JAPANESE<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Rajapaksas dubbed the final Eelam War a humanitarian offensive with zero-civilian casualties. Acknowledging civilian Tamil deaths was equated with playing the Tiger game. Mourning was a crime, criticising Lankan forces treachery, and referring to the root causes of the conflict justifying Tiger-atrocities. In this us-vs.-them universe, Ms. Pillay\u2019s condemnation of the LTTE as a \u2018murderous organisation\u2019 counted for nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms. Pillay, like UN agencies and humanitarian organisations, based her stance on International Humanitarian Law (IHL). IHL is premised on the concept of jus in bello, just conduct of war, which includes principles such as non-combatant immunity and proportionality. The Rajapaksas practiced the antithesis of IHL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Prof. Rajan Hoole wrote, \u201cFrom 2006, the government began to do what would have been unthinkable after 1987. Intense shelling and deliberate displacement of Tamil populations became integral to its military strategy\u2026 (Himal \u2013 February 2009). Before launching the final offensive, the Rajapaksas ordered all UN agencies, INGOs, and media to leave the war-zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the 2014 Gaza War, a pro-Netanyahu columnist in The Jerusalem Post urged the Israeli PM to learn from Lanka\u2019s example of \u2018resolute use of military force\u2019 and give Hamas \u2018the thrashing it deserves\u2019 https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/Opinion\/Fundamentally-Freund-Defeating-terrorists-From-Sri-Lanka-to-Gaza-371428).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today Israel is waging a total war in Gaza, a war that has killed more than 3000 children so far (one child killed every 15 minutes). According to Save the Children, more children have been killed in Gaza in three weeks than in global conflicts annually in the last 4 years (2985 children 2022, 2515 in 2021, and 2674 in 2020). Oxfam has accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. The UN is warning of hunger and desperation in Gaza leading to societal collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How many Palestinian children must die for Israel to feel safe, or the West to say enough?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The targeting of Israeli civilians by Hamas was an act of barbarism. Israel\u2019s retaliatory war against the entire population of Gaza is no less barbaric. As Karim Khan, a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said, \u201cWhether a child is born Jewish in Israel or is a Christian or Muslim in Gaza \u2013 they\u2019re children and we should have that sense of humanity \u2013 that legal, ethical, and moral responsibility to do right by them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Hamas and their supporters, Israeli children are not children. For Israel and its Western backers, Palestinian children are not children. Hamas committed war crimes. Israel is committing war crimes. And the West, the self-appointed guardians of International Humanitarian Law, is enabling Israel to go on committing war crimes. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has descended so low as to ask Qatar to \u2018moderate Al Jazeera\u2019s coverage\u2019 of Israel\u2019s air strikes against Gaza, according to a Guardian report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The repercussions of this abandonment of jus in bello are likely to be both global and long-lasting. The world could regress to a time when anything was permissible in and during war. The UN and international humanitarian organisations could become totally irrelevant. The credibility of a legal system depends on its fair application. When laws are applied selectively, they lose legitimacy. One law for friends and another for foes results in jungle for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By permitting, indeed helping, Israel to violate IHL, the US and the West are opening the door to a world of complete lawlessness and injustice. They are not ending terrorism but birthing it, in ever more gruesome forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Allied powers did nothing to impede the Holocaust. Dresden which had no military value, was fire-bombed while railway lines to Auschwitz were not. From that civilisational failure was born the cry, Never Again. But as a Jewish protestor at the anti-war demonstration near the Capitol building said, \u201cNever again means never again for anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The world needs impartial application of IHL to Israel and Hamas, to Russia and Ukraine. The failure to do so will push humanity back to an age when life for most humans was solitary, nasty, and brutish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marriages made in Hell<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conception was the name given to Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s decades-old policy of using Hamas to divide and weaken Palestinians. Addressing Likud party Knesset members in March 2019, he explained his rationale for favouring Hamas and permitting Qatar to fund it. \u201cWhoever opposes a Palestinian state must approve the delivery of funds to Gaza because maintaining the difference between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement) does not accept Israel\u2019s