An open letter by Sandy Marquette, a Jew from Chicago:

Mr. Mike Wallace and Staff CBS 60 Minutes 
New York, NY 10019

Dear Mr. Wallace and Staff of 60 Minutes

I watched your 60 Minutes program that aired on July 7, 1996, paying special attention to the segment your interview with Dr. Radovan Karadzich, leader of the Serbian Republic in Bosnia. It took a long time to decide to write this letter. Finally, I have.

It struck me as strange that Mr. Wallace, a Jew, would interview Dr. Karadzich, a Bosnian Serb, only using the support of commentary by another Jew, concluding the segment with commentary by Mr. Lawrence Eagleburger, yet another Jew. Were there no non-Jews to include in the program with Dr. Karadzich, or Jews who understand the Serbian problem in Bosnia to include in the program to speak on the 'Bosnian issue?'

Mr Eagleburger may or may not be a good source on the 'Serbian problem.' He has a lot of baggage in Yugoslavia and should not carry a grudge against all Serbs because his 'Yugo' car deal with the Yugoslav communists went sour.

But his commentary was not the most disturbing part of the segment. At one point in the interview when Dr. Karadzich mentioned that the Croats and Bosnian Moslems had massacred over 700,000 Serbs during World War II. Mr Wallace hysterically exclaimed:

'BUT THAT WAS 50 YEARS AGO!'

The question is, did Mr. Wallace ever say the same thing when someone brought up the matter of six million Jews slaughtered during that same period? Was he so dismissive? Or are Jewish lives more precious than Serb lives?

Not everything can be pointed out in this letter, but there are a few points that have to be, because this dismissive attitude is very inappropriate for a show of the caliber of 60 Minutes and a journalist of Mr. Wallace's credentials. 

THE POINTS:

Serbs were always friends of the Jewish people. First, because the majority of Serbs are humane people, despite the way the political and media propaganda paints them these days. They do not like to see others hurt. Secondly, they are sensible enough to know that Jews have proven to be a progressive positive force in the world. And Serbs need them to survive in the not so friendly world of Southern Europe.

It is interesting that Mr. Wallace interviewed Dr., Karadzich twice in the past year and neither time did he bring Dr. Karadzich to the program. Dr. Kissinger, also a Jew, probably knows more about Bosnia and that part of the world than all the Jews in the broadcast media put together. But it is evident that his insights would probably not fit into the present Jewish political agenda concerning Serbs and Moslems in Bosnia according to the way that most of the Jewish aces in the U.S. broadcasting and print media are presenting it.

Mr. Wallace and the staff could have brought to the program, Major Richard Felman, also a Jew, who is an American World War II veteran and a real hero. A flier during the war, he was one of the airmen involved in the Allied bombing of the Ploesti Oil Fields in Rumania, Nazi Germany's main supply of fuel at the time.

He was shot down by the Nazis and ended up bailing out over Serbia, wounded. It was Serbian peasant and Serbian noncommunist forces that saved his life and the lives of over 500 hundred of other airmen in 1944.

He did not eat ants. The Major could tell Mr. Wallace how these Serbs nursed him back to health and protected him and his compatriots from the Nazis who knew they were in Serbian hands. Major Felman could tell Mr. Wallace and the 60 Minutes viewers what kind of risk these Serbs took, what kind of sacrifices they made, and how many of them died in order to save his life and the lives of other Allied airmen like him.

All those who ended up in Serbian hands were returned back to friendly control in Italy. As Major Felman has been pointing out for years now, 'there are thousands of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren alive and well in the United States because of these heroic rescues.'

BUT, THEN, THAT WAS 'FIFTY YEARS AGO,' WAS IT NOT, MR. WALLACE?

Knowledgeable Jews would also be a good source on the issue of who the Serbs really are. Not just who they were 'yesterday,' but who they are today. But it is you, Mr. Wallace, who dismissed 'yesterday' as if it is irrelevant. Had other Jews had your attitude toward the Jewish Holocaust, Adolf Hitler, too, would have been 'irrelevant.'

