Israel and the undermining of pluralist Sri Lanka

Israel seems intent on keeping Sri Lanka as a plaint provider of manual labour and a willing recipient of unruly tourists (including possible war criminals)

“Let’s learn from Israel how to create a Sinhala-Buddhist state” – National Organiser, Sinhala Ravaya (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb3x0M7AgKw)

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

Angunugalle Sri Jinananda thero is yet to achieve the notoriety of a Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara or an Akmeemana Dayaratane. He deserves to. To him belongs the distinction of turning the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) from a law aimed at safeguarding individual rights to an instrument of persecution.

In February 2019, the monk wrote a letter to the IGP urging him to use the ICCPR to incarcerate a young Lankan (Sinhala-Buddhist) writer, Shakthika Sathkumara for penning a short story ‘defaming Buddhism’. Previously the same monk had lodged a complaint – unsuccessfully – against director Malaka Dewapriya and his radio drama series ‘Kanata Parak’. This time, the IGP paid heed. Sathkumara was summoned to the Polgahawela police on 1 April 2019, arrested, and held in the Kegalle prison for 130 days. No preliminary inquiry was carried out and the B Report just contained the complaint by the monk, the writer claimed.

Other arrests under the ICCPR followed, the most infamous being the incarceration of comedian Nathasha Edirisooriya for remarks considered “lese majesté” towards King Suddodana (father of Prince Siddhartha). Akmeemana Dayaratane thero of Sinhala Ravaya and other monks who lodged the complaint against Edirisooriya went so far as to demand that audience members who laughed at her ‘blasphemous’ jokes should also be arrested.

That particular spate of witch-hunting ended with the landmark bail order in Edirisooriya’s case by Colombo high court judge Aditya Patabendi. He pointed out the illegality of using Section 3 of the ICCPR Act against individuals for making statements considered hurtful to a racial or religious group. “Especially, just because a complaint is made by a Buddhist monk or another religious leader or an influential person in society, it is not the task of an investigator to arrest a person based on that alone,” he emphasised.

The monk who pioneered the abusive use of the ICCPR Act as an anti-blasphemy law now has a new cause – promoting Israel in Sri Lanka.

In the mid 2010’s, Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled Israel’s pivot to Asia policy. In 2018, Rabbi Ronny Arad of the Chabad-Lubavitch Movement came to Sri Lanka with the God-given mission of being a shilach (agent/messenger) in Arugam Bay and Hikkaduwa. Since then, Chabad Houses and pro-Israeli organisations have mushroomed. The Israel-Sri Lanka Solidarity Movement is one such organisation. It claims that Lankan-Israel ties go back 3,700 years (!) and wants to turn Sri Lanka into “a loyal supporter of Israel in International Fora.” And it is cultivating and deploying extremist Buddhist monks to promote this agenda.

Such as Angunugalle Sri Jinananda thero.

Addressing an October 2024 meeting organised by the Israeli-Sri Lanka Solidarity Movement, the thero hailed the ‘over-4000-year history of Lankan-Israeli diplomatic and trade ties’ and proclaimed Israel and Sri Lanka to be soul-mates (ekathmika). He asked the new Government of Anura Kumara Disanayake “to immediately open doors to Israel in Sri Lanka and to renew those ancient ties” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1or-lSbIzsU).

Senapathiye Ananda thero, the founder-head of the Sinhala Organisation of the North and the East, is another extremist monk allied to Israeli interests. A veteran of anti-Tamil and anti-Muslim campaigns, he held a media conference in 2024, under the self-explanatory banners of ‘Protect the Buddhist heritage of the East, No to Racism, Protect jobs in Israel’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYFUPxHXzzA).

The third and the most consequential entrant to this pro-Israeli scene is Sinhala Ravaya, a leading light of Lanka’s anti-minority wars, from Tamils to Muslims, via Christians.

Nexus of Extremisms

On 30 August, 2025, an entity called the Israel-Sri Lanka Friendship Development Organisation held a pro-Israel demonstration outside the UN compound in Colombo. A key promoter of this event was Sri Lanka Israel Friendship Collective, headed by the national organiser of Sinhala Ravaya, Madubhashana Prabath Ranahansa.

