SRI LANKAN SUFFERING CYNICALLY USED FOR PROPAGANDA BY ZIONISTS
One of the most tedious aspects of the blogger circus is the “whataboutery” accusation. Where anyone who takes a view on Topic A, is promptly denounced by someone with an opposing view about Topic A, for having an entirely unrelated opinion about Topic B, or even for not having an opinion about topic B.
Sunder Katwala recently wrote about this at Liberal conspiracy.
This can be one route into what Sunny Hundal and others call the ‘condemnathon’, a closely related phenomenon to ‘whataboutery’ on contested issues.
Oh, I see you have blogged about X but you chose not to blog about Y.
Ah-ha! Now we see your hidden agenda.
This is the way that pro-Israeli bloggers have seen the terrible human suffering in Sri Lanka, not as a topic for humane consideration in its own right, but rather as a useful stick to attack supporters of the Palestinians. This is clear to see from Harry’s Place
Or to take a less obvious example, slow-burn Zionist, Bob from Brockley, condemned us at Socialist Unity blog for only posting two articles so far in 2009 about Sri lanka. This is by the way two more than Bob has posted.
Now on the substantive issues of Sri Lanka, I don’t have much to add to what I wrote back in February.
On the government side there has been a wave of chauvinist and racist propaganda. Much of this goes unchallenged by the press, and to make sure of this there has been government terror, including the brutal murder of Lasantha Wickmeratunge, one of the country’s most respected journalists. The Socialist party website reports that even the German ambassador to Sri Lanka was called before the government and criticised after speaking out against media suppression at Lasantha’s funeral. Since Lasantha’s death another editor has been stabbed and numerous other attacks on journalists have taken place.
But the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), have also played their part in creating the current crisis. There are some 400000 civilians trapped in one small area of Mullaithivu district, without food or supplies, with no contact from relief agencies.
The “Tigers” forcibly moved the Tamil population out of Kilinochchi as government forces advanced, and refused to allow civilians to leave when the government offered them safe conduct on 31st January. Even though there may be reasonable grounds from some scepticism about this offer of “safety”, evacuation must be a better option for the helpless civilians. The LTTE has seemingly not made any attempt to create a safety zone in the area they control. Instead they are moving people further back into areas where there are no facilities - water, food, medicine or shelter.
Incidentally, I concluded that article six week ago with the following point
“What is most remarkable is that the world is almost completely silent. Sri Lanka is not an inaccessible country - there are direct flights there from London, but politicians and journalists in the west seem to take no interest in a humanitarian disaster that has been described by some as a “silent Tsunami”.”
But when Terry Gavlin makes the same point as I did, only several weeks later, Bob from Brockley praises him to the skies!!!
The disingenuous coat-trailing question being asked by the Zionists, is “why is there so much interest in the Palestinians, but not the Tamils, nudge, nudge, wink, we know the real reason, don’t we?”
It is a big mistake to think that either that the weight of a political issue is directly a product of amount of human suffering, or that the left are influential in setting the mainstream political agenda: mostly we can only respond to political priorities beyond our making.
The current escalation of the war in Sri Lanka and big death toll is due to a dramatic change in the military/political situation since the New Year, where a long running war of attrition around the Tamil held area has rapidly changed into a war of manoeuvre as the government seeks to overrun and eradicate the insurgency. This has seen a relatively sudden escalation in the killing. Incidentally, the calamitous reverse in the Tigers military fortunes have also destroyed their access to communications infrastructure, so the news from the war is almost all coming from the government side, who are minimising the reporting of the atrocities.
We need to contrast this with the situation in Palestine where land overrun by the Israelis in a war of conquest in 1967 are still under military occupation, and the oppression of the civilian population has become a daily grind. The Palestinians have made great efforts, and overcome crushing obstacles, to get their voice heard, as a way of breaking the siege.
So why is this different?
Well most obviously because the Tamils have been reliant upon a primarily military strategy to maintain the autonomy of the rebel held enclave, and press for regional powers like India to pressurise Sri Lanka to accept the situation. As such the Tamils have put very limited emphasis on building political solidarity connections in the West.
The long term, low intensity warfare in Sri-Lanka has become part of the background noise of politics in the South Asia region, with very little political resonance in the West. In contrast, Palestine, and the related wars in Lebanon, have punctured into Western political consciousness due to the frequent spikes of violence.
Another obvious difference is that the Sri Lanka situation grew out of typical post-colonial nation building between peoples who had all previously been subjects of the British Empire, so this did not cross any ideological fault lines in the West. As there were no obvious strategic interests for the Western governments, there has been very little mainstream media reporting of the war, and therefore very low public awareness of it.
Palestine is completely different. The extension of Israel into the occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza strip and Golan Heights were the result of wars of conquest, and the building of settlements in the West Bank, and the permanent annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem are manifestly illegal under international law. As such Israel does cross a major ideological fault line, because Western governments supporting Israel are backing an explicitly expansionist, colonialist project, contrary to the professed renunciations of Colonialism by these former Imperial powers.
