Portrait of a Sri Lankan Wahhabi

This report should be read in conjunction with my last post:

"Zaharan Hashim, a radical Muslim preacher accused of masterminding the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, never hid his hatred. He railed against a local performance in which Muslim girls dared to dance. When a Muslim politician held a 50th birthday party, he raged about how Western infidel traditions were poisoning his hometown, Kattankudy.

"There were, Zaharan said in one of his online sermons, three types of people: Muslims, those who had reached an accord with Muslims, and 'people who need to be killed'. Idolaters, he added, 'need to be slaughtered wherever you see them'.

"Zaharan has been described by Sri Lankan officials as having founded an obscure group with inchoate aims: a defacement of a Buddha statue, a diatribe against Sufi mystics. But in his hometown, and later in the online world of radical Islam where his sermons were popular with a segment of Sri Lankan youth, it was clear for years that Zaharan's hateful cadences were designed to lure a new generation of militants. 'He was influential, very attractive, very smart in his speeches, even though what he was saying about jihad was crazy,' said Marzook Ahamed Lebbe, a former Kattakudy politician and member of a local Islamic federation. 'We all underestimated him. We never thought he would do what he said.'

"Standing among seven masked men in black, Zaharan is the only one with his face exposed. Sri Lankan investigators believe that eight suicide bombers carried out the attacks on the hotels and mosques Sunday, one of the bloodiest assaults ever claimed by IS. On Thursday investigators said they believed Zaharan was one of two suicide bombers who targeted the Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital. (The Sri Lankan police have also identified him as Mohammed Zaharan.)

"Muslims in Kattakudy said they had repeatedly contacted the police to warn that Zaharan was dangerous, but that the authorities played down the threat [...] Growing up in Kattakudy, an oasis of Islam on a majority Buddhist island with significant Hindu and Christian minorities, Zaharan's religiosity was unremarkable. Most houses here have a picture of Mecca on their wall, and road intersections are decorated with golden monuments in Arabic.

"Zaharan and his brothers were sent by their father, a small-time seed and spice seller, to a madrassa, where teachings adhered to a strict interpretation of Islam. But even as he impressed with the fluency of his Koranic recitation and easily made friends, Zaharan confronted his teachers and accused them of failing to adhere to true Islam. Like other Kattakudy youths lured by new overseas fashions, he had come under the spell of foreign preachers whose sermons were being passed around town by DVD, said MBM Fahim, one of his classmates... 'He spread misinformation about us,' Fahim said. 'He said the the school should close because it was teaching the wrong way. He was just a student and he was saying like this. Zaharan was kicked out of school. He enrolled at another Islamic college but never graduated, his acquaintances said. Still, by listening to the sermons of charismatic but extremist preachers based in India and Malaysia, Zaharan was honing his oratory.

"After getting ejected from serving as imam of one mosque for his extremist views, Zaharan started a group in 2014 called National Thowheeth Jamaath or NTI, which drew from the austere Wahhabi tradition that claims to follow the faith as practiced in the age of its founder, the Prophet Mohammed." From Sri Lanka bombings: 'Mastermind' never hid his hatred, Hanna Beech, The New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 26/4/19)

Lest We Forget... Iraq

An excellent letter from yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald:

"David Cameron has demanded an independent investigation into whether war crimes were committed in Sri Lanka's civil war. Sure, straight after there's an independent investigation into whether war crimes were committed when the British government, with others, invaded Iraq despite not having any justification under international law or the authorisation of the UN Security Council.

"It is sheer arrogance and hypocrisy for Cameron to demand another country be open about war crimes it might have committed when the result of the Chilcot inquiry into the circumstances in which Tony Blair dragged Britain into the US-led invasion of Iraq is sitting on his desk, held up from being released because he doesn't want to upset Washington by revealing what Blair and George Bush said to each other." Gordon Drennan Burton (SA)

'Engaging': Julie Bishop Points the Way

When it comes to flying off to a Commonwealth Heads of Government bash in a butcher shop, aka Sri Lanka, the word on every sophisticated Western politician's tongue is 'engage'.

For example:

"British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote this week: 'the right thing to do is to engage. To visit the country. To shine the international spotlight on the lack of progress in the country'." (Bishop urges leader to attend talks, Ben Doherty, David Wroe, Sydney Morning Herald, 12/11/13)

"Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has vowed to 'engage' rather than 'isolate' Sri Lanka over claims of human rights abuses, bucking a growing trend to boycott this week's Commonwealth Meeting in the country." (ibid)

Now Jules has had some experience 'engaging' in Sri Lanka. And thanks to News Ltd's Rowan Callick, we now have a pretty good idea of just what it is that a politician actually does when she 'engages'. And as it turns out, David Cameron seems to have gotten it all wrong. But then that's men for you, right?

Apparently, when you 'engage' in a place like Sri Lanka, or as Callick has it, "the Tamil badlands of Sri Lanka," the last thing you do is "shine the international spotlight on the lack of progress in the country." No way!

What you do - what Jules did at any rate - was to negotiate the rubble-strewn, khaki morass, with its odd, reddish splashes, in her stylish new Milan stilettos, adjust her new Kailis pearl necklace, brush the dust off her immaculate new Escada frock, sweep the joint with her trademark death-stare - so appropriate in a killing field, no? - wince at the decidedly un-Israeli ambiance of the place ("scarcely vibrant" as Callick put it), note with relief the absence of Tamil women being raped by Sri Lankan troops within the immediate ambit of her gimlet-gaze, then high-tail it back to her air-conditioned luxury hotel in Colombo as soon as decently possible:

"Earlier this year, with immigration spokesman Scott Morrison and customs and border protection spokesman Michael Keenan, she spurned all government and high commissioner offers of guides and escorts and placed her team in the hands of local Tamils; the Australians were picked up in an old minibus at Jaffna airport and checked in to a $17-a-night hotel with cold showers only. They stayed in Kilinochchi, a town at the heart of the failed Tamil rebellion, which had seen little development for decades. For two and a half days they were taken to meet people whose lives were scarcely vibrant, but who could provide no evidence, Bishop says, of continuing persecution from Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority." (Julie Bishop: All the right moves, Rowan Callick, The Australian, 28/9/13)

Now unlike Jules, Tone hasn't been there before, but he too will soon be 'engaging' with the best of them in Sri Lanka. In fact, as befits a PM not particularly known for his foreign affairs expertise, he's taken time off from pollie-peddling to practise 'engaging' with Sri Lanka right here in Australia, and I have to say I'm quite impressed with the result:

"Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Mr Abbott said the Sri Lankan government deserved praise for ending its civil war. 'I don't propose to lecture the Sri Lankans on human rights,' Mr Abbott said. 'I accept that by Australian standards, probably things could have been done a little differently and maybe a little better'." (Tony Abbott to stay quiet on Sri Lanka human rights, Dan Harrison, Sydney Morning Herald, 12/11/13)

"Probably things could have been done a little differently... maybe a little better..."

