Israel Versus Palestinians: Thank God For South Africa’s Boldness
Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole
K. Pooranampillai of St. John’s College
Our own identity often determines where we stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whereas it is good to move beyond our identity. Nearly all of us at St. John’s College were programmed to have a pro-Israel identity.
It was early in the year 1968, just after Israel shattered the larger armies of the surrounding Arab world. I was in my AL first year. My subject teacher was absent and my St. John’s Principal Mr. K. Pooranampillai came to cover our teacher’s absence. These were some of my best moments at St. John’s because, not being a scientist or mathemtician, he took us into general discussions on English and “arts” things. I recall his asking us each to write down the name of a car’s parts in English which is when we recognized that we knew the names but not how to spell them. On another occasion he asked us to spell the sound of the letter Z. We had zat, zad as I did, izad, izat, etc. No one tried zee. It is zed he finished.
He, KP or Bond as we called him for his walks around school to see what teachers were doing and which classes were noisy, was respectfully feared and loved.
Time as Opinion Maker: Admiration Turning Sour
The day in question was to be a discussion (or more a lecture) about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He relied heavily on Time which had just featured a cover story on Israel’s struggle to survive (9 June 1967), featuring Premier Levi Eshkol. He brought the magazine to class. He also had with him another cover story on Defence Minister Moshe Dayan (16 June, 1967). Dayan had been watching the battlefield through his binoculars when a bullet that should have killed him was stopped by his binoculars, leading to his patch-eye. KP recounted how the vast Arab armies ran away as Isreli forces advances. Perhaps our Tamil mindset – we admired clever people. So we were on Israel’s side just as I admired Benjamin Netanyahu for having an MIT PhD. It took me long, too long, to see the butcher in him.
For us young Tamils, already feeling the pinches of growing discrimination and remembering the riots and the Satyagrahas, how could we not grow up admiring the Israelis standing up to a numerically overwhelming Arab majority? We could not see the Europeans armed by the West battling against primitive nomads. We saw shared geography with us in the aridity of our land and admired how the desert was being turned green. Soon the Maanavar Peravai (the Students’ Front’s Nicholas Ariaratnam in particular) developed contacts with Israel and would show us magazines given to them by their Israeli contacts on how to make Jaffna bloom.
In time, our admiration turned sour. It seemed clear when under JR Jayewardene Mossad entered the fray and was training the Sri Lankan army in brutality leading to sexual bestiality in Mullivaikal by Sinhalese troops in 2009.
To quote from The Diplomat, “Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack wrote in a recent article in Al Jazeera that Israeli weapons, including surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other military equipment, were likely used by the Sri Lankan Army in atrocities against civilians during the decades-long war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Sri Lankan government, he writes, also purchased combat aircraft and battleships from Israel that were used in the commission of war crimes.” Former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, in his book By Way of Deception told us in 1990 about how Israel trained the Tigers and Sri Lankan troops at the same place in shifts without letting them see each other.
Now, as Israel bombards the Gaza Strip, killing more than 4,300 people since Oct. 7, we Tamils see parallels to the massive and genocidal bombardment of Mullivaikal killing large numbers of innocent Tamil civilians. One sees that just like LTTE Terrorism is used to justify the killing of innocent Tamils civilians and children such as when my secretary was asked by the SLA to gather at place to collect infant milk and then bombed the place, we see Hamas Terrorism being used to justify similar genocide by Israel.
The world watched when we Tamils were put though genocide. It is mainly NGOs that speak up for us Tamils and against SLA’s attempts at genocide which continue today as the government tries to eliminate rather successfully the Tamil presence and Tamil culture from the North-East. The Government is on the brink of success in the East.
Tamils have to thank organizations like AI, HRW, and Crisis Group.
Other Governments are largely silent. India too. They have geostrategic interests they say. Who are we Tamils to them?
But the Arabs are far more influential. And South Africa is one bold country that acts without fear or favour on the world stage. Recall that the UN Secretary General’s Report on Sri Lanka was by Yasmin Sooka of South Aftrica. The other two authors were Marzuki Darusman (the Chairman from Indonesia and Attorney General) and Steven Ratner, a university professor from Michigan. Their authorship gave strength and credibility to the report. Our Bar Association let itself down badly when it condemned the report even before it went public.
South Africa Files Genocide Charges Against Israel
On 28 Dec. 2023, South Africa filed Genocide Charges against Israel at the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, the ICJ. Initial hearings would be on 11th and 12th January 2024. Manel Fonseka, a Colombo Telegraph writer of the Civil Rights Movement, has written to say: “This week on 11 Jan. 2024 , the ICJ will be hearing charges of genocide against Israel. The BBC & other MSM outlets aren’t covering this. It will be live on UN TV though, on the following link: www.webtv.un.org Please share and help get the genocide into the mainstream.”
Israel usually ignores the ICJ but this time has promised to defend itself. The ICJ normally deals with states. All three, South Africa, Israel and Palestine, have signed on to the relevant convention.
The jurisdiction of the ICJ is spelt out from paragraph 8 of the filing which is linked above. To quote from The Conversation, ICJ can hear cases brought by states (“contentious cases”) and requests by United Nations bodies, such as the General Assembly, for advisory opinions. The first time a case was brought to the ICJ alleging violation of the Genocide Convention was in 1993 by Bosnia against Yugoslavia. The second case was in 2019 by The Gambia against Myanmar. The third case was by Ukraine against Russia following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Of these cases the ICJ has so far only handed down a final judgment in the 2007 Bosnian judgment, 14 years after the case was initiated.
Although full judgment can take years (14 for the Bosnia case), the ICJ has issued provisional measures in all the Genocide Convention cases, within a few months after the cases were brought to the court. Provisional measures are orders of the court to prevent irreparable harm. They bind the respondent state to refrain from certain actions until the court has delivered final judgment. The provisional measures in the Myanmar case adopted by the court in January 2020 prohibited the state from, among other things, taking action against the minority Rohingya group by (again quoting from The Conversation):
(a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
Allegations and Comments
Paragraph 4 of the filing calls for provisional ruling: This application by South Africa and its request for the indication of provisional measures fall to be considered in that context and in the light of those calls. It is made against the background of South Africa’s foreign policy objective for the attainment of a durable peace between Israel and the State of Palestine, with two States existing side by side within internationally recognised borders, based on those existing on 4 June 1967, prior to the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in line with all relevant United Nations resolutions and international law.
Paragraph 4 is very specific on the charge of Genocide: 4. The facts relied on by South Africa in this application and to be further developed in these proceedings establish that — against a background of apartheid, expulsion, ethnic cleansing, annexation, occupation, discrimination, and the ongoing denial of the right of the Palestinian people to selfdetermination — Israel, since 7 October 2023 in particular, has failed to prevent genocide and has failed to prosecute the direct and public incitement to genocide. More gravely still, Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Those acts include killing them, causing them serious mental and bodily harm and deliberately inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as a group. Repeated statements by Israeli State representatives, including at the highest levels, by the Israeli President, Prime Minister, and Minister of Defence express genocidal intent. That intent is also properly to be inferred from the nature and conduct of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, having regard inter alia to Israel’s failure to provide or ensure essential food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter and other humanitarian assistance for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian people, which has pushed them to the brink of famine. It is also clear from the nature, scope and extent of Israel’s military attacks on Gaza, which have involved the sustained bombardment over more than 11 weeks of one of the most densely populated places in the world, forcing the evacuation of 1.9 million people or 85% of the population of Gaza from their homes and herding them into ever smaller areas, without adequate shelter, in which they continue to be attacked, killed and harmed. Israel has now killed in excess of 21,110 named Palestinians, including over 7,729 children — with over 7,780 others missing, presumed dead under the rubble — and has injured over 55,243 other Palestinians, causing them severe bodily and mental harm. Israel has also laid waste to vast areas of Gaza, including entire neighbourhoods, and has damaged or destroyed in excess of 355,000 Palestinian homes, alongside extensive tracts of agricultural land, bakeries, schools, universities, businesses, places of worship, cemeteries, cultural and archaeological sites, municipal and court buildings, and critical infrastructure, including water and sanitation facilities and electricity networks, while pursuing a relentless assault on the Palestinian medical and healthcare system. Israel has reduced and is continuing to reduce Gaza to rubble, killing, harming and destroying its people, and creating conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as a group.
