{"id":114282,"date":"2021-05-15T14:59:03","date_gmt":"2021-05-15T21:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=114282"},"modified":"2021-05-15T14:59:03","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T21:59:03","slug":"some-thoughts-on-israelis-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/05\/15\/some-thoughts-on-israelis-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Some thoughts on Israelis in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

When\nthe first Israeli airstrike hit Gaza on Monday nine children and 13 others were\nkilled, according to Washington Post. (Monday 10, May, 2021).<\/em><\/strong> By\nSaturday the  death toll had risen to over hundred and 33 of them were\nchildren. Simultaneously, Taliban bombs exploding in Kabul on Tuesday killed 85\nMuslim school girls, according to CNN<\/em><\/strong>. What\u2019s the\ndifference? How can we condemn the Israelis when the Muslims are committing the\nsame crime of killing Muslims?  Can Muslim violence descend to a more\ninhuman level than in Kabul? In Africa? In Sri Lanka?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\ncan we condemn the Israelis when our  own Tamils committed the biggest\ncrime  of their history : they killed more Tamils than all the others put\ntogether? How can we condemn  the Israelis when the Sinhala terrorists in\nthe fascist JVP showed  no mercy in killing the Sinhalese? One has to\nexpect beastly behaviour from the enemies but not from your own kind. In moral\nmetrics, the crime of Muslims killing Muslim children is greater than the\nIsraelis killing  the children of their inveterate enemies. This principle\napplies to Tamils and Sinhalese as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nis written not to exculpate the Israelis of  their heinous  crime of\ndeliberately killing civilians to punish Hamas sending rockets to Jerusalem.\nThose who watched the Israeli airstrikes bringing down  civilian high-rise\nbuildings where civilians, including children, live will agree that Benjamin\nNetanyahu, Prime Minister  of Israel,  has been and continues to be a\ncold-blooded killer. The Jews who were the victims of ethnic hatred throughout\nChristendom \u2013 just not under the Nazis — have no moral right to engage in\nwar  crimes, crimes against humanity and, specifically, crimes against\nanother ethnic community. They were victims who suffered continuously in Christian\nEurope because  the  Christians hated the Jews as Christ-killers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nirony is in the way the Jews have turned their wrath against the Muslims who\nare not guilty of such crimes against  the Jews and with whom  they\nhave to live in the Middle East, particularly in Palestine,  whether \nthey like it or not. Ethnic crises invariably remind us of the central \nissue that is plaguing global politics: how can communities competing  for\nterritory, power, dominance, equality, dignity, justice, liberty etc., co-exist\npeacefully?  Invariably it boils down to a minority vs majority issue. Is\nthere a recipe  to resolve the tensions and conflicts between these two\ncompetitors? Each zone of conflict comes with causes and personalities specific\nto its time and place. History repeats itself in each case but with variations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nfor Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of a minority that became a majority, is\ngoing down the same path of the Nazi majority that oppressed and persecuted his\nminority when they were living in the holocaustic past. Of course, he is\ndisplaying not his power but the power  of his ally, America. American\nmorality stinks to high heaven when it says that Israel has right  to\ndefend itself. Does that right include killing children and non-combatant\nhousewives indiscriminately? Also, why didn\u2019t America apply the same principle\nto Sri Lanka? Why did Ambassador Robert Blake ask the Rajapakse regime to stop\nthe war or face charges  of war crimes? Will the American ambassador in\nIsrael apply the same bullying tactics to restrain Netanyahu? Besides, why is\nit vindictively pursuing a policy of punishing Sri Lanka for restoring \npeace and ending a brutal war saving thousands of lives? Why hasn\u2019t the foreign\nminister of France and UK jointly rushed to Tel Aviv to stop the war like the\nway they did when the Sri Lankan  forces were at the gates of the Tamil\nTigers? Why is Israel, condemned umpteen times  by the UN and yet face no\nserious  consequences? Why is Israel given favoured treatment and why is\nSri Lanka given the middle finger by the US? Is American foreign policy driven by\nmorality or by stupid — not enlightened — self-interest?