As much as I share your view (some things partly, some in full), if you - for whatever reason - don't want, I don't need to go back in the history to get my point across.
I will look at the present. If you are honest and if you look at what both leaders (politicians, intellectuals) and ordinary people in today's Croatia, Muslim/Croatian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and in occupied part of Serbia ("Kosovo") say AND do regarding Serbs, you must realize that they still display stark animosity against anything Serb-related. Almost 30 years/over 20 years after last wars there have ended!
This year (2022), as one example out of many that I could name, in Dubrovnik (Croatia) high school graduates have celebrated high school end and were walking through the center of the city while chanting "Za dom spremni" (Croatian-Nazi greet from WWII, equivalent to German-Nazi "Sieg Heil"), while singing Croatian-Nazi songs about killing Serbs, while wearing Croatian-Nazi flag and while being greeted with Nazi salutes by other young people who have filmed this spectacle of true emotions [0]. These young people will be MD's, lawyers, engineers, policemen, soldiers - future of Croatia - tomorrow and they don't mind putting their hatred towards Serbs into the public on the bright sunny day.
They have probably never met a Serb in their short lives, because in today's Croatia - due to huge social pressure - you must hide your identity if you're a Serb. Which is why many Serbs cave in, change their religion (from Christian Orthodoxy to Roman-Catholicism) and then become Croats. And many/most of them then hate Serbs at least just as much, because it is not enough to just change your religion/identity/name - you must prove yourself in the new identity. (I am aware that social pressure varies between regions in Croatia: Dalmatia probably being the worst, Istria probably being the least bad - on average)
At the same time, Serbia and Serb-part/entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina ("Republika Srpska") are still in good part multi-religious and -ethnic and they help others by letting them get jabbed for free during pandemics (with many Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians being vaccinated in Serbia), by giving Sarajevo natural gas to stay warm during the past winter or by sending helicopters to put out fires that have recently raged in Muslim/Croatian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. (to name a few)
To summarize: Serbs want to a life in peace, to prosper and to procreate, and neither our leaders nor ordinary people (almost exclusively) show animosity towards all of you while everything that we hear and see in Croatia, Muslim/Croatian-part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and "Kosovo" is show of hatred and threat to us. It teaches us that most of you live in the past, waiting to repeat crimes against us that you have commuted in the past 100 and some years.
(I could write for days, read my other comments in this thread, read Wikipedia articles I have linked for more context.)
Last census in former Yugoslavia, shows that 581.663 Serbs have lived in the Federal Republic Croatia [0]. Thus, Serbs have not ”invaded" Croatia. How could they have, if they had lived on the land forever that, thru perverse inner-Yugoslav border drawing by Tito’s communist, became a part of a federal unit called Croatia inside post-WWII Yugoslavia.
(ASIDE: It is ironic that since independence in 1991 Croats are very anti-communist but always refer to borders drawn by… communists! And you do, too: “retain former borders”)
Yes, while Croats have worked towards secession from Yugoslavia in 1990/1991, Serbs on parts of territory of that federal unit took guns. I am not denying it. But why? Are they some wild or crazy people, willing to kill and be killed? Or were they afraid that Croats were preparing to continue doing what they couldn’t finish in 1945, for example in the Concentration camp Jasenovac [1]? Look at the photographs of killed people in that WIkipedia entry. See that knife that Croats have used to kill the Serbs faster (you've called it “Srbosjek”/”Serbcutter” and have made it for faster throat-slitting).
Were Serbs afraid for no reason? Were they just imagining a Croatian boogeyman? After all, Franjo Tuđman, the Croatian President at that time, was a communist and partisan. It turns out, there is an audio from a meeting of the Croatian leadership prior to Operation Storm [2]. In that audio Tuđman can be heard saying “da nanesemo takve udarce da Srbi praktično nestanu” or in English “to inflict such blows that the Serbs practically disappear” [3]. I could name (if you want) many other examples in the 1990-1995 timeframe that show the Serbs were afraid for a reason.
