Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole
Stray Dogs in Jaffna
When I was a child at the CMS Practising School in Nallur, I witnessed perhaps 65 years ago, Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) workers from the Paraiyah caste coming and shooting stray dogs in the school with rifles. There were children close by. That did not deter them or make the Headmaster stop them. The gory sight made me feel sick. Over time, perhaps moved by a prick of conscience, JMC resorted to sticks with a loop of wire to catch the dogs and put them in a cart. These were then drowned in the lagoon behind JMC by pushing the cart with the dogs inside after showing the dogs and collecting their per-dog fees.
I learnt two lasting lessons I recall. One, the sight of blood connects us to our conscience moving us against bloodshed, certainly wanton shedding of blood. Jaffna’s conscience has advanced today to the extent that the JMC catches stray dogs, gives them ant-rabies shots, puts on a handsome collar to signify the shots, and lets them loose.
Two, because of their work the Paraiahs were considered untouchable. One of them, removing excrement from our home, had fits on the road and collapsed. A low-caste man ranking above Paraiahs, asked for a tea for him as he recovered. This man took the tea, but when offered in a tin cup, asked for it in a coconut shell – an old version of today’s disposable cup – and gave it to him from the shell. The limited lesson was that those doing dirty work are not good company and polluting and all of them believe in the hierarchy.
Israel and its Killings
Nowadays I am glued to the TV carrying horrific, bloody images of people being killed in Palestine. How the Israelis kill has not graduated beyond spilling blood. Indeed, the gas chambers by Hitler were an improvement in kindness even over drowning dogs. The Isralis must think about it and how what they do dissipates the sympathy we have for victims of the holocaust.
Drawing from the second lesson
The report to the UN by its Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, is an impressive tome on the murders being committed in Palestine. It accused dozens of companies of being complicit in war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. It is titled “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide.”
A courageous report, its major flaw is that it does not directly blame the US for arming Israel and even directing the war. Recall the US’s well-worn refrain “No American lives were lost,” betraying its lack of concern for other lives – an attitude that pushed the US into proxy wars like getting Ukrainians to die in place of Americans by stupidly taking on Russia. That US funding gave the US complete control over Ukraine, the US stopping the flow of armaments to Ukraine as if Ukraine is a donkey with the US riding it with a carrot in front to make it run or stop as commanded by America.
America Riding an Israeli Donkey using a carrot
By this show of power over the entrapped Ukraine in a bad war, the US forced an agreement on 30 April 2025 for Ukrainian minerals and establishing a joint investment fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction, partially funded by revenues from its own natural resources. That is, Ukraine destroyed itself by taking on a war on behalf of America’s NATO expansion ambitions to the borders of Russia and now will pay 50% for mining its own minerals. In that process the US got preferential rights to mineral extraction in Ukraine, while the Ukraine retains ownership and final say over what is mined, including oil, natural gas, gold, and copper, as well as “rare earth” minerals, which are essential for modern technologies. But how much says will Ukraine have after being publicly scolded by Trump in the White House and being sent off without the scheduled luncheon. The agreement is said to signal a long-term commitment from the US to support Ukraine’s security and economic stability – meaning permanent slavery.
Also getting away from Albanese’s strictures are the EU nations that quickly congratulated Trump on his bombing of Iran and supported Ukraine dreaming of NATO at Russia’s border, keeping their hands clean. Only Sri Lankans and North Koreans seem to have died for this impossible dream.
The Albanese report, however, appropriately details what “the corporate machinery” sustains Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. This part shows how corporations are benefiting from the genocide in breach of international law. Albanese revealed at a news conference the names of 48 corporate actors, including United States tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. – Google’s parent company – and Amazon.
Lulled into Complacency
We do not easily recognize our own participation in this genocide. Israel’s procurement of F-35 fighter jets is part of the world’s largest arms procurement programme, relying on at least 1,600 companies across eight nations. It is led by US-based Lockheed Martin, but F-35 components are constructed globally.
We may say we have nothing to do with genocide. For myself, I saw my work as purely technical when I did a project for Northrop’s B-2 Bomber Division designing the layers of paint and their thicknesses to go on the frame of the bomber in its early stages of development. Because the project was top secret, neither my students nor had security clearance. So we would design the plane as a tubular coated waveguide and give the design to the Northrop Engineers who would paint the plane and fly it over the Mojave Desert and offer feedback to fine-tune the design. We never saw the plane!
We who stay in Booking or Airbnb hotels do not connect that to genocide. We fail to recognize the profits they generate from listing properties and hotel rooms in Israeli-occupied territory.
Tech companies worldwide provide automatic predictive policing technology used for automated decision-making in the battlefield, to process data and generate lists of targets including through AI systems. Neither I nor many of my students who proudly develop AI do not realize our indirect participation in genocide.
