I have not made any new posts since 25 December 2023, having become despondent over the ever-deepening genocide in Palestine. Nevertheless, this blog has had a doubling in viewership in 2024 due to the success of one post – ‘The Poppy is the Flower of Palestine.’
The Koboi Project Blog will be active again, addreessing the same questions of power and justice, but in a more metaphysical manner, beginning with a series of posts on Ananda Coomaraswamy’s ‘Spiritual Authority And Temporal Power In The Indian Theory Of Government’.
Many critics and commentators have characterized Ukraine as a proxy for the collective West in a geopolitical strategy against Russia. As Ramesh Thakur puts it, “Ukraine’s territory is the battleground for a proxy war between Russia and the West … that reflects the unsettled questions since the end of the Cold War.” Perhaps Israel’s position vis-a-vis Palestine and the wider Middle East belies an analogous imperative of great power politics. Israel was created under the auspices of a declining British empire, whose mantle was assumed by the United States which remains the greatest power in the world today. While Israel appears to have co-opted the United States polity in its Genocide of Palestinians and must, of course, be held responsible for its actions, it is the Americans who are ultimately answerable, as Israel is wholly dependent on their enablement.
In fact, Alexander Haig, a four-star general in the US Army who served as its vice chief of staff, as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, as United States Secretary of State, and as White House Chief of Staff under two presidents is reported to have said that Israel is “America’s largest aircraft carrier which never could be sunk.” Indeed, the United States is a great power and, as such, must be held responsible for its actions within its expansive sphere of influence on the world stage. In this light, the idea that the Israeli lobby determines US policy towards Palestine is, regardless of this lobby’s enormous influence, a profound misconception. At best it is a misunderstanding of the machinations of the United States military-industrial complex; at worst, it is yet another expression, albeit a subliminal one, of an underlying anti-semitism!
To restate this argument as a counter-idiomatic interrogative – can the tail really wag its dog?
The image above is adapted from the perspicacious and prescient 2014 cartoon by Rob Rogers pictured below.
Note: There is a mental health disorder, that involves a behavioral pattern between a caregiver (perpetrator) and a person cared for (victim), called ‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy,’ in which a caregiver makes up fake symptoms or causes real symptoms in a victim to make it appear that the victim has a true physical or mental health issue.
The Mullaivakkal massacre of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) took place in May 2009, on a rural beach in an era when social media had not as yet established itself as a powerhouse of alternative news. While images and news of the slaughter was ciurculating among the Tamil Diaspora, nothing of them made it past the Mainstream Media’s blockade of news of this event. The SLA was enabled in their merciless goal of elimination the Tamil Tigers and the defacto Tamil state, regardless of the cost in civillian lives. Today, by contrast, the Israeli Defence Force’s (IDF) massacre of Palestinians in Gaza is presented in mainstream media, not so much because the media has reformed, but because it is now unable to ignore the pervasiveness of social media and citizen journalism. Gazans have been able to document and present the horror of their experience of destruction, displacement, and death, to the global gaze and conscience.
In the context of this reflection on the state of mainstream journalism, I want to recount a personal experience that symbolizes the decrepit state of the media. As the Third Elam War was coming to its violent close, I joined fellow Tamils in the public gatherings that took place in Vancouver. One of these gatherings was outside the CBC Regional Broadcast Centre in Vancouver and was aimed at appealing to the CBC to address the ongoing massacre of civilians in the Jaffna peninsula. I remember the mood as relatively sedate and not boisterous or assertive in any way. I was standing towards the front of the group when the acclaimed news anchor Ian Hanomansing, came along, presumably to prepare for the day’s news broadcast. Mr Hanomansing was, at that time, the co-anchor of CBC News: Vancouver, an evening newscast. The leader of our group led a party across the road with a petition and tried to hand it over. I went forward instinctively and found myself in line of sight to observe the pleading demeanor of the leader as he asked for our appeal to be forwarded to CBC management. I will never forget the evasive countenance of this esteemed Journalist, as he shuffled past our party without any engagement. This image, couched as it is inpersonal and communal experience of rejection and erasure, is seared in my awareness as an icon for the end of mainstream journalism in Canada – the end of truth in the neo-liberal era.
