In a radio broadcast on Sept. 27, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told his listeners: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.”
Chamberlain’s comments were made on the eve of the infamous Munich Conference at which he and the French premier acquiesced to Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, the first step in the occupation of that country. Six weeks later in Germany, Jewish synagogues and Jewish businesses were burned and windows were smashed in the infamous Kristallnacht pogrom. Less than a year later German troops began the blitzkrieg against Poland, launching World War II.
What happened in Czechoslovakia in 1938 led irreversibly to the Second World War in which hundreds of thousands of Brits lost their lives; it led directly to events in which ultimately 20 million people around the world perished, including 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
The experience of World War II taught us that there are no “faraway” countries in our world. Today, even more so than six decades ago, we are inextricably linked — economically, politically and culturally — with countries and peoples around the globe. What happens in Kosovo or Karachi, in Indonesia or Iraq, has a profound impact upon Americans and upon people and governments everywhere.
The outrageous violation of human rights in Kosovo is only the latest in a long line of abuses against a group of people for racial or ethnic or religious reasons. The abuses in Kosovo are a continuation of the ethnic violence and human rights violations that have followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Many Americans have argued, like Chamberlain, that Kosovo is not our problem, that it is a distant land which does not affect us, and that we should let the Europeans deal with it.
In the past few months more than 1,500 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have been killed, most of them deliberately and indiscriminately murdered by Serbian military and police officials in a calculated campaign of terror to intimidate the population of that area. This escalation of violence against Albanians is the culmination of a decade-long effort of the Serbian government to repress the population of the province of Kosovo.
This area has a population that is more than 90 percent ethnic Albanian, but it is an area that has great historical importance for Serbs. In an effort to repress the Albanians, the Serbian government has systematically withdrawn the governmental and cultural autonomy the Albanian majority enjoyed under the former Yugoslavia. The increasing Serb repression has finally exploded in violence, with the vastly superior Serbian military forces unleashing death, violence, and terror in an effort to expel the ethnic Albanians or force them into submission.
Our world will be safe for people of all races, ethnic backgrounds and religions only if we fight against repression and discrimination and the violation of individual rights wherever and whenever we find them — and only if we establish international legal principles and procedures to protect these rights.
Our forebears, as well as many of us, have suffered injustice, violence, abuse and bigotry. Because of this long history, and especially because of our background with the Holocaust, Jews have a special obligation to fight violations of human rights here and abroad.
Jews have consistently shown leadership in fighting against racism and discrimination, not only against our own people but against all people everywhere. We understand, perhaps better than most, the idea that was expressed so eloquently by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail”: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
The violence and repression and murder in Kosovo is a matter of serious concern for all of us. We should support strong action by our government, the United Nations and other international organizations in order to bring an end to that conflict. We must work to end the horrendous human suffering that Serbs have inflicted upon the Albanians of Kosovo.