If and when Slobodan Milosevic is brought before an international tribunal on charges of war crimes, his defense team will be able to quote the Bible to exonerate him. Passages in Numbers and Deuteronomy could easily be made relevant to what is happening in Kosovo today by comparing atrocities there to what happened in the towns of Midian some 3400 years ago.
In Numbers 31:15-18, after his soldiers had killed all of the men among the Midianites, Moses ordered his army officers to kill all of the male children, kill all of the nonvirgin females but to save alive all of the virgin girls for his troops. Prior to this, the Israelites had taken all of the animals and goods of the Midianites and then burned all of their towns. If genocide or "ethnic cleansing" is a war crime, then this act of Moses was clearly a war crime.
What possible reason could Moses have given in order to justify this horrendous act of genocide? After all, wasn't he the great "law giver"? He claimed that Yahweh, the God of Israel, ordered him to do this, because the Midianites worshiped a deity named Baal Peor. The Midianites felt that Baal Peor was nature's god, the creator of the universe, whereas the Israelites believed that their god Yahweh was the creator. The current situation in Kosovo is remarkably parallel. The Albanians in Kosovo worship a creator whom they call Allah; the serbs worship this creator but call him the "Holy Trinity." So, in effect, what we have here is a demonization of those people who refer to the creator by a different name. These people are accused of worshiping a false god.
Religion and ethnocentricity become the fuel that incites people, who are ordinarily moral under normal circumstances, to commit the most horrendous acts of moral depravity without any pangs of conscience, because they feel justified in killing the inhabitants of a land and taking their property, because their holy book has set examples for them to do so. In chapters 6 and 7 of Deuteronomy, Moses told the Israelites that God wanted them to smash the altars of the Canaanite tribes, utterly destroy them, and possess their land. This is exactly what Milosevic was doing to the people of Kosovo, smashing their mosques, massacring them, and taking their land. Neither Moses nor Milosevic believed in religious freedom.
It is interesting to note that Jethro, a Midianite priest, gave refuge to Moses when he fled from Egypt in fear of his life (Ex. 2:14-23). Moses married his daughter, who had two sons by him. We are not told in the book of Numbers what happened to the relatives of the priest who had befriended Moses, but apparently Moses had felt no sense of obligation to them. There are also stories in Numbers that show that Moses did not allow anyone to criticize him or his brother Aaron. When anyone did so they suffered dire consequences, such as plagues and even death by fire that Yahweh sent forth to consume them (Num. 11:33-35; 16:31-35). Once, when Moses' own sister criticized him, she was stricken with leprosy (Num. 12:1-10). The Serbian dictator Milosevic doesn't tolerate criticism either. In short, neither Moses nor Milosevic permitted freedom of speech or religion.
This is quite a contrast to the beliefs and practices of our "founding fathers." Belief in religious freedom was clearly stated in Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, 1782: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as they are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are 20 gods or no god, It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Similar statements were made by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, the unsung hero of the American Revolution. They believed that to do good was their religion and discarded all divisive, demonizing dogmas. How strikingly different the attitudes of Moses and Milosevic!
Do actions speak louder than words? Milosevic and Moses, innocent or guilty?
(Sol Abrams, 1759 Stuart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11229-2631;
e-mail, heliosol@aol.com)
