A Case Study In Parallels

The Tamil population of Sri Lanka has long hoped for and agitated for a sovereign state of their own. Long persecuted by the majority Sinhalese population of the country, they have chafed under a rule and a religion that is not their own, that has no intention of defending their rights, and that views them as second-class citizens. Their discriminated-against authenticity led to the rise of a violence-prone 'liberation' group, the Tamil Tigers.

And most Tamils were in support of the activities of the Tamil Tigers, viewing them as their potential liberators from Sinhalese rule, leading to a potential state of their own. There were, in fact, legitimate, legal and diplomatically-political Tamil leaders who sought to persuade the government of Sri Lanka, over time, that the needs of Tamils should no longer be overlooked. And who had it in their long-range plans to steadily work toward sovereignty.

The Tamil Tigers brutally murdered them, just as they murdered thousands of Sri Lankan Sinhalese in their violent and determined march toward the creation of a separate state for Tamils. Yet most Tamils still viewed the Tigers as their champions, regardless of the terrorists' use of suicide bombers, of their unregenerate dedication to blood-letting, and despite their extortionate protocol of demanding financial support from Tamils.

In the end, the government of Sri Lanka, through a long-drawn-out war of attrition punctuated by various truces, broken one after the other by the resurgent Tigers, decided it was now or never, they would enter 'Tiger territory' and battle the insurgents to insensibility. In the process of which, the Sri Lankan government and its army sacrificed tens of thousands of Tamil Sri-Lankan civilian lives.

The Tigers themselves used the Tamil civilians as living shields, and took their adolescent children to train them as fighters, wreaking their own version of havoc, hardship and fear among those whom they claimed to represent. Hundreds of thousands of Tamils were trapped in the conflict zone, and 20,000 died in bombed bunkers and open spaces which the army claimed would be protected.

The Tamil Tigers were finally defeated, their leader killed, the rag-tag remnant displaced in total disarray. The government of Sri Lanka maintains "welfare villages" for the displaced Tamil civilians where inadequate food and medical help for the severely wounded prevails, and the onset of disease claims hundreds of victims daily from among the refugees.

The UN Human Rights Council exonerated the government of Sri Lanka from any excesses or perceived wrong-doing, and in fact praised the government for its success in finally routing the Tamil Tigers.

In the Middle East, Palestinian interests are represented by two disparate and mutually antagonistic groups; the secular-based PLO through Fatah, and the Islamist group Hamas. Each is dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel which was established on lands formerly claimed by the Palestinians through a UN-mandated partition; one portion of the land to Jews the others to Arabs. The establishment of a Jewish state on formerly Arab land viewed as vile anathema in Muslim societies.

Fatah, who has long represented the interests of the Palestinians, has earned a reputation for unscrupulous self-availment, its leaders becoming wealthy by siphoning off funding given by the international community for the sustaining of Palestinians and infrastructure-building in the support of a civil society. In suing for what they claim to be rightfully theirs, Fatah, its member-militias, and Hamas, latterly political, have all wrought huge damage to Israeli infrastructure, and conducted bloody carnage through attacks on its citizenry.

Violent, aggressive acts of mass murder, corruption, political one-upsmanship have marked the legendary actions of the leaders of the Palestinians and their militias dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the concomitant recapturing of all the territory that they insist must be returned to Palestinians. Truces have been announced, a protective wall has been built around Israel, the Gaza strip has been abandoned, but nothing has availed toward peace.

One peace treaty after another has been launched under the auspices of interested Western sources, and one after the other has failed. Israel has been compelled to agree to many difficult concessions, and the Palestinians appear to accept these concessions and promise some of their own, most notably a cessation of violence and the instigation of further violence, during the course of which peace talks collapse.

In response to ongoing rocket attacks from Gaza across the border into Israeli communities year after year without cease, and the additional provocations of the seizing of members of Israel's military, the attempts to abduct even more, the IDF is finally given orders by the government to invade Gaza to route the Hamas terrorists who have been threatening even greater incursions and rocket attacks.

During the course of which counter-attack, one thousand Palestinians are said to have been killed. Israel claims that a large percentage of that number represents Hamas militias. Those very militias who also used Gazan Palestinians as living shields, who thought nothing of firing off missiles from among crowded urban populations, and who placed weapons depots in schools, mosques and villages.

The United Nations has now launched an enquiry into the Gaza conflict. The UN Human Rights Council initially tabled a resolution finding Israel guilty of "massive violations" of human rights. It is now in the process of conducting an investigation whose purpose is to prove its unequivocal denunciation of Israel as a human-rights violator.

Powerful enmities selectively chosen and launched in a massive display of breathtaking hypocrisy.