“Fundamentally Freund: Defeating terrorists: From Sri Lanka to Gaza” by Michael Freund

Michael Freund, a former official in Bibi’s government, argues for the application of the “Sri Lankan model” of counter-insurgency in Palestine. Whether to laugh or cry?

via: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Fundamentally-Freund-Defeating-terrorists-From-Sri-Lanka-to-Gaza-371428

“From jungle to urban labratories” by Sinthujan Varatharajah

“While watching Al Jazeera English’s coverage of the bombings in Shujaiya, Gaza, together with my father, we saw tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. My father had tears in his eyes at the sight of an older Palestinian father who was evidently in shock, unable to walk, and in need of being carried by his son in order to flee from Israeli bombs. “They are like us”, my father said. It’s the same bombs and jets, I replied.
The military-industrial complex is international, transnational and multilateral. It connects oppressed peoples all over the world through arms trade, military co-operations, and engineered forms of violence that are replicated all over the globe, as well as informed by each other. These aren’t isolated and discrete events, which fail to carry global repercussions. The bombs dropped upon Tamil people five years ago were carried by jets and pilots trained by the very army that occupies and oppresses the Palestinian people. While Sri Lanka rendered the villages and jungles of the Vanni into a military laboratory, Gaza has similarly become a global testing zone for urban mass-violence and the legal impunity of Israel. Indeed, Gaza and the Vanni lie politically and militarily much closer together than one would suppose, much closer than geography would allow.”

via: http://diasporaland.tumblr.com/post/93223988627/from-jungle-to-urban-labratories