WARNING:DO NOT PROCEED TO THE VIDEO ABOVE IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DISTURBING DOCUMENTARY WITH VIDEO AND PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE OF DEATH, INJURY, SEXUAL VIOLENCE, TORTURE, AND MURDER. PLEASE PROCEED TO THE VIDEO ABOVE ONLY AFTER REFLECTING ON THE POSSIBLE IMPACT ON YOUR EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING.
Following the establishment of the de-facto Tamil state in the North and East of the island, the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government maintained a tenuous ceasefire from 2001 to 2006. Between 2004 and 2005, the tsunami hit eastern Sri Lanka, the LTTE Eastern wing broke away from the Northern Command, weakening the Tamil Tigers hold on their territory. In late 2006, large-scale fighting resumed, and by May the LTTE was finally defeated ending the de-facto state of Tamil Elam. The last months of this bloody three-decade-long war are the subject of a deeply disturbing documentary titled No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka.
With the resumption of hostilities in Gaza, the seemingly deliberate targeting of civilians by the Israeli Defence Forces, and the scale of the casualties recorded thus far, there is good reason to remember such precedents as the Sri Lankan Genocide evidenced in the video above and to call for an end to the Israeli action. Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, reports how the Israeli Defence Force’s extensive use of Artificial Intelligence programmes that treat high-rise buildings as “power targets” with large civilian casualties, has turned it into a “mass assassination factory.” Between October 7th and December 3rd, there have been 15,207 killed of which 6,150 are children.
According to Peter Adams of the BBC, an estimated 2.2 million people are now crammed into the southern two-thirds of the Gaza Strip. Conditions are dire, with many ill, injured, and traumatized by the indiscriminate Israeli bombing campaign, in the name of eviscerating Hamas. This terrible situation has been exacerbated by winter rains and flooding. Further, Adams notes that Israeli authorities have been urging these desperate Gazans to move into an even smaller “safe area” called al-Mawasi on the coast, near the Egyptian border. Al-Mawasi is estimated to be only about 2.5km wide by 4km (2.5 miles) long. In a sinister but wholly predictable development, the IDF’s Arabic social media is reported to have messaged that al-Mawasi would provide “the appropriate conditions to protect your loved ones.” In light of Israel’s promise to resume its assault on Hamas at the end of the present ceasefire, the implication that other than this tiny sliver of land, the rest of Gaza is unsafe, raises the terrifying spectre of an impending massacre. (Update : The Ceasefire ended on the 30th Nov and Isreal has indeed resumed its assault with a vengance).
I am a Jaffna Tamil and, this relentless heading and corralling of the population of Gaza into progressively smaller ‘safe areas’, brings memories of my people being forced into that narrow seaside strip in Mullivaikkal in the Mullaitivu District, towards the end of the Fourth Elam War in 2009. This area was declared a “no fire zone” to protect civilians during this final battle in the Government of Sri Lanka’s relentless war to eradicate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). However, in the aftermath of this battle the Government is accused of indiscriminately, even deliberately, shelling this “safe zone” and the LTTE, in turn, of using the desperate civilians as human shields. The UN has estimated a civilian death toll of 40,000 in the last days of this war but a UN internal inquiry has acknowledged that the number that up to 70,000 deaths were possible. However, when World Bank spreadsheets for 2010 are set against Statistical Handbook Numbers for 2007, the difference suggests that 101,748 people are unaccounted for in the Mullaitivu District.
I fear that Israel might be on the way to applying theSri Lanka Genocide Model as a solution to the conflict in Gaza. As of December 4th, (UPDATED), 15,523 have been killed, 41,316 injured and 6,800 are missing. Of the 15,000 who have been killed so far, 6,600 children and 4,300 are women. Israeli attacks are as follows. Those of us who live in nations that continue to stand with Israel regardless of the illegality and the inhumanity of its actions must impress upon our leaders that, regardless of how Israel’s negotiations develop vis-a-vis Hamas (Update : The Ceasefire ended on the 30th Nov and Isreal has indeed resumed its assault with a vengance), this genocide must not continue. What happened at the end of the Elam War should not be allowed to happen in Gaza.