Yep, for a bloke, he's a natural, and I'm sure that, as with Jules, "no evidence of continuing persecution" is ever going to cross his path in Sri Lanka.

Great Minds Think Alike

Now where have I heard this one before?

"'My question is this: if people are really persecuted here, why don't they go to India, which is two hours away? Why do they take a dangerous journey of 25 or 30 days in a boat to Australia?' So asks Vice Admiral Jayanath Colombage, commander of the Sri Lanka Navy, in the course of a long discussion in naval headquarters in Colombo." (Sri Lanka heads back the tide, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 29/8/13)

Bugger me if it wasn't back in Sheridan's column of June 13 this year:

"The refugee convention envisages people fleeing across borders to avoid persecution. Consider Sri Lankan Tamils. There are tens of millions of Tamils living next door to Sri Lanka in India. They are certainly not persecuted. But India is poorer than Sri Lanka. Australia is much richer. So they choose Australia, not India. That is an immigration decision, not a refugee decision." (People are fed up with continued growth in asylum-seeker numbers)

Not to mention his column of October 22, 2009:

"Just being a Tamil does not make a person a refugee. Moreover, if you are fleeing persecution as a Tamil in Sri Lanka, why wouldn't you go and live in Tamil Nadu, the giant Tamil state of India, just next door to Sri Lanka? India does not persecute people for being Tamils." (Boatpeople paint PM into corner)

Months, nay years, before! And oceans apart! A Sri Lankan admiral and an Australian journalist - so alike it's scary! Now that's what I call spooky.

The Australian's 'Suppository of Wisdom'

The Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, continues to amaze.

Did you know, for example, that Tony Abbott "looked completely prime ministerial" in Sunday night's 'great' debate?

But then this is the "suppository of wisdom," as his dear friend Tony might describe him, who once declared that G.W. Bush "may well be judged, ultimately, a great president."

But that's not what really stood out for me in Sheridan's post debate commentary yesterday. This was:

"Notably there was no foreign policy beyond boats. However, some of Rudd's statements in this area were bizarre. It is astonishing that Rudd should blame the Sri Lankan civil war for a flow of boatpeople. The Sri Lankan civil war ran for decades. It didn't start under Rudd. It ended on Rudd's watch, so it didn't cause the boats." (Presidential Abbott sinks Rudd in debate, 12/8/13)

Remember here that we're dealing with "the most influential foreign affairs analyst in Australian journalism," according to his profile on the Australian's website.

Yet, this SOW seems not to have twigged to the possibility that, so long as the Tamil Tigers were around to protect the Tamil community from the depredations of a genocidal Sri Lankan military, there was really no need for Sri Lankan Tamils to jump on a boat.

Why, if such a thought had ever crossed his mind, the Australian's SOW might have to rethink his characterisation of Hamas as merely a "death-cult."* Heaven forbid!

[*See my 21/5/09 post Repeat After Me.]

Greg Sheridan's Blocked Mind

Well, The Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, is baaack at last following bypass surgery.

Understandably, he's not quite up to speed yet with the frequency of his columns, but the ideological rigidity of his views, as infallible as that of any medieval Pope, shows no diminution:

"[I]t is unequivocally a good thing that the Sri Lankan government defeated the Tamil Tigers, one of the most murderous and vicious of all terrorist groups, which enslaved children, murdered civilians and pioneered the suicide bomb." (Isolating Fiji, Sri Lanka or Myanmar would serve no useful purpose, 7/2/13)

I was particularly struck by Sheridan's tenuous connection with reality when I read the following in today's Australian:

"A Human Rights Watch report documenting dozens of cases of torture and rape of Tamils in the custody of Sri Lankan security forces claims the practice remains 'widespread and systematic' more than 3 years after the end of the civil war." ('Torture & rape of Tamils is widespread', Amanda Hodge)

As with his demonisation of Hamas - a 'death cult' - Sheridan's Tamil Tigers emerged, seemingly, out of some pit in Hell.

The very concept of a resistance movement like the LTTE emerging as a direct result of the failure of decades of peaceful, non-violent struggle by Sri Lanka's Tamil minority for such basic human rights as the preservation of their language, secularism, constitutional rights for the Tamil minority, a de-centralised administration, and an end to the caste system is, apparently, anathema to Sheridan.

Arteries can be unblocked but not, it seems, a blocked mind. 

A Deafening Silence 2

Further to my earlier post of this title (6/7/11):

In a letter to yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, Sandy Free of Carlingford wrote:

"I opened yesterday's edition of the Herald hoping to find a shocked and angry public reaction to the story aired on Four Corners on Monday about the genocide in Sri Lanka in the closing phase of their civil war. Instead of the lengthy articles and opinion pieces about the ethics of the live [cattle] export trade that were published in the days after the Four Corners report on that subject, there was 4 pieces on Sri Lanka... including 2 letters, and one had nothing to do with the genocide. What does it take for a highly regarded newspaper such as the Herald to publish something serious about this horrific event in recent history? Do Australians have to die? Do more than 100,000 people have to be killed? Do they have to be cute, moo and swish their tails?"

So what do we find in today's Herald? An editorial on... the federal government's lifting of the ban on live cattle exports to Indonesia! (Stunned by live export drama)

Does that answer your question, Sandy?

A Deafening Silence

After the May 30 screening by ABC TV's Four Corners program of A Bloody Business, on Australia's brutal live cattle trade to Indonesia, the mainstream media gave ample voice to our collective revulsion for weeks afterwards.

By contrast, after Four Corners' July 4 screening of The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka, showing the mass slaughter (and worse) of some 40,000 defenceless Tamil civilians at the hands of the Sri Lankan military... nothing!

Not a whisper from Fran Kelly on Radio National's Breakfast program next day. Nothing in The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age. Nothing in the Murdoch press.

Today? Again, nothing on Radio National except for an item on PM (Alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka under the microscope). Nothing in the Murdoch press.