Caterpillar, Leonardo-owned Rada Electronic Industries, South Korea’s HD Hyundai and Sweden’s Volvo Group, provide heavy machinery for home demolitions and the development of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Would their host countries rock the boat to stop genocide? In 1984 I redesigned a motor that was heating up for Caterpillar as a consultant. For me the challenge was purely to use my electromagnetcs programs for heat transfer. A fruit of that effort probably goes to demolish Palestinian homes efficiently!
In the agriculture sector, Chinese Bright Dairy & Food is a majority owner of Tnuva, Israel’s largest food conglomerate, which benefits from land seized from Palestinians in Israel’s illegal outposts. Netafim, a company providing drip irrigation technology that is 80-percent owned by Mexico’s Orbia Advance Corporation, provides infrastructure to exploit water resources in the occupied West Bank.
Treasury bonds have also played a critical role in funding the ongoing war on Gaza, according to the report, with some of the world’s largest banks, including France’s BNP Paribas and the UK’s Barclays, listed as having stepped in to allow Israel to contain the interest rate premium despite a credit downgrade.
It is clear that without knowing it we are reaping profit from Genocide, US multinational investment companies BlackRock and Vanguard are the main investors behind several listed companies. Nearly all of us who have or had pension investments have had their money in these funds. My wife and I once had funds with Vanguard.
A Boycott of Israel and its Accomplices: Learning from Apartheid South Africa
Like the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanction Movement”, Francesca Albanese has made similar calls on Member States to impose sanctions and a full arms embargo on Israel. She has called on trade Unions, lawyers, civil society, and ordinary citizens to press for these. There is much we can learn from what happened to similar calls against Apartheid South Africa. The boycotts then included academic, cultural, and economic measures, to isolate South Africa.
Academic Boycotts at the request of the ANC targeted South African academic institutions and scholars. Cultural boycotts must certanly target Israelis coming to the Arugam Bay beach resort. The Sri Lankan government is providing security to the Israelis but should really chase them off. Cutural boycott covers artists, and musicians performing in Israel. Economic boycott would institute a consumer boycott of all businesses dealing in Israel. The Sri Lankan government seems a little too busy sending workers to fill in the gaps of Palestinians ethnically cleansed by Israel.
American and Sri Lankan Savagery
The Americans have supported Israeli savagery. But not the people of America. According to a recent ipsos poll, US public support for Israel has seen a noticeable decline, particularly since late 2023. In early 2025, a majority of Americans (53%) held an unfavorable opinion of
Israel, a significant increase from 42% in 2022 before the current conflict in Gaza.
Support for Israel is increasingly polarized along political lines. Republicans tend to remain highly supportive of Israel. In February 2025, 83% of Republicans held a favorable view of Israel, whereas only 33% of Democrats viewed Israel favorably. Without US support, Israel is done for.
As Professor Jeffery s of Columbia cogently argues, my putting it succinctly, dealing with the PLO is unacceptable to Israel because it comes with all the UN resolutions and puts an end to the dream of occupying all the land. So the other two options are, i) continuing as the Apartheid State that Israel is which is not acceptable to its grand plans; and 2) Ethnic Cheeansing which is the ongoing project backed by Trump and the American self-appointed righteous, unbiblical Christians who are misaddressed as “The Christian Right” which is really a caricature of Christianity.
But time is really against Israel. It is surrounded by Arabs, has a diminishing birth rate and has to stop Israelis from moving out; and perhaps most importantly, even Orthodox Jews are rebelling in New York against the genocide – even ultra orthodox Jews in Israel.
Trump is a has been, his rating dropping across most demographics as shown by The Economist. He can be sustained only by his present seats in Congress based on his support at the elections on 5 Nov. 2024. Till the next elections he will be able to give effect to all his madness even for unpopular policies like his “Big Beautiful Bill” passed today (3 July 2025), taking money from the poor for himself and his rich cronies by bribing Congressmen through support for single issues of use to them in their re-election.
Remember that the American public and even the two wings of Congress supported the Boycott of South Africa by the passage of the. Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986.
The sustained pressure from the anti-apartheid movement ultimately led to its passage, which imposed sanctions on South Africa.
As to be expected, the pro-corporate Ronald Reagan leading the racist seg ment of America (the Republicans as seen in the vote to keep Apartheid safe), vetoed the bill but could not support its becoming the law when Congress over-rode his veto: 232 Democrats and 81 Republicans voted to override the President’s veto while 4 Democrats and 79 Republicans voted to sustain the President’s veto. The requrement for an over-ride is that a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting, with a quorum present.
As Trump gets madder and madder, a boycott of Israel is more and more likely. There re many good people remaining in America. Thank God!
