For the past eight months, like many people around the world, I have started my day by checking the news from Gaza and the rest of Palestine. I rely on reports from people on the ground in Gaza, primarily on social media, for reliable information about what is happening.
At the same time, I follow mainstream media, executives, representatives of major international organizations and academics to get different perspectives. Unfortunately, I hear them use the term “ethnic cleansing” too often to refer to the ongoing genocidal campaign against the Palestinians. Every time I hear this phrase, it reminds me of the war I survived in the 1990s in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Ethnic cleansing” is a term coined by genocide perpetrators during the wars that led to the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The term derives from military terminology for the “cleansing” (čišćenje) of an area after a military operation. Propagandists added the term “ethnic”, thus creating the term “etničko čišćenje”, and the media, politicians, even academia and international organizations helped spread it and keep it alive.
International criminal law recognizes four main types of crimes: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression. The United Nations accepted the term “ethnic cleansing” in 1994, describing it as a method used to commit crimes against humanity and war crimes, leading to genocide. However, it is not a crime defined by law and, as such, cannot be prosecuted.
Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, defines “ethnic cleansing” as a “euphemism for genocidal practices” used to cover up events that should be prosecuted as genocide and to dehumanize its victims. In other words, the use of the term “ethnic cleansing”, if intentional, is part of genocide denial, which constitutes the final stage of this crime.
In the late 1980s, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), home to around 22 million people, began to collapse. Disintegration began in Serbia, the largest republic in the federation, triggered by the policies of its then president Slobodan Milošević. The former banker who became a politician in the early 1980s was hungry for power and sought it by any means necessary.
Fearful of losing power amid political upheaval and the disintegration of Yugoslavia, he launched a propaganda campaign sowing fear and hatred. His approach involved all segments of society, including the media, academia, the military, intelligence services, common criminals, writers and even pop stars and astrologers.
The propaganda aimed to create a conflict between “us” and “them”, “us” being the Serbs, the “heavenly” nation as he called it, and “them” being everyone else, starting with the Kosovo Albanians, the Croats, or all non-Serbs who did not want to follow his propaganda in Bosnia. He and his allies propagated myths about “age-old hatred” between these groups and the victimization of Serbs, who, to be protected, had to live in a single state.
This goal could only be achieved through what they called “ethnic cleansing” and “human resettlement”, followed by the creation of mono-ethnic states, with Velika Srbija (Greater Serbia) being the most powerful among them.
The term “ethnic cleansing” was sufficiently vague and easy for the propaganda media to use. Ironically, Western politicians and international organizations, including the UN, accepted the term because no one was ready to recognize that a genocide was occurring in the heart of Europe. No one wanted to take responsibility and respect the obligation imposed by international law to end the genocide.
The mainstream media followed the lead of governments and international organizations, adopting the terminology created by Milošević’s propaganda machine. They spoke of the war as if it were too complicated to explain to Western audiences and instead suggested that it was fueled by “centuries-old hatreds” between people who did not want to live together, and that the “cleansing ethnic” was the only solution. .
This interpretation of what happened in Bosnia in the 1990s still persists today. It has become ingrained in the language of Western war reporters and their approach to reporting on almost all wars, as we can see in the coverage of the Gaza War.
Every time I hear the words “ethnic cleansing,” I am reminded of two episodes from the war of the 1990s. The first took place in April 1992, when the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and the Army of the Republika Srpska entered the town of Zvornik in eastern Bosnia.
They raised a Serbian flag atop the city’s largest mosque and played an old Serbian military song over the loudspeakers as they went on a rampage, massacring people. When all this was over, Serbian media reported that the city had been “liberated” and “cleansed.” More than 400 people were killed in just a few days and thousands were taken to concentration camps or expelled from the city.
The second episode occurred in July 1995 in Srebrenica. After days of heavy fighting and shelling in the town where more than 30,000 people lived, war criminal Ratko Mladić, commander of the Main Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska, entered the town accompanied of a television cameraman.
Mladić greeted, hugged and kissed the soldiers who reported to him that the “cleaning” was underway. He then ordered: “Pravac Potočari” (go straight to Potočari), where thousands of people had gathered around and in the UN base seeking protection.
Instead of protecting civilians, UN peacekeepers allowed Mladić’s soldiers into the base. They watched as his troops began to separate men and boys from women and other children. Women and children were put on buses and trucks that took them away (“humane resettlement”).
The men and boys were taken to various areas around Srebrenica and Potočari and executed (“ethnic cleansing”). It took Serbian forces about seven days to kill more than 8,000 people and throw them into mass graves. Some of the victims’ remains have still not been found.
At the end of the genocidal campaign, media in Serbia and Republika Srpska reported that Srebrenica had been “liberated”, with some claiming it had been cleansed “of the smell of those who previously lived there”.
The genocide was part of the plan prepared by Mladić, Radovan Karadžić and other wartime political leaders of Republika Srpska, and supported by Milošević. Twenty years later, Mladić and Karadžić were found guilty of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), while Milošević died in prison, awaiting judgment. The genocide was finally recognized as such by the International Court of Justice in 2006, but only in Srebrenica.
Today we see a very similar situation in Gaza and the rest of Palestine. The Israeli military, with the full support of political leaders, systematically targets and massacres Palestinian civilians with the aim of eliminating them as a group.
And yet, many people use the term “ethnic cleansing”. Not all of them do it intentionally, and many are just victims of propaganda and don’t even know how and why this term was coined during the Bosnian genocide. But language matters and it can make a difference.
Every image of Gaza takes me back to the early 1990s in Sarajevo, where my family and I were trying to survive attacks by the Army of the Republic of Srpska. The sights, words and sounds are so familiar. I know medical procedures without anesthesia; I know hunger, thirst, fear, despair, loss of loved ones and the smell of blood. I recognize the feeling of humiliation while waiting for humanitarian aid, opening and eating food from cans or plastic bags. And like it was more than 30 years ago, I feel angry again because not enough is being done to end war and genocide.
Using the term “ethnic cleansing” and talking about “complex situations” and “centuries-old hatreds” is like letting Milošević or any other genocidaire win. This is deeply insulting to the victims of the genocide because it implies that they are nothing but dirt that needs to be cleaned from an area.
By using appropriate terminology and calling it what it is, we seek accountability and demand that perpetrators be brought to justice. Most importantly, we show respect for victims and survivors.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.