And the best the Sydney Morning Herald could do was this blink-and-you'd-miss-it item on page 7:

"New footage of the Sri Lankan Army allegedly executing naked and bound prisoners and raping and murdering Tamil women has prompted the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd*, to call for a re-examination of the final stages of the civil war there. Labelling the footage - watched by almost 600,000 Australians on ABC Television's Four Corners on Monday night - as 'profoundly disturbing', Mr Rudd urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to revise a 2009 resolution praising the war's outcome. Local and international media were prevented from covering the 2009 campaign to eliminate the Tamil Tigers. Monday night's footage, by Britain's Channel Four, showed unarmed people being shot dead by Sri Lankan soldiers, who could be heard joking." (Sri Lanka war rethink urged, Dylan Welch)

The following 2 letters also appeared on the Herald's letters page:

"The morning after Four Corners depicted the mistreatment of cattle in Indonesia there was a national outrage, led by our politicians. On Monday night Four Corners showed the systematic slaughter, mutilation, torture, rape and execution of civilians in Sri Lanka. Much of the worst was filmed by the perpetrators themselves in gory celebration. And this morning there is silence." Gary Stowe, Springwood

"Recently the federal government suspended the live export of cattle to Indonesia after Four Corners exposed the mistreatment of said cattle. Will the federal government now expedite the applications of Sri Lankan refugees who came out of this horror, instead of sending them back as they did 2 years ago?" Denise Thorpe, Wentworth Falls

And this on the letters page of The Age:

"The footage (Four Corners, ABCTV, 4/7) showing war crimes by the Sri Lankan military was the most disturbing piece of television I have ever seen. The Australian government has a moral responsibility to push for these crimes to be brought to account in the International Criminal Court. It also puts our pathetic debate on asylum seekers into grim and meaningful perspective." Daniel Price, Frankston South

How to account for the near deafening silence of the ms media following the screening of this searing documentary? How to account for a real concern over the slaughter of cattle, but a seeming indifference over the slaughter of human beings? I'd love another explanation, of course, but when all is said and done, I can't help asking: Is it because they're brown?

[* "We, the Foreign Ministers of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and the Commomwealth of Australia, reaffirm our continuing commitment to work together to combat people smuggling, the financing of terrorism and related organised criminal activities... Australia welcomes the end of the conflict situation that prevailed for over two and a half decades in some parts of Sri Lanka..." Joint Ministerial Statement, 9/10/09]

The Right Stuff

Having already written about the Kafkaesque plight of the Rahavan family in my 23/11/10 post Behind the ASIO Assessment, I was reminded of them again by a report in yesterday's Australian, which revealed just how much it was costing the Australian taxpayer to 'protect' us from them:

"They are Australia's most expensive refugees. The Rahavans, a Sri Lankan family of 5, most of whom journeyed to Australia on the ill-fated Oceanic Viking, were until recently costing the Australian taxpayers a staggering $428,861 every 3 months in security bills. Yogachandran Rahavan and his wife, Sumathi, were declared security threats by ASIO 18 months ago over alleged links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or Tamil Tigers... The family had all been found to be genuine refugees, meaning Australia was prevented by law from deporting them to Sri Lanka. But their negative security assessment means they can never be given visas, either, potentially consigning them to a life of perpetual detention. Because of ASIO's concern, guards were assigned to live with the family 24 hours a day. For 9 months they had to maintain their dignity as a family with 2 guards in their house at all times... The Immigration Department said that between November 2010 and February 2011 the cost of placing 'static guards' inside the Rahavan's family compound had run to $428,861. That adds up to about $1.14 million in the 8 months the security remained in place." (Million-dollar refugee family caught in perpetual detention, Paul Maley, 27/5/11)

We know virtually nothing of the heinousness of the Rahavan's 'crimes', all evidence of which is kept strictly under wraps by ASIO. What we do know, however, is shocking in the extreme: "Sumathi had worked as a legal officer in the LTTE-run court system in Sri Lanka's north... [but] it is not known what Sumathi's husband, who came to Australia ahead of his family on a separate boat is alleged to have done." (ibid) OK, I did warn you!

Why revisit this bizarre story from Australia's Gulag then? Well, I'd read the following tale the day before and it got me thinking, a dreadful curse I know:

"Variously described as publicity-shy, secretive, even mysterious, Ivan Glasenberg's most prized asset had been his closely guarded privacy. But that came to an end with his dramatic emergence as Australia's second-richest person on the BRW Rich List, worth an estimated $8.8 billion. Before yesterday, few knew the powerful South African-born businessman was an Australian citizen. The decision to partially float the world's largest commodity trader, Glencore, where Mr Glasenberg is chief executive, has made instant millionaires of 485 senior employees - and catapulted the company's boss into the limelight." (Mysterious financier blitzes the rich list, Philip Wen, Sydney Morning Herald, 26/5/11)

You see, it was Ivan Glasenberg's story, and that of the Rahavan family, that led me to ponder the weighty subject of just who is worthy, and who is not, to enter our little South Pacific paradise, who's in and who's out in Godzone country, so to speak.

Well, obviously the Rahavans are a bit of a worry: that Sumathi, for example, working in the Tiger-infested jungles, sorry, Tiger-administered courts of Tamil Eelam. Now if only she'd made a beeline for Colombo, thrown herself on the mercy of the Rajapaksa bruvvers, denounced the Tigers and all their works, and declared her intention of going public with a heart-rending story of forgiveness and peace in the strife-torn island of Sri Lanka, maybe even penning a little number called I Shall Not Hate, containing maybe a photo of her good self cosying up to the Rajapaksas, and even - why not? - eventually turning up at the Sydney Writers Festival like our good friend Abuelaish... Of course, she'd probably have been raped and thrown into a dungeon somewhere along the way, if not just shot out of hand, but hey, wouldn't that (every cloud having a silver lining, as they say) have saved the Australian taxpayer a pretty penny!

But I digress. You can play what ifs? till the proverbial cows come home - the plain fact of the matter is she's brown!

