Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel

Ron, James. Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel. CA: University of California Press, 2003. 263 pp.

Professor James Ron, Research Chair in Conflict and Human Rights studies at McGiIl University in Canada, has written a timely and powerful book on ethnic cleansing and torture. This unique study focuses on two areas: Serbia and Israel, but its implications are far-reaching for both the west and non-western world.

This book is about the abuse of power by states hiding behind irregular troops, death squads, and institutionalized state violence involved in information gathering. It centers on the failure of human rights in the process of preventing human rights abuse by terrorist groups; and it asks the question is ethnic cleansing and torture, physical or mental, ever justifiable to protect the lives of many innocent people.

Frontiers and Ghettos focuses on Serbia's frontiers in Bosnia and Kosovo; and on Israel's occupied territories, the West Bank and Gaza strip. The book's thesis is that powerful states will promote "national" violence in the frontier areas and in occupied territories. Thus, certain states violate their own principles in their own interests. In the case of Serbia, the UN intervened to stop ethnic cleansing; in the case of Israel/Palestine, the violence rages on.

AJ. Abraham John Jay College

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