In a statement of April 5, 1999, the Canadian Jewish Congress has commended the Government of Canada for acting "...to effect a cessation of the crimes being perpetrated in Kosovo and to ameliorate the human suffering in the region." The Canadian Jewish Congress has also stated that it "...stand(s) in solidarity with the efforts of the brave men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces..."

We, the Jews from the former and present-day Yugoslavia, who are privileged to enjoy the hospitality and citizenship of this great country, write this letter to express our strong disagreement with your decision to support the war NATO and Canada are waging against Yugoslavia.

We believe the initial support of the Canadian Jewish Congress was given in good faith and with the best of intentions. It was, however, based on slanted, grossly prejudiced and, at times, deliberately false information available to the Canadian public both before and after the beginning of NATO's war against Yugoslavia. We hope your position would have been very different if you had access to a more responsible and objective assessment of the situation. Any such assessment would inevitably reveal the following points:

• The NATO war against Yugoslavia constitutes an unprecedented aggression against a sovereign country in contravention of the very essence of International Law, the United Nations charter, NATO's own charter, as well as the highest laws of participating NATO countries including Canada. This was attested to by a number of esteemed Canadian legal experts, as well as the former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia.
  
• If a "humanitarian exception" was to be used as a justification for the war, it should have been considered and authorized by the United Nations. Without such authorization, the NATO rationale for attacking a sovereign country is as convincing as Hitler's rationale for "humanitarian" invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938.
  
• The so-called Rambouillet Peace Agreement was never agreed upon by the conflicting parties. It was a US-drafted document presented to the Yugoslav authorities on a sign-or- be-bombed basis. Such a document, amounting to an outright capitulation, could not have been signed by the government of any sovereign nation in the world and, even if signed under threat, would have been null and void according to the International Law.
  
• The situation in Kosovo, prior to the beginning of NATO strikes on March 24, 1999 could have been described, at best, as a low level armed insurgency. It was not a civil war, much less a "humanitarian catastrophe." The total number of people killed, during the whole year, was less than 2,000 including armed members of all the conflicting groups. The civilian casualties were predominantly caused by the KLA (the self-proclaimed Kosovo Liberation Army) and included both ethnic Serbs and loyal ethnic Albanians. Although there were a number of internally displaced people, the presence of OSCE verifying mission improved the situation to a point where most of them were returning to their homes. There were no refugees outside Kosovo, except for a certain number of KLA members and supporters who took shelter in the neighbouring Albania.
  
• Although there is little dispute over well-documented examples of political repression, there never were any official or unofficial, explicate or implicate policies of ethnic cleansing against the ethnic Albanians on the part of any level of government in Yugoslavia. On the contrary, the policy of Yugoslav and Serbian governments was in the past 10 years chronically plagued by a lack of any consistent approach to the Kosovo problem.
• Military and intelligence experts of all NATO countries, and particularly of the United States, warned that the creation of a flood of refugees and of a real humanitarian catastrophe would be the likely results of any military action.

We have ample evidence in support of every point we have made and would appreciate an opportunity to put our knowledge, experiences and insights at your disposal. 

We would like to acquaint the Canadian Jewish Congress with some of the results brought about by the "efforts of the brave men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces", together with their comrades from other NATO nations:

 

• Two months of bombing have resulted in more than 1,300 dead and 7,000 injured civilians throughout Yugoslavia, among them a significant number of ethnic Albanians.
  
• The damage to predominantly civilian infrastructure and industrial capacities has, according to some estimates, reached $100 billion. At least 700,000 people, including ethnic Albanians, were left without jobs, which means that close to 3 million people, or more than a quarter of the total population of Yugoslavia, were left without a minimum sustenance.
  
• The destruction of oil refineries and chemical industry, predominantly in Novi Sad and Pancevo, as well as the use of depleted uranium weapons, have resulted in severe ecological crisis which is already spreading beyond Yugoslav borders. The "background radiation" measurements in Kosovo reportedly point to an increase of over 30% compared to the last year's levels. Large areas of Pancevo and Novi Sad had to be evacuated. Hundreds of thousands were left without potable water. Oil spills, some of them longer than 20 kilometres, are travelling down the Danube river toward Romania, Bulgaria and the Black Sea.
  
• In addition to more than half a million of ethnically cleansed Serbian (and other) refugees from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Yugoslavia now has to deal with an equal or greater number of new refugees and displaced persons. Hundreds of thousands of them are ethnic Albanians who, considering themselves Yugoslav citizens, were labelled traitors by the KLA. An estimated number of ethnic Albanians in Belgrade alone has surged from 100,000 to at least 150,000. This also raises concerns about a serious rift within the ethnic Albanian population, a rift that will take years, if not decades, to heal.

We can understand that the initial support of the Canadian Jewish Congress was given as a result of incomplete and biassed information. However, the continuation of such support after two months of NATO's ruthless destruction of a whole nation would be clearly indefensible. We call upon the Canadian Jewish Congress to withdraw its support of NATO war against Yugoslavia, and to demand an immediate cessation of the bombing campaign and resumption of the negotiations. We call upon the Canadian Jewish Congress and all Jewish organizations in the world to do everything in their power to help the cause of a viable, lasting peace -- a peace that would ensure a future worth living and heal deeply shattered lives of people of all ethnic groups in Yugoslavia.

Finally, we call upon the Canadian Jewish Congress to remember the words of the Scripture: "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink" (Prov.25:21). Please do everything in your power to make sure the help Canadian Jewish community has so generously given reaches all the victims, on both sides of this ugly, undeclared and illegal war.

Toronto
May 21, 19999
Comments: lebl@idirect.com