A Case for curbing the Israeli Embassy

by Izeth Hussain

( April 29, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) This writer’s last article Israel and Sri Lankan Islamophobia provoked a great many replies in the Colombo Telegraph including of course from Backlash, one of the two chief propagandists against this writer. He came out on April 23 with a spectacular revelation that merits dissemination on a national scale. He wrote “Israel’s contribution to the good of mankind, then and now, is unmatched in the annals of man’s history”. That of course is mind-boggling for its hyperbole. But the dog-like devotion to Israel that it displays is the sort of thing one has to expect from a fierce Islamophobic racist such as Backlash. It does not therefore merit status as national news. What does is the following: “That the Israelis backed the BBS is the worst kept secret in the country”. That has to be regarded as a spectacular revelation. Every Muslim with whom this writer has checked – all of them very well-informed persons – reacted uniformly by stating that Israeli backing for the BBS has been widely suspected among Muslims but nothing has been established. None of us has seen anything to that effect in print. It is therefore not one of the worst kept secrets in the country but one of the best. Why is Backlash making the revelation now? According to a contact who has made a professional study of propaganda Backlash is resorting to a well-known ploy: when a propagandist loses credibility he does something to restore it so that his further lies will be believed. Backlash was losing credibility with suspicions being roused that he is an Israeli agent – so he distances himself from Israel by making the seriously incriminating revelation about Israel’s backing for the BBS.

However he has made it clear that he remains staunchly pro-Israel. His bizarre hyperbole about Israel’s unmatched contribution to the good of mankind, then and now – meaning today’s expansionist apartheid Israel that outrages most of the rest of the world – declares unequivocally his continuing dog-like devotion to Israel. That devotion is apparent also in his virtual justification of Israel’s backing for the BBS. His panegyric is worth quoting in full: “This may be because misguided Muslims unnecessarily annoyed the Israelis by their weekly demos opposite the US Embassy in Colombo. This went on for years – until the Israelis obviously retaliated. The Tamasha demos after Friday Jumma prayers at Kollupitiya stopped immediately. Another debacle like the ill-considered Halal misadventure”. This writer cannot vouch for the accuracy or otherwise of what Backlash is claiming. What can be said with certainty is that he has been so accustomed for so long to being economical with the truth that the divide between fact and fiction no longer exists for him. A glaring instance is his assumption that three editors continue to publish this writer’s weekly articles – which are no better than excrement – knowing that they make most readers “grin and bear”. He expects others to believe that! The contradiction between Backlash’s devotion to Israel and his exposure of Israel’s criminal backing for the BBS is beyond this writer’s comprehension. What is important is to examine the implications of his spectacular revelation. We know that the BBS was funded with extravagant munificence supposedly by Norwegian Islamophobic groups. We know that the BBS was in association with the Wirathu gang in Myanmar, both of which had the same force behind them. We know that Wirathu has been forced into silence by the Buddhist authorities in Myanmar while the BBS leader was received the other day by President Sirisena along with nationally respected Prelates. We have good reason to suspect that the last Government knew the Israelis were backing the BBS but chose to keep quiet about it. We can have many convictions and suspicions of the order outlined in the preceding paragraph but what evidence is there to show that the Israelis really backed the BBS? Backlash, a propagandist devoid of moral scruples, may be lying. He may be lying for some unfathomable reason because he is an unbalanced person. After all, who but an unbalanced person will expect anyone to believe that three editors publish this writer’s weekly articles in the knowledge that they make most readers “grin and bear”? That surely bespeaks a pukkah lunatic. However, there are sound commonsensical reasons to incriminate the Israelis. We know that former President Rajapakse believed that the BBS hate campaign was part of the machinery set up by the West to topple him. Norwegian fundamentalist groups could not have been interested in effecting Governmental change here. One or more Governments had to be involved in that, and the most plausible candidate for the major role is surely Israel. By backing the BBS it could help the West in toppling the last Government and at the same time spread Islamophobic hatred. That would be consistent with the argument in the last article of this writer: an apartheid system in Israel would have the best prospect of enduring if there is an apartheid world order in which the Muslims in particular are held in special loathing as a lesser breed. What should be done? It is relevant to recount a development that took place when this writer was Ambassador in Manila in the first half of the ‘eighties. He was asked by our Foreign Ministry to report on how the Philippine Government treated the Israeli Embassy. Foreign Secretary Pacifico Castro said that this writer’s impression was quite correct that the activities of the Israeli Embassy had been severely circumscribed. Castro had crafted the policy, got his Government’s approval, and summoned the Israeli Ambassador to tell him that the Philippines was facing a serious separatist rebellion in Muslim Mindanao and therefore the Israeli Embassy had to be virtually non-functional. The Israeli Ambassador, a very nice man, abided by that rule scrupulously. Backlash’s spectacular revelation has to be officially investigated. He may be unbalanced in some ways but not in every way, and therefore he has to be taken seriously. Besides, the writer has given a very cogent reason above why we can be practically certain that Israel backed the BBS. The findings may show that the national interest requires that the activities of the Israeli Embassy be severely curbed. The writer will assert two principles. One is that a Government that acquiesces in a foreign-backed hate campaign against one of its minorities deserves to fall. The last Government fell. The other is that a nation that acquiesces in a foreign-backed hate campaign against one of its minorities is not fit for Independence. It will lose it. There cannot be the slightest doubt that there has been a concerted smear campaign against this writer over a very long period. Common sense dictates certain conclusions. No one reads all the articles that become available to him, particularly today when there is so much excellent reading material to suit every taste through the internet. The reader will therefore eschew in particular articles they regard as no better than excrement by writers whose guts they hate – which is how Backlash and Kettikaran view this writer and his articles. But they obsessively read him week after week and month after month. In exchanges in the Colombo Telegraph they have been repeatedly asked to explain this paradox, but unsurprisingly they have failed to do so. Both specialise in the bucket attack in which fact and reason don’t matter, and only the dirt thrown at the writer does – as shown in the last article. Kettikaran clearly showed his extreme Islamophobia when he imaged Muslim children as “piglets”, and he has made it clear that he sees nothing wrong in that. Backlash concealed his Islamophobia but he now declares his dog-like devotion to apartheid Israel which goes together with Islamophobia. Both have clearly been engaged in an Islamophobic hate campaign. In whose interest? All the indications are that they are servitors of Israel, may be without knowing it. The important point is that Israel is the only country in the world that could have an interest, a vital interest, in promoting Islamophobia on a world-wide scale. The Government should make investigations, particularly into the revelation about Israeli backing for the BBS, and take appropriate action, if necessary severely curbing the activities of the Israeli Embassy, as happened in Manila.

