totally about lands and the occupied territory, and the religion is what leaders try to take advantage to promote their own interests. Like what Yassin did with the suicide bombers and said they will go to heaven. They try to make it a religious war but it is not. It is about lands. I have a lot of friends here. And my girlfriend, she is Muslim, I am very serious about her. And to tell you honestly, most of the Israeli people are not religious people. The last time I was in Synagogue was when I was 13 years old. I had to do the Bar Mitzvah and since then I haven’t gone. If you go to Tel Aviv, 98 percent of the people are super liberal, and they will accept you if are a Palestinian, if you are Chinese, if you are Jewish. If things go well I want to bring my girlfriend back home to Israel.”
“If you are married,” I said, “would she get Israeli citizenship?”
“Here is the big problem in my opinion,” he said, “that the religion and the state are connected. You need to be Jewish to be an important citizen. But now things are changing. Now we have civil marriage in specific places that are recognized in Israel, and she can get citizenship.”
Lebanon also has issues with inter-sectarian marriages. If, say, a Christian wants to marry a Sunni they have to get married in Cyprus or another third country.
“Do you know about the Wahhabis that are coming here?” I said to Caspi. Well-heeled Gulf Arabs set up shop in Kosovo after the 1999 war to rebuild destroyed mosques and convert, so to speak, liberal and moderate Albanian Muslims to the fanatically fundamentalist Wahhabi sect out of Saudi Arabia. If anyone in Kosovo would give Caspi a hard time or worse for being Israeli, it would be someone from that crowd.
“There are people telling me that people from outside are coming here to try to make religion a bit stronger,” he said, “but I don’t have a clue.”
At least they haven't bothered him yet.
“You don’t have any problems with those people?” I said.
“Since I came here,” he said, “nobody has shown any kind of problems against Israel. On the contrary, because everybody here loves the U.S., and they all know that Israel is like a state of the U.S. That is a good thing. Everybody knows the support that Israel gets from the U.S. You don’t need to be well-educated to know that the amount of money Israel gets from the U.S. means Israel owes them a lot. And that’s how it works. When Israelis wanted to do military business with China, they had to cancel it because the U.S. didn’t like it.”
“So you think the primary reason Kosovars like Israel is because of the United States?” I said.
“No,” he said. “I think it is many things. They had good relations with the Jewish people back in the old days. If you go back 40 or 50 years you will find that there were good relations with the Jewish people, they lived here happily. Also I think it is what happened in 1999. That showed them that Israel cares and wants to help them. And the people who came back here from Israel say that it was amazing, and they are still in contact with the families in Israel. Nobody here is radical. It is a Muslim country, but I think it is a beautiful Muslim country. I think Israel is a more religious country than here.”
“Have you been to Serbia?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I was in a Jewish meeting for all of the Balkans about two years ago. I usually don’t go to these kind of meetings because I feel much more an Israeli than a Jew, but I went because I used to work for this company, and my colleague who was also Israeli and was a bit more religious wanted company. So I went to Belgrade and Novi Sad. But since then I haven’t visited. I can tell you honestly I like it better here than in Bosnia and Serbia. I don’t know why. Maybe because I am living here, and what happened, I was a part of it, I don’t know.”
Caspi's Israeli employee at the Odyssea Bakery around the corner thought I was slightly strange for wanting to interview someone in Prishtina for no reason other than the fact that he is Israeli. Caspi, though, understood.
“I know why it is an interesting story,” he said. “An Israeli business in a Muslim country.”
“It just wouldn’t happen in the Middle East,” I said. “I don’t even think it would happen in Jordan.”
“No,” he said. “It won’t. And that’s the whole point. Religion can co-exist. For example, my girlfriend, you know, I am in love above my head. I want us to be together. I don’t think religion should… I think the opposite, I think religion should integrate.”
check it out.
Yeah interesting BS from Totten...paid stooge of Muslims.
Bottom line: Ethnic cleansing works when it is Christians being ethnically cleansed at the behest of the Saudis.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Check out the graphic in the upper right of Totten's webpage -- the cross and crescent melded into one symbol. Ironically, it's also the sign of the devil (the D with a hash mark in it) in Balkans -- which pretty much explains it all.