What is more, the ideological assumption behind Western liberalism is equality before the law, which is contradicted by the systematic discrimination and second class citizenship of Israeli Arabs and Bedouin within the pre-1967 borders – so this also crosses an ideological fault line in the West.
The internationalisation of the conflict has also been encouraged by the West - because Israel sits close to the vital oil interests. Not only has Israel projected itself as an extension of Western imperial power, for example the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactors, or the invasion of Egypt in 1956; but America deliberately encouraged Palestine becoming a pan-Islamic issue during the 1960s in order to undermine the moral authority of the pan-Arabist Nasserites who were seen as threatening US oil interests.
The result has been that every aggression by Israel has not only seen terrible human suffering, like we see today in Sri Lanka; but it has also seen sickening hypocrisy from Western governments, and that has itself made the issue a politically charged one in the West.
The situation in Sri Lanka is appalling, and the military defeat of the Tamils will not resolve the problems, but merely open a new chapter. But I am disgusted by the callous crocodile tears of Zionists in the West who only see this human suffering as an opportunity to criticise supporters of the Palestinians.
“What is most remarkable is that the world is almost completely silent.”
You notice this Andy but stay pretty much silent yourself. Bob from B is right that the impending humanitarian disaster in Sri Lanka is every bit as large as that in Gaza, but only Gaza seems really to have got your attention. It may just be an availability bias, but surely it is time to correct that?
Comment by John Meredith — 27 April, 2009 @ 2:04 pm
Thanks for clearing this all up.
I’d assumed that the following factors might have been relevant to the relevant prominence of the Israel-Palestine conflict:
1. After initially supporting Israel militarily, Communist states then switched their support. Thereafter, “anti-Zionist” propaganda - which closely thematically mirrored antisemitic propaganda - was pumped out by USSR vassal states. NB, in particular, the purging of Polish Jews from academia, on the grounds that they were “Zionists”.
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/887104.html
2. Much of the running in this debate has been made by Jews involved in Stalinist or Trotskyite politics. Stalinists obviously repeated the USSR’s line on Israel. Trotskyites also reproduced the pretty much identical arguments as those pushed by Stalinists on this subject.
I should add that the running here has been made mostly by Communists of Jewish origin, for whom the Communist anti-Zionist analysis has become an important component of their cultural identity.
3. In recent years, as we have all seen, Trotskyite and Stalinist groups have devoted considerable efforts to partnering, and promoting, Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood. It is they who have done the most work in providing alibis for the extreme racist and openly genocidal statements of these groups.
4. Buddhists killing Hindus has very little resonance in our culture. However, the same cannot be said for killing done by Jews. That is why newspapers routinely use biblical terms - such as “Massacre of the Innocents” - in relation to the I-P conflict.
That is also why the notion of the Jews as the “persecuted who became persecutors” plays so strongly as a theme.
Comment by David T — 27 April, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
If David T isn’t enough, you can read another loon on the same subject here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/apr/27/sri-lanka-war-silence
Comment by Rory — 27 April, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
Well, he asks a very good question:
“Yes, I know there have been some violent scenes in Parliament Square, which is even now occupied by Tamil protesters. But that’s the point. The protesters and the hunger strikers are all Tamils. Where are the homegrown cheerleaders that spearheaded protests in London during the recent military action by Israel in Gaza? Tony Benn, for example? George Galloway? Jenny Tonge? Come to that, where is the saturation media coverage of the Sri Lankan assault on the remaining Tamil strongholds?”
Where is Eno?
Lennox?
Galloway?
There are one or two MPs who do turn up at pro-LTTE events. They’re the ones with large Tamil populations in their constituencies.
Look, I’m not saying that you can’t comment on Gaza if you don’t also comment on Darfur or Sri Lanka at equal length. For a start, it is often very difficult to get information out of the places where the grimmest massacres or human rights abuses are taking place. Congo, anybody?
However, there are very clear reasons that I-P has the prominence it does for you. Directly or indirectly, a good number of them have to do with Jews. The rest are to do with the legacy of the USSR in directing the Western Left’s struggle against “Imperialism” (i.e. when practiced by the US, not the USSR)
Comment by David T — 27 April, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
But David
Your blog is more obsessed with the Israel/Palestine conflict than anywhere, why don’t YOU write about Sri Lanka?
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 April, 2009 @ 2:43 pm
I think your assessment is pretty comprehensive, Andy, but I think that David T also has a point. Anti-semitism does play a role in the interest in Israel-Palestine - which is why people like David Duke suddenly turn out to be anti-Zionists and passionate supporters of the rights of colonised brown people. Just as long as they don’t live in America. That doesn’t make anti-Zionists anti-semites, but it does mean that there is an attraction for real anti-semites in the issue.
Comment by logan — 27 April, 2009 @ 2:57 pm
… none of which means that you shouldn’t be concerned about peace for I-P. And I know that you’re very careful, Andy, about the way that the I-P conflict plays into pretty deeply ingrained cultural racism directed at Jews.