-Izeth Hussain

Foreign interference in SL Muslim problem

From the very moment that the BBS became prominent in Sri Lanka, there has been speculation about sinister foreign forces operating behind it. There is certainly a Norwegian connection, about which no clarification has been forthcoming. Now the BBS leaders are in the US on a month-long visit, which is reportedly part of a programme to make their movement international. There seems to be big money and power behind the BBS. Most curious of all are the coincidences between what is happening here and in Burma. By Izeth Hussain

I concluded my article, Sri Lankan Muslims in the racist paradigm (The Island of March 18) with the following paragraph: "Were the Bodu Bala Sena and the JHU unaware of what was going on in Geneva, and that the anti-halal campaign could have very adverse consequences there? Commonsense should have dictated that the anti-halal campaign be postponed until the conclusion of the UNHRC meeting. Some who are over-fond of conspiracy theories would say that they are secretly serving the purposes of the US and of India. Others would say that they have been manipulated by the CIA and RAW without being aware of it. I cannot subscribe to such notions. I have the strong conviction that the explanation for the horrendous mistiming of the anti-halal campaign is to be found in the irrationality that goes with racism. The usual paradigm of racism does not include a recognition of the fact that racism and irrationality go together." Let me make my position absolutely clear before proceeding further. Both the BBS and the JHU are very widely regarded as extreme racist organizations, and therefore both have to be regarded as having a proneness to extreme irrationality. It was that extreme irrationality – and not their being traitors – that made them blind to what was going on in Geneva. But, of course that extreme irrationality would also make it very easy for the CIA, RAW etc to manipulate them without their being aware of it. Assuming that they were indeed manipulated, we have to ask what were the presumed objectives of the CIA, RAW etc. The objectives could have been along the following lines: the anti-Muslim hate campaign, which clearly had the acquiescence if not the positive support of the government behind it, could lead to genocide and, therefore, it was impossible for any self-respecting Muslim state to vote against the anti Sri Lanka US Resolution. Without the Muslim vote for Sri Lanka, the US Resolution would have won overwhelmingly, and Sri Lanka would have been seen internationally as a virtual pariah state. That may be precisely what certain sinister forces want for Sri Lanka. Fortunately, the indefatigable campaigning of the Pakistani Foreign Minister and her officials prevented that outcome. Anyway, there is no getting over the fact that objectively – whatever might be the subjective intentions of the BBS and the JHU – their allowing the anti-halal campaign to mount to a crescendo precisely at that time served the purposes of the enemies of Sri Lanka. They should be more alert to the international implications of their actions in the future.

