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All Israeli governments since the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia have adopted a consistently pro-Serbian stand. Israeli public opinion has failed to respond to Serb atrocities in a way comparable to the response in many other countries. An important part of the explanation of this remarkable state of affairs, which puts Israel at odds with most of the western world - and the Jewish diaspora, is to be found in Israel's history. Israel was set up at the price of turning the larger part of the native Palestinian population into expellees of refugees. Its continued existence as an ethnic, Jewish state is predicated on not readmitting the exiled Palestinians. Collective repression and denial of these facts help explain the unwillingness or inability of Israeli society and its political establishment to condemn the Serbs' war of expansion and `ethnic cleansing'.

From the beginning of hostilities in the former Yugoslavia to the summer of 1995, the world community failed in its efforts to effectively stop the carnage [Rieff, 1995]. But it did alleviate the suffering of the civilian population by providing considerable humanitarian aid. And it did make clear what it thought of the conflict: it condemned Serbia's aggression against Croatia and Bosnia - Herzegovina, and the crimes of war and crimes against humanity, including genocide, that the Serbs were... >>>