No shared Greek-Serb DNA
There are some errors and omissions in Alexis Papachelas’s commentary [«Greeks and Serbs’ shared DNA»]. First off, regarding «…Serbia lost a war when its then strongman decided to ‘cleanse’ Kosovo…,» it’s the Christian Serbs who over the decades have been systematically ethnically cleansed from Kosovo. In tandem with that, the Albanians continued to illegally pour into Serbia via a very porous border with Albania. That is obvious by today’s extreme population imbalance. Soon, Kosovo will be completely ethnically cleansed of all minorities and Europe most likely will have an independent, intolerant Islamic state to deal with in its neighborhood. That should be of some concern to Greeks, since the Albanians have an insatiable appetite for even more territory in the region, and a slice of Greece fits nicely into their plans. I believe there is a quite sizable population of Albanians within Greece, many coming via the illegal route. Secondly, Mr Papachelas somehow forgot to note that in 1999 the US-led NATO invaded Serbia on a completely false pretext. And, after 78 days of incessant bombing with all manner of weaponry, Serbia was left with poisons in its soil and water table. Cancer cases and birth defects have risen at an alarming rate. That is quite the war crime. Since the US-NATO-UN takeover of Kosovo, it has descended into a gangster state, where well over 100 ancient Christian holy places have been destroyed and where the Serbs and other minorities live in ghettos, without even the most basic freedoms. At the same time, hundreds of new Islamic mosques have been built, thanks to generous financing by Saudi Arabia. That is the sad legacy of the «great power» USA and its allies. No, today’s Serbia is not «falling back on the role of victim,» but is defending its inalienable rights. The UN charter, the Helsinki Final Act and international law clearly support those rights. Clearly, Mr Papachelas has not done his homework. In actual fact it’s the USA which has a tendency to believe that «…it is always someone else’s fault…,» and which always leads to the establishment of yet another US military base on foreign territory. So be it if Mr Papachelas believes that «…Greece belongs to the West» and «…the European Union…» Greece can belong wherever it wants, so long as it does not lose its soul in the process. LIZ MILANOVICH, Edmonton, Canada. I do not believe stabbing your friends in the back or betraying international laws are common between Greeks and Serbs and I am insulted by the absurd idea of «shared DNA» in the article by Alexis Papachelas. My grandparents were ethnically cleansed from Kosovo in 1897 following the tragic war in Crete between Greece and the Turks – they resettled in the Krajina where my father was born. Before he reached his 13th birthday and the beginning of WWI, the family was sent to the United States as «Displaced Persons,» a kinder word for ethnically cleansed… During the Holocaust, 17 of my relatives were locked inside the Serbian church in Vojnic, Croatia, which was then burned to the ground by Nazi Catholic priests. During Operation Storm in August, 1995, when 200,000 Serbs were cleansed from Croatia, the last five relatives of my name were too old and too sick to flee. I was notified a month later by the Red Cross that they were found with their throats slit. As a triple victim of genocide in the Balkans, twice in my lifetime, I do not sing the Papachelas tune. When Cyprus is fully taken over by the Turks and when Albanians make northern Greece part of their «Greater Albania» scheme, I will listen carefully to the tune Alexis Papachelas sings as he stabs his countrymen in the back to curry favor with Islamic fascism. WILLIAM DORICH, Los Angeles, CA. * The writer is the author of five books on Balkan history, including his 1992 book «Kosovo.»