The problem here, however, is that your section of the Left can hear Hamas leaders threaten to kill Jewish children all over the world, can read their publications including the Covenant, and it just isn’t an issue.
Galloway can hand over cash to Hamas, knowing what sort of organisation they are - he doesn’t even support them himself! - and it is entirely unproblematic.
Comment by David T — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
Andy - in answer to your other question, excuse me for cut and pasting from something I said to Sunny.
There is little we can say other than (a) Tamils have a right to self government (b) the LTTE are murderous bastards (c) the Sri Lankan government appears to have little regard for civilian life in their battle against them.
That’s pretty much what the news reports say as well. There’s nothing novel we can say, beyond that.
That’s because
- prominent authors and national newspapers aren’t putting on plays entitled Seven Buddhist Children in which Buddhists are depicted telling their children that they will ‘attain Nirvana if they kill a Hindu child’.
- no national politician nor celebrity is involved in advocacy over this war at all
- only Tamils turn up on the pro LTTE demos
- supposedly Buddhist owned shops and temples aren’t being attacked
- the LTTE is fighting for regional autonomy, not for the creation of a Hindu state in which Buddhists will be expelled.
- the LTTE doesn’t have a foundational charter which claims that Buddhists are responsible for all the ills of the world, including Communism and Capitalism, and will all be killed by Hindus when the time of reckoning comes, and nobody is claiming that these words oughtn’t to be taken at face value, or are unproblematic
etc.
Comment by David T — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:04 pm
” Much of the running in this debate has been made by Jews involved in Stalinist or Trotskyite politics.”
” there are very clear reasons that I-P has the prominence it does for you. Directly or indirectly, a good number of them have to do with Jews.”
Hmmm.
Perhaps the main reason that Gaza attracts more attention than Sri Lanka or Congo is that the issues are more clear cut, the nation-stealing that much more grotesque. It is an astonishing piece of “reasoning” to claim that the Sovie Union is responsible for Trotkyist opposition to the zionist entity.
Though I’m not sure why I’m defending Andy Newman when he chooses to drag my family into what are supposed to be political arguments.
Comment by skidmarx — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:07 pm
“Perhaps the main reason that Gaza attracts more attention than Sri Lanka or Congo is that the issues are more clear cut,”
The fact that anyone can imagine that the issues in the I-P dispute are in any way ‘clear cut’ is astonishing. Almost frightening, actually. What could be more complex?
Comment by John Meredith — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:10 pm
“It is an astonishing piece of “reasoning” to claim that the Sovie Union is responsible for Trotkyist opposition to the zionist entity.”
It is remarkable isn’t it.
It is pretty much the only issue on which Trotskyites and Stalinists were prepared to work together, in coalition.
Comment by David T — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:18 pm
As for using human suffering as an opportunity to criticise one’s opponents, I posted about that recently at Harry’s Place.
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/04/24/a-hint-of-truth/
I think it’s something we’ve all done to one extent or another, as I hope you’ll acknowledge.
But what really struck me about this post is your willingness to find some complexity, to understand the responsibility on both sides, in Sri Lanka– in contrast to your simplistic tendency to blame Israel first, last, exclusively and always for the I/P conflict. In fact I can’t remember ever reading a critical word here about Hamas.
Comment by Gene — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:22 pm
“What could be more complex?”
A lot of things. Where do you want to start? Israel is a colonial-settler state based on the dispossesion and expulsion of a million Palestinians. Admittedly the situation is not quite as grotesque as when 7,500 Israelis occupied a third of the land in Gaza but the basic facts remain.
Off-topic, I was just looking at the Respect(minority) website and can’t resist commenting on a couple of pieces of nonsense therein:
http://www.therespectparty.net/paperarticle.php?id=536&origin=&maintitle=March%20issue%20of%20the%20Respect%20Paper
“Following a hard fought local election campaign, Redbridge now has a new branch.”
By hard fought I presume is meant “getting stuffed out of sight”.
“It is important to note that we now have sole ownership of the Respect database and it has over 10,000 names on it…We have a big group willing to come and help you set up a branch and we have a new website and over 10,000 local campaigners to contact.”
Come back John Rees, all is forgiven!
Comment by skidmarx — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:27 pm
“A lot of things. Where do you want to start? Israel is a colonial-settler state based on the dispossesion and expulsion of a million Palestinians. ”
Of course it is possible to PRETEND that the I-P conflict is morally and politically simple, but you will only come across as simple minded if you do.
Comment by John Meredith — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
#12 That’s a more reasnable statement. One opposing position is that Israel is first,last exclusively responsible whereas there is no national oppression in Sri Lanka in the same way, and both sides have rejected egalitarian solutions to the conflict.There’s a lot I wouldn’t agree with Hamas about, but Israeli oppression is always a more pressing issue.
Comment by skidmarx — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
But John the Palestinian struggle for human rights IS a very clear-cut issue.