In a 2024 video, he showcased Israel as a model for Sinhala-Buddhist supremacists: “We must get together to create a Sinhala Buddhist state like Israel… We can build an exclusively Sinhala-Buddhist state where minorities can live freely like Israel which is a hundred percent Jewish state, a state for the Jewish people – where other religious live freely” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hYSXTeFgW8 – emphasis mine).

Adolf Hitler banned mixed marriages as part of the 1935 Reich Citizenship Act. In the state of Israel, mixed marriages are banned. Israel is, as Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem pointed out in 2022, an apartheid state. “The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it controls (Israel Sovereign Territory, East Jerusalem, West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organising principle lies at the base of a wide variety of Israeli laws: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians…” (https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid). 

Amnesty International came to the same conclusion in 2022, pointing out that Israel implements practices banned by Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute and treats Palestinians as ‘a demographic threat’: “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians across all areas is pursuant to the same objective: to privilege Jewish Israelis in distribution of land and resources, and to minimise the Palestinian presence and access to land… Israel authorities treat Palestinians as an inferior racial group…” (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/).

Israel is the probably the most successful example of ethno-religious state-building. It is the antithesis of pluralism and tolerance. Little wonder the likes of Sinhala Ravaya regard Israel – especially in its current genocidal phase – as a beacon.

In 2011, Sinhala Ravaya settled several Sinhala-Buddhist families in Navakkuli, Jaffna. A temple was built, supposedly for these families, using military labour. The name of the temple said it all – Sihalaramaya (Temple of the Sinhalese). Sinhala Ravaya literally fired the first shot in the anti-Muslim campaign of 2010’s. In 2011, long before the Rajapaksas settled on the Muslim Enemy, Sinhala Ravaya “demolished a mosque near the Dakshina Seya in Anuradhapura (housing) the ashes of King Dutugemunu…” (Sri Lanka Mirror – 13.9.2011). In June 2013, Sinhala Ravaya manhandled and ‘arrested’ a group of Christian missionaries, set fire to a meat stall in Tangalle, and began a march from Kataragama to Colombo, to protest against cattle-slaughter. In other words, this is an organisation which has a long history of not just verbal violence but also physical violence.

Given this history, the organisation’s alignment with Israeli interests is concerning. In a recent video, Sinhala Ravaya national organiser claims that all children killed in Gaza are child soldiers trained to attack Israel and raises the possibility of Muslim extremists training child soldiers in Sri Lanka. Such preposterous claims can well be justifications for future acts of anti-Muslim violence, especially in the run up to an election.

Especially in 2019, when the Muslim bogey, correctly packaged and delivered, could become a major vote-swinger.

In one of its official videos, Israeli-Sri Lanka Solidarity Movement tells the Lankan Government not to permit pro-Palestine demonstrations; doing so could endanger Lanka’s access to Israeli job and tourist markets, it warns. (The truth is that Israel is hard-pressed to find ‘safe’ workers for their labour-starved economy and ‘safe’ holiday destinations for their globally unpopular tourists).

In a telling twist, Sinhala Ravaya national organiser parrots the same fear-mongering in his own video. He claims that Israel intends to provide 100,000 jobs exclusively to Sinhalese. This will strengthen the ‘Sinhala economy’ and weaken the ‘Muslim trade dominance’, he argues. In his opinion, solidarity with Palestine is a conspiracy to destroy the Sinhala-Buddhist state because such solidarity might deprive Sri Lanka of Israeli jobs and Israeli tourists. “If that happens, the Sinhala-Buddhist people of this country will begin giving a…strong answer to the government and Muslim extremists. Don’t push Sinhala-Buddhists in this country into the position of giving that strong answer… If that happens, we too will…give answers. That answer might be more serious than the answer given after being patient for 30 years” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gHaiYXCtbk).

These words are an implicit threat of violence against Lankan Muslims and perhaps even the NPP/JVP Government. Given the back history of Sinhala Ravaya in inciting anti-minority violence, it is a threat that needs to be taken seriously.

