Re: Take a closer look at the General.
You're right! General Clark's Jewish background might impair his wisdom in dealing with the Israel-Palestine crisis....
THE GENERAL. His Family's Refugee Past Is Said to Inspire NATO's Commander,
by Elizabeth Becker, New York Times, May 3, 1999
"The American general who is leading NATO's military operation to stop Serbian troops from killing and expelling Albanians from Kosovo discovered as an adult that he is the grandson of a Russian Jew who fled his country to escape the pogroms there a century ago. Gen. Wesley Kanne Clark was raised as a Protestant in Little Rock, Ark., where he was brought up by his mother and stepfather, Victor Clark.
He was ignorant of his ancestry, which disappeared from his life with the death of his father, Benjamin Jacob Kanne when Wesley was 5 years old. He learned of his ethnic background when he was in his 20's and embraced the discovery, according to several family members.
Since President Slobodan Milosovic of Yugoslavia began the forced exodus of Albanians from Kosovo, many have drawn parallels with the expulsion of Jews from Russia and the Nazi mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust in Europe. General Clark has not discussed his heritage with many people, sharing his belated discovery of his biological father's family and background with only a few close friends and his immediate family. He declined to be interviewed for this article. But in interviews, some of his relatives and friends say that General Clark was inspired by the story of his grandfather's persecution and escape from his native land, and that his determination to defeat Milosevic is fed in part by his empathy for the victims of Serbian ethnic purges. After he was married, while studying at Oxford from 1966 to 1968, Wesley Clark was contacted by his father's relatives and gradually became aware of who his father and grandparents were. Soon after, he met some of the members of his lost family. He then slowly became part of the Kanne family, beginning with the initial phone call from a cousin in the late 1960's and culminating with an invitation to his first cousin Barry Kanne to spend a quiet New Year dinner with him in Belgium this year. General Clark also has become fluent in the Russian language and in the past three years has delved into the family history ... In the late 1890's, Jacob Nemerovsky, the general's grandfather, fled Russia in fear for his life during one of the episodic pogroms against Jews. According to the family, Nemerovsky found safety in Switzerland where he obtained a false passport under the family name of Kanne, which he used to immigrate to the United States. "Wes and I talked about his family once on a military plane to Bosnia," said Richard C. Holbrooke, the negotiator of the Dayton peace plan. 'I told him how my wife discovered she was Jewish in her 30's and he said, 'That's funny, I have a sort of similar story.'' (Another Clinton Administration official, Madeleine K. Albright, learned only after she was nominated as Secretary of State that her grandparents had died in concentration camps during the Holocaust.)"
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