Here we have a people who are treated as less than human by the Israeli government and military, in a manner reminiscent of apartheid South Africa.
It is quite clear that anyone with an ounce of humanity should support the Palestinians’ struggle to be treated as equal human beings and should oppose the Israeli military and government’s treatment of them.
A secular, democratic state in which all are treated equally is surely something to which we can all give our support - isn’t it?
However, although I disagree with much of what David and Logan have said, they are right to point to the existence of anti-semitism and we must be vigilant against any attempt to use the oppression of the Palestinians to advance an anti-semitic agenda.
Anti-semitism does exist. We should not try to deny it or ignore it, but actively oppose it.
However, this should not prevent us from opposing the racist and neo-apartheid nature of the Israeli government’s policies and the Israeli military’s actions.
Comment by Karl Stewart — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
#14 Well you can pretend that there’s a complexity where none exists, but you will come across as a simple minded and blind to the oppression of the Palestinians.
Comment by skidmarx — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
“One opposing position is that Israel is first,last exclusively responsible ”
See what I mean?
Comment by John Meredith — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
“It is quite clear that anyone with an ounce of humanity should support the Palestinians’ struggle to be treated as equal human beings and should oppose the Israeli military and government’s treatment of them.”
Karl, this is reframing the issue as a ‘motherhood and apple pie one’ but that sort of pseudo-simplicity can only be achieved by ignoring the facts and so it gets us precisely nowhere. Everyone from Naomi Klein to Benjamin Netanyahu would agree with the first part of your sentence, but that does not mean that there would be consensus on the second part. That’s because it is a complex siuation with two armed parties engaged in a struggle. A bit like Sri Lanka in that regard (although, like Sri Lanka, most of the military capability belongs to one side).
Comment by John Meredith — 27 April, 2009 @ 3:42 pm
While not agreeing at all that Pastinian oppression gets more attention because the left is anti-semitic - I do agree that we should be doing a lot more over Sri Lanka. I felt sad when I saw the absence of white faces at the recent demos.
Comment by Joseph Kisolo — 27 April, 2009 @ 4:31 pm
Dave T. “However, there are very clear reasons that I-P has the prominence it does for you. Directly or indirectly, a good number of them have to do with Jews. The rest are to do with the legacy of the USSR in directing the Western Left’s struggle against “Imperialism” (i.e. when practiced by the US, not the USSR)”
More likely that Andy and Respect are taking their orders from for MAB and right wing Islamists (useful idiots that they are).
Comment by bennett — 27 April, 2009 @ 4:51 pm
Turkish Kurds tended in the 1990s to notice that Saddam Hussein’s treatment of Iraqi Kurds got attention big time from “Western” powers and media, whereas the oppression of Kurds at the hands of the Ankara régime did not. They referred to this as the “Good Kurd, bad Kurd” syndrome. Turkey has been a member of NATO since the 1950s and usually plays ball with Western interests, whereas Saddam ceased being popular with the West in 1990, for some reason.
A Kurdish guerrilla in Iraq was a freedom fighter, while one in Turkey was (and is) a “terrorist”. Geopolitics, not morality, was the determining factor.
Comment by Faust — 27 April, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
Genuine question, what on earth is a ’slow-burn Zionist’?
Comment by Duncan — 27 April, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
Conversly, Faust, when David Irving spouts Holocaust denial, he’s a neo-Nazi and anti-semite. When Ahjmadinijad holds a Holocaust denial conference and invites David Duke, he’s a brave anti-Zionist daring to speak truth to power,
Comment by logan — 27 April, 2009 @ 5:06 pm
” because the left is anti-semitic ”
I don’t think that ‘the Left is antisemtitic’. There are certainly some antisemites on the Left.
There are also a lot of people who basically have decided that Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood is the great force that will overthrow capitalism and imperialism, and therefore must be defended from anybody who points out that they are an openly genocidal antisemitic movement. They’re not antisemites. They’re just supportive of antisemites.
Then there are those who come from a Left tradition in which believed that Zionists were plotting against socialism. Read the stuff that the USSR aligned groups, or the WRP - who were funded by antisemites - produced. Were they antisemites? Some certainly were. But most were just following the party line.
Then there is a more general structural or cultural millieu in which what Jews do or don’t do is of huge significant, and in which Jews are there either to be saved or damned. Is that antisemitism? It kind of is, but the people involved in this sort of debate most certainly don’t regard themselves as racist at all.
It isn’t an original point, but one of the comparisons that is sometimes made about the present politics, is how it mirrors the thinking about the Inquisition about Jews. The Inquisition didn’t hate Jews at all. It wanted to save them. Very much indeed. God didn’t hate Jews. He just had a problem with Jews who stubbornly refused to accept His truth. Not all Jews were like that. Indeed, some became priests and were themselves active in attempts to save the souls of other Jews. It was these converted Jews who were about to the ‘the truth’ about what Jews really believed, and what they got up to in secret - cursing Jesus, desecrating the Host, blaspheming, using the blood of children for ritual purposes, and so on.