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nall this what is most unbearable and heart-rending is the plight of the\nchildren. Why must children pay for the sins of the adults? Why must children\nbe abducted from schools  in Africa by Muslim terrorists? Why did the\nTamil terrorists too go to the extreme of forcibly abducting Tamil children and\nthrowing them as fodder into the frontlines of their futile war? Pakiasothy\nSaravanamuttu, that vexatious  litigant, never took  the Tamil leadership\nto court  holding  them accountable for committing  war crime\nand crimes against  humanity. The paper Tigers in the Tamil diaspora are\npassing resolutions of genocide in Ontario, accusing the GOSL, when the killer\nof the greatest number of Tamils was the leader they backed all the way. They\nfinanced the biggest massacre of Tamils by Tamils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ngenocide of Tamils is unacceptable. But that was committed by the Tamil Pol\nPots with the consent of Tamil diasporans who financed it from the beginning to\nNandikadal. Boosted by the backing of the Diaspora, Tamil Pol Pots ran berserk\nwith blind hatred of the other\u201d. They began by decimating the established,\nconservative Tamil leadership and unable to face the horror of it the Tamil\ndiaspora the Tamil diasporans have accused the Sinhala state\u201d of killing\nNeelan Tiruchelvam and even Appapillai Amirthalingam. They also financed the\nmassacres  of Muslims and Sinhalese. They knew that S. C. Chandrahasan,\nthe son of S. J. V. Chelvanayakam had said that Prabhakaran had killed more\nTamils than all the others put  together. V. Ananadasangaree, the head of\nthe TULF,  too had confirmed that Prabhakaran  had killed more \nTamils than anyone else. And now that their guilt  has caught up with\nthem, after losing the war they financed,  they are making a desperate bid\nto wash their guilt away by passing  the buck to the Government of Sri\nLanka (GOSL.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muslims\ntargeting their co-religionists in divided sects, or perceived enemies like the\nChristian worshippers on Easter Sunday 2019 in Sri Lanka, too are driven by\nblind hatred which knows no limits. In their minds killing is  pathway to\nheaven and virgins therein, waiting  to open their legs. Killing is\npursued as a signature sign of their prowess to dictate terms to their enemies.\nIt is a mindless strategy that has taken them nowhere, so far. For instance,\nwhere has it taken them in Sri Lanka except into the bad books of the nation?\nThey have successfully degraded the respected the word Muslim\u201d into  the\nequivalent of Tamil Tigers \u2013 a dirty word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Killing\nbecause they have money to buy the wherewithal and mobilise fanatics willing to\nkill or die in  the process of killing is not a tactic that will deliver\nthem their caliphates or glorify Islam. Glorification of Islam with territorial\nconquests is a thing  of the  past. Israel too is  employing\nthis tactic. The latest explosion in Palestine  was caused by the\nfar-right Jewish activists moving to capture Sheik Jarrah, the territory\noccupied by the Muslims in Jerusalem. They were out to evict the  Arabs\nforcibly from East Jerusalem in  the hope of making the whole of Jerusalem\ntheir capital, freed from Arabs. It is pure ethnic cleansing. It is\nunacceptable. It  is unpardonable. They became the Wandering Jews because\nthey had no home, or territory to call their own. Now that they have some\nterritory, they are doing to the Arabs what the Christians did to them. How\nfair and just is that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once\nI spent one night in the kibbutz of Kiryat Shmona. In the morning my\nJewish  escort told me, pointing. quite proudly, to the open fields\nwithout any people, that the Jews opened fire on the fellaheen who were\nfarming  in the  neighbourhood and drove them away. The Jews then\ntook over their  lands. Well, that is similar to the expulsions of the\nMuslims from Jaffna by the LTTE in 1990. The Muslims did not go to Maldives, or\nSaudi Arabia. They came to live with the Sinhalese in the south \u2013 and they\nstill do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nis not an essay to explore the whole gamut of the ethics of violence. Dayan\nJayatillleka has made a daring attempt to do so in his book Fidel\u2019s\nEthic of Violence, <\/em><\/strong>exploring, as he says, the moral dimensions of\nthe political thoughts of Castro.