{"id":139202,"date":"2015-02-14T00:09:02","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T18:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=139202"},"modified":"2015-02-17T16:05:37","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T10:35:37","slug":"mervyn-de-silva-on-israeli-involvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/mervyn-de-silva-on-israeli-involvement\/","title":{"rendered":"Mervyn De Silva On Israeli Involvement"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Rajan Hoole<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>

Dr. Rajan Hoole<\/p><\/div>\n

Border Aggression and Civilian Massacres<\/span><\/a> \u2013 Part 15<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We give here the gist of the testimony given before the Mossad Commission (19th and 26th July 1991) by the late Mervyn de Silva<\/span><\/a>, senior journalist and editor of the Lanka Guardian. He had closely studied Israel\u2019s dealings with Sri Lanka and had inter- acted with several Israeli VIPs, including Natanel Lorch, Israel\u2019s consul-general in Ceylon until 1959 and David Matnai who headed the Israeli Interest Section in 1984. He argued that the Sri Lankan Government\u2019s course of seeking Israeli help through the US was based on mistaken premises and faulted the Government for changing Sri Lanka\u2019s diplomatic thrust from Open Diplomacy to Secret Diplomacy which created friction with India. The Israelis, he said, pursue national in- terest \u201cwith cold-blooded calculation. They do not wave flags for anybody-just their own flag\u201d.<\/p>\n

He doubted that Israel had a serious inter- est in crushing the Tamil insurgency. Israel had come here with an eye to a diplomatic base in India and was deeply disappointed when President Jayewardene in a secret meeting in Paris with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in October 1985, wanted Israel to continue its aid but refused her full-diplomatic status. On the results of Israeli involvement, he quoted from the renowned Israeli social scientist Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn any event, this renewal of contact with an Asian country was not a complete success. This help received by the Sri Lankan Government has not enabled it to subdue the insurgents. If anything, it seems that since Israel became involved in 1984, things have become bloodier and less hopeful. Sri Lanka has now earned the frightening nickname of \u2018the Lebanon of South Asia\u2019.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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On how the move to get the Israelis in gave offence to India, he said: \u201cThe irony is that the US did not want to give us direct help in order not to antagonise India, while India found yet another reason to be hostile to Sri Lanka and its foreign policy; I would call that another giant step in our MARCH OF FOLLY.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mervyn<\/a><\/p>\n

*Mervyn de Silva ( Middle) with Sirima Bandaranaike and Lalith Athulathmudali\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Giving the Oil Tank Farm in Trincomalee co- vertly on contract to the US was apparently part of the deal made by President Reagan\u2019s envoy General Vernon Walters, which India found threatening. de Silva described Walters as a man \u201cwho has been involved in a lifetime\u2019s career of international intrigue, conspiracies, arming of anti- government rebels etc. As US Ambassador later in the UN, he was a confirmed opponent of Third World countries, ridiculing and abusing the non-aligned group. Walters was always happy in the company of dictators and fascist, pro-US junta-type defence ministers, national security top brass etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the Oil Tank Farm, questions were raised in Parliament in the Spring of 1984 and Industries Minister Cyril Mathew defended its award to the Singapore registered firm of Douglas Miller. The U.S. Coastal Corporation of which Miller was earlier managing director, had been an unsuccessful tenderer in the first round. Sarath Muttetuwegama MP, said of Miller\u2019s firm that the capital is \u201chardly enough to run a bicycle shop in Singapore\u201d. A year later the Communist Party journal Forward reported (1.7.85) that the \u201cTrincomalee Oil Farm deal fizzled out when the dummy firm fronting [for] the US Navy which received the award, did not complete legal formalities by 30th June.\u201d<\/p>\n