I can tell you all this, and some of you will think “oh what an interesting point”, but the sad fact is, it won’t make the slightest bit of difference, because we’ve been here before, very many times, and it always ends up the same way.
Comment by David T — 27 April, 2009 @ 5:11 pm
“Slow-burn Zionist”: that’s a phrase to reckon with Andy! Even if not exactly accurate.
OK, you posted more about Sri Lanka than I did, just as you posted (a lot) more about Gaza than I did. But your blog is one with many people posting, with lots of guest posts, and which large sections of the left (including me) check into regularly to be part of the main debates going on on the left. My blog is a personal blog, reflecting the private obsessions of one person, who knows only a little about only a few issues. I know a little, for example, about Israel/Palestine, but much less about Sri Lanka, something of which I am not proud. If you read my post, though, you will note that I indict myself as much as I indict anyone else.
I broadly agree, incidentally, with what you wrote in February about the situation there.
Comment by Bob — 27 April, 2009 @ 5:12 pm
“A Kurdish guerrilla in Iraq was a freedom fighter, while one in Turkey was (and is) a “terrorist”. Geopolitics, not morality, was the determining factor.”
There is a bit of a difference, however, between
(a) the PKK and
(b) the KDP
Comment by David T — 27 April, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
Andy, I took your criticism in a comradely spirit, but then I noticed what I had originally missed, the title of your post: “SRI LANKAN SUFFERING CYNICALLY USED FOR PROPAGANDA BY ZIONISTS”. How crass is that? “Zionists”. Who are these “Zionists”? Actually, your three examples are anti-nationalist socialists. Sloppy use of the word “Zionists” as some catch-all swearword plays into very ugly forms of conspiracy theory; it is a substitute for real analysis.
On your post, I think you are half-wrong about this:
“the ideological assumption behind Western liberalism is equality before the law, which is contradicted by the systematic discrimination and second class citizenship of Israeli Arabs* and Bedouin within the pre-1967 borders – so this also crosses an ideological fault line in the West”
Surely, equality before the law is also woefully lacking in Sri Lanka, where the “standardisation” laws systematically discriminated in favour of Sinhalese speakers.
Second, I think you are half-wrong about this:
“the Tamils have been reliant upon a primarily military strategy to maintain the autonomy of the rebel held enclave”
How much did “the Tamils” pursue a military strategy? Rather, a middle class nationalist elite pursued a military strategy on behalf of the Tamil masses, who suffered for this.
Otherwise, I think you are mostly right about the reasons for the contrast.
*By the way, I got rightly told off for using the phrase “Israeli Arabs” at my blog. They prefer to be called “Palestinians with Israeli citizenship”.
Comment by Bob — 27 April, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
Ahem, back to the war in Sri Lanka?
I think both sides in this debate are labouring under some serious misapprehensions about the conflict in Sri Lanka.
Firstly the HP types apart from making some wholly inacurate comparisons between Sri Lanka and Israel are also making their usual mistake of equating the SWP and elements of Stop the War with the whole of the Left.
The Committee for a Workers International has campaigned for decades on this issue in solidarity with our comrades the United Socialist Party of Sri Lanka. Under the most difficult conditions they have stood squarely for the right of sel-determination of the Tamil and Muslim minorities, opposed Singhala chauvinism in the name of workers unity and was in a minority of one in initially opposing the Indian Army occupation of the North of the island in the ’80’s. The USP has been, to all intents and purposes, driven underground for it’s opposition to the murderous Rajapakse government.
The CWI have launched an international solidarity campaign called Stop the Slaughter of Tamils. It has launched protests in India (particularly Tamil Nadu), Australia, Ireland, Germany, Sweeden, Israel and of course Britain in the past few weeks agains the atrocities taking place in northern Sri Lanka. See our website for more info: http://www.stoptheslaughteroftamils.org/
It would be a mistake to say that the conflict in Sri Lanka is more or less ‘clear-cut’ than Israel/Palestine. It would be more the case that Sri Lanka has been less in the headlines in recent years than Israel/Palestine.
As well as this I believe a key factor in the shamefull media silence here in the West (which the left no control over, what an odd notion!) has been the fact that the Rajapakse government has sold this blood letting as similar to the US/UK fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This has also kept Sri Lanka firmly off the agenda at the UN as well.
Comment by Neil — 27 April, 2009 @ 6:08 pm
It might help if Israel stopped selling weapons and sending advisers to the Sri Lankan government. That might reduce the genocide of Tamils. Maybe DavidT’s crocodile tears might amount to something then.
I doubt it though because Israel didn’t stop selling weapons and sending advisers to apartheid South Africa. Where ever in the world there is genocide and brutal repression by racists there will be Israeli and US weapons and advisers backing them up.