But Ivan - sorry, our Ivan - what a catch! Yes, yes, he's white, but hey, that's just the beginning. The man's a legend. I mean, who in his right mind would not want Ivan to call Australia home? Among his many assets I need mention but the following:

There's his focus on the things that really matter:

"Glasenberg... became intrigued with commodities trading when studying accountancy in South Africa... 'I observed a man sourcing candle wax from South America and selling it to Japan. I thought, 'That's unbelievable. Talking on the phone in his office, that man made money moving candle wax from one country to another'. It really interested me." (Newsmaker-Ivan Glasenberg's long walk to Glencore billions, Webb & Onstad, Reuters/ my.news.yahoo.com, 5/5/11)

There's his (slag) heaps and heaps and heaps of good work all over the planet:

"News that the London Stock Exchange is on the verge of a mammoth flotation didn't spread quite as far as the Zambian mining village of Mufilira. Even if it had, it's unlikely the villagers there would have seen much cause for celebration. While the rich seams of copper that lie deep in the ground beneath Mulifira have helped to make Swiss-based Glencore the largest and wealthiest commodities trader in the world, the African villagers are still struggling to get by on just a few dollars a day. This is barely enough even to feed their families, let alone pay for the medicine they need to treat the illnesses caused by the dangerous levels of pollution spewed out by Glencore-controlled mines... In Zambia alone, Glencore is accused of manipulating its financial accounts in order to reduce its tax bill, deliberately depriving that poverty-stricken nation of much-needed income. Indeed, the foul-smelling sulphur clouds that hang low over Mulifira are not the only thing about this obsessively secret company leaving a bitter taste in the mouth. The truth is that until now, most people would not have heard of Glencore - it's only as a result of the proposed flotation that questions about its practices are being asked... Its empire stretches from the jungles of Colombia to the plains of Australia. It makes its money from metals, minerals, oil, sugar, grain - commodities that form the very building blocks of world trade. And, armed with the best possible knowledge of global events, its traders buy these at the lowest possible price and sell at the highest possible mark-up." (Flotation to shine light on shadowy Glencore, Sunderland & Davies, thisismoney.co.uk, 4/5/11)

There's his sterling commercial pedigree:

"... Glencore grew out of the business empire of a man cited in the biggest tax fraud indictment in history. American oil trader Marc Rich, who founded the company - originally named Marc Rich & Co - in 1974, arrived in the US as a small boy with his parents in 1941, having fled from the Nazis in Belgium. At the peak of his powers, he dominated the global oil market. He traded with African dictators, Cuban communists and, most notoriously with Iran during the embargo on that country imposed by America during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis. He is also said to have financed operations by Mossad... former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit said Rich helped with the intelligence agency's work in Yemen and Sudan in the Eighties, when Israel was evacuating Jews from those countries. His support for Israel, however, did not prevent him also doing deals with Islamic fundamentalists bent on the destruction of the Jewish state. And he also made a 1.2 billion pound profit selling oil to South Africa during the apartheid years, contrary to an international trade embargo. In 1983, he was charged by lawyer and future New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani with 51 crimes, including evading at least 29m pounds in taxes, racketeering, conspiracy and trading with the enemy, Iran. Rich fled to Switzerland, from where he evaded various attempts by the US authorities to seize him. In 1994, he sold his business empire, handing control to his long-time German associate, Willy Strothotte, who reinvented it as Glencore. Rich was eventually pardoned in 2001 by President Clinton after lobbying by his former wife, a songwriter who has penned hits for such stars as Celine Dion. Today, Glencore may have eliminated all trace of Rich from its website, but his ghost haunts the company. Traders who worked with Rich remain steeped in his philosophy of cut-throat negotiation over prices - operating in a murky world, albeit on the right side of the law." (ibid)

Ivan, of course, has unerringly followed the path of the master:

"During Saddam's rule in Iraq, and the UN sanctions which accompanied its final years, Glencore made handsome profits marketing embargoed oil. In February 2001, Glencore bought 1 million barrels of Iraqi crude oil destined for the US and diverted the black gold to Croatia, where it was sold for a premium of $3 million, according to a UN Security council report." (Glencore: Profiteering from hunger & chaos, Chris Arsenault, english.aljazeera.net, 9/5/11)

But, best of all he's a sportsman. And... and... I can hardly contain myself at this icing on the cake, he's also an... Israeli citizen and so practically one of us already!:

"A 54-year-old champion race-walker for both South Africa and Israel (he has dual nationality), Glasenberg runs and swims every day to maintain his lean physique. Selected colleagues accompany him on his early-morning jogs - some say under sufferance - to display their loyalty to the workaholic Glencore 'cult'." (Sunderland & Davies)

We are indeed a lucky country. Shame about the Rahavans though. If only Sumathi had pulled her finger out and listened up as somebody was making money moving candle wax from one country to another while on the phone. We might even have forgiven her for being brown.

Behind the ASIO Assessment

An example of the obscenity which is Australia's treatment of asylum seekers:

"Sumathi Rahavan never predicted the Kafkaesque situation that awaited her young family when she boarded the Australian Customs boat, Oceanic Viking, last year. The [Tamil] Sri Lankan has given birth as an immigration detainee, been branded a national security risk by [the] Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and now faces 24-hour surveillance with 3 guards watching over her family, which is being held in detention indefinitely. Her husband, Yogachandran Rahavan, [is] also declared a national security threat by the spy agency... The saga began when Mrs Rahavan decided to join her husband in Australia, bundling their daughter Atputha, 6, and son Abinayan, 3, on to what was to become the most politically charged boatload of asylum seekers under the Rudd government. In its haste to end a diplomatic stand-off with Indonesia, the Australian government offered all refugees on Oceanic Viking a special resettlement deal. As refugees, the government cannot return the Rahavans to possible danger in Sri Lanka. But because ASIO assesses them a security risk, the family cannot be settled in Australia... The reasons ASIO has for its suspicions may never be revealed. The agency's decisions in immigration matters are not reviewable. Mr Rahavan adamantly denied he was involved with the Tamil Tigers separatist group and said he did not know why he could be considered a risk... At Villawood [Detention Centre], the Rahavans are watched 24 hours a day. Emails are blocked and phone calls must go through immigration staff who type in 'approved' numbers and confirm who is on the line before passing the phone over. 'There's all the time - 24/7 - two officers inside the house', Mr Rahavan said. 'There is a Serco vehicle and officer, who watches us 24/7 through the window'. Some family members are authorised to visit and others not." (ASIO ruling puts asylum seekers in no man's land, Yuko Narushima, Sydney Morning Herald, 22/11/10)

You can be sure that lurking somewhere behind ASIO's non-reviewable assessment of these Tamil victims of Sri Lankan genocide is a 'terror expert'. My guess is the ubiquitous Rohan Gunaratna (See my 20/10/09 post Exporting Zionism 2).

