By Izeth Hussain –

Izeth Hussain

The attacks against this writer practically every week, which have gone on relentlessly over a very long period, have evidently been meant to stop this writer’s articles from being published. But the articles continue to be published in the Island, the Colombo Telegraph (CT), and the Sri Lanka Guardian and there are no signs that the attacks will have their desired impact on any of the Editors. Consequently this writer can safely ignore the attacks. Unfortunately there has been another dimension to the attacks that cannot be ignored: Islamophobia shown in varying degrees of contempt and hatred towards Islam and the Muslims as a whole. The writer’s analysis led to the conclusion that Tamil Islamophobic racism was much worse than that of the Sinhalese. It afflicts only a minority of the Tamils but it can be terribly lethal if the LTTE rides again. Fortunately, however, after 2009 moderate and pragmatic Tamils have had the political ascendancy and can be trusted – the writer is convinced – to defuse Tamil Islamophobic racism and keep it in check.

Alas, there is yet another dimension to the attacks that requires analysis: Israeli promotion of Islamophobia in Sri Lanka. There is good reason to believe that the present Israeli Government would want to promote Islamophobia on a world scale. Its settlement policy in the West Bank is blatantly expansionist and is making a two-state solution virtually impossible. Israel will therefore have to work out a strategy to prevent the colored Arabs from gaining a demographic ascendancy over the white Israelis, a strategy that entails the apartheid system that is being installed, and is already worse than that of South Africa according to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who should know. The apartheid Israeli state cannot endure unless it is backed or at least tolerated by the West. Ideally Israel would want the West also to institute the apartheid system in which the colored immigrant hordes are subjugated and kept safely in their place. It would result in a world order as envisioned by Hitler and also by one of the founding fathers of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who projected Israel as a white fortress withstanding the threatening colored Asiatic hordes. It is a neo-Nazi vision in which the colored peoples, particularly the Muslims, are to be regarded as lesser breeds. That is the deep meaning of the Islamophobic movement that is sweeping the world today. It has its devotees, passionate devotees, in Sri Lanka also.

There could be a reason why this writer in particular could be targeted by the Israelis. Shortly a after he left the Foreign Ministry around 1990, notoriously a victim of the UNP’s ferocious Islamophobic racism, he was invited by one of the two leading Muslim institutions of the time to give a talk on the Palestine problem. It was very well attended by leading Muslim politicians of the time. The talk lasted for over an hour, it was videotaped, and a version was serialized in the Sri Lanka Guardian. After the talk several Muslims asked Dr. Kaleel whether he could do something with the material provided towards effecting the closure of the Israeli Interests Section at the American Embassy – which question was known to be under consideration at that time. His reply was that he would definitely do something about it. He had given an edited copy to President Premadasa who had watched it in full and decided to close down the ISS. (At this point the Tamil Islamophobes will raise one of their sky-splitting earth-sundering yells “LIAR”). It is relevant also to mention that one of the questions raised at the conclusion of the talk was whether the Israelis had been behind the last-minute abortion of his appointment as Ambassador to Paris.   

The above certainly establishes that Israel could have a motive for spreading Islamophobia on a global scale but what evidence is there to show that the writer has been targeted? The evidence has to be of a hypothetical and circumstantial order but it seems pretty convincing. After the concerted attacks by the LTTE stopped, further attacks by two, three or more Tamils have continued practically every week. For the most part those Tamils were venting their Islamophobic hatred, but the attacks by two Tamils have been of a different order and require explanation. Backlash has been attacking articles by this writer over a very long period, declaring every one of them as no better than excrement – his favorite metaphor has been “verbal diarrhea”. He suddenly revealed that something unusual was afoot: he corrected this writer’s erroneous memory over an article he had written twenty five years ago. How was it that someone who regarded the articles as excrement should have so vivid a memory of them over a quarter century? Some sort of institutional backing for Backlash was clearly suggested. 

The other fact suggesting institutional backing is what might be called the tactic of the bucket attack. The logic behind the attack is not of the slightest consequence since what matters is the attack itself, which consists of scooping up the contents of the bucket and letting them fly at the target. The following are some examples. Backlash was asked why he has been reading this writer for years and decades when the articles are no better than excrement. He has also been asked how come editors continue to publish the writer’s excrement. He has given nothing but facetious replies. The reason is that fact and argument don’t matter since what matters is only the successful flinging of the bucket contents at the chosen target. That is also clear from the latest example of his bucket attack. He spent some weeks abroad and now finds that the editors still continue to publish this writer, leaving him and others no alternative but “to grin and bear”. He cannot expect to be taken seriously. But he can tell his foreign backers that he is earning his keep by again flinging bucket contents at the writer. 

The other brilliant bucketeer is Kettikaran, who has been attacking this writer with hatred and rage over a very long period. Some time ago he inadvertently blurted out that he wished that he didn’t have to read me at all. What could that mean except that he was reading me under compulsion? Who was compelling him and why? Was it some institution? Recently in exchanges with this writer and a Sinhalese in the Colombo Telegraph he suddenly became placatory in language that seemed typical of Christian fundamentalists, who in general are notoriously pro-Israeli and Islamophobic. It was such Norwegian groups that are alleged to have funded the BBS. 

In addition, just like Backlash, he specializes in the bucket attack in which fact and reason don’t matter at all. He continues to allege that this writer advocated famine as a method of subduing the Tamil rebels when in fact he advocated the precise opposite – as will be shown beyond dispute by getting to Google and clicking on “Izeth Hussain’s reply to K.Arvind – 2006”. He now alleges that the incriminating article by this writer was reproduced in the CT, which is a bare-faced lie. He has been asked to provide the details, which have not been forthcoming, but he can be confidently expected to go on repeating the lie ad nauseam. Some time ago a Tamil reader wrote approvingly of Goebbels’ theory of the big lie, according to which a lie that goes on being repeated comes to be believed. That might have been true in Nazi Germany where there was no freedom of expression. Do these Tamil idiots think that the big lie can prevail against this writer in Sri Lanka where he can easily refute the lie? 

This article leads to the question whether the Israeli propaganda organization Hasbara, which has plenty of funds at its disposal, is using Backlash and Kettikaran as its agents for the promotion of Islamophobia in Sri Lanka. There are interesting common factors between them. Both have been attacking this writer over a long period, both have given indications that they have some sort institutional backing, and both use the identical tactic of the bucket attack in which fact and reason have no place at all. How do the bucket attacks serve the interests of those two nondescript Tamils? In no apparent way at all because this writer continues to be published and continues to be read. But we can expect the bucket attacks to continue. Why? They don’t serve the interests of those two Tamils but they could serve the interests of Islamophobes who believe that the best that can be done against this writer is to keep throwing dirt at him in the hope that some of it will stick. That will serve their fundamental purpose which is to project one message: All Muslims are dirt.