By Tisaranee Gunasekara

“We seek to make Sri Lanka a loyal supporter of Israel in International Fora. We also champion the cause of recognizing the inalienable right of Israel and the Jewish people to her Ancient Indivisible Capital of Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.” -Israel Sri Lanka Solidarity Movement

Place: Egypt. Time: Summer of 1954. Targets: British and American civilian assets. Perpetrators: Islamists, Communists or Nationalists.

On July 2, action began. Over the next several days, targets in Cairo and Alexandria were bombed, including the libraries of the American Information Centre and a British owned theatre. None of the bombers were Islamists, Communists or Nationalists. They were Israeli intelligence agents and a handful of Egyptian Jews. The plan was hatched in Israel by the head of Aman, Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, with the blessings of Defence Minister Pinhas Lavon. Named Operation Susannah (after an Old Testament character), it entered history under another name: Lavon affair. Its purpose was to prevent Egypt from gaining control of Suez Canal by persuading the British not to cede control and the Americans to back Britain’s continued colonizing. The bombing was supposed to “make it clear to the whole world that Egypt’s new rulers were nothing but a group of foolhardy extremists, unreliable and unworthy of taking charge of an asset as important as the Suez Canal”.

When the real perpetrators were caught and the whole affair blew up, Israel did what it does whenever it’s caught breaking laws and norms: denied (like when the Israeli Defence Forces or IDF bombed the last standing Catholic church in Gaza this week). It didn’t work. Defence minister Lavon was forced to resign, probably to assuage American and British anger at being made fools by their supposed ally. Israel accepted the truth only in 2005 when the country’s president presented certificates of appreciation to surviving agents of the Lavon affair.

False flag operations are not uncommon. Israeli ones are in a class of their own because of their propensity to betray allies and patrons including the US. For example, in 2007 and 2008 Mossad operatives met up with members of an anti-Iranian and hardline Sunni-Salafi armed group called Jundallah based in Balochistan, an organization on the US’ terrorism list. Using US passports and pretending to be CIA officials, Mossad operatives recruited Jundallah members to carry out terrorist operations within and outside Iran. According to an expose in the Foreign Policy magazine, US officials were ‘stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad’s efforts.’ An American intelligence official interviewed on the matter said, “It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with… Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought”.

None of this should interest us Sri Lankans except at a purely academic level had it not been for the rapid growth of Israel’s footprint Sri Lanka.

With the genocide in Gaza, Israel’s soldier-tourists face the threat of being arrested abroad for war crimes or simply being unwelcome by people appalled at the sight of murdered babies. The arrogant conduct of some Israeli tourists have created non-political backlashes even in famously tolerant countries like Thailand.

Many IDF tourists behave with the same sense of entitlement in Sri Lanka as even an Israeli-made film The Wave admits in its introduction: “In Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka. It is often said that Israel surfers feel entitled to every wave.” Either because they’re 18 years old and they’ll most likely get killed in the military service or because they’re 22 years old and they’ve managed to survive it. Yet, Sri Lanka remains a safe Rest and Recuperation (R&R) space for IDF soldiers on leave. Sri Lanka is also a key supplier of cheap and safe labour, especially in agricultural and care giving sectors in Israel, jobs considered too lowly and low paying by Israelis.

And as the world turns increasingly hostile, Israel is likely to do whatever necessary to keep a toehold on the dwindling number of safe international spaces just as it did whatever necessary to try to keep the Suez Canal in colonial hands.

In Sri Lanka this could mean tapping into already existing fault lines such as the Sinhala-Buddhist supremacist tendency to see an enemy in every Tamil, Christian or Muslim.

Divide and expand

Charles Sarvan was born a citizen of Ceylon and died a citizen of Germany, a transformation driven by his ethnicity – Tamil. As a Sinhala speaker and as a socialist who thought in terms of class rather than race or religion, he fitted naturally into the predominantly Sinhala milieu of school and university. But as he once wrote, his mother had warned him not to discuss religion or politics with friends who belonged to a different community. Still, he didn’t really understand what his Tamilness meant until he found himself menaced by a monk-led mob during the 1958 riots.

His experience of shock, fear, disenchantment and alienation was and remains a common one for most Sri Lankan minorities. Anything can turn you into an enemy anytime.

Take the case of Muslims. Think of the ease with which Gangodawila Soma Thera convinced middle and upper echelons of Sinhala-Buddhist society (including professionals) that Muslims were a greater threat to Sinhalese than even the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). This was in late 1990s when the Second Eelam War was raging. Champaka Ranawaka joined the anti-Muslim bandwagon by claiming that Muslims were trying to carve out a separate state in the Eastern province called Nasiristan. This campaign of fear mongering led to the first post-independent outburst of anti-Muslim violence in Mawanella in 2001.

That round of anti-Muslim hysteria died when Soma Thera lost the famous TV debate to M.H.M. Ashraff, leader of Sri Lanka Muslims Congress. Soma Thera then moved on to Christian phobia and Muslim Enemy was forgotten.

The first sign of the resurgence of the Muslim Enemy came in 2011 when a mob demolished a small mosque in Anuradhapura. The Rajapaksa administration, still flirting alternately with Tamil Enemy and Christian Enemy, decried that attack. When the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) held its first public convention in 2012, none of its five demands were aimed at Muslims exclusively.

By early February 2013, the situation changed. Sans warning, sans inciting incidents or reasons, Muslim Enemy became the problem for the Rajapaksa regime and the BBS.