James Petras' penetrating analysis of the breed is hard to beat:

"The Terrorist Experts (TE) project the violence of the rulers, their conquistadorial ambitions, their greed to seize land and resources, and their savage destructive impulses onto their victims while the responses of the victims, the survivors, are clothed in the rhetoric of pathological behaviour. The really clinical pathologies are to be found, however, in the minds of the verbal assassins - who cannot decipher the causal relation between the repeated rapes and tortures committed by their patron-states and the desperate cries and attempts at self-defence of the excluded, displaced, and exploited, or arrive at any appropriate moral conclusion. Almost all the terror experts have a chronic psychological blindness to the systematic and comprehensive violence inflicted by the West and Israel on particular groups. Today it is the 'Arabs'; at other times it is all insurgents who respond to imperial violence with violence." (The Power of Israel in the United States, 2006, pp 148-149)

"The TE simply pronounce their diagnosis of the armed resistance fighters: incurable psychopaths, extremely dangerous when at large. The politicians dictate the commands: capture, confine, torture, or kill. The Special Forces break through doors in the middle of the night, cut throats, or take prisoners. The prison commandants establish the rules of 'interrogation'. The guards torture. This is a very coherent international division of labor, in which the TE play an important part in elaborating the rationale. They ply a mortally and scientifically justified war-unto-death of the 'untermensch', the 'inferior' peoples, the 'fundamentalist Arab Muslims', the 'suicide bombers', the 'Terrorists'. A common language is spoken between the TE and their state patrons, and then promoted in and by the mass media." (ibid p 152)

Round Round Get Around... 4

They get around:

"Donald Perera, who served as Sri Lankan chief of staff during the offensive that ended in the Tamil rebels' surrender after almost 30 years... has since been appointed Sri Lanka's ambassador to Israel... 'I was familiar with Israel before coming here', he tells Yediot Ahronoth daily. 'In the framework of my previous positions as airforce commander and chief of staff, I had a great relationship with your military industries and with Israel Aerospace Industries. For years Israel has aided our war on terror through the exchange of information and the sale of military technology and equipment... Our airforce includes 17 Kfir warplanes, and we also have Dabur patrol boats. Our pilots were trained in Israel, and we have received billions of dollars in aid over the past few years. This is why I asked to be assigned to Israel - a country I consider to be a partner in the war against terror. Many Sri Lankans admire Israel', says Perera... After noting the similarities between the Tamil Tigers and Hamas, Perera says Sri Lanka is a staunch supporter of Israel's fight against terror. 'No one wants bloodshed. The other side should be offered direct negotiations, without preconditions, to determine its level of seriousness. These talks should focus on trying to reach a compromise that would allow both sides to sign an agreement', he says. 'In case the other side shows it is not interested in the compromise, (Israel) must move onto the military phase with full force. (The government) will have to explain to the citizens that Israel is headed for a long and difficult struggle that will exact a heavy price, but at the end of this struggle the country's situation will be much better', says the ambassador. 'Once you have the public support, you should fight relentlessly until all of the terror hubs are destroyed. There is no going back'." (Sri Lankan ambassador: We back Israel's war on terror, David Regev, ynetnews.com, 21/7/10)

"An Israeli man was arrested Friday for allegedly running an organ trafficking network in the Ukraine, Army radio reported... According to the report, the network operated for over 3 years and recruited donors via the Internet. Most of the donors were young women who agreed to sell a kidney for $10,000. The organs were then allegedly transferred to Israelis in need of a kidney transplant, which cost over $200,000, said the head of the Ukrainian organization for combatting human trafficking... Ukrainian police estimated that the network made a gross sum of $40 million..." (Report: Israeli suspected of running Ukraine organ trafficking ring, Haaretz, 6/8/10)

"A man the US deems one of the worst offenders among sellers of stolen financial data has been arrested in France. Vladislav Horohorin, 27, of Moscow and a dual Israeli and Ukrainian citizen, was arrested at the weekend in Nice on a US warrant... The US believes the suspect is one of the founders of CarderPlanet, a criminal internet forum for selling stolen credit card data. 'The network created by the founders of CarderPlanet, including Vladislav Horohorin, remains one of the most sophisticated organisations of online financial criminals in the world', said US Secret Service assistant director for investigations Michael Merritt. 'This network has been repeatedly linked to nearly every major intrusion of financial information reported to the international law enforcement community'." ('Credit card crime king' caught, AFP/The Australian, 13/8/10)

"Act's hard line law and order spokesman MP David Garrett has told [the New Zealand] Parliament he created a false identity by applying for a passport in the name of a dead child 26 years ago... Mr Garrett said he had applied for the passport as a prank - to see if it could be done - and had never used the passport, which had since expired. Mr Garrett was arrested years later as part of an investigation into bogus passports, conducted by the police in the wake of the discovery Israeli Mossad agents had used the same method to obtain New Zealand passports. He was discharged without conviction in 2005 and given permanent name suppression..." (Act MP Garrett admits creating false identity, Adam Bennett, nzherald.co.nz, 15/9/10)

Exporting Zionism 2

"What Israel has been exporting to the Third World is not just a technology of domination, but a worldview that undergirds that technology. In every situation of oppression and domination, the logic of the oppressed is pitted against the logic of the oppressor. What Israel has been exporting is the logic of the oppressor, the way of seeing the world that is tied to successful domination. What is exported is not just technology, armaments, and experience, not just expertise, but a certain frame of mind, a feeling that the Third World can be controlled and dominated, that radical movements in the Third World can be stopped, that modern Crusaders still have a future." (The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms & Why, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, 1987, p 248)

"They defeated the Tigers earlier this year but is the Sri Lankan government's war with the Tamils really all over? This week on Dateline, Amos Roberts investigates the mysterious disappearance of Kumaran Pathmanathan, or 'KP' as he is known, who became the leader of the Tamil Tigers after the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran in May. For more than 2 decades KP had been the Tiger's chief arms smuggler and money launderer... Now it appears that in a clandestine operation 2 months ago KP was snatched from a budget hotel in Malaysia and whisked back to Sri Lanka." (The Tiger Trap, SBS Television, 18/10/09)

Dateline's report on KP's illegal rendition was dominated by terrorism 'expert' Rohan Gunaratna of Singapore's International Center for Political Violence & Terrorism Research. Gunaratna, a Sinhalese whose pre-9/11 'expertise' was largely devoted to tracking the Tamil Tigers, was described as "close to Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary, who's credited with masterminding KP's rendition."