Akin to how Julia Gorin does it for the Serbs?
No. Julia Gorin has been on the Kosovo issue since the 1999 NATO Bombing, as a matter of conscience. She didn't even know any Serbs when she got involved, and like me, it is about America's involvement to her, not really about Serbia.
Totten has jumped on this bandwagon out of nowhere. (His knowledge and experience was the Middle East, not the Balkans) But all of a sudden he's "promoting Kosovo independence" with the zeal of a two-dollar whore. Something's wrong with this picture.
We are members of the Army National Guard currently deployed to the province of Kosovo with Multi-National Task Force (East), or MNTF (E). Our task force is made up not only of the National Guard, but the Army Reserve, the active Army and the Air Force. We come from various parts of the United States, including Virginia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico and 23 other states. We are what is called “boots on the ground” Soldiers. We are here. We are witnesses to what is happening in Kosovo, so what was published in the American Legion magazine in July of 2007 created the need for us to reply to the inaccuracies.
The American Legion Magazine ran an opinion piece in the July issue by a New York comedienne named Julia Gorin, whose writings have been published in a number of conservative publications, including Front Page Magazine and National Review Online. She is also a contributing editor to the Jewish World Review. Ms. Gorin may be a funny lady, but her commentary is filled with wild accusations, inaccuracies, distortions and downright lies that serve only to hurt our peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and shed a negative light on the Soldiers who are carrying out said mission.
Ms. Gorin’s accusations include, but are not limited to:
• “A Serb a day is killed in Kosovo.”
• Kosovo Serbs live inside barbed-wire, NATO-guarded perimeters, beyond which they “dare not venture.”
• When shot by Albanians, NATO troops are directed to flee rather than fight back.
• Serbian nuns continue to be killed.
• Serbian churches and monasteries are destroyed.
• Albanians call U.N. and NATO “occupiers” and want them to get out.
“I can initially tell you that …a Serb being killed a day is not just a ghastly exaggeration, but an erroneous allegation,” says Sgt. Tara Vayda, an intelligence analyst at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo. According to Vayda, the worst ethnically-motivated violence that has occurred here during our stay in Kosovo has been Kosovo-Albanian teens throwing rocks at Kosovo-Serbian-associated busses or a Serbian elderly couple.
While throwing rocks at people or busses is not an activity one would call desirable behavior on the part of the Albanian teens, it certainly does not constitute the murder of a Serb every day. Ms. Gorin’s claim is exactly what she denies it to be – an exaggeration at best and a downright lie at worst.
“Our mission in Kosovo is to maintain a safe and secure environment in our area of responsibility in order to provide the stability that allows local governmental institutions to address and resolve the issues of self-governance and service to their residents, and to allow those residents to live their lives free of the fear of past conflicts,” says Col. Steven Scott, the Deputy Commander of Civil Military Operations for MNTF (E).
“We do this with a ‘boots on the ground’ presence everywhere in our sector; young Soldiers building and maintaining relationships with local leaders, shop owners, teachers and students, and folks going about their daily routines. We do this by engaging civil leadership and assisting them in their attempts at solving the vast problems they face every day. We do this through humanitarian assistance, whether improving infrastructure, or distributing the many, many donated goods we receive from our families and friends.”
According to Col. Scott, the Soldiers work to provide reassurance to the people of Kosovo that bad things won't happen to them, and they work very hard to keep that commitment.
That's why the accusations hurled by Ms. Gorin in her article are so appalling and insulting to our Soldiers. Her implication that 200 Serbs have died on our watch is absurd.
Members of the Joint Implementation Commission in Kosovo have a special mission. They work with the Serbian Armed Forces to enforce compliance of the Military Technical Agreement and UN Security Council Resolution 1244. They operate along the Administrative Boundary Line between Kosovo and Serbia proper (or Uza Serbia, as the Serbs call it).