This history needs to be remembered when considering Israel’s growing footprint and Chabad-Lubavitch Movement’s increasing interest in Sri Lanka.

In 2024, just weeks before the parliamentary election, the US warned of a terrorist plot to target Israeli tourists in Arugam Bay. As a recent essay in Polity, the official publication of Social Scientists Association points out, “Within a few hours, the vague prognostications of a possible attack was transformed into a discourse about incipient terrorism and protecting Israeli tourism from its reach. A shrewd observer will note how in this formulation, it is implied, by some sleight of hand or logic, that these terrorists would be Muslim”. This, incidentally, was without the Anura Kumara Dissanayake administration playing the Muslim card as a Rajapaksa administration would have done.

Thanks to that still mysterious incident, a new narrative has been created, “of a benevolent state protecting Israeli tourists from Muslim terror”. That narrative would lead to some previously unimagined (and worryingly anti-democratic) outcomes such as the detention under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) of two Sri Lankan Muslim citizens for the “terrorist crime” of being critical of Israel. Another consequence of this narrative could be the government turning a blind eye to mushrooming of Chabad Houses and even to alleged drug dealing by some Israeli tourists. On July 3, 2025 journalist Kelum Bandara wrote that some Israeli tourists “are involved in peddling various types of narcotics in their unauthorized business centres set up in certain pockets of the Eastern Province, posing a threat to public security according to reports shared with tourism authorities”.

Ongoing developments in Cyprus provide us with a warning. “Concerns have grown in Cyprus over an increasing wave of immigration by Israeli settlers to the island-country, where they are buying real estate and settling in strategic areas… Cypriot analysts warned that continued real estate purchases by Israelis could pose a threat to Cyprus’s sovereignty…”. “The second Israel? Israelis are streaming into Cyprus to buy anything in sight,” wrote Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2023 before the genocide in Gaza began. The war exacerbated the situation. “Zionist schools are being built,” warned the general secretary of the main opposition party, the left wing AKEL; “synagogues are being built… If you go to Larnaca or Limassol, people there will tell you about specific areas where this is happening but the authorities are ignoring it” (Cyprus Mail, 24.6.2025).

The Sri Lankan situation is more dangerous than Cyprus due to pre-existing ethno-religious fault lines. Already, the likes of Udaya Gammanpila are championing Israel’s cause here. There is an Israel-Sri Lanka Solidarity Movement that aims to make Sri Lanka support Israel’s “right” to annex the Occupied Territories of West Bank and Gaza. “The pressure we are gradually building up for a strong advocacy campaign and productive engagement for the cause of Israel is spreading through schools, universities, public and private sectors, civil societies (sic), Buddhist temples, Christian churches, Hindu kovils, academics, thought leaders and media networks”. Note the absent religious institution – mosque – and the means by which Sri Lanka would be turned into an Israel lackey should be clearer.

Monkeys to cannon fodder

Neither Victor Ostrovsky nor his first book, By Way of Deception, needs special introductions. Much has been said about how the Israelis trained both Sri Lankan soldiers and LTTE fighters at the same time at the Kfar Sirkin base, “The Sinhalese were taught how to deal with the very techniques the Israelis had just taught the Tamils.”

What is of greater relevance today is the casual racism of Mossad operatives, their good-natured contempt towards a people they consider “uncivilized”.

“Amy (Yaar – Mossad operative) was waiting for the Sri Lankan flight from London when I joined him. ‘When these guys arrive,’ he said, ‘don’t make a face, don’t do anything… these guys are monkey like. They come from a place that is not developed. They are not long out of the trees. So don’t expect much.’”

Ostrovsky’s first task was to take Penny Jayewardene, President J.R. Jayewardene’s daughter-in-law, around. Afterwards he accompanied several high-ranking Sri Lankan military officers to Alta, a radar equipment manufacturer. “But when he saw their specifications, the Alta representative said, ‘They are just going through the motions. They’re not going to buy our radar… These specs were written by a British radar manufacturer called Deca, so these guys already know what they are going to buy. Give them a banana and send them home…’”

Rank racism, “the belief that some people/groups have less dignity and worth than others…” As Rev. Munther Issac, pastor of the Lutheran church in Bethlehem says, (contrary to Israeli propaganda, not all Palestinians are Muslims. Some are Christian, Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians).

Recently, the BBC reported of a Russian cemetery with 30 Lankan graves; Sinhalese lured by the promise of fat salaries into becoming cannon fodder in Russia-Ukraine war.

Currently, the Israel army is facing a severe manpower crisis. Over 100,000 Israeli reservists have refused to serve in the IDF, some going to jail rather than participate in the genocide in Gaza. Reservist attendance has dropped to around 50%; Ishai Menuchin, a leader of the refusal movement There is a Limit, calls this the biggest wave of refusals since the Lebanon war of 1982. According to a Times of Israel report on July 15, IDF commanders are using WhatsApp to recruit soldiers due to war weariness. High PTSD levels have led to an unprecedented spate of suicides among soldiers. Sometimes, hungry children being mowed down can get to you. If ever Israel needs mercenaries on the cheap, they know where to look.

Sri Lanka has enough geo-political headaches; India and China are fates we cannot escape. Israel is an unnecessary complication, a problem of our own creation. There is still time to disentangle ourselves from Israel’s toxic web. If we fail, a new round ethno-religious strife might be our unavoidable future. And for the Rajapaksas, the resurgence of Muslim Enemy will be an unmixed blessing, a straight path to power.

-This article was originally featured on groundviews.org