New Zealand academic and human rights advocate Dr David Small has called Gunaratna a "self-styled expert on Islamic groups and terrorism" and noted that his post-9/11 "impact in Australia was to heighten people's sense of fear and suspicion, particularly in relation to Islamic groups and migrant communities," as well as to contribute to "the justifications for laws that undermined hard-won human rights and civil liberties." "Gunaratna's current project to establish a data base of Asian terrorist groups," observed Small, "has been said to blur the line between freedom of academic research and intelligence-gathering for governments. [He] tends to rely on what he claims are inside contacts within intelligence networks. By their very nature, however, no claims based on these sorts of sources can be independently tested. To the extent that they can be investigated, there are many instances where they have been found to be questionable." (Terrorism expertise of Rohan Gunaratna questioned, scoop.co.nz, 24/8/04) [See also Analyse this, Gary Hughes, The Age, 20/7/03]

I was particularly struck by Gunaratna's tendency to gloat ("KP was taken directly from Malaysia on board a Sri Lankan flight. He flew on business class to Sri Lanka - in style!"), and by the following two statements:

"Previously, the Americans, the Israelis did this kind of rendition operation. By bringing KP home, Sri Lanka demonstrated that it will not spare any Tamil Tiger, or any other terrorist, who is going to harm Sri Lanka's national security interest." IOW, if the USraelis can do it, why not Sri Lanka? [See my 13/5/09 post Exporting Zionism for John Pilger's penetrating rumination on Sri Lanka's Gaza model.]

"I can share with you that the Sri Lankan government is already planning to bring a number of other people home... There are a number of professionals who are living in Australia and they have supported a terrorist group by providing them with funds, by distributing their propaganda, by advocating violence, and by supporting a group that conducted violence, and I believe that they should be prosecuted." And if these Australian citizens should resist in any way, well then, the Buddhist state can always take another leaf out of the book of the Jewish state: "Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries, said former Israeli intelligence officials in interviews with UPI." (UPI's intelligence correspondent Richard Sale, quoted in Watch your back, Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, 17/1/03)

But there's more. In an interview with Gunaratna (Making peace more challenging than making war, nation.lk, 15/10/09), it comes as no surprise to learn that, in addition to his current 'work' in Singapore, Gunaratna is also "a member of the Advisory Council of the Institute for Counter Terrorism, Israel." And given that both Sri Lanka and Israel have major image problems connected with their penchant for slaughtering civilians, is it any wonder that they play the same dubious numbers game by way of damage control? Here's Gunaratna in the nation.lk interview: "The US, in particular, has realised that no civilians were deliberately killed in Sri Lanka, and civilian fatalities and injuries in Sri Lanka are much lower compared with the numbers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan." And here's local Zionist advocate Peter Wertheim (Executive Director, Executive Council of Australian Jewry) in a letter to The Australian: "In Gaza, either two combatants were killed for each civilian (Israel's version) or the reverse (the Palestinian version). In the 1991 Gulf war, a lawful war authorised by the UN, the ratio was 2,125 civilian deaths for each enemy combatant killed. In the 2003 Iraq war it was 4.5 civilians per enemy combatant. In attacks by drone aircraft in Afghanistan, 10 civilians have died for each enemy combatant." killed." (20/10/09)

It's the State Terrorism, Stupid

The following statement by veteran anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew Uri Davis enshrines a fundamental truth:

"A fundamental asymmetery obtains between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', between the colonizer and the colonized. No armed action targeting civilians can be condoned. All 'acts of terrorism' ought to be condemned. But 'suicide bombing' by Palestinians is not 'just like' the strafing of Palestinian civilian residential quarters by Israeli Apache and Cobra helicopters with missiles, just as stealing food to feed the hungry is not 'just like' stealing money to feed a drug habit. Many of those at the forefront of the 'war against terror', notably the Government of the State of Israel, seem to be unwilling to embrace an inclusive view of the phenomenon of 'terrorism' they so forcefully condemn. The first party victimized by 'acts of terrorism' is the Palestinian party - not the Israeli party. The majority of the victims of 'acts of terrorism' are Palestinian civilians - not Israeli citizens. The primary perpetrators of 'acts of terrorism' are the governments of the State of Israel sending death squads on assassination missions in the post-1967 occupied territories; strafing civilian residential areas with helicopter gun-ships; destroying clinics and medical infrastructure; devastating centuries of learning, education and cultural heritage; subjecting the civilian population to protracted curfews; and denying the civilian population access to medical care. The primary 'terrorist' in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Government of the State of Israel - not the Palestinian suicide bomber." (Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, 2003, p 74)

Of course, we expect Zionist dead-enders and their mouthpieces in the mainstream media to be blind to such a fundamental truth. But it never ceases to amaze when it eludes even spokespeople for human rights organisations. Take Human Rights Watch for example:-

First this, courtesy of The Angry Arab News Service: "'Human Rights Watch provided the international community with evidence of Israel using white phosphorus and launching systematic destructive attacks on civilian targets. Pro-Israel pressure groups in the US, the European Union and the United Nations have strongly resisted the report and tried to discredit it', said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW's Middle East & North Africa Division'. But Sarah, you forgot to mention that HRW also equates the suffering of the colonized with that of the colonizers. But Sarah, you forgot to mention that HRW is obsessed with its 'pro-Israel donors' - as your director calls them - and that this obsession affects its coverage. But Sarah, you refused to mention that Israeli lives are always treated as more precious than Arab lives. But Sarah, you forgot to say that Hamas' homemade fireworks (aka rockets) are treated as more lethal than bombs from Israeli fighter jets. But Sarah, you forgot to mention that you never produce a report critical of Israel without matching it with a report critical of its victims." (26/5/09)

Then this, from Radio National's Breakfast program: "The conversation has to start with the Tamil Tigers because they were a totalitarian organisation that ran part of the country for many years where there were no basic freedoms, where people who criticised them were sometimes killed, sometimes tortured, sometimes imprisoned, where any moderate Tamil voices in Sri Lanka that spoke up were silenced by them. There have been hundreds of unexplained killings over the years that appear to have been the work of the Tamil Tigers, but the government has basically said they're so bad they engaged in terror tactics, therefore we can do whatever we need to do to end this conflict and that's where the problem started because they used indiscriminate force." (Brad Adams, Asia Director, Human Rights Watch, 27/5/09)

Blindspots

Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan on what happens to people when you cage them:

"The Sri Lankan Government should surely see the precedents from all over the world, that distressed populations held for long periods in camps are breeding grounds for discontent and, ultimately, potentially violent reaction." (Sri Lanka's best hope a pact with India, The Australian, 23/5/09)

What is it about the Gaza Ghetto he still doesn't understand?