You personally are an example for what I write about the whole time, as well. You have admitted your family were actually Christian-Orthodox Serbs (“My family used to be Orthodox and now my side is Catholic.”) and now you are a Roman-Catholic Croat that defends everything Croatian. Even here and now we can observe Croatian ethno-genesis before our own eyes, which lasts for hundreds of years: How Serbs turn into Croats and why that causes problems, both to those that take the new Croatian identity but also for those who remain Serbs. Those who remain Serbs are witnesses which, by their sheer existence (sometimes words) remind those that have turned their backs to their forebears to become something else that is, by design, anti-Serbian.
It is thus not surprising that all key people in the first Croatian state (1941-1945; see my other comment) were all Serbs a few generations earlier (Ante Pavelić, Ljubo Miloš, Andrija Artuković, Mile Budak and countless and nameless others). Yet to become something else they have had to kill those that have remained Serbs using the most brutal methods - by organizing throat-slitting competitions or by crushing their victims' heads with a wooden sledgehammer, to name a few. They had to burn the identity-bridge behind them, they had to kill the Serb in themselves.
> 581.663 Serbs have lived in the Federal Republic Croatia ... Thus, Serbs have not ”invaded" Croatia.
As I remember the early 90s, the Federal Yugoslavian Army -- which, with all the other republics seceding had in practice become synonymous with Serbia -- rolled in with tanks and artillery.
So I think "invaded" was meant literally, not as a synonym for immigration by ethnic Serbs.
I will look at the present. If you are honest and if you look at what both leaders (politicians, intellectuals) and ordinary people in today's Croatia, Muslim/Croatian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and in occupied part of Serbia ("Kosovo") say AND do regarding Serbs, you must realize that they still display stark animosity against anything Serb-related. Almost 30 years/over 20 years after last wars there have ended!
This year (2022), as one example out of many that I could name, in Dubrovnik (Croatia) high school graduates have celebrated high school end and were walking through the center of the city while chanting "Za dom spremni" (Croatian-Nazi greet from WWII, equivalent to German-Nazi "Sieg Heil"), while singing Croatian-Nazi songs about killing Serbs, while wearing Croatian-Nazi flag and while being greeted with Nazi salutes by other young people who have filmed this spectacle of true emotions [0]. These young people will be MD's, lawyers, engineers, policemen, soldiers - future of Croatia - tomorrow and they don't mind putting their hatred towards Serbs into the public on the bright sunny day.
They have probably never met a Serb in their short lives, because in today's Croatia - due to huge social pressure - you must hide your identity if you're a Serb. Which is why many Serbs cave in, change their religion (from Christian Orthodoxy to Roman-Catholicism) and then become Croats. And many/most of them then hate Serbs at least just as much, because it is not enough to just change your religion/identity/name - you must prove yourself in the new identity. (I am aware that social pressure varies between regions in Croatia: Dalmatia probably being the worst, Istria probably being the least bad - on average)
At the same time, Serbia and Serb-part/entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina ("Republika Srpska") are still in good part multi-religious and -ethnic and they help others by letting them get jabbed for free during pandemics (with many Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians being vaccinated in Serbia), by giving Sarajevo natural gas to stay warm during the past winter or by sending helicopters to put out fires that have recently raged in Muslim/Croatian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. (to name a few)
To summarize: Serbs want to a life in peace, to prosper and to procreate, and neither our leaders nor ordinary people (almost exclusively) show animosity towards all of you while everything that we hear and see in Croatia, Muslim/Croatian-part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and "Kosovo" is show of hatred and threat to us. It teaches us that most of you live in the past, waiting to repeat crimes against us that you have commuted in the past 100 and some years.
(I could write for days, read my other comments in this thread, read Wikipedia articles I have linked for more context.)
[0] https://www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/maturanti-na-stradunu-ur...