International Crisis Group stands by flimsy anti-Israel evidence
28 May 2010
On Monday 17 May The Guardian published ‘Sri Lanka faces new calls for Tamil inquiry’, an analysis piece by Simon Tisdall. He described how Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group, had given a talk about the aftermath of the recent Sri Lankan civil war in the midst of which she noted that, given the manner in which the Sri Lankan government had managed to overwhelmingly repress an insurgency via the use of force, without due consideration of either human rights laws or international condemnation, several other countries had considered adopