Palestinians wait in a queue to receive bread outside a bakery in Khan Yunis on the southern Gaza Strip amid bombardment by Israel.

(PIC BY BASHAR TALEB/AFP)

Sri Lanka should stop issuing tourism visas to Israelis, especially armed forces members, until a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. This is the view of Sri Lanka’s progressives, who yearn for a just and fair solution to the Palestinian crisis that erupted in the mid19th century with the quest by European Zionists with dubious Semitic roots to create a Jewish state.

The recent security threat to which the country awoke no sooner than the United States embassy issued a tourism-killing alert, advising Americans to avoid Arugam Bay—surfers’ paradise—on the east coast is a hot topic these days—hotter than the political heat over the November 14 parliamentary elections.

The progressives see the best way to manage the present security crisis is not to permit Israeli tourists, especially its armed forces members, to visit Sri Lanka.

The proposal may sound preposterous and even unpatriotic, given the importance of every dollar earned from tourism for the economic recovery. But it is still worth the sacrifice, for it will make Sri Lanka a much safer destination for tourists from other countries.

Morally, too, Sri Lanka has a responsibility to deny members of the Israeli Defence Force—the Israeli Occupation Force— visas to visit Sri Lanka. The neighbouring Maldives has banned all Israelis from visiting the Indian Ocean archipelago. One may say the Maldives did so because it is a Muslim country. Morality does not belong to one religion. It is universal and the core that makes humanism humane. South Africa, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Belize, and Nicaragua severed relations with Israel in protest against the Gaza genocide. Any progressive government worth its salt will not and should not hesitate to take morally correct political action.Losing 20,000 Israeli tourists will not make a major dent in the industry. With a stimulus in marketing, the country can attract tourists from other countries, including West Asia and North Africa.

Moreover, allowing the Israeli Defence Forces members to use Sri Lanka’s beaches and tourism facilities for recreation and the mental reset necessary for them to go back and continue their genocide in Palestine certainly makes Sri Lanka complicit in Israel’s crime of crimes in Palestine and Lebanon. The progressives, most of whom identify with the socialist and anti-imperialist policies of the ruling National People’s Power, believe Zionism is a dangerous ideology that does not end with the conquest of Palestine and neighbouring countries. It also aims to dominate the world and rule the Goyyim, a pejorative term for non-Jews. They call themselves the chosen people and quote the scripture to justify genocide. But little do they realise that they have long lost the right to be ‘chosen people’. The chosen are not those who mercilessly kill children, women, and the elderly and use starvation as a weapon of war, but those who have compassion for human beings, irrespective of their creed, caste, class, or other parochial identities.

Just as terrorism is condemned and deplored, Zionism should also be. Going viral these days on social media is a video clip that shows an IDF member on vacation in a Western capital violently intimidating UNICEF volunteers collecting funds for Gaza children. “Say Palestine one more time, I will kill you,” he shouts at them. Some say IDF members who come to Sri Lanka for recreation to overcome their war stress are as arrogant and contemptuous of the locals as the IDF soldier seen in the video clip was.

This is why the progressives urge the government to apply the law strictly to any tourist who violates Sri Lanka’s laws, especially visa regulations, and behaves in such a way as to hurt the feelings of local people.

The Israelis are the biggest culprits. They represent a state that this week passed legislation to outlaw the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, which for the past seven decades has been taking care of the Palestinian refugees’ food, shelter, and educational needs. These tourists represent a state that is implementing the so-called Generals’ Plan to cleanse the Northern Gaza of Palestinians while making the rest of Gaza a living hell for people who, if they are not killed by Israeli bombs and missiles, will die of starvation and disease.

Some of these tourists, including IDF war criminals, can be Mossad agents with plans to destabilise the country. In many terror attacks around the world, Mossad is the hidden hand. The terror group ISIS is believed to be a Mossad laboratory product. The so-called Islamic terrorism was engineered by Mossad and the term was popularised by Benjamin Netanyahu or Bibi the psychopathic baby killer. The Mossad is accused of carrying out attacks on Israeli targets and putting the blame on Iran or a Palestinian group.

In interviews and lectures, whistleblower and ex-British spy Annie Machon says the MI5 (the domestic arm of British intelligence) had evidence that Mossad carried out the bombing of its own embassy in London in 1994. She says it was done to undermine the free Palestine cause and the favourable press it was receiving in Britain. Mossad did achieve its objectives, she says. Two innocent Palestinian youths were arrested and sentenced for a crime they did not commit. There are also theories about Mossad’s role in the 9/11 terror attacks. Perhaps the Arugam Bay security alert could be a Mossad plot to portray Sri Lanka’s Muslims as terrorists and implicate Israel’s adversaries, such as Iran, in the plot. Iran’s ambassador to Sri Lanka, Alireza Delkhosh, categorically denies that Iranians were involved in any plan to launch an attack on Israeli targets in Sri Lanka. He said he met President Anura Kumara Dissanayake a few days ago, but no question on any Iranian link was raised. The embassy has also not received any official correspondence in this regard.

It is said that Israeli tourists buy properties here through proxies at several times the market price. This was how the land grab began in Palestine in the early 20th century. The Zionist Jews from Europe arrived in their thousands and bought land from credulous Palestinian peasants, paying them more than the market price. It was only in the 1930s that Palestinian leaders realised the danger behind the land-buying exercise. It had increased the Jewish population from a mere 4 percent at the turn of the 20th century to 30 percent.

Sri Lanka’s progressives also raise alarm over the Jewish places of worship in Colombo and other coastal towns. They ask whether these centres were set up in keeping with the domestic laws. The authorities must answer. Freedom of religion is a universally recognised human right. But if tourists are allowed to set up centres of worship in Sri Lanka with no questions asked, it may encourage even Satanists and cultists preaching collective suicides—like the 1978 Jonestown Massacre by the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones—and immorality to set up bases here.

Given the wheels-within-wheels nature of the security alert, the new government needs to be extra alert over the schemes of some geopolitical powers and their intelligence arms and adopt a strategy that combines prudence with a good measure of cynicism.