Divided we stand

Thu, 08 Apr 1999 08:09:00 +0000

On Monday morning, April 5, as the American Jewish Committee was reopening its New York headquarters after the four-day Passover holiday weekend, executive vice president David Harris found himself on the phone with the Albanian Mission to the United Nations. The ambassador, Agim Nesho, was anxious to talk. Could he come right over?

Nesho, it turned out, wanted Harris's advice on how to respond to the growing crisis of Kosovar refugees pouring into his homeland -- or, more precisely, how to respond to the American response to the crisis. The sudden flood of refugees the week before had sparked a flood of phone calls to the understaffed Albanian mission from Americans eager to help. To the Albanians'
bewilderment, most of the callers were Jewish.

"We have been receiving, without exaggeration, 30 to 50 calls a day, and most of them are of Jewish background," said Sokol Kondi, first secretary of the Albanian mission. Some volunteered their religion, he said; "Others, you can tell by their last name."

Salon.com > J.J. Goldberg

Divided we stand