A significant aspect of the Sri Lanka Genocide model (for an explanation of this term, see Applying the Sri Lanka Genocide Model in Gaza 2) is the suppression of news and expression in the media. I will go into the similarities of censorship in the wars in Sri Lanka and in Gaza later but, in the present post, I would like to address a suppression I have just experienced on Facebook. My previous WordPress post, titled Applying the Sri Lanka Genocide Model in Gaza 3, was originally headed by the image of a Tamil Elam flag. This is very similar to the LTTE flag but it is not the same; the difference being in inscriptions in Tamil and English. This difference is explained clearly on Tamilnation.org as follows, “The Tiger symbol of Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) created in 1977, was designated as the National Flag of Tamileelam in 1990 differentiating it from the LTTE’s emblem by leaving out the letters inscribing the movement’s name. The Restructure site explains further, “Yes, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam created and use the Tamil Eelam flag. It makes sense since they support the Tamil Eelam. However, not everyone who supports the Tamil Eelam supports the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The Liberation Tigers of Eelam supporters are a proper subset of Tamil Eelam supporters.”
When I re-posted my WordPress post on on Facebook, I received a warning about posting offensive material, and my post was blocked. I have also had many Facebook privileges removed for a period of one month as some kind of penalty. In this context, it is important to note that, while the LTTE is a proscribed organization and that it would be reasonable for their flag to be prohibited on Facebook, the Tamil Elam flag is different from the LTTE flag, and its display is permitted in many nations around the world that have prohibited the LTTE. Canada, where I reside, is a case in point, as here it is not only legal but also promoted by representatives of different levels of Canadian government.
The scene pictured above is of the Tamil Eelam National Flag Day being celebrated in Brampton Ontario in Nov 2023. Brampton Mayor Patrick Broey, who officiated at the ceremony at the town hall where the Tamil Eelam flags were flown, said, “Today and every day, we celebrate the resilience of the Tamil community and the contributions that Canadian Tamils have made in enriching our communities in Brampton and across the country. We will never forget the atrocities and human rights abuses of the Tamil genocide. We celebrate the resilience of the Tamil community.” Other government representatives who made statements of support on this Tamil Eelam National Flag Day include, Shaun Collier, Mayor of Ajax; Jagmeet Singh, Leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP); Ruby Sahota, Member of Parliament for Brampton North; David West, Mayor of the City of Richmond Hill; Iqra Khalid, Member of Parliament for Mississauga-Erin Mills; Shaun Chen, Member of Parliament for Scarborough North; Shafqat Ali, Member of Parliament Brampton Centre: Logan Kanapathi, Member of Provincial Parliament for Markham-Thornhill; and Elizabeth Roy, Mayor of the City of Whitby.
As I have said in previous posts (see Applying the Sri Lanka Genocide Model in Gaza and applying the Sri Lanka Genocide Model in Gaza 2), I am having a sense of deja vu as I follow the recent events in Gaza. I am brought back to the state of psychic shock that I found myself in early 2009 as the short-lived Tamil nation of Elam came to its crushing end. In this post, I will outline the history of the formation of the de-facto Tamil state.
The island of Sri Lanka gained independence from the British in 1948 with the majority Sinhalese taking the reins of a unitary state which incorporated ancestral Tamil areas in the North and the East. After decades of discrimination and futile non-violent resistance, some Tamils organized to take up arms to wage a violent struggle. Indeed, in 1972 Velupillai Prabhakaran and others formed the Tamil New Tigers (TNT). In 1976, the TNT became the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) under the leadership of Prabhakaran. In July 1983 the LTTE killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in an action in the Jaffna peninsula, and this led to race riots in Colombo in which hundreds of Tamils were killed and thousands more were displaced. This was the start of a full-fledged guerrilla war referred to as the “First Eelam War.”