<\/em><\/strong> That, of course, needs a\nseparate  chapter on another day. But this theme of  violence being\nplayed out in Palestine right now opens the opportunity to explore some\naspects  of the violence that had rocked Sri  Lanka in the\npost-independent period and even before because it is a theme exploited by the\nintellectuals to add fuel to fire with their tendentious theories and partisan\npolitics. It has been a very controversial issue  in which some schools of\nthought have identified only one  party  — namely, the\nSinhala-Buddhists — and flayed them as  the sole provocateur, promoter,\nperpetrator and pursuer of violence. The general argument of these schools goes\nlike this: Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country  and why  is there so much\nviolence  in  it? It is this question  that  launched\nthe  controversial book from Harvard University written by Prof. S. J.\nTambiah, Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics and Violence in Sri\nLanka.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming\nwith the imprimatur of authoritative Harvard it had a  clout which other\npublic intellectuals did not. It was to be the definite reference point for\nother scholars  and they did fall for the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist line spelt\nout by Tambiah. By the time he wrote his text demonising Sinhala-Buddhist\nhistory and culture, there was nothing original in his selected theme. The\noriginal authorship of demonising Sinhala-Buddhist culture goes to G. G. Ponnambalam\nwho caused  the  first ethnic conflagration in 1939 with his crude\ndenunciation of Sinhala-Buddhist culture. All Tamil politics and ideologies\noperated within the framework laid down by him. No Tamil ideology\noperated  outside his  triad of (1) demonising Sinhala-Buddhist\nculture (2) demanding disproportionate territory and power and (3) crying their\nheads out, claiming to be victims of majoritarianism. Tambiah too adhered\nto  this pattern. In other words, he fell in line with the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist\npolitics of the NGOs, left-wing academics, and the applauding Tamil claque. He\nwas aided and abetted by Lal Jayawardana and his  wife Kumari Jayawardana,\nthe inveterate anti-Sinhala-Buddhist academic. Lal Jayawardana, who was \nthen the head of the World Institute   for Development Economic\nResearch (WIDER) of the United Nations University rewarded Tambiah \nhandsomely, with funds from WIDER.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tambiah\ndid a cheap job which any sophomore  could have done. Putting together\nanti-Sinhala-Buddhist data was not a difficult task considering the fact that\nmost of the research  was done  for him partly by Kumari Jayawardana\nand her fellow-travellers like H. L. Seneviratne and C. R. de Silva. They saw a\nSinhala-Buddhist under every bed waiting to spoil their political honeymoons.\nEverything went wrong, everything that failed was blamed on Sinhala-Buddhism.\nHere\u2019s what a fairly competent historian like Nira Wickramasinghe wrote about\nthe failure of the Left movement: The trajectory of the left, as movement and\nas idea, can also  be  read as  the gradual decline in \nideological terms of a democratic and secular project unable  to sustain\nthe assault  of the  hegemonic forces  of Sinhala Buddhist\nexclusivism.\u201d  — Pathways of the Left in Sri Lanka,<\/em><\/strong> Marshall\nFernando and B. Skandakumar, Editors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nignores the basic fact that the Left died of self-inflicted  wounds. The\nsplits that divided the  Left into micro-mini fragments on fake\ntheoretical  differences, which, in reality, were masks to cover the \nself-serving  power struggles of the aspiring leaders, were one of the\nprimary bases that led to the collapse of the Left.  The working class too\nwere led astray with strikes of rival unions that were politically oriented\nmore than  feeding  the economic needs of the \nworkers.     Marxist leaders  were hoping to\nclimb  into power on the back  of the workers. Their revolution was\nconfined to paralyse elected  governments with strikes. In the end the\nMarxists  joined the very capitalist class they condemned. They misled the\nworkers from the beginning. The promised revolution never came and when \nthe perverted version  of the revolution came through the  fascist\nJVP the Marxist fathers of the Revolution condemned it as a CIA plot. When the\nrevolution came they were hanging on to seats in  the SLFP cabinet\nand  they were naturally inclined  to protect their ministerial\nposition than the revolution. The people disillusioned  with their\nalliance with the capitalist class threw them out lock, stock and barrel. But\nour Left-wing intellectuals, wearing tinted glasses, blame it on the hegemony\nof Sinhala Buddhism\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demeaning\nand