From the very moment that the BBS became prominent in Sri Lanka, there has been speculation about sinister foreign forces operating behind it. There is certainly a Norwegian connection, about which no clarification has been forthcoming. Now the BBS leaders are in the US on a month-long visit, which is reportedly part of a programme to make their movement international. There seems to be big money and power behind the BBS. Most curious of all are the coincidences between what is happening here and in Burma. The T-shirts worn by the demonstrators in both countries look identical except that the logos are different, suggesting that they were produced by the same manufacturer. A new wave of anti-Muslim violence broke out last month, this time in central Burma against Muslims regarded as indigenous Burmans unlike the Rohingyas who were targeted last year. Apparently the rhetoric used by the Buddhist monk leader there is very similar to the rhetoric used here.

Consider this for example: "When the profit goes to the enemy’s hand, our nationality, language and religion are all harmed. They will take girls with this money. They will force them to convert religion. All children born to them will be a danger to the country. They will destroy the language as well as the religion." It seems to be the same unholy brew as in Sri Lanka, with a nexus drawn between money, sex, and conversion. This could be standard fare in racist hate speech, or it could be that the same sinister forces are operating behind the campaigns in Sri Lanka and Burma. I have no hard evidence to cite in support of my position that the same sinister forces could be at work behind the campaigns in Sri Lanka and Burma. Even so, I concluded my article Clarifications on Genocide in The Island of April 22 with the following: "I must also say that I have come to suspect more and more strongly that behind the nonsense about halal and the anti-Muslim programme sinister foreign forces have been at work." Though lacking the hard evidence I can however set out the rationale for that position. But, before doing that I must refer to important material about secret service activity in Sri Lanka that I came across while in the process of writing this article. The material is given in Upul Joseph Fernando’s article Paving the way for US intervention in Sri Lanka? (Ceylon Today of April 24). According to the American website World Net Daily a source within the Iranian Intelligence Services told it (WND), even before the identities of the Boston bombing suspects became known, that the Islamic regime was behind them and to look for trails through Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Earlier when the German bakery bomb explosion took place in Pune (India), the chief suspect had in his confession revealed that the final operational plan had been drawn up in Colombo. Various details were given in that connection. Another interesting detail is that President Bush had stated that a Sri Lankan Tamil speaking Muslim was the chief financial officer and money launderer behind the clandestine operations of A. Q. Khan (the reputed father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb). A further detail worth mentioning is that a few months ago the New York based Open Society Foundation had in their report mentioned that Sri Lanka permitted use of its air space and airports for flights associated with the CIA’s extraordinary renditions operations in 2003. There is further interesting material in the article but I will not go into all that as my purpose is merely to point to material indicating that several secret services have been active in Sri Lanka. But I must quote the following from UJF’s interesting speculations in his concluding paragraphs: "In essence, all these revelations and disclosures amount to an alarming trend in Indian and American strategy – vis-à-vis Sri Lanka. Both countries are committed to proving Sri Lanka as a hot-bed of Islamic terrorism targeting Europe, America and India." I will now set out the rationale for believing that the same sinister forces could be behind the anti-Muslim campaigns in Sri Lanka and Burma. It all goes back to the 1972 Arab-Israel war, in the aftermath of which there was a phenomenal increase in oil prices. One of the main beneficiaries was Saudi Arabia, which chose to spend part of that wealth in spreading its Wahabi version of Islam. Its main instrument for that purpose was the madrasa, which provided free education since under Islam it is forbidden to make money out of religion. The main beneficiaries of madrasa education were members of the poor and the lower middle classes, precisely the classes from which violent revolutionaries are bred. The result was seen in the Eastern Province in the form of violent incidents after the death of a Sufi mystic, who caked himself Pailuwan (wrestler). Later there was violence in Beruwela, the result of what orthodox Muslims would regard as sacrilegious behaviour on the part of Wahabi Muslims. At the time of the conclusion of the war in 2009 there were several Jihad groups in the Eastern Province, and it took some time to make them give up their weapons. Not much more is known to the general public about the impact of Wahabism in the Eastern Province. But as UJF’s article brings out the EP and the rest of Sri Lanka have for years been a hotbed of international secret service activity. The madrasa education has everywhere led to what is called political Islam, militant Islam, and fundamentalist Islam, which has bred hatred of the West and terrorism. The US and India, as well as Pakistan, Iran, and Israel had to be concerned about what was going on in Sri Lanka on the religious front and we can expect that all their secret services have been active here. In connection with the anti-Muslim campaign we have to be concerned mainly about the possible interests of the US and India. The US could want to alert our government to the dangers that could flow from Wahabism. As I have argued in earlier articles, halal is really a non-problem, something that could have been easily solved. But, the halal problem was a way of targeting the ACJU, which significantly is regarded as the spear-head for Wahabism in Sri Lanka. But, I don’t believe that the US will pursue its own interests in Sri Lanka at the expense of India’s interests. If the US did promote the anti-Muslim hate campaign, it would have been to serve India’s interests. How have those interests been served? The hate campaign leads to one resounding question: if the Muslim minority which has been so much on the side of the Sinhalese against the Tamils can be treated in this way, how can we expect the Sinhalese to ever give fair and equal treatment to the Tamils? The question leads to the idea that a political solution for the Tamils has to go beyond 13A or even 13A+. Was that what the TNA President Suresh Premachandran had in mind when he told a visiting delegation of Indian MPs, "We need an interim administration overseen by India or the United Nations until there is a final settlement for the Tamils."