Their mission takes them throughout the Multi National Task Force (East)’s area of operations, and they encounter people from all walks of life. They have been guests at the homes of both Serbian and Albanian citizens of Kosovo. Not one member of the JIC team has ever seen Serbian enclaves surrounded by barbed-wire, NATO-guarded perimeters.
In most of the province, Kosovo Serbians are free to leave their enclaves, drive to their destinations, take vacations and walks. As a matter of fact, part of KFOR’s mission here in Kosovo is to ensure freedom of movement of all people who live here.
Orthodox Chaplain, 1st. Lt. Michael Wikstrom has traveled throughout Kosovo and has developed relationships with the religious leaders of the Serbian Orthodox community. He concurs that in the MNTF (E) area of operations, no concentration camp-like conditions exist. He says the vast majority of the province is perfectly safe for Kosovo Serbs to live and travel. He does see some areas of Kosovo where Serbian Orthodox priests and nuns could not travel alone....
It is difficult to say where Ms. Gorin is getting her erroneous information, or whether she’s simply using her rather fertile imagination as a substitute for checking facts. However, her claims of what, in essence, are NATO-run concentration camps are simply untrue.
...and it goes on and on.
American soliders in Kosovo are calling Julia Gorin an out and out liar.
“Akin to how Julia Gorin does it for the Serbs?”
No. Julia Gorin has been on the Kosovo issue since the 1999 NATO Bombing, as a matter of conscience. She didn’t even know any Serbs when she got involved, and like me, it is about America’s involvement to her, not really about Serbia.
Totten has jumped on this bandwagon out of nowhere. (His knowledge and experience was the Middle East, not the Balkans) But all of a sudden he’s “promoting Kosovo independence” with the zeal of a two-dollar whore. Something’s wrong with this picture.
An Israeli In Kosove
Comments
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/08/an-israeli-in-k.php#comments
Marc: One can be a practicing, non drinking, praying five times a day, fasting for Ramadan non sleeping around Muslim, and still be “one of the good guys”.
Yes, Marc, I know. Iraqi Kurdistan is full of people like that. The Arab parts of Iraq are becoming more like that now than they were.
Kosovo is European, so it’s different. You probably don’t know it, but cranks like Julia Gorin and Andrew Bostom are attacking me because they are certain Kosovo is a “jihad state” like Gaza even though they have never been there and will never go and have no sense of what Albanians are actually like in the real world.
I draw attention to the non-fundamentalist people in Muslim societies because many Westerners assume they do not exist, that every Muslim country on Earth is like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan. Those three countries hog so much media attention and are assumed to be standard, but they aren’t. A huge number of people I casually know still think alcohol is banned in the places I visit and that women wear “burkhas.” It’s ridiculous.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 4, 2008 10:08 AM
Well said Michael!!!!
“Akin to how Julia Gorin does it for the Serbs?”
But don’t you know that the Serbs are pure as the driven snow? They are protecting Christian Europe..that’s why they got into a war with the Catholic Croats. The Serbphiles here never seem to mention that little fact.
They were zealous supporters of the Nazis when it was profitable, and of Stalin and, later, of Mao, and now they embrace the US with equal enthusiasm. They know that without the US they would be nothing, and they can't be America's "friends" and Israel's enemies, so they tolerate a token (propaganda) Israeli cafe (making sure it the Israeli flag is flanked by an American flag as if saying "do not touch"), never mind the flag of Albania and not of Kosovo.
So, this is an organized propaganda piece. It's transparent and it's intended to appeal to the naive and the stupid, as usual.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a “out and out liar”. IMO, she has legitimate concerns. However, I admit that she may be relying on outdated and/or exagerrated data for her statements. If so, she risks hurting her credibility and risks people not listing to the points she wants to make.
BTW, the article links below seems to contradict what Nicki Fellenzer was saying and they appear to contain more than enought sources to back it up:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/ending_the_balkan_quagmire_at.html
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=9A68C6F6-8A08-453E-B2E8-6E247D2736CD
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=CEE2CB87-7FB5-42AD-83CF-23C04E660D99
Only crank I see here is Totem with this propaganda piece. I should waive the banner high for the fruits of the 14th century Jihad by the Turks in creating dhimmis of the Christian populations resulting in conversion by force or attrition because of oppression? I don't think so. As is quite evident by now anytime Muslims are in a position of authority population or otherwise they Jihad for separation. Only an imbecile would cheer along with them.