right to existence and wants to install an Islamic Caliphate in all Palestinian lands. Such an organisation would be the best excuse for Israel right\u2019s own plans for a theocratic and non-pluralist Greater Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As retired general Yair Golan pointed out, Netanyahu \u201ccreated a situation in which, so long as the Palestinian Authority was weak, he could create the overall perception that the best thing to do was to annex West Bank. We weakened the very institution that we could have worked with, and strengthened Hamas\u201d (The New Yorker \u2013 28.10.2023). In pursuant of this, weapons were reportedly taken away from the Gaza border and given to settlers in West Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s Conception indirectly enabled Hamas\u2019 October 7th attack just as his war will turn the Arab world into a breeding ground for Hamas. As Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh said, \u201cIt is a mistake to think that Hamas is an alien being \u2013 it is part of the national tapestry. It grows bigger or smaller depending on other factors. You can eliminate the guys running Hamas now, but you cannot eliminate it entirely. It will stay as a way of thinking, as an idea so long as there is a Palestinian-Israeli conflict\u201d (ibid).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Had the Oslo Accords worked, had there been an independent democratic Palestinian state, Hamas could have been marginalised. The Accord\u2019s monumental failure, and the resultant disillusionment in peaceful solutions (not to mention Fatah\u2019s incompetent and corrupt practices in West Bank) helped Hamas thrive. As Hamas founder Sheik Ahmad Yassen once said, \u201cWhen oppression increases people start looking for God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The plan to ethnic-cleanse West Bank piecemeal, using low intensity violence by Israeli settlers and the Israeli army, continues, empowered by Western indifference. As human rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh wrote, even such a quotidian activity like olive picking has been politicised by expansionist settlers who attack Palestinian olive-pickers, preventing them from reaching their lands and sometimes stealing the harvest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the West Bank village of Deir Istiya, those returning home from harvesting olives found notices under car windshield-wipers telling them to wait for the Great Nakba \u2013 to leave or be forcefully evicted, Israeli columnist Hagar Shezaf wrote in Haaretz on October 27th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pursuit of Greater Israel is a threat to Palestinian Christians as well. Settler expansionists want a Jewish state in which Christians will have little or no space. In 2012, extremist settlers attacked the Trappist Monastery in Latroun, setting its door on fire and writing anti-Christian graffiti such as Jesus is a monkey on its walls. Jerusalem\u2019s Monastery of the Cross too has been attacked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Again in 2012, Israel politician Michael Ben Ari tore a copy of the New Testament in the Knesset and threw it into a rubbish bin after denouncing it as an abhorrent book. A second legislator wanted bible to be burnt. Neither was officially sanctioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Father Pierbatista Pizzaballa, Custodian of the Holy Land, pointed out, \u201cIsrael has failed to address the practice of some ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools that it is a doctrinal obligation to abuse anyone in Holy Orders they encounter in public\u201d (https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/religion\/9529123\/Vatican-official-says-Israel-fostering-intolerance-of-Christianity.html).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Sri Lanka too, political monks, extremist politicians, and retired military officers have stepped up their campaign to incite ethnic\/religious tensions. Now that Kurundi has been neutralised by the government, these motley combos have shifted focus to Batticaloa. They are abusing even Buddha statues, using them as weapons of war and markers of territorial possession. Omalpe Sobitha thero, a bit-actor in the drama, asked, \u201cIf you can\u2019t keep a Buddhist statue in places like Batticaloa, has a separate country come into being?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main actor in the unfolding Diwulpathana teledrama, the infamous Ampitiye Sumanarathana thero, set out a clear warning. \u201cThe country is angry and awake\u2026 They are ready to reply the President, Rasamannikam, Senthil Thondaman. The entire Sinhala nation is ready to reply to all of them anytime\u2026 I don\u2019t know who sired Ranil Wickremesinghe. I don\u2019t know if Tamil people have traditional properties in this Sri Lanka\u2026 There is a history going back beyond 2500 years for these properties\u2026 These are traditional properties of Sinhalese\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Mahinda Rajapaksa became the president and the war ended, these people got back their rights\u2026 They lost their rights when Maithripala became the president, and regained them again when Gotabaya became the president and lost them again when Gotabaya was driven out. It\u2019s after Ranil Wickremesinghe came to power that politicians like Shanakyam shout like this\u2026\u201d The monks and lay cohorts are acting with total impunity while the government looks away and the Opposition evades the issue. The moderate centre is unoccupied territory while the two antipodes are teeming with actual and would be owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rational Resistance<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When a policeman shot dead unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, USA, in 2014, mass protests erupted. Confronted by policemen armed as if for war, some demonstrators drew comparisons between themselves and the Gazans. Many Palestinians responded by tweeting practical advice (for instance, Mariam Barghouti from West Bank tweeted, \u201cAlways make sure to run against the wind\/to keep calm when you are tear gassed, the pain will pass, don\u2019t rub your eyes.