These experienced Balkan Jews could tell you and the 60 Minute viewers about what King Alexander, a Serb, and leader of the Kingdom of the first Yugoslavia, did constitutionally for the Jews in Yugoslavia, something that no other country in the world had ever done. This was corroborated in testimony that is recorded in the United States Congressional Record. King Alexander felt compelled to do something, because the Serbs were friends of Jews, while the majority of Croats and Moslems in Yugoslavia, were not. The experienced Balkan Jews could also expose something you and your viewers may not be aware of, but something that is extremely significant, given the 'Bosnian issue' in relation to the prevalent mainstream Jewish reaction to it. During the 15th century, the time of the infamous 'Inquisition,' the Spaniards and other Roman Catholics executed many Jews and drove the rest out. Many of the Jews of Europe that were driven away, migrated to find a safe haven among the Serbs in the Balkans where they stayed and prospered. Some 30,000 of their descendants were still in Sarajevo in 1941 when the Croatian Nazis and Bosnian Moslems slaughtered most of them.

BUT THAT WAS 'FIFTY YEARS AGO,' WAS IT NOT, MR. WALLACE?

Where it not for Mr. Wallace's reaction to Dr. Karadzich when Dr. Karadzich tried to give a historical context today in Bosnia, the momentum of friendship between Serbs and Jews would have gained ground rather than lose ground, and this letter would not have been necessary...

The character of Mr. Wallace's interview substantially represented the syndrome of Iraqis and the 'incubator babies being killed' which was the false pretense for American involvement in the Gulf War.

OTHER POINTS:

In 1942, the news stories broke in the United States that 'one million Jews had been slaughtered in Europe by the Nazis,' up to that time, a full three years before the end of the war. The New York Times, a predominately Jewish owned and operated newspaper, put that news on page four. This same paper, some fifty years later, has had much to say on its headline, front page about Serbs, Moslems and Srebrenica, a current metaphor for 'Genocide.'

A lot has been said about 'mass graves holding the bodies of 8,000 Bosnian Moslems summarily executed by Serbs.' But the media is very quiet about the special commission handling the investigation finding only 6 bodies as of this writing in that 'mass grave of thousands' and no one has yet determined if those bodies are of Bosnian Moslems or of Serbs that were executed by Moslems or Croats.

I challenge Mr. Wallace and 60 Minutes to arrange an interview with Mr. Simon Wiesenthal, who has spent the last '50 years' of this life tracking down the criminals of 'fifty years ago' and bringing them to justice. For him, the genocide of Serbs in the 'Independent State of Croatia' which, during World War II including all of Bosnia, has not been irrelevant.

I challenge Mike Wallace and 60 Minutes to go to Zagreb, Croatia and interview Mr. Slavko Goldstein, a Croatian Jew for whom 'FIFTY YEARS AGO' is not irrelevant and who is now waging a battle to prevent the current Croatian regime from exhuming and re burying the remains of murderers together with their victims at Jasenovac.

I especially challenge Mr. Wallace to interview Dr. Klara Mandic, a Belgrade Jew, to find out what the Serbs are all about and what pains them most. Given the current agenda in the U. S. broadcasting and print media, this interview is not likely to happen, therefore, I am attaching a copy of an interview she did give entitled: 'The European Hoodlum Democracy Will Not Break the Serbs.'

She and Mr. Goldstein have spent their lives in Serbia and Croatia, and it would be enlightening to hear them speak. Dr. Mandic lost 73 members of her family to the Nazi Holocaust during WW II.

BUT THEN AGAIN, MR. WALLACE, THAT WAS FIFTY YEARS AGO, WAS IT NOT?

Even though the late Admiral Boorda, also Jewish, was ultimately the one who issued the order to bomb Serbian positions which resulted in the civilian casualties of Serbian women and children, the Serbian spirit of friendship toward Jews and the shared kinship of their historical fate is still alive and well. What is needed is for Mr. Wallace and others like him to retire or at least not talk about what they know nothing about.

Perhaps it is time to remove from the American media what Dr. Mandic calls 'The Hoodlum Democracy' and bring back real democracy.

Sincerely,

Sandy Marquette, Chicago

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Last revised: April 23, 1997