By Tisaranee Gunasekara.
Last December, a group of ultra-religious Israeli soldiers turned a Palestinian home in the Gaza city of Beit Hanoun into a Chabad House.
The structure at the centre of the Arugam Bay terror scare is also a Chabad House.
Chabad House is not a synonym for synagogue. It is a religious space belonging to a particular Jewish sect, the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Movement. Founded in the 18th Century among more conservative and non-assimilated Eastern European Jews, this Orthodox Jewish movement is spreading fast across the globe currently. The problem with this expansion is not the Movement’s religion, but its politics.
Almost a millennia old, Beit Hanoun was home to nearly 20,000 Palestinians before Israel’s war on Gaza began. Today it is a mere shell, its Palestinian population either dead or struggling to hold on to life in makeshift camps. The Israeli soldiers who set up a Chabad House in a Palestinian home obviously see it as the precursor of many such religious spaces in an occupied and annexed Gaza. The Chabad-Lubavitch Movement is totally opposed to Palestinian statehood. It wants Israel to become a Jewish state occupying all Biblical lands (which include not just Gaza and the West Bank but also Jordan and parts of Syria and Turkey). Think of an Israeli Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) on steroids. Lots of steroids.
And successive Lankan governments permitted this extremist Jewish movement to establish an outpost in Muslim-majority Arugam Bay!
The setting up of the ‘first Chabad-House in Gaza,’ while ignored by mainstream media, went viral on social media. Dr. Andreas Krieg of the School of Security Studies at King’s College, London, reacting to a post on X celebrating this encroachment, warned that it “potentially puts 1000s of Jewish Chabad Houses in the world at risk…” (https://x.com/andreas_krieg/status/1732673779548004525). Like, possibly, in Arugam Bay.
Welcoming Israeli tourists is not the same as allowing members of a right-wing Jewish sect opposed to Palestinian statehood and indifferent to Palestinian suffering to set up religious places and buy land (through proxies) in Sri Lanka. The first is the civilised thing to do and economically helpful. The second is morally wrong and politically suicidal, especially now, when direct Palestinian death toll in Gaza is has surpassed 42,000 and the Netanyahu government is steadily widening the theatre of war to Lebanon, Iran, and possibly, beyond.
Banning all Israeli tourists would be anti-Semitic and wrong. But the Chabad-Lubavitch Movement should not be allowed to spread its tentacles in Sri Lanka. While all Israeli tourists should be welcomed – and protected, when necessary – the Chabad House should be closed down and long-term visas denied to members of the Movement.
How would Israel react if a group of Sinhala tourists wrangle long term visas and set up a Buddhist temple in, say, Haifa?
As the Arugam Bay terror drama was unfolding, media reports mentioned a ‘demonstration by locals’ in support of Israeli tourists. The participants carried Israeli flags, and had the look of the kind of demonstrators the Rajapaksas used to conjure up against various enemies. (Wonder where those flags came from, since it beggars belief that Arugam Bay locals have a large supply of Israeli flags). The demonstration indicates that attempts are already being made to politicise this issue. What would happen if, for instance, the Chabad-Lubavitch Movement members build tactical alliances with anti-Muslim Sinhala and Tamils politicians in the East? How would such a development impact on the fraught ethno-religious relations in that province?
According to a 2023 report by the Brown University, America’s Global War on Terror has cost at least 4 million civilian deaths since 2002, virtually all of them in the Global South. Do we want to become the latest outpost of this madness?
Tourists commemorating their war-dead in a faraway country? Does that make sense? Imagine Lankan tourists in Israel putting up noticeboards lionising their war-heroes.
The BBC report mentions a mysterious Israeli who has been staying in Arugam Bay for the last three years. He refused to be interviewed or to reveal his identity. This individual has been provided with special security consisting of two members of the MSD, two army soldiers, several members of the police, and civil defence force, the BBC notes. Why so much security for a non-national, a tourist with an extended visa? If this is our idea of tourism, it is going to become as much of a dead-weight as many a state-owned enterprise.
When questioned, Minister Vijitha Herath said he had no information about such a special security arrangement. The police spokesman parroted him. If so, who authorised these extraordinary security measures involving multiple agencies such as the MSD, the military, and the police? Incidentally, is Minister Herath aware of the identity of this Israeli, who is being VIP-protected at tax-payers’ expense? Is this mysterious individual a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Movement? Was he responsible for the setting up of the Chabad House? Did he organise that pro-Israeli demonstration or, at least, provide the Israeli flags?
Americans, who first issued the advisory warning, would be aware of the identity and purpose of this mysterious Israeli, not to mention the Chabad-Lubavitch Movement’s inexplicable footprint in Arugam Bay. Have they shared that knowledge with the Lankan authorities? Maybe; maybe not. After all, America’s much vaunted rules and principles have one exception. Israel. In the eyes of the American establishment, Israel can do no wrong. Not even when it was blatantly violating the basic rights of a credentialed American journalist.
Excerpts from a longer article with the caption Chabad House in Arugam Bay: Bringing Gaza home? published in The Daily FT