\u201d) When an American social-media user objected to the Ferguson-Gaza comparison, another responded, \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone is trying to compare Ferguson to Gaza; the point is solidarity and justice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now also, the point is solidarity and justice, with Gazans and all Palestinians, with hostages, and the Israelis who lost their loved ones, with Palestinian journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh whose wife, daughter, and son were killed in Israeli bombings, and with the mother of Shani Louk, the German-Israeli tattoo artist murdered by Hamas. For solidarity with Palestinians to grown into a moral and political force, resistance needs to move out of the violent theocratic paradigm represented by Hamas. The locus should be not Islamic or Arab but global.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is at issue is not the right to violent resistance but the efficacy of that path. Arab and Islamic leaders might breathe fire, but they are not even going to suspend diplomatic relations with Israel, let alone wage war against Israel, not even if every inch of Gaza is flattened and every Gazan perish under the rubble. The only way out is to do what national liberation movements did in the old days, from Vietnam to South Africa: gain and occupy the moral highground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The repugnancy of Israel\u2019s policies and actions cannot be showcased, if resistance to Israel is dominated by Hamas and its equally repugnant brand of violence. Just as it is possible to support Israel\u2019s right to existence without supporting the Greater Israel project, it is possible to resist Israel occupation and expansion without descending to the depth of barbarism. To find that radically moderate path all Palestine has to do is to reach back to its own history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Palestinian cleric Munib Younan, Bishop emeritus of the Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land pointed out last month, \u201cWe have lived with the Jews all the time. Jews were persecuted in Europe. Never in Palestine. Anti-Semitism is a European construct.\u201d Tolerating anti-Semitism, even in the face of the murderous attacks by Israel, is morally wrong and strategically counter-productive. Had Tamil struggle not succumbed to extremism, had the LTTE not targeted Sinhala and Muslim civilians and Tamil critics, it wouldn\u2019t have gone down to utter defeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While October 7th attack was happening, Hamas exhorted Palestinians in the West Bank to rise against Israeli settlers, violently. West Bank Palestinians refused to heed that deadly call. Outside Israel, and even within, some Jews have endorsed the growing global call for a ceasefire in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week, hundreds of mostly Jewish demonstrators, members of Jewish Voice for Peace NY, took over the main hall of the Grand Central Station, protesting against the bombing of Gaza, shouting that Palestinians will be free. The sentiment of one of the young demonstrators provides a glimpse of a path out of the looming jungle of violent lawlessness: Mourn the dead. Fight like hell for the living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tisaranee Gunasekara is a Sri Lankan political commentator based in Colombo.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nINPS Japan\/IPS UN Bureau<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Original Link:\u00a0https:\/\/www.ipsnews.net\/2023\/11\/gaza-spells-jungle\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By\u00a0Tisaranee Gunasekara COLOMBO\u00a0(INPS Japan\/IPS NORAM) – During her 2013 visit to Sri Lanka, then UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay wanted to lay a wreath to commemorate the war-dead. \u201cWhen I go to a country, I like to honour the victims, all victims, victims of LTTE, soldiers, families,\u201d she explained. The Rajapaksa regime refused permission […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4556,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,38,16,93,32],"tags":[98],"class_list":{"0":"post-4555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-asia-pacific","8":"category-middle-east","9":"category-news","10":"category-politics","11":"category-regions","12":"tag-ips-un-bureau"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4555"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4559,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555\/revisions\/4559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}