Comment by Ray — 27 April, 2009 @ 6:19 pm
Israel is one of the key arms suppliers to the Sri Lankan government. This was pointed out in the protests outside the Sri Lankan embassy in Tel Aviv by SST. One of the embassy officials came out to speak to the protestors and pointed out that what the Sri Lankan government was doing was no different from what Israel was doing in Palestine. He clearly thought this would be a clinching argument with a group made up primarily of Israeli Jews. Apparently he was quite shocked when the comrades pointed out they did not support what the Israeli government was doing in Palestine either!
That said there is a whole nexus of countries who have blood on their hands in this conflict. China supplies masses of ams in return for the use of Sri Lankan ports. The US, Britain and France all supply weapons in the hope the conflict can be ended and Sri Lanka opened up to investment and the Indian government in supplying money and arms to Rajapakse because they have extensive interests in Sri Lankan natural resources.
A key issue now is the $25 billion dollar loan that Sri Lanka is applying to the IMF for. Sri Lanka is the 5th highest per capita millitary spender on the planet and it is doubtful they will be able to contnue prosecuting this war without this aid package. Mervyn King sits on the board of directors overseeing this loan application. We must demand not a penny for the Rajapakse government!
Comment by Neil — 27 April, 2009 @ 6:31 pm
Neil:
I’ve twice been triumphantly asked by pro-Israel activists, in a vaguely triumphalist tone how come we are doing as much about Sri Lanka as we do to raise the issue of Palestine. To which the only response is… erm, actually we do. Unlike any organisations which sympathise heavily with the policies of the Israeli state, the Socialist Party has actually put a great deal of effort into campaigning against the Sri Lankan government.
Comment by Irish Mark P — 27 April, 2009 @ 7:02 pm
Hmmmm… two triumphantly’s in one sentence…
Comment by Irish Mark P — 27 April, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
I do get a bit fed up about the “whataboutery”, though I have a slightly different take on it. Sometimes certain solidarity/campaign issues happen and their prominence, in the scale of what is happening in the world becomes more important than others (even if on the scale of nasty things being done by nasty governments they might not be as bad). For example, in the past, Chile solidarity attracted enormous attention and support - rightly - whereas Salazar’s 42 year fascist dictatorship did not attract so much attention and opposition. On a scale of who murdered how many, Pinochet was a little pisher compared to what Salazar did in Portugal and in Portugal’s African colonies.
I know that some people did try hard - mostly anti-colonial groups, and some left groups that had co-thinkers in Portugal. But overall, more people were aware of what was going on in Chile - a far away country - than Portugal, just round the corner.
I cannot remember anyone ever accusing anti-Pinochet activists of being inately anti-Latin American because they did not spend twice as much energy opposting Salazar, or major articles in the press (blogs had not been invented then) asking why pick on poor little Chile when there were some real mass murdering countries around like Portugal.
And while the US had a hand in both countries, European countries (and Israel by the way) busily armed Salazar so in many ways - not least in the length of time he was in power, there should, on the “whataboutery” scale have been much more opposition.
Comment by ross bradshaw — 27 April, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
#28
Bob - the Israeli leftist magazine Challenge, uses the term Israeli Arabs, and it is in common use among Israeli Arabs themselves.
By “slow burn Zionist” I simply mean a low intensity supporter of Israel, which a cursory examination of your blog shows.
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 April, 2009 @ 10:15 pm
What I find intensely distressing about the situation in Sri Lanka is that Tamil civilians are being forced into prison camps, which I worry could become permanent. This conflict has not been as widely reported in state or corporate media, perhaps because it doesn’t fit into war on terror narratives, though obviously the LTTE are classed as a terrorist group. However, Sri Lanka, like Israel-Palestine, is a former British colony and there has to be some attention to the role of the UK govt here in comparison with other former colonies.
Comment by Charlie Marks — 28 April, 2009 @ 12:44 am
David T: so you support the Tamil Tigers? If not, why not?
Skidmarx: was George Galloway your daddy - you need to get over daddy.
Comment by Ferrier — 28 April, 2009 @ 1:03 am
Neil #29,
I can’t speak for the CWI actions in other parts of the world (and good on you for doing what you can and where), but I think it’s a gross exaggeration to say that you have launched protests in Australia. These - and there have been quite a lot - have been almost exclusively initiated by the Tamil community.
I’m based in Sydney, where the CWI would have - if you’re very very lucky - half a dozen people (I suspect closer to, ahem, one), and you haven’t been seen at the rallies (can’t speak for Melbourne, where there have also been some large protests). This isn’t meant to be an attack, merely a warning about phrases like “initiated protests in .. Australia”, when your membership here is limited largely to one suburb of one city. But, like I said, keep up the good work.
Back to the much more important matter of the Tamils. What *IS* unfortunate, is that most of the organised left, and particularly importantly, the unions, have largely stayed away. This is despite protests taking place - in large numbers, often well over a thousand - on an almost daily basis in Sydney, as well as elsewhere (especially Melbourne).
