DO SERBS DESERVE CONTINUED PUNISHMENT?
by William Dorich 7 November 2007 In 1918 British historian William Harold Temperley wrote: “There is no race which has shown a more heroic desire for freedom than the Serbs or achieved it with less aid from others or at more sacrifice to itself.” No better words have been spoken regarding the Serbians except for the words uttered in 1541 by Suleiman the Magnificent who said: “Pity the world if the Serbs ever unite!” He knew more about us than we know about ourselves. After more than 400 years of Ottoman slavery and occupation of the Balkans, the Serbs learned to survive. Did they ever unite? Of course not! Serbs were denied an education under their Ottoman oppressors and Serbian history was recorded, not on paper, but through poetry and songs. Guzla players sing songs about their Muslim oppressors. When they refused to sing songs about the pasha they were blinded as a form of punishment. My Serbian ancestors willingly sacrificed their lives in defense of their people. Those survival skills gave us such heroes as Sava, Lazar, Obllic, Bogdan, Karadjordje and Njegos. That gene pool has all but disappeared in our culture. In its place are the seeds of envy, spite, betrayal and cowardice with the most disgusting trait of all, contempt for each other. Serbs go out of their way not to help a fellow Serb. I have been in the publishing business for 21 years and in that time I can count on two hands how many Serbs have purchased a book from my company. As a Serb who has suffered from the effects of double genocide in which I lost 17 members of my family who were burned to death in a Serbian church in Vojnic, Croatia during the Holocaust, I went on to lose the last 5 relatives of my name who were too old and too sick to flee Operation Storm in August, 1995 when Croats cleansed the last 200,000 Serbs from Croatia. My relatives were found a month later with their throats slit at a time when only Serbs were being blamed for crimes against humanity in the media. I don’t need to be taught about prejudice, bigotry, hated or revenge—I have lived it. But what I do not understand is the willful contempt Serbs have for each other, or worse, the near total disregard they have for defending their own race from extinction. During the war in Croatia in 1991 most Serbs in Belgrade treated their fellow Serbs as Hillbillies and mocked their rural lifestyle and country music as unworthy of being defended or saved and most never lifted a finger until the bombs started dropping on Belgrade and they got a taste of their own complacency. As the war progressed to Bosnia the intelligentsia in Belgrade only gave lip service but few stepped up to the plate to defend their fellow Serbs. In a nation of 6 million people less than 100,000 served in the military. Today they are paying the price. When the bombs started dropping on Belgrade I encouraged Serbs to send a telegram to President Clinton believing that tens of thousands of messages would send a clear signal to Clinton’s State Department. George Stephanopoulos told me privately that only about 100 telegrams were received. Shame on us! The Croats and Bosnian Muslims spent in excess of 70 million dollars on public relations and lobby effort in Washington to gain their independence while a million Serbs in this country could not raise $300,000 to defend our own interests. Was it too much to ask every Serb in America to contribute as little as $20.00 a year to defend their fellow Serbs? The answer is clearly, yes! In 2005, I encouraged Peter Brock to publish Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting… Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia. I felt it necessary to expose the hideous deceptive reporting by dozens of American journalists. In my naïve thinking I believed we could sell 10,000 copies and get on the New York Times “Best-Seller” list. By doing so, the media could not keep these lies and deceptions secret from the American public. But Serbs would rather complain about being out-foxed by their enemies than doing something about it. Knowing that there are over 1.3 million Serbs in the United States selling 10,000 books should have been a cakewalk. However, to date, the total sales for Media Cleansing represent 3,385 copies of which 1,880 were purchased from people in Canada, Great Britain, Greece, and Russia, all of whom paid nearly as much for postage as the cost of the book. After placing ads in the American Srbobran and Sloboda we sold a grand total of 27 books. The only newspaper to do a review was the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I purchased a half page ad in the Los Angeles Times Book Review costing me $3,000—we sold 21 copies in a city where there are over 150,000 Serbs. In two years, the bookstore at St. Steven Serbian Cathedral in Alhambra, California sold 7 copies in a church with over 700 members. At St. Sava Church in San Gabriel, California, we have sold 5 copies. Serbs simply do not give a damn that this book exposes the truth of what the media did to our people. They do not have a clue that their children will suffer from the racial and ethnic discrimination that will affect their lives, their education and even their job opportunities due to this ugly bigotry. When Brock’s book was scheduled for release I arranged a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington where I am a member. I spent thousands of dollars promoting the event for three weeks prior to the presentation. I flew to Washington to make the announcement. In total 28 people attended, 7 were Serbs, 4 Greeks, 2 Russians and one journalist, Sherri Gossett, who was promptly fired from her job after writing about Brock’s book. Hello? Is anyone listening? This is not about selling books. I don’t give a damn if Serbs read this book or not, but what they should be doing is buying the book and putting it in their school libraries, or sending copies to their elected officials or to the newspapers in their communities, especially to the media outlets that have succeeded in muzzling the book. The late Desa Wakeman purchased 100 copies. She was not a rich woman, but she believed in getting the word out. The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies along with the American Council for Kosovo, held a conference on Kosovo in Washington on October 23 at the Capitol Hill Club, less than 100 people attended. I donated 20 copies of Media Cleansing to the event. Ambassador Bissett, David Binder, Nikolas Gvosdev, Jim Jatras, Steven Meyer, John Schindler and Bill Warner spoke. These were all non-Serbs who were willing to defend Serbia’s rights when few Serbs are willing to “get involved.” Except for Srdja Trifkovic (Chronicles Magazine) Serbs were invisible. And by the way, Chronicles never reviewed Media Cleansing by Peter Brock in spite of this Serbian connection to the editorial staff of the magazine. Are we really this powerless? Or is helping one another asking too much? The vast majority of Serbs who now live in the luxury of freedom in the United States couldn’t care less about those they left behind in Serbia. And Serbs born in this country have a total disconnect to their ethnic heritage except when it comes to a Serbian social function. Then they prove they can drink, dance and throw money around with the best of American Serbs. If we lose Kosovo it is because millions of Serbs were not willing to defend what is rightfully ours. If Serbia is further dismembered, and it will be, that is because Serbs have become cowards and unwilling to place their lives on the line. In the end, Serbs will continue to be punished—and maybe we deserve it?