Greg (JP) Sheridan on race:

"When I say I'm an old-fashioned liberal on race, what I mean is that I want race not to count very much, if at all. If you tell me someone's race you've told me the least important thing about them. In Australia I want everyone to share an equal citizenship... I don't want race to be an important part of anyone's civic identity... The whole stress in our official culture these days is to concentrate on ethnic and cultural distinctiveness. That's OK if that's your thing, but it's such a paltry, pitifully small part of the human potential to get so fussed about... [F]rom the admittedly limited experience of my own life, I don't believe any race exhibits any particular characteristic." (We'll all win when race comes last, The Australian, 23/5/09)

What is it about Zionism he still doesn't understand?

Oh, and Greg (JP) Sheridan on those lying Palestinians:

"I do not believe a single story of Israel's war crimes or atrocities in Gaza. There is no evidence of any such story beyond Palestinian eye-witness accounts and on countless previous occasions these accounts have been fabricated..." (There may be the will but not necessarily the way, The Australian, 5/2/09)

Now what was that he was saying about racism?

Exporting Zionism

"So we can understand what Israel is doing in various remote corners of the world when we contemplate the Middle East itself and consider what Israel is doing there. Given the past and the present of Zionism in the Middle East, what else could one expect? What Israel is doing in the Third World is simply to export the Middle East experience of Zionism. This product doesn't need much adaptation to suit the export market, because the Middle East is part of the Third World, and what Israel does in such remote corners of the world as Chile and the Philippines is a direct outgrowth of what it has done at home. What Israel has been exporting to the Third World is not just a technology of domination, but a worldview that undergirds that technology. In every situation of oppression and domination, the logic of the oppressed is pitted against the logic of the oppressor. What Israel has been exporting is the logic of the oppressor, the way of seeing the world that is tied to successful domination. What is exported is not just technology, armaments, and experience, not just expertise, but a certain frame of mind, a feeling that the Third World can be controlled and dominated, that radical movements in the Third World can be stopped, that modern Crusaders still have a future." (The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms & Why, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, 1987, p 248)

"It is only a matter of time before the last redoubt of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) will fall. Armed resistance in the conventional sense of positional warfare will soon come to an end. But for all the triumphalism of the Sri Lankan army, it would be instructive to remember that since the fall of Killinochchi in October 2008, a small band of 2000+ LTTE cadres held out against 3 divisions of the Sri Lankan army for over 8 months. An army armed by China, Pakistan, helped by radars from India, manned by Indian personnel... Trained by the Indians, Pakistanis, Israelis and the Chinese... In the post-conflict situation, the Sri Lankans will keep conditions in the [Internally Displaced Persons] camps barely livable... They will... actively encourage the displaced to leave Sri Lanka for India or join the Tamil diaspora elsewhere and in a sense depopulate part of the north of that island. They will then... seek to implant Sinhalese settlers in that area... as they did successfully in the east where there is now a sizeable Sinhalese population in what was once a predominantly Tamil area... Any exodus of the Tamils from the north of Sri Lanka to India... would be inimical to the long-term interests of both the Sri Lankan Tamils as a historical community, as deeply rooted in the island nation as the Sinhalese. The Rajapakse brothers are devious but also farsighted... [They] are not merely looking at the military defeat of the Tigers; they want to write a new and final chapter of the Mahavamsa, which will conclude that the Sinhalese finally settled the 2000-year struggle with the Tamils under the Rajapakse brothers by sending the Tamils back in boats to where they originally came from." (Summer winds auger ill for the Sri Lankan Tamil, Ravi Nair, countercurrents.org, 11/5/09)

"The Sri Lankan government has learned an old lesson from, I suspect, a modern master: Israel. In order to conduct a slaughter, you ensure the pornography is unseen, illicit at best. You ban foreigners and their cameras from Tamil towns like Mulliavaikal, which was bombarded recently by the Sri Lankan army, and you lie that the 75 people killed in the hospital were blown up quite wilfully by a Tamil suicide bomber. You then give reporters a ride into the jungle, providing what in the news business is called a dateline, which suggests an eyewitness account, and you encourage the gullible to disseminate only your version and its lies. Gaza is the model. From the same masterclass you learn to manipulate the definition of terrorism as a universal menace, thus ingratiating yourself with the 'international community' (Washington) as a noble sovereign state blighted by an 'insurgency' of mindless fanaticism. The truth and lessons of the past are irrelevant. And having succeeded in persuading the United States and Britain to proscribe your insurgents as terrorists, you affirm you are on the right side of history, regardless of the fact that your government has one of the world's worst human rights records and practises terrorism by another name. Such is Sri Lanka." (Distant voices, desperate lives, John Pilger, johnpilger.com, 14/5/09)

An Armchair Joshua

"And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, even in the wilderness wherein they pursued them, and when they were all fallen by the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all Israel returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. And all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand... For Joshua drew not back his hand, wherewith he stretched out the javelin, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which He commanded Joshua... So Joshua burnt Ai, and made it a heap for ever, even a desolation..."

One of our armchair Joshuas, no doubt vexed at his tribe's less-than-successful smoting of the accursed Gazans in January, and indignant that other tribes, further afield, had misguidedly decided to send them succour (albeit to their collaborationist 'brothers' in Judea and Samaria), could do little more than rail against such foolishness: "The Gaza Hamastan now apparently has thousands of men under arms and they are in possession of weapons so sophisticated that they can reach cities as far away as Be'er Sheva, Ashkelon and Ashdod. These weapons don't come cheap. So if they can afford them, why can't they afford to feed and clothe their own people? By perpetuating the handout culure, the West - including Australia - is unwittingly prolonging the conflict. Giving the Palestinians money for nothing means that they can divert their own resources into building up their armaments factories and terrorist capabilities. It means that their young people have no need or motivation to work, leaving them free to direct their energies to violent endeavours against our brothers in Israel. As an Australian taxpayer, I am outraged that my tax dollars are indirectly going to fund the Palestinian war machine." (Letter of Arthur Hurwitz, Randwick, NSW, The Australian Jewish News, 20/2/09)

