c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is the mother of two sons and the author of five books.)

(UNDATED) Two international issues were the dominant news items this week: The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians and the relatively peaceful overthrow of the Milosevic regime in Serbia.

The two items seemed to have nothing in common. On one hand, America was applauding the resurgence of democracy in a nation we had demonized; on the other hand, we were tiptoeing through a bitter crisis we may have helped exacerbate. In both cases, we seem to feel America has a right to have an opinion and even to intervene.

I am certainly not an expert on foreign affairs. I even admit to being confused about who is on the U.S. “bad guy” list of nations. I certainly haven’t figured out how we decide which nation is worthy of our intervention.

But here’s the thing: As I understand it, we bombed a sizable hole in Serbia because we didn’t like the way they were treating the Kosovar Albanians. These were a group of people living in a recognized part of Serbia who were demanding, among other things, the right to education in their own language and were living in extreme tension with their Serbian neighbors.

When the Kosovo Liberation Army began to arm itself and threaten other citizens, the Serbian army cracked down in a heavy-handed way.

I am not saying the Kosovar Albanians were well-treated. There is ample evidence to suggest their lives were miserable under Serbian rule and, in fact, those who have returned to what they consider their homeland are still feeling persecuted. The Serbians who live in Kosovo believe it is their right to live there. In fact, the United States officially recognizes Kosovo as part of Serbia.

But when the Serbians began to defend their people against what they considered an uprising by the Kosovar Albanians, the U.S. intervened. We justified our action by saying we couldn’t stand by while innocent people were being massacred. We were also unhappy with the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic, a war criminal who had been freely elected and then re-elected by the Serbian people.

Now here’s my confusion. We have watched this week as Palestinians throwing stones were cut down by the Israeli army. We know that Palestinians have had their land taken by Israeli settlers, have been denied basic democratic rights and have suffered economic hardship while their neighbors prospered. We even watched the Israeli military blow up two Palestinian apartment buildings for security reasons.

Yet we continue to defend the Israelis, even while the rest of the world condemns their actions.

Why did we feel righteous in bombing the Serbs but feel we must defend the Israelis? Why did we choose to intervene when Serbs fought with their Albanian neighbors but choose to let the Israeli military kill Palestinians?

There must be a reason such seemingly similar situations get a totally different U.S. response. I understand that the Israelis are our allies and we have a sizable stake in defending them. I understand that they also feel threatened and have lost soldiers and citizens to the violence.

But when we criticize Vojislav Kostunica, the new Serb president, as a “nationalist,” are we defining terms differently than when we defend Israel’s right to exist as a nation? When we accuse the Serbs of ethnic cleansing are we discussing something different than pushing Palestinians off of land they have held for centuries?

It just seems to me that keeping track of which nations get rewarded and therefore receive sizable U.S. aid and which ones get punished and may find bombers in their backyard must be a very daunting task. And if I were Kostunica, I would be a little worried about how the United States decides what is appropriate national interest and what is considered aggression worthy of intervention.

KRE END BOURKE