In 1987 India brokered the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord and deployed peacekeeping troops in Northern Sri Lanka to enforce it. When the LTTE refused to disarm, a full-scale war between the LTTE and India. After incurring heavy losses, the Indian troops withdrew in 1990 and the Tigers took control of large sections of northern Sri Lanka, and the fighting resumed between them and Sri Lankan troops. This was the beginning of the “Second Eelam War” which ended in a truce in 1995, with the LTTE controlling one-third of all Sri Lankan territory and two-thirds of the island’s coastline.
The “Third Elam War” began with the breakdown of the short-lived truce in April 1995 and a brutal 6 year war ensued across the North and East of the island. It was during this war, that the United States declared that the LTTE was a terrorist organisation. This US declaration was made in 1997. It was followed a British declaration in 2001 and other nations then followed suit. This “third Elam war” ended in 2001 when a ceasefire was instituted through a Memorandum of Understanding which was formalized in the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement, made under the auspices of Norwegian mediation.
From 1984 onwards the LTTE set up a functioninggovernment in the territory under their control. They ran a sophisticated administration comprising a judicial system, a civil police force, Human Rights organizations, health and education systems, a Bank, as well as radio and Television stations Periods of Sri Lankan military occupation not withstanding, this de-facto Tamil state was fully functional and was recognized by many global institutions; notably, the World Bank’s Sri Lanka representative made the following statement in 2005, ‘Given the fact that there is an officially recognized LTTE-controlled area, a kind of unofficial state, and since it is a party to the ceasefire agreement with the Government, the LTTE has the status of a legitimate stakeholder’.
Note: This WordPress post was originally headed by the image of a Tamil Elam flag. I re-posted it on Facebook and was warned about posting offensive material and my re-post was blocked. In this context, it is important to understand that, the Tamil Elam flag (above) is different from the LTTE flag (the LTTE is a proscribed organization). For a detailed explanation please see Applying the Sri Lanka Genocide Model in Gaza 4.
So what is the Sri Lanka model of Genocide that is indexed in the title of this series of posts? According to Dr. Jude Lal Fernando, a renowned Sinhala peace activist, and scholar, the Sri Lankan Army’s overwhelming and merciless approach to destroying the Tamil Tiger (LTTE) insurgency, in which massive numbers of civilians were massacred in a manner that has been determined to be Genocide by Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, has become a recognized counterinsurgency strategy. An article in the Hindu Students Council of North America states that according to UN reports, between 40,000 and 70,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the first five months of 2009 and that World Bank population data indicates that over 100,000 Tamils remain unaccounted for from these final months of the counterinsurgency. In July 2016, Dr Fernando suggested that this counter-insurgency model has been applied against resistance in Turkey, Israel, and Columbia. While DR. Fernando does not cite sources for this terminology, I find his lexicon meaningful. In my own reframing of this terminology, I mark the the disproportional of the killing of civilians, and posit that this is a strong indication that this killing was not simply a collateral consequence of the counterinsurgency, but an integral part of its objective. In short, Tamil civilians were not distinguished from LTTE cadre deliberately. In light of what is happening in Gaza today, there is no doubt that Israel continues to apply this model, only in the ongoing assault on Gaza, there is the added dimension of stated genocidal intent.
I am a Malaysian who was born in Jaffna and although I identify unequivocally as a Malaysian, I recognize the Tamil struggle for justice and self-determination in their ancestral lands in the north and the east of the Island of Sri Lanka. After decades of non-violent struggle for justice was met with intransigence by the Sinhalese hegemons of the Sri Lankan state, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) emerged to wage an armed struggle for an independent Tamil state. Through a brutal conflict that ensued, the LTTE succeeded in setting up a defacto Tamil state. I have observed this violent Elam struggle which has involved terror and counterterror, from afar. I have felt its pain vicariously, through my mother’s responses to the experiences of her family. The LTTE reign ended in 2009 when their organization was completely destroyed by the Sri Lankan Army (SLA). In the crushing final battle of this War, it is estimated that between 20,000 and 100,000 Tamil civilians were massacred with impunity by the Sri Lankan Army. As I have followed the ongoing Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, I have been reminded of the genocide of the Tamil people by the Sri Lankan state.
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