Well, while *most* of the left has ignored it (occasionally some groups have turned up at rallies in their ones or twos, looked awkward for a while, tried to sell a paper or magazine, and then left), Socialist Alliance, Resistance, the DSP and Green Left Weekly certainly haven’t - we’ve been carrying on about this for some time.
The challenge is (always) getting broader support, but then, during the assault on Gaza, the protests were overwhelmingly Palestinian and Lebanese in make-up, with the usual myriad of left groups. That socialist multicolour is distinctly missing from the Tamil protests, and that is a problem.
So, a few useful links:
Internationally well known tamil-rights activist Brian Senewiratne - a Socialist Alliance member in Brisbane - was recently kicked out of Malaysia over the issue: http://socialistalliance-brisbane.blogspot.com/2009/03/sa-member-dr-brian-senewiratne-deported.html
Socialist Alliance resource blog dedicated to the Tamil issue: http://tamilsol.blogspot.com/
Latest Socialist Alliance statement/ leaflet: http://www.socialist-alliance.org/page.php?page=835
The website of the Tamil hunger strikers in Sydney, with a lot of good coverage not only of the war, but also of the protests: http://fastuntoaction.wordpress.com/
You can also read Green Left Weekly coverage of the strife here:
http://www.google.com/search?oe=utf8&ie=utf8&source=uds&start=0&hl=en&q=tamil+site%3Agreenleft.org.au
Comment by Red Wombat — 28 April, 2009 @ 3:01 am
I agree with the direction of your post. It was even handed and showed the complexity of the situation.
Why doesn’t more of the left, take up the Tamil cause? We can’t do everything. The left is spread thin.
Comment by Renegade Eye — 28 April, 2009 @ 8:11 am
David T at #27 points out that there are differences between the two Kurdish parties, the KDP (in Iraq) and the PKK (in Turkey). There are indeed. One is that the PKK never entered into an alliance with Saddam Hussain to wage war on their local allies, unlike the KDP in 1996. The idea that the KDP are ‘pure’ freedom-fighters while the PKK are ‘evil’ terrorists is a pro-Western ideological construction which ignores the actual history.
Comment by chjh — 28 April, 2009 @ 8:20 am
The most laughable thing about those who make the utterly ridiculous assertion that the motivations for solidarity with Palestinians are anti-semitic is their claim to represent moral complexity. For them the world is entirely manchian, a good liberal west threatened by fundementalism (the new Hitler!) and undermined from within by cultural relativists who do not understand the importance of running websites making slanderous allegations of anti-semitism about playwrights with comments chock-a-block with unpleasent racists who endlessly go on about why Islam is a uniquely evil religion. Moral complexity? Give me a break.
Comment by johng — 28 April, 2009 @ 10:44 am
#37 “Skidmarx: was George Galloway your daddy - you need to get over daddy.”
Very strange thing to say. I’m surprised that Andy Newman hasn’t objected to your use of a one-off pseudonym to make a baseless personal attack - oh I forgot, he only does that with opponents of the respect(minority).For the record, I am not related to Mr.Galloway as far as I am aware, though of course it’s a wise man who knows his father.
Comment by skidmarx — 28 April, 2009 @ 10:57 am
40. The PKK was declared “terrorist” because Turkey’s government has a largely “pro-Western” orientation and lobbied long and hard for the PKK’s proscription. There is no such pressure when it comes to other armed Kurdish groups, in Iraq, and it is quite plausible that armed Kurdish groups in Iran might even come in handy for the US, the Israelis etc., if they are not already. So they are unlikely to have the label “terrorist” applied to them.
Despite recent hiccups in the relationship, Israel and Turkey’s government and armed forces have generally got on well - I understand that Israeli warplane pilots have trained in Turkish airspace, and there is other cooperation, though this is increasingly controversial in Turkey. There is believed to have been a Mossad role in the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in 1999. Geopolitics often determine why one lot of armed people are “terrorists” and another lot are not.
Comment by Faust — 28 April, 2009 @ 12:03 pm
“For them the world is entirely manchian, a good liberal west threatened by fundementalism (the new Hitler!) and undermined from within by cultural relativists who do not understand the importance of running websites making slanderous allegations of anti-semitism about playwrights”
That’s right Johng, everyone thinks the West is perfection and Islamists are entirely evil and behorned. And of course Caryl ‘tell her we are the chosen poeople … tell her we are better haters’ Churchill’s play is not antisemitic. The very thought!
Comment by John Meredith — 28 April, 2009 @ 12:12 pm
@ 40 & 43: PJAK, the Iranian-Kurdistan offshot of the PKK was declared a terrorist organization by the US Treasury on 03/02/2009, see http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN04297671
Comment by Entdinglichung — 28 April, 2009 @ 12:19 pm
A cursory examination of my blog shows I am a low-intensity supporter of Israel? I’m not sure what a low intensity supporter of Israel is, exactly. A cursory examination of my blog would show that you have to go about 14 posts down before you reach any links to any vaguely pro-Israel material, and to get there you have to go past the post linking to the music of the First Intifada and the post highlighting the struggles for civil rights of Arab workers in Israel. And a cursory glance at the post that this post links to would show that it is not a piece of whataboutery and that it indicts me as much as it indicts the rest of the left. A slightly less cursory glance would show that before you linked to it, I had amended it to suggest that the Socialist Party might be an honorable exception.