The South African filing is a must read for those interested. As Sri Lankans we will recognize some of things the Israeli Defense Forces are doing from what happened here in Sri Lanka to us Tamils:
* Israel’s parallel implementation of a wide buffer zone inside Gaza’s eastern border fence (estimated to restrict access to approximately 24 per cent of Gaza) severely impacts internal food supply, by reducing the main agricultural area for farming. Israel also made fishing extremely hazardous for Palestinians, who have not had full access to the fishing zone of 20 nautical miles stipulated in the Oslo Accords — interim agreements concluded between the PLO and Israel in the early 1990s. The naval blockade — policed by Israeli forces through the use of force, arrests and the confiscation of fishing equipment — severely reduced the fishing catchment area for Gaza’s fishermen. (These are tactics used in Sri Lanka. Who taught whom?)
* Those killed by Israeli soldiers, firing from behind the separation fence, included three medics and two journalists. A total of over 36,100 Palestinians, including nearly 8,800 children, were injured by Israel, including 4,903 people who were shot in the lower limbs, “many while standing hundreds of metres away from the snipers, unarmed”. A hundred and fifty six of them had to have at least one limb amputated, and over 1,200 required specialised limb reconstruction treatment. The Commission found that the maiming was not accidental: the rules of engagement adopted by Israel permitted snipers to shoot at the legs of the “major inciters”.One Israeli soldier admitted that he shot “42 knees in one day”.
* The Commission found that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers “intentionally shot” children, knowing them to be children, and they also “intentionally shot” health workers and journalists “despite seeing that they were clearly marked as such”.
* . . [T]he IDF apparently on grounds of military necessity, has destroyed homes and laid to waste a significant amount of agricultural land, especially in Gaza, which is already land starved. Statistics shows that 94 homes have been demolished and 7,024 dunums [a dunum is about 1000 sq. m] of agricultural land bulldozed in Gaza. Damage to private houses is put at US$ 9.5 million and damage to agricultural land at about US$ 27 million. . . . Houses situated on this land had been destroyed and families compelled to live in tents. Water wells in the vicinity had also been completely destroyed. [The Sri Lankan Army is known to dump Tamils it killed in wells which are made unusable for long thereafter. Staff a Sunil Ratnayake was found guilty of murdering 15 Tamils in Mirusuvil and sentenced to death. President Gotabaya Rajapakse immediately pardoned him ajd set him free. That is congratulating him for killing Tamils! What ONUR Bill after that?]
* The Mission did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities or that ambulances were used to transport combatants or for other military purposes. On the basis of its own investigations and the statements by United Nations officials, the Mission excludes that Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat activities from United Nations facilities that were used as shelters during the military operations.
* Taking into account the weapons used, and in particular the use of white phosphorous in and around a hospital that the Israeli armed forces knew was not only dealing with scores of injured and wounded but also giving shelter to several hundred civilians, the Mission finds, based on all the information available to it, that in directly striking the hospital and the ambulance depot the Israeli armed forces in these circumstances violated article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and violated customary international law in relation to proportionality. [There is report of evidence that the SLA also used chemical weapons]
* The Gaza military operations were, according to the Israeli Government, thoroughly and extensively planned. While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to selfdefence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole. . . .
* The repeated failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians appears to the Mission to have been the result of deliberate guidance issued to soldiers, as described by some of them, and not the result of occasional lapses.
* It is clear from evidence gathered by the Mission that the destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy by the Israeli armed forces.
* Allied to the systematic destruction of the economic capacity of the Gaza Strip, there appears also to have been an assault on the dignity of the people. This was seen not only in the use of human shields and unlawful detentions sometimes in unacceptable conditions, but also in the vandalizing of houses when occupied and the way in which people were treated when their houses were entered. The graffiti on the walls, the obscenities and often racist slogans, all constituted an overall image of humiliation and dehumanization of the Palestinian population. . . .
* Like Rajapaksa’ boast of his soldiers going with the Human Rights Charter, the IDF states “The operations were carefully planned in all their phases. Legal opinions and advice were given throughout the planning stages and at certain operational levels during the campaign. There were almost no mistakes made according to the Government of Israel.”
* The Mission also finds that the Israeli armed forces unlawfully and wantonly attacked and destroyed without military necessity a number of food production or food processing objects and facilities (including mills, land and greenhouses), drinking-water installations, farms and animals in violation of the principle of distinction. From the facts ascertained by it, the Mission finds that this destruction was carried out with the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population.