Izethhussain@gmail.com

Clarifications on Genocide

by Izeth Hussain

( April 24, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I began my article “Genocidal anti-Muslim racism” in the Island of April 1 by remarking that the term “racism” had in recent times suddenly come into vogue, and that there is now recognition among the Sinhalese that there could be racists within their own ranks. The obvious example is the BBS which is widely recognized as racist. I saw that recognition as a step or even a great leap forward holding out promise for the future. It might have seemed to many readers that I was being absurdly euphoric. I believe on the contrary that I am proceeding on a very sound principle. It is that to solve a problem you must first of all be able to recognize the problem. Formerly, it seemed to me, that very few Sinhalese were willing to recognize that at the root of our ethnic problems there was Sinhalese racism, or at least that that was part of the problem. Now, in connection with the BBS’s anti-Muslim campaign, there seems to be a widespread recognition that Sinhalese racism is in this case the real problem. That recognition could lead to more realistic thinking about our inter-ethnic relations. In any case the racism paradigm, as I have been arguing for some time, affords a much better grasp of what is involved in so-called ethnic problems than the ethnic paradigm. Racism is seen as coming from the drive to treat the Other as inferior. There are three recognized ways of doing that, one of which is to confine a targeted ethnic minority to inferior positions in a hierarchically ordered system. That was being done to our Tamils, in a systematic way, for decades. That was also being done to our Muslims in the State sector, as I can attest from personal first-hand experience as a Foreign Service officer. I have details to show beyond contest that the 1977 UNP Government practiced racist discrimination against Muslims in the foreign relations sector to an extent that was probably the worst in the world – all under a bizarre Muslim Foreign Minister who was used to legitimate that discrimination – a record that did not really surprise me as I have long regarded the UNP as a quintessentially anti-Muslim racist party, much more so than the SLFP. The two other recognized ways of treating the Other as inferior is to exclude them or to subject them to genocide. Exclusion could take a mild form or be quite intolerable. For instance the Chinese in the Philippines are not welcome in the State sector nor do they want any significant place there, thriving as they do in the private sector where in fact they have more status than the Bhumiputra Filipinos who strut about in the State sector. I have long believed that that could be a model for inter-ethnic accommodation in Sri Lanka, but for the time being the Sinhalese racists seem to be adamantly averse to allowing their legitimate place to the minorities both in the State sector and the private sector. In a way, what has proved successful with the Chinese in the Philippines is a limited form of apartheid, quite successful and acceptable because it is founded on the ancient principle of an ethnic division of labour that is to be found all over the world. Systematic apartheid on an extended scale is of course the most intolerable form of exclusion. It came a cropper in South Africa and is bound to do so in Zionist Israel as well, no less than Kissinger forecasting that in ten years’ time there will be no more Israel. Exclusion can sometimes slide into genocide. Sri Lanka provided a splendid example when the LTTE drove out a hundred thousand Muslims from the North, an act which has come to be regarded internationally as a horrendous act of genocide. We SL Muslims, however, have never committed genocide during the entirety of our existence in this island of over 1,400 years, for which I can give a convincing explanation: we lacked the means to do it. But we too have done our mite to show that we are solidary with our Sinhalese and Tamil brothers when it comes to the matter of genocide: at the height of the war Muslim Homeguards got together with the STF to drive out Tamils from around seventeen villages. It was certainly an act of exclusion with a genocidal touch to it. The most notorious act of genocide through exclusion in the last century was committed during the First World War by the Turks when they drove out their Armenian minority. It inspired what in my view is one of the great novels of the world, Franz Werfel’s The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. I