Destabilisation?

On 29 August 2025, two Israeli tourists attacked a well-known Lankan hotelier and his female companion in Arugam Bay. The attack, according to multiple eyewitness accounts, was unprovoked. And contrary to the claims of Israeli apologists, the hotelier is not a Muslim, but a Sinhalese. The two Israelis have been arrested and bailed out on Saturday. They are to appear before the magistrate this week, for a hearing. Whether the Government allows the law to take its course or intervenes to help the Israeli tourists escape justice remains to be seen.

Long before the genocide in Gaza began, Israeli tourists achieved global infamy for their rudeness. In 2022, they were ranked 5th among the worst tourists globally. In a piece tellingly headlined ‘The Ugly Israeli: Are Israel’s tourists the worst in the world’, Israeli web-paper Y-Net wrote, “Some hotels have an unofficial policy of refusing young Israeli tourists” (9.11.22). Israeli tourists have been involved in “setting forest fires, camping in illegal areas, photographing themselves naked at sacred sites, and staging an orgy in an archaeological park,” according to ‘The Jewish Independent’ of September 2022. (Was the Lankan Government aware of this appalling track record when it decided to waive visa fees for Israeli tourists?)

The ongoing genocide has made matters worse. “The most despicable pleasure of genocide is obviously in its blood-thirsty execution,” Lankan academic Prabhath Sirisena writes in his recent FT guest column (‘Perverse pleasures of genocide’ – 28.8.2025). Such executioners form a large swathe – perhaps even the majority – of the Israeli tourists pouring into Sri Lanka. Given the racial undertones of the Gaza genocide, these soldiers would regard brown-skinned unbeliever natives (be they Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Buddhist or Christian) as inferior beings and fair game. Gaza has accustomed them to cold-blooded murder and absolute impunity. Why should they behave any differently in Sri Lanka, if the natives fail to ‘keep to their place’?

The recent incident in Arugam Bay became known and the assailants were arrested only because the victim was a well-known local and, perhaps also, a Sinhalese. The economically poor Muslims in the area probably have no choice but to endure humiliation and even violence at the hands of Israeli tourists for fear of being labelled terrorist by their own Government and even arrested under the PTA.

It is into this combustive situation that Sinhala-Buddhist extremist elements – led by Sinhala Ravaya – have entered as promoters and protectors of Israeli interests, including the right of Israeli tourists to break laws and norms with impunity.

Organisations like the Israel-Sri Lanka Solidarity Movement parades Israel as a development miracle and argue that aligning with it would enable Sri Lanka also to achieve prosperity in short order. Of course, Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign aid (over $ 3 billion in military assistance alone annually) and is likely to suffer slow-motion collapse if this largesse is withheld or even reduced. But such nuances are unknown to its Sri Lankan fan club (Some of them even believe that the US instigated the Hamas to carry out the 7 October attack to prevent Israel from overtaking American technologically!).

Some Sinhala-Buddhist extremists might be genuine dupes, naively seeing in Israel a panacea for all Lanka’s problems. Others (like Sinhala Ravaya) would regard any alliance with Israel in an opportunistic light. They are going through lean times politically and organisationally. A patron with a large wallet, impressive connections, and total amorality would be just what they need.

Israel seems intent on keeping Sri Lanka as a plaint provider of manual labour and a willing recipient of unruly tourists (including possible war criminals). Its political/religious agents here are cultivating Sinhala-Buddhist extremists, either to force the current Government to toe the line more or to ensure that it is succeeded by a far friendlier regime.

Sinhala-Buddhist extremists want the current Government to be replaced by one which is non-pluralist and majoritarian – Gotabaya Rajapaksa without Ali Sabry.

To achieve their common and different aims, Israel and Sinhala-Buddhist extremists need to build up the Muslim Enemy. The process of doing so would strengthen the extremists within the Muslim community. Political destabilisation will be followed by violence. It was what happened from in the run up to 2019. If the Government doesn’t take notice, 2029 could see a repeat performance.