demonising the majority has been the standard stock in trade of our public\nintellectuals. It was not so all the time. There was a time in the pre-Vadukoddai\nResolution period when some leading Tamil theoreticians recognised the value,\npower and glory of Sinhala-Buddhism. Prof. A. J. Wilson, for instance,\ncommended Sinhala-Buddhism as the  force that sustained democracy. It\nwas Calvin Woodward, an\nAmerican scholar, in his review of Wilson\u2019s book, Politics in Sri\nLanka, 1947 \u2013 1973,<\/em> states: The uniqueness of Sri Lanka, Wilson\npoints out, is that it (Sri Lanka) has faced challenges without veering from\nthe democratic path. Certainly then, the key  to the future lies in \nan understanding of the past. How and why, in other words, has the democratic\nexperiment been able to work so well in Sri Lanka? The author investigates this\nand concludes that the  political stability so far maintained in Sri Lanka\nis due mainly two factors, one of indigenous origin and the other the result of\nWestern implantation. Primary is the Buddhist ethos and the doctrine of\ntolerance. This, according to Wilson, has acted to dissuade the majority\ncommunity from unduly imposing itself on the minorities and encouraged it to\nrespect the fundamental rights and distinctions of others in the plural\nsociety.\u201d (p. 72 – The Ceylon Journal of Historical and  Social\nStudies<\/em> \u2013 Vol III, July-December, 1973, No.1.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he too flipped. He too later joined the mob and blamed\nSinhala-Buddhism as a force inimical to minorities, peace and progress. Another\none who somersaulted was Prof. K. Indrapala, the  first  professor\nof  history in Jaffna University. He obtained his Ph. D by writing a\nthesis on history in which he acknowledged that  the Jaffna settlers\narrived  in 12 \u2013 13th<\/sup> centuries from S. India. This was\nnot acceptable to the Tamils who  claimed in the  Vadukoddai\nResolution \u2013 the  most authoritative political manifesto of the Tamils \u2013\nthat  they were there  from  the dawn of time. He was virtually\nchased out of the Jaffna University. He later attempted to make amends by\nproducing another  history in which the Tamils go  back to \nprehistoric  times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were re-writing history according to the needs of contemporary\npolitics and  not according the way it happened. History has been an\nexplosive force both in Sri Lanka and Israel. For instance, the move to evict\nthe Arabs by far-right Jews began when  the  courts declared\nthat  the  land occupied by the Arabs in  Sheik Jarrah belonged\nto the Jews before 1948. Disentangling the knotted threads of history is\nnot  an  easy task even to the  courts  or the experts.\nHistory looms large in politics. Netanyahu\u2019s military manoeuvres are aimed\nat   erasing the history of the Arabs and make Jerusalem the\nexclusive capital of  the Jews. Each move he makes  is also to\ndiminish the two-state solution for the two communities. Inch by inch \nhe  has been gaining ground. Donald Trump gave him  the greatest gift\nthat any Jew could expect  : Jerusalem as their capital. Now the far-right\nJews are moving to clean up the whole city. They are bent on ethnically\ncleansing Jerusalem to make it the exclusive sacred city of  the Jews.\n\nThe\nPalestinians have been retreating reluctantly and helplessly accepting \neach  gain of the Israelis as the new normal. The two-state theory too is\ndiminishing its force. Israel has succeeded in normalising relations with a\nstring  of Arab states to  the dismay of Palestinians. Trump\nadministration did the backdoor work to strengthen Israel\u2019s position in the\nMiddle East. The emerging scenario is not the  most positive for the\nPalestinians. They end up  getting  the  worse  end \nof the deal  with each military offensive. Their misery increases. So,\ndoes the glory of Israel. To be an Arab in Israel today is like being an insect\nin  one  of Kafka\u2019s novels. It is nightmarish, humiliating and\npositively  oppressive. Muslims in Sri Lanka should go down on their\nknees  and thank God that they are not in Israel, in particular\nJewish-occupied Palestine. \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala\u00a0 When the first Israeli airstrike hit Gaza on Monday nine children and 13 others were killed, according to Washington Post. (Monday 10, May, 2021). By Saturday the  death toll had risen to over hundred and 33 of them were children. Simultaneously, Taliban bombs exploding in Kabul on Tuesday killed 85 Muslim school girls, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-h-l-d-mahindapala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}