Former Sri Lankan Ambassador to Iran M. M. Zuhair yesterday (09) urged the government not to join US-led military alliance in Red Sea operation.

The former PA MP and Senior State Counsel issued the following statement: “Those in Sri Lanka holding accountable office but recklessly aiding the US moves to widen the Western supported wars in the Middle East, must read the 85 page Complaint of genocide that South Africa had filed in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) arising from the ongoing mass murder of civilian men, women and children of Palestine and the close upon total destruction of their homeland, recklessly bombed by the ‘holocaust victims’.

The Foreign Ministry must advice the SLPP controlled President to be strictly non-aligned and save Sri Lanka from getting trapped in Joe Biden’s wars in third world countries. South Africa is due to seek interim orders on Israel to forthwith implement ceasefire on all Palestinian fronts. There is nothing to prevent South Africa at some appropriate stage in the ICJ proceedings to move to add the US, Britain and other States for complicity in the violations of international humanitarian laws by aiding and abetting Israel in committing genocide in Palestine.

There is no need for Sri Lanka to get implicated for aiding the wrong side in this war. The 1968 to 1973 massive US massacres in Cambodia and the 18 year American war in Vietnam pale into insignificance compared to the unimaginable process resorted to by the Israeli State terror mafia in its murderous onslaughts, bombings and the collective punishment of Palestinian men, women and children in the 2023 massacres in Gaza.

To quote the Israeli Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, at whose request Sri Lanka had reportedly offered to provide 10,000 agricultural (or domestic) workers, “We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Naqaba”, quoting the Arabic word ‘Naqaba’ used to refer to the pre 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to create Israel. The Minister’s genocidal intent to wipe out Gaza is clear. Sri Lanka’s Foreign Employment Minister who has risked the lives of Sri Lankans by offering to send them to the Israeli war front, can also be considered by South Africa to be added to the ICJ list for aiding Israel in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

In this background, the Sri Lankan President’s offer to dispatch a Navy vessel to confront the Yemeni Houthis in the Red Sea is beyond any comprehension! The cost of the deployment of one Navy vessel is reportedly Rs 17.5 million every two weeks. This money can be used by the Foreign Employment Minister to prevent Sri Lankans being sent to the Israeli war zones. Sri Lanka can pay from the Rs 17.5 million (Rs 35 million per month) each of the 10,000 Sri Lankans Rs 105,000/= every month and save them from facing likely deaths in Israel and also the Navy Vessel and its personnel from getting destroyed by the Houthis! Whoever gave the President’s advisors the idea of blaming the Yemeni Houthis for Sri Lanka’s skyrocketing cost of living, thanks to the VAT, deserves a free ride to the Sun in India’s “Aditya-L 1” or ‘L 2’

Israel itself has reacted to the South African move in the ICJ by deciding that the destructive bombings in Hamas controlled Northern Palestine would be scaled down even as it’s over stacked ground campaigns continue to meet stiff resistance from Palestinians. Unlike in other UN related inquiries, Israel, a signatory to the Geneva Convention, will appear before the ICJ and attempt to put up a defence for the mass murder of “human animals” and the near total “destruction of Gaza” relegating it, into an uninhabitable part of the globe.

The US move to enlist other nations in the Israeli war on Palestine must be seen as a dangerous step to widen Israel’s war into a broader ME war. The correct option for Sri Lanka will be, to press the US to demand Israel end this senseless war, carried out under the pretext of countering last year’s globally condemned Hamas attacks of 7th October, in Israeli occupied Palestinian territories. Israel’s pre- 7th October desecration of the historical Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem has been comfortably forgotten! 75 years of oppression of the Palestinians by Israel have also been effectively buried under the sand by the world media!

South Africa’s move in the ICJ ought to succeed, if the ever growing Hamas is to be restrained from recourse to acquiring nuclear weapons to defend its only homeland, as Israel continues to obliterate even the two State solution, which was dangled only as a carrot for consumption by the world at large but never seriously offered. “