Gaza conflict: Sarvajana Balaya’s response - II

Time the West backed off and allowed the unitary state of Sri Lanka to fulfill its own destiny based on ‘peace building’.

- BY ROHANA R. WASALA

It is also time to reflect that both Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus value, respect and venerate the lotus flower with its symbolism of purity of body, speech and mind, is it really too much to ask the religious leadership of both faiths to come together in the cause of a lasting peace. That would do more than anything to create a real paradise.

Lord Michael Naseby, former Conservative MP and pioneer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sri Lanka in the British parliament in his book ‘SRI LANKA: Paradise Lost Paradise Regained’, Unicorn, London, 2020

Israel isn’t a paragon of democracy. But Israel is a paragon of the struggle for democratic norms under near impossible circumstances. Israel is a laboratory for democracy under extremity, and that is its value for the world.

Yossi Klein Halevi, American-Israeli Journalist and author, (as quoted in ‘The Genius of Israel’ by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, book issued in August 2023)

Part I of this article ended with the sentence:

‘For the SB’s message of solidarity to be of any potential value for global peacemaking efforts in this conflict zone, its unequivocal denunciation of Israel should have been balanced by a similarly unambiguous condemnation of the horrific Hamas terrorism that provoked the massive Israeli military operations in Gaza that continue to this day.’