Gaza is Sarajevo, is Podujevo, is Oluja, is Batajnica, is Srebrenica. It is Vukovar and the Tvrđavska market and Markale. It is the horror of the bomb dropping from above, of “all men are combatants”, of the refugee column.
Read this if you are from #Yugoslavia and remember. And then let’s do something.
#CeasefireNow #Palestine #Gaza #Israel
From: @bogiperson
https://wandering.shop/@bogiperson/111653638409947863
@loshmi @bogiperson I agree with the conclusion, but not with the premise. I actually have commented on why it's incorrect to compare serbian massacres in #Bosnia with Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
I understand that you're coming from a good faith perspective, but I think that nuanced understanding of situations is strictly better to populism.
@jonn @bogiperson of course there are major historical, political, economic differences between these conflicts.
however, all the differences become miniscule when we take the perspective of civilians trapped under state violence. the experience of helplessness in front of asymmetric power relations. that was the perspective of my post, and i feel it accurately characterizes what's happening in #gaza. that is not populism.
what was your assessment?
@loshmi the major difference that I see is that Bosnian war was not started on behalf of the people by a Bosnian military autocracy, but rather it was started by serbian cells within the newly-independent country against freely elected government of the independent BiH.
Your argument for similarity is very humanist, and it's nice, but it is by definition populist, I'm sorry. By the same token, one can say "Kfar Aza is Bucha is Irpen is Kherson" and compare arab league and allied armies to russian army, right?
Also, many people who start with invoking Srebrenica end with "from the river to the sea". But I agree with the sentiment. First #Mossad has shown that it can't be trusted to do intelligence, and now #IDF has shown that it can't be trusted to wage a defensive war.
@loshmi if you read the occupant language, here's a very interesting and chilling account of Gazan intellectuals thinking about the war and their reaction to it: https://meduza.io/feature/2023/12/26/ya-molila-boga-chtoby-my-pogibli-vse-vmeste-i-srazu-esli-budut-bombit
Actually, the more I think about comparing Bosnians to Gazans the more upset I become :D So I'd rather stop this conversation before I actually get angry. 🙏 Sorry for not being able to cope with emotions, but please take your time to read the account of several civilians I have linked.
@loshmi I'm sorry, I just didn't want for my emotions to spill over into the conversation, it's a personal experience for you and I didn't want to upset you with my unsolicited opinion.
I'm not Bosnian, I'm Latvian, but I have spent many years in Croatia and I have Bosnian friends.
I can appreciate that you find similarities in the emotional response of people faced with state violence, but people of Bosnia didn't want to erase serbia, didn't launch and support a combined arms warfare operation, they merely voted and not even a half-year later, faced utter and ruthless strike. Again, I'm not saying that all Gazans are monsters or that IDF is handling things well, but I can't—in good faith—support hamas-apologists or take away the rights of states to defend (even if the states are fascist, like netanyahu's Israel).
In the upcoming years my country will face a russian invasion and I would rather it wouldn't be limited in the way it can retaliate, say, in Pskov Oblast. I don't know if it makes sense to you, but that's how I see it.
@jonn That’s fine, but it feels a bit unfair to start this discussion and then bow out. Are you Bosnian? Thanks for the link, I’ll read when I can. Lucky guess that I read Russian!
In any case, my examples involved particular aspects of asymmetric and horrific state violence from and by multiple actors in the Yugoslav wars. It is not about comparing the causes of war, but its subjective experience. This is how I experienced it as a child and teenager.