in
ven in a color-television world, war still seems to happen in black and white.
Close your eyes for a moment and you I can recall pictures from World War n concentration camps, nightly newscasts from Vietnam, and photographs of starving children in Somalia, like th^ stark, black-and-white news-reel and newspaper images of conflicts old and new, war itself typically paints everything either black or white — no shades of grey.
Every con^agration, of course, is more complicated than that. In time of peace, we have the luxury of exploring and debating the nuances of disagreements. But war forces us to take sides. For years, the complicated nature of the war in the Balkans has prevented direct military ac-^ tion. Which of the three sides would you defend?
Anyone but the Serbians, perhaps, l]^use they Ijj are the aggressors. But what about their histo-^ lyasvictims?
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lives are we willing to lose to protect it?
^ pie" of Bosnia,
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people — half of the population — were forced from their homes," we have the opportunity to help end the misery.
We have the chance, with the peace agreement between the Serbians, Muslims and Croa-tions signed in Dayton, Ohio, to see an end to theMllingo
While ttie Balkan conSict is not directly analogous to the Holocaust—for one thing, all sides in Bosnia have arms — Jews should be especially cognizant of the moral lessons from the last Euroi^an war. In addition, we must be prepared to support the use of United Nations and American troops to enforce a peace treaty far from our borders, knowing a similar need might arise in the near future for Israel.
Should that day come, we will argue for soldiers to enforce the work of peacemakers, Mly aware that similar efforts have led eventually to more war, but hoping that real peace is possible.
Two and a half years ago, Elie Wiesel api^ed to President Clinton at the dedication of the Holocaust Museum: "I have beenin the former Yugoslavia last fall I cannot sleep since B warfare, the mass what I have' seen. As a Jew! am saying that we
a side (and some say we the Bosnians), how many
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If it v/ouid be possible for a man to suffer death tmce, he would de-^-"^.. ; < serve it." "ij'' —A Brooklyn yeshivah student to a Dutch TV interviewer, on Isra^p.
prime minister Yitzhuk Rabin's assa^sinatio^ki
* Jews like it, you know.** '"^^m —An aide to Sen. Robert Dole, on why the presidential candidate /u«E^^" advocates moving tlie U.S. embassy in Israel to JerusGler^i^^
*^1y style, my taste and everything is all lands of stuff just slamm^i:J||
together. That's how IVe lived my entire life." .
—Rock star Lenny Kravitz, on being an African-American Je^^lff^
I joke about blacks and Jews, and people say Fm a racist. But the'4fS|&i real racists are too uptight to sit and joke about these things." —Shock jock Howard Stern, on introducing humor into the natio
discussion about ra^S^^x
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^ uey, what have I done?"
—New Jersey's Zellig Bach, 88, whose fake Internet interview in YiSP" *'
dish with Colin Powell attracted reprinting requests global^' :i: \ \
LoTKion ENQLANO
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