THE WAR IN GAZA continues to escalate, with over 40,000 killed, at least 100,000 injured, public infrastructure and homes decimated, and almost the whole of the territory’s 2.1 million people displaced. Those of us across the world who are horrified by Gaza’s plight continue to deliberate on how best we can organise and build solidarities to bolster the movement for a free Palestine. At the heart of this is the question of how we should mobilise across the political spectrum at this moment of crisis. 

For Sri Lankan Tamils – both in Sri Lanka and in the diaspora – it is natural to draw comparisons between the devastation in Gaza and the brutal end of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009. Back then, the Sri Lankan government rained down bombs – some of them procured from Israel – on Tamil-dominated areas that continued to hold out. A savage military assault killed over 40,000 Tamils in the space of some months, while the international community continued to provide arms to the Sri Lankan government and simultaneously issued vacuous statements urging restraint.