(If you are interested, which you probably aren’t, I am not a slow burn Zionist, but a supporter of a one-state solution, as the next best thing to a no-state solution.)
Of course the left can’t do everything. And of course there are lots of reasons aside from antisemitism why Sri Lanka would be sidelined. But the fact is, the left - with some exceptions - has not had a great record on Sri Lanka, and it’s time we did better. That’s all.
Comment by Bob — 28 April, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
45. You perhaps assume there are no other armed Iranian Kurds out there, besides PJAK. Anyway, labelling a group “terrorist” on the one hand and trying to use it on the other, perhaps in an under-the-counter way, is the sort of gyration the CIA, among others, are known for. But most probably the Americans didn’t get anywhere with PJAK, hence its appearance on a “terrorist” list.
Comment by Faust — 28 April, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
Actually the very thought that Churchill’s play is anti-semitic is indeed absurd. Its a play about how parents who dearly love their children deal with the fact that the society they live in is twisted. It also demonstrates that this universal tragedy of parenthood in the modern world is heightened by the special tragedy of Jewish history in the 20th century. The mothers endless dilemma’s of what to say to the child speak not to any simplistic tale of Zionist brainwashing but to her very human reaction to her dilemma. The various arguments (endlessly recycled on blogs like HP and Engage) which she trots out are always conflicted and fractured (tell her, no don’t tell her THAT etc), and also allude constantly to real divisions in the attitudes of Israelis (don’t tell her that her cousin refuses to serve etc). It is simply obscene to describe this as in any sense an anti-semitic play, and the attempt to describe it as such is part of the hysterically manchian vision I alluded to, which this play at least, allows us to see in a somewhat human light. One suspects that the real objection is to the fact that rather then being ineffectual agitprop, it rather effectively explores the dilemic nature of being a decent person and a supporter of Israel. And pointing this out is intolerable. Tough.
Comment by johng — 28 April, 2009 @ 6:58 pm
Neil: Firstly the HP types apart from making some wholly inacurate comparisons between Sri Lanka and Israel are also making their usual mistake of equating the SWP and elements of Stop the War with the whole of the Left.
Here’s Neil again, in his usual sectarian mode. HP’s claims are no more accurate applied to the SWP and IS than to the SP and CWI. But if it comes to SWP-bashing, Neil will happily make common cause with HP and friends.
Comment by christian h. — 28 April, 2009 @ 7:46 pm
No he won’t make common cause with them.
When you look at the SWP and the amount of attention it gives to Palestine and Sri Lanka it’s clear that it puts much more emphasis on the former and relatively little on the latter. So the initial factual claim made by the HP types is actually true - it’s their explanation for it that is poisonous and untrue.
When you look at some other sections of the left, in particular the other major far left group, the Socialist Party, the initial factual claim is also untrue.
Comment by Irish Mark P — 28 April, 2009 @ 8:29 pm
” Much of the running in this debate has been made by Jews involved in Stalinist or Trotskyite politics.”
I’m surprised to see the old ‘Jewish Bolshevik conspiracy’ theory making its appearance on the SU blog of all places. But not surprised to see it given an outing by the professional McCarthyite witch hunter-general David T.
Bolshevik Jews have been blamed for many things, but to claim that they are the ones behind the growing movement of solidarity with the Palestinians is a real collectors item.
In fact the only person I can recall saying anything remotely similar is - surprise surprise - David T’s old drinking pal Gilad Atzmon who, alongside all his many other dottinesses, has gone on record as saying that the trouble with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is that it has fallen under the infuence of the Joos.
Only Atzmon thinks that is why it hasn’t been more successful. Perhaps the next time DavidT sinks a jar or two with his old buddy, they could sort out between them whether the problem with the Palestine solidarity movement in this country is that it is antisemitic, or that it’s not antisemitic enough.
Comment by Stephen Marks — 28 April, 2009 @ 9:53 pm
“The mothers endless dilemma’s of what to say to the child speak not to any simplistic tale of Zionist brainwashing but to her very human reaction to her dilemma. ”
What has ‘Zionism’ got to do with it? The play is not about Zionism or Zionists, it is pointedly about Jews in general, all of them. It takes it for grabnted that Jews all share the same views on all subjects that concern Jews (a standard racist trope this). Surely johng is not labouring under the delusion (as Ms Churchill seems to be) that all Jews are Zionists? I am sure he doesn’t believe, with Ms Churchill, that Jews all take the view that as ‘chosen people’ they are exempt from conventional morality and can delight in the deliberate killing of children? This play is the most unabashed piece of racism I have ever seen in the mainstream media.
Comment by John Meredith — 29 April, 2009 @ 10:11 am