must add that the Sinhalese are internationally recognized as having committed genocide of the conventional order in 1983. I must now define what is meant by genocide. But before doing that I must provide a clarification. The drive to treat the Other as inferior is so widespread that it can be regarded as practically universal. It is a drive that can erupt anywhere under certain conditions, and it can take a genocidal form anywhere, including in the most civilized countries – such as in Nazi Germany. In fact genocide is a commonplace phenomenon in history. The Kuveni legend points clearly to an act of genocide against the original inhabitants of a country, and so does the fact that a great many dominant majorities in the world are not indigenous to the territories where they are today bossing the show over the minorities. A realistic appraisal of the present situation in Sri Lanka requires our taking into account the possibility that the Sinhalese racists may want to commit genocide against the Muslims. Anyone who regards that idea as being insulting to the Sinhalese can be fairly regarded in one of three possible ways: he is a fool, he is an ignoramus, or he is both. For the definition of genocide I turn to Pierre-Andre Taguieff’s book Racism. The term “genocide” was created by the jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1944, and it has come to be used in two ways. In a narrow technical sense, it is used to mean the systematic extermination, in accordance with an ideological conception, of a human group regarded as deserving it. In the second and wider sense, it is used to mean actions taken with the objective of destroying, wholly or in part, a racial, national, ethnic, religious or other group. The 1983 “riots” against the Tamils were clearly genocidal in the second sense. The big question preoccupying many Sri Lankans is whether there will be another 1983, this time against the Muslims as had been anticipated by many Tamils and Muslims after the 1983 pogrom. It is assumed that in that event we will have another ethnic conflict on our hands. It is arguable that it was not anti-Tamil discrimination but the State terrorism after 1977, mounting to a genocidal crescendo in 1983, that ignited the Tamil armed rebellion. Likewise, in the case of the Muslims, mass violence against them could become the catalyst for armed rebellion. It is difficult to imagine a more submissive – indeed abjectly submissive – minority than our Muslims. But changes are taking place, as suggested by the spectacular success of the Eastern Province hartal organized by Azath Sally and Mujibur Rahman. Reportedly that provoked the anger of the Sinhalese extremists, and some believe that the attack on Fashion Bug was their riposte meant to demonstrate Muslim vulnerability to the Sinhalese majority. There are hard facts that seem to favor an anti-Muslim pogrom. Hardly anyone today doubts that the Government has been complicit with the BBS. The police blatantly play the role of spectators while anti-Muslim action is going on, and the Government takes no action against them. On the other hand, when Buddhist moderates engage in a peaceful candle-light vigil, the police immediately arrest them. Some conclusions might be drawn, rightly or wrongly: the Government wants no opposition to the Buddhist extremists, and as for the Muslims they are beneath and outside the Law, a people who should not expect the protection of the State when Buddhists target the Muslims. The reason for this position is of course that the Government’s power rests mainly on Buddhist support. It is a consideration that applies to all the other political parties as well, except for the minority ethnic parties. The Muslims can expect no meaningful support from the Opposition. Nor can they expect such support from the civil society, which is simply not dynamic enough for that purpose. As for the people, they need a scapegoat and the Muslim is the ideal candidate for that role as I argued in my last article. In brief, everything points to a genocidal anti-Muslim pogrom which can be carried out with total impunity. Fortunately President Rajapakse is obviously against that, and very probably there is an understanding with the BBS that the anti-Muslim program can proceed merrily but without violence. I believe that his reason for taking up that position is concern about possible foreign reactions. I must also say that I have come to suspect more and more strongly that behind the nonsense about halal and the anti-Muslim program sinister foreign forces have been at work.

-Izeth Hussain