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On this matter, de Silva said that it was another issue, which India raised as threatening its security interests. He added, \u201ctrue or false, exaggerated or not, the regional Big Power, used it as a sort of causus belli, argumentative support for its intervention in Sri Lanka\u2019s domestic affairs\u201d.<\/p>\n

de Silva dismissed the belief held by members of the pro-UNP elite that Israel was somehow pro-Sinhalese in the local context (strong hints of this belief are there in Gunaratne\u2019s and Ratnatunga\u2019s books). He quoted Netanel Lorch, who as consul-general here witnessed the 1958 riots and ended up as Secretary General to the Israeli Knesset, as detracting from Sri Lankan Foreign Minister A.C.S. Hameed\u2019s repeated claim that Israel would \u201chelp to eradicate Tamil terrorists in the north of the country\u201d. As official historian of the Israeli Army, Lorch wrote in the Jerusalem Post in 1985, recording with satisfaction the prospect of re-establishing diplomatic relations with Sri Lanka as a broadening of Israel\u2019s diplomatic network. Lorch noted that from time to time, \u201cviolent outbursts in an otherwise tranquil country accentuated the inherent tensions. In 1958, pogroms were committed against Tamils – barely reported in the Western media, but on a scale and with a brutality which compare to the worst in the annals of the Jewish people.\u201d \u201cPogroms means genocide\u201d, de Silva added, saying that Lorch had written from what he had witnessed in Sri Lanka in 1958.<\/p>\n

de Silva also said, \u201cThe matter of Israeli aid to the Sri Lanka Government\u2019s \u2018suppression of the Tamils\u2019 was raised in the Knesset by Matityahu Peled on October 23, 1984. Prime Minister Shimon Peres answered the parliamentary question on January 22, 1985, denying any Israeli involvement.\u201d (Accord- ing to social scientist Beit – Hallahmi, \u201cAs of Au- gust 1984, there were reportedly up to six domestic intelligence experts from Israel working with the [Sri Lankan] Government to develop a new intelligence network against the Tamils.\u201d)<\/p>\n

About the book in question (i.e. Ostrovsky) he said: \u201c… despite Mossad and Shabak, the KMS and South Africa, and all the pompous pro-Israeli pundits of warfare and national security, we had become \u2018the Lebanon of Asia\u2019. Of course, Ostrovsky has been called a fiction writer by some witnesses straying into the field of literary criticism – an act of intellectual vagrancy. Your Lordship may wonder whether such persons should be charged for loitering.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat is why I say that the 1980s has been the decade of the arrogance of power and the march of folly\u201d, de Silva said, adding that it had led to a resurgence of Islam by such a policy, activating the country\u2019s third largest community, and irritating India.<\/p>\n

Mervyn de Silva summarised his testimony thus:<\/p>\n

(a) Israel has a militarised economy and society. The sale of arms and expertise is a money-spinning export industry.<\/p>\n

(b) That industry thrives on conflict, and the proliferation of conflict, not its resolution. Conflict today is in the Third World, and recently in the second.<\/p>\n

(c) In any case, the \u201cdream of Asia\u201d, \u201can eye on India\u201d is the main imperative in Israel\u2019s Asia policy. There is a \u201cvacuum\u201d between Israel and Burma. Sri Lanka, so close to India, could fill that vacuum. Matnai used the phrase \u201creturn to Asia\u201d.<\/p>\n

(d) Since the \u201cethnic conflict-cum-insurgency\u201d involves India, any intimate connection with that conflict gives access to Tamilnadu and India.<\/p>\n

(e) For this reason, Israel must try to infiltrate the Eelam movement.<\/p>\n

(f) If the US-UK, and the big powers could \u201ckeep off\u201d Sri Lanka because of India, why should the Israelis, especially when the intention seems to be to use them and dump them, get seriously entangled with the Sri Lankans?<\/p>\n

(g) If Israeli-Jewish opinion matters, and it does, the sentiment is on the side of the minority \u201cpersecuted\u201d Tamils, the victims of \u201cpogroms\u201d (Lorch, Beit-Hallahmi etc).<\/p>\n

(h) Long before the Westernised Sinhalese elite glorified Israel, it was the Tamil leadership and intelligentsia, from the days of the Federal Party to the Marxist-Trotskyist intellectual C. Karalasingham, who compared their fate to that of the persecuted Jew in search of an independent state in their traditional homeland.<\/p>\n

To be continued..<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

*From Rajan Hoole\u2018s \u201cSri Lanka: Arrogance of Power \u2013 Myth, Decadence and Murder<\/a><\/span>\u201d. Thanks to Rajan for giving us permission to republish. To read earlier parts click here<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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