Poor Arthur. But lo, what's this? The steely glint that had disappeared from his eye following the less-than-successful smoting of the accursed Gazans in January has finally reappeared! There's a whole lot of what looks like very successful smoting going on across the waters somewhere and the Lord has commanded him to draw it to our attention:

"Sri Lanka has taught the world a lesson. With perseverance and determination and a resolve to ignore the bleeding hearts of world public opinion, Sri Lanka has shown that it is possible to defeat a terrorist army. The crushing of the Tamil Tigers, a group whose contribution to the world includes pioneering the use of the suicide bomber and the child soldier and whose cadres have killed and injured thousands of civilians over the past 25 years, is to be welcomed. It is a victory for peace and reconciliation, because a resolution of the conflict was never possible while the Tigers took it upon themselves to represent Sri Lanka's Tamils." (Letter of Arthur Hurwitz, Randwick, NSW, The Australian, 1/5/09)

Sri Israel

The struggle of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority for an independent Tamil state in northern and eastern Sri Lanka has reached a critical juncture with the Tamil Tigers and thousands of Tamil civilians besieged in a dwindling pocket on the northeastern coast of the island. What has this to do with MERC? Nothing directly, except that I've been reading US journalist William McGowan's book Only Man is Vile: The Tragedy of Sri Lanka (1992) and finding some unnerving parallels with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Some extracts:-

Who does this lot remind you of? "According to a myth cherished deeply by the Sinhalese, the dying Lord Buddha had turned to one of his minions, pointed across the waters of the Bay of Bengal, and said, 'In Lanka, O Lord of Gods, shall my religion be established and flourish'. As a result the Sinhalese believe that they are the chosen people of Buddhism, given a mission to preserve and protect the religion in its most pristine form, and that the island of Lanka is the repository of Buddha's teachings. But despite considerable government patronage and ostentatious displays of public devotion like the monumental Buddha statues scattered all over the country, Sri Lanka hardly became the island of the dharma [Buddhist teachings] celebrating the ideals of nonviolence and compassion. Instead, it had become a country of routine massacres, rampant human rights abuses, and moral obduracy where the implacable hatreds of race, class, and culture had created a nightmare world of viciousness, opportunism, and envy." (p 7)

McGowan converses with the eternal cabbie: "'You know the way the Nazis treated the Jews', he, a Sinhalese [cabbie], had told me. 'Well, that's the way we have to deal with the Tamils. They can't stay here'." (p 16)

Yes, we have settlers: "[Tamil] Tiger suspicions were also fanned by continued government attempts to pack the eastern province with Sinhalese colonists. The peace agreement had specified that Colombo would cease these West Bank-style settlement programs in areas that the Tamils claimed as their 'traditional homelands', and Tamils suspected that the Sinhalese refugees being returned were really new colonists." (p 39)

Those Zionists and Islamophobes out there, who refer sarcastically to the 'religion of peace' and hypocritically pretend that all religions bar one are somehow miraculously immune from the political fray, might like to consider these two passages: "One of the most terrifying accounts of the riots [of 1983, the point of no return for Sri Lanka's Tamils] is from the diary of a Tamil man whom Siva Naipaul quotes in a collection called Unfinished Journey. Traveling on a bus when a mob laid siege to it, the man watched as a small boy was hacked 'to limbless death'. The bus driver was ordered to give up a Tamil. He pointed out a woman who was desperately trying to erase the mark on her forehead - called a kum-kum - as the thugs bore down on her. As the witness melted into the crowd, the woman's belly was ripped open with a broken bottle and she was immolated as people clapped and danced. In another incident, two sisters, one 18, the other 11, were decapitated and raped, the latter 'until there was nothing left to violate and no volunteers could come forward', after which she was burned. While all this was going on, according to the diarist, a line of Buddhist monks appeared, arms flailing, their voices raised in a delirium of exhortation, summoning the Sinhalese to put all Tamils to death." (p 98)

"Much of the Sinhalese resistance to the peace process [ie the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord of 1987] was the product of hysteria fanned by Buddhist monks. Asserting themselves as the traditional guardians of the national flame, the monks played the role of spoiler, shooting down any proposal for concessions as soon as it was made and cheering opposition politicians who pledged to rescind any settlement as soon as they came to power. Some of the more reactionary monks even formed a secret ultranationalist cell called the Circle of Sinhalese Force, whose members greeted each other with Hitler-like salutes and spewed apocalyptic bombast from the Mahavamsa [a sort of Sinhala Old Testament] about the end of 'the land, the race and the faith', which narrowed the latitude that the government had in reaching a settlement." (p 191)

The Sinhalese even have their very own Theodor Herzl, the Buddhist monk Anagarika Dharmapala [1864-1933]: "[T]he most dangerous fallacy perpetuated by Dharmapala was the so-called Aryan origins of the Sinhalese. Dharmapala claimed that the Sinhalese originated in northern Indian Aryan stock and had retained that racial purity over the centuries, which, combined with their sacred Buddhist mandate, made them an exceptional people of great historical importance." (p 146)

The irony, the irony: "In fact, the Sinhalese were actually Tamils by blood who took on a separate contrived racial identity after getting to Lanka and embracing Buddhism." (p 174)

And where have you heard this kind of paranoia before? "'For the non-Sinhalese, even if they do not have Sri Lanka as their homeland, their races have other countries of their own', wrote the Sinhala arch-chauvinist Cyril Matthew in the forward to his Diabolical Conspiracy, a screed on university admissions*. 'Hence their races will never get annihilated. But the Sinhalese have one and only one country in which Sinhalese live. If the Sinhalese get annihilated in Sri Lanka as a race, they are lost forever'." (p 169)

[*Refers to the introduction in the 70s of a quota system for university entry based on the ethnic composition of the country - with 72% of places held for Sinhalese.]

But do our friends on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean have any actual involvement in the Sri Lankan government's war against Tamil separatism? You bet: "The increasing support for a military solution [against the Tamil Tigers] was a reflection of the improving field performance of the Sri Lankan military, a function of the training, materiel, and money it was receiving from foreign allies... What help the United States rendered is unknown, but it was widely suspected that the Israelis gave assistance, as American proxies, supplying experts in counter-insurgency." (p 192) Never miss an opportunity.

Then or now: as I write, Israeli-made Kfir jets of the Sri Lankan airforce are pounding the Tigers in the last strip of land still held by them, and one senses a very Israeli inspiration for the kind of Gaza-style blitzkrieg currently being undertaken by the Sri Lankan armed forces.