Wars and hypocrisy

Wednesday 19th May, 2021

The 12th anniversary of the conclusion of Sri Lanka’s war has come to be marked while the world is watching, with shock and dismay, the escalation of violence in Gaza. But for the defeat of the LTTE, such tragic scenes would have been beamed across the globe from this country, which used to attract international media attention owing to terrorist bomb blasts and battlefield encounters.

The latest round of clashes in Gaza resulted from an alleged attempt by Israel to evict some Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah to make way for Israeli settlers, according to international media reports. Hamas and Israel have since been trading lethal projectiles, paying no heed to the human cost of their actions. The reaction of the so-called world leaders has been appalling. They are playing geo-politics with the Gaza violence, which is snuffing out lives.

The US, which is calling for a war crimes probe against Sri Lanka, has come under fire internationally for not reining in Israel; it has turned a blind eye to civilian deaths caused by Israeli air attacks on residential towers and other such non-military targets in Gaza. No serious effort is apparently being made by others to pressure Hamas to stop firing rockets indiscriminately on some parts of Israel. Having thwarted three attempts by the UN Security Council, during the past several days, to issue a statement asking for an immediate halt to the Gaza violence, US President Joe Biden has, at long last, spoken in favour of the call for a ceasefire.

A pro-Israeli Democrat, President Biden has allowed the Jewish state to carry out enough attacks and gain the upper hand militarily prior to the declaration of a ceasefire. This is what the US Presidents have been doing all these years. Instead of making an all-out effort to de-escalate hostilities by asking Israel (as well as Palestine) to stop attacks forthwith, Biden has only ‘encouraged Israel to make every effort to ensure the protection of innocent civilians’. More than 200 lives are said to have been lost due to air strikes, in Gaza, and dozens of deaths due to Hamas rocket attacks have been reported from Israel. The death toll could even be higher, defence analysts say. Washington does not seem to care!

The UN cannot absolve itself of the blame for the unholy mess Israel and Palestine have got into, and, therefore, has to make a meaningful intervention to resolve the protracted conflict, which has caused the destruction of tens of thousands of lives and properties worth billions, if not trillions, of dollars. So long as the UN bows to US pressure, Palestinians and Israelis will continue to die in artillery duels, air strikes, and terror attacks.

Surprisingly, the UNHRC, which issues statements, at the drop of a hat, has not made its position known on the current spree of violence in Gaza. Israel has destroyed residential towers and a building that housed Al Jazeera and Associated Press. It obviously knew what it was doing: it gave journalists one hour for evacuation, insisting that the building was being used by Hamas; this claim has not yet been substantiated. Al Jazeera has been a thorn in the side of the US so much so that President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair planned to bomb it during their illegal war in Iraq, according to a leaked Downing Street memo published by the British media in 2005.

The US has reiterated that it stands by Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas attacks. Countries should have the right to self-defence, but why did the US act differently while Sri Lanka was fighting the LTTE? Washington went out of its way to derail military operations against the LTTE, albeit without success, during the closing stages of the war in 2009 obviously in a bid to throw a lifeline to a cornered Prabhakaran. If Sri Lanka had given in to US pressure, and stopped the war, Prabhakaran would have escaped, and thousands of lives would have been destroyed during the past 12 years in terror attacks and clashes between the LTTE and the military; children would not have been able to attend school owing to forcible child conscription. No lives have been lost due to northern terror since May 2009. Strangely, the western human rights crusaders do not look happy.