BS, Dio! American soldiers are just following orders and saying what they are told to say! Nicki Felzer, who you quoted, works for the Army (Dis)information Office.
My brother-in-law is a retired Army Colonel and was the first CO of the Army Chaplain School when it relocated from Ft. Monmouth to South Carolina. He was also at the Pentagon during the first Gulf War. I know that Army Chaplains do NOT speak freely to the press unless they are under orders to do so! So this "testimony of a Chaplain" is no more credible than any other soldiers' under orders -- they say what they are told to say.
So quit trying to BS people, Dio -- and quit "waiving the American flag" to manipulate opinion when you aren't even an American!
This paragraph is a good example:
Albanians did shelter Jews during the Nazi occupation, more than any other people in Europe. More than half survived the Nazi occupation of Kosovo because so many Albanians sheltered them from the Nazi authorities. According to Dan Michman, Chief Historian at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, there were three times as many Jews in Albania at the end of the Holocaust than at the beginning. Albanians were well-known at the time as a friendly population that could be trusted. They refused to surrender Albanian Jews, and they refused to surrender Jewish refugees from elsewhere in Europe. The dark side of the Nazi occupation of Kosovo were the 6,000 or so ethnic Albanian collaborators who joined the so-called Skanderbeg Division of the Waffen-SS. The Germans had serious problems with them, though. Thousands deserted within the first two months, and the rest were disbanded after a mere eight months of “service.” The fact is, Albania and Kosovo are not the same. During WWII Albania was under Italian control and Italians were not bent on destruction of Jews, even sidestepped The Holocsaust and sheltered Jews in territories under their control.
After the war, Albanians from ALbania took credit for Italian effort. The fact that there were more Jews in Albania after the war is because many European Jews hid there.
Kosovo was the entirely different story. Albanians eagrly joined Waffen SS and Nazifascsist movement of Bali Kombetar.
Now, the sons and grandsons of unrepented Nazis claim they saved Jews. It is as if Eichmann's offspring claimed the same.
This propaganda activity is as dirty as it can be.
When Israel sent a medical team to refugee camp, Albanians showed gratitude by gang raping female MD.
This is why the actions of presstitutes like Stephen Schwantz and Michael J. Totten are despicable. They support evil and trick unsuspecting readers to support it as well.
Yes. But at least Schwartz has an excuse -- he's Muslim and he's rooting for "his team".
But what's Totten motivation? Just being a liberal socialist? An atheist? A paid propagandist? Or has converted to Islam too and hasn't told anyone yet? Totten came out of nowhere on Kosovo and now he spews a steady stream on it as though one trip to the Balkans has made him "an expert". So far Totten's entire reporting on Bosnia and Kosovo seems to be "it isn't the Middle East". Well, duh!
Like I said before, something is very wrong with this picture.
Not all of are willing ignore that the Germans took over occupation duties from the Italians when Italy left the Axis in late 1943, DTA.
You mean just like the Catholic Croats never seem to mention the fact that they and the Muslims were joined at the hip in killing Serbs and Jews during WWII together under the Hitler-backed "Independent State of Croatia"? The union of fascism and the hatred of Serbs and Jews, was even stronger than their religious differences.
Both the Croats Catholics and the Bosnian & Albanian Muslims used each other to get what they wanted -- then and now. So don't assume "the Catholic Croats" were "Catholic" in any sense that most American Catholics would understand or condone! Catholic Croats were "Torquemada-style Catholics" who found greater commonality with Muslims than they did with fellow Christians of another denomination. And Catholic Croats backed the same Muslims who created this flag:
You can say, "That was 60 years ago." But the fact remains that less than two weeks ago the funeral of the WWII Death Camp commender Dinko Sakic was buried in his full Nazi regalia, with a crowd of Croat mourners and a Croat Catholic priest saying that the WWII Croat Nazis laid the foundation of today's Croatia!
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