* Like in the Vadamarachi operation, “warnings to evacuate were meant to create ‘sterile combat zones’, and the people remaining in the area would no longer be considered civilians and thus benefit from the protection afforded by their civilian status. For example, the Head of the Doctrine Desk at the Infantry Corps Headquarters, . . . , reportedly stated: “… In peacetime security, soldiers stand facing a civilian population, but in wartime, there is no civilian population, just an enemy.” [That is how the SLA was able to obliterate Tamil civilians in Mullivaikal]
* Inferring that anyone remaining in an area that has been the object of a warning is an enemy or a person engaging in “terrorist activity”, or issuing instructions to this effect, contributes to creating an environment conducive to attacks against civilians. Those civilians choosing not to heed a warning do not lose the protection granted by their status. The only way in which civilians lose their protection from attack is by directly participating in the hostilities. Merely issuing a warning does not absolve the Israel Defense Forces of their legal obligations to protect civilian life . . .
* I am reminded of the use by Sri Lanka of multi-barrel launchers in the next atrocity identified by South Africa: “The sheer number of shells fired, as well as the reported dropping of over 100 oneton bombs in a short period of time in a densely populated area, together with the reported use of an artillery barrage, raise questions as to the respect by the IDF of the rules of distinction, precautions and proportionality. These methods and means employed by the IDF could not, in such a small and densely populated area, be directed at a specific military target and could not adequately distinguish between civilians and civilian objects and military objectives as required by IHL. The information available also indicates that during the Shuja’iya operation on 19 and 20 July the IDF violated the prohibition of treating several distinct individual military objectives in a densely populated area as one single military objective. … The choice of the methods and means used by the IDF cannot be reconciled with the obligation to take constant care to spare civilians and civilian objects or at the very least to minimize incidental loss of civilian life and damage to civilian objects in a densely populated area. . . .[My note: This is exactly what the SLA did like clockwork spraying Jaffna town with indiscriminate bombs at 6 am and 6 pm daily. I have lived through it. Everyone vacated Jaffna Town as a result.] … Its in these circumstances that the Mission concludes that what occurred in Gaza in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.
* Information received by the commission suggests that in several cases Palestinians who had been detained, mostly in their homes in Khuza’a, had been insulted, beaten, threatened to be killed and otherwise ill-treated by IDF soldiers. My note: I experienced this in Vavuniya switching from my train from Colombo to the bus from Vavuniya to Jaffna. My travelling companion was held up and released days later, after I asked his wife in Jaffna to go to Vavuniya as the SLA was less suspicious of married men
* I am reminded of Isaipiriya and women in the Channel 4 documentary by the next: “as regards the treatment by Israel of Palestinian detainees, the Special Rapporteur found “instances of torture and cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment include sexual assaults;
* For many Palestinians, the forced evacuation from their homes is necessarily permanent. Israel has now damaged or destroyed an estimated 355,000 Palestinian homes — amounting to 60 per cent of the entire housing stock in Gaza. (This seems comparable to the Palaly area)
* Like in Vadamarachi, the army formed part of the logic of soldiers on the ground that those civilians who had stayed put without evacuating had to be combatants. Like in Vadamarachi, those who built bomb shelters to evade SLA shells were presumed to be enemies and shot dead in their bunkers. At home debates turns heated over whether to dig a bunker or not. Which was more dangerous?
Lessons for Sri Lankans – and the World
There are lessons in the South African endeavor for justice. Sri Lanka will come up for review soon in Geneva. The President seems to think he can fool the world by giving death certificates to the disappeared without justice for the victims or closure to their families, and can pretend to reconciliation through a toothless ONUR whose members will be politically appointed.
Article 15 of our Constitution prohibits exercising our right to free expression if that causes defamation or incitement, puts national security and public order at risk, or obstructs the duties of the armed forces.
So, highlighting the Mullivaikal massacres invites imprisonment, just as Pastor Jerome Fernando is in jail for comparing religions as any Pastor should. The government and all who engaged in war crimes during battles in 2009 and before, hope that the next UNHCR review will be the last. I hope not. I hope we are not let off and that the world will come forward to punish the beasts in Sri Lanka so that the world is a safer place.
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