First of all, the figure of “200,000″ was used by the media to describe “200,000 dead or missing” in the Bosnian war, not “200,000 killed.” I have analyzed close to 1000 articles from various archives (AP, Reuters, AFP, etc.) and in virtually all cases, the figure of “200,000″ referred to “dead or missing.”

Second of all, it is not true that genocide was committed only in the town of Srebrenica. For example, according to charges leveled against Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, Prijedor was one of eight Bosnia-Herzegovina municipalities where the persecution of non-Serbs reached the scale of genocide. Other municipalities include Bratunac, Foča, Ključ, Kotor Varoš, Sanski Most, Vlasenica and Zvornik. The problem with the International Criminal Tribunal and the International Court of Justice is that they require unrealistically high standard of proof for finding the Serb side guilty of Genocide in Bosnia.

Third of all, the number of 100,000 (or so) “direct war deaths” or killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina does not take into account thousands of Bosniaks who died of starvation, disease, or cold. For example, in the winter of 1992/93, five thousands (5,000) Bosniak women, children and elderly died of starvation in the besieged Bosnian Muslim enclaves. They were never part of this “100,000″ figure.

Fourth of all, you need to understand that majority of Serb civilians who died in the war were killed by the Serb army commanded by Ratko Mladic. Remember Sarajevo? Mladic sniped it and shelled it indiscriminately; he never asked residents of the besieged capital for their ethnicity — instead, he killed them for sport.

I learned about your book and about your blog via Twitter. George Monbiot mentioned it and others joined in their responses.

I am ordering this book, for sure. It’s 12:39 AM now, will purchase it tomorrow. Do you sell it over this web site, can I order it directly from you, or should I just find it elsewhere, I need to have that book.

I was very pleased with your assessment of the ICJ’s absolutely wicked judgement. The copy of your article can be found at http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com (just enter your name is search box) or on open democracy web site.

Prof. Shaw, thank you for speaking the truth.
Yes, we are listening. And yes, you’re making a difference.

Dear Mr. Shaw

The recent article “Conflict Erupts Among Top Genocide Scholars” in The Forward reports that you were called delusional for describing Israel as having practiced “genocide” against the Palestinians which resulted in a controversy among scholars.

However, I strongly agree with that description. It doesn’t take a learned academician to see over one million Arabs living as citizens of Israel some serving in the Knesset, in the armed forces and thriving throughout Israeli society. If Israelis practiced “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing” in 1948, they surely did a poor job.

On the other hand, the Jewish community of Jerusalem was summarily driven from their homes with no criticism from the outside world. I’ll be awaiting your comments on that.

Furthermore, If academicians like you and others want to spend their time wisely reviewing cases of genocide or ethnic cleansing, I would suggest you look no further than the surrounding Arab world where the Jewish communities were destroyed and their members driven away to the tune of close to a million people.

No doubt individual cases of hatred and persecution occurred during and after the 1948 war in what is now Israel but these were isolated. As the present Arab population numbers attests, neither planned or orchestrated genocide or ethnic cleansing occurred.

Also, if you have time in your schedule, I would really like to see you chair a conference on the Turkish genocide against the Armenians and a great location would be Istanbul. But I guess you might be a little less willing to take on the Turks than the easier chance to slam Israel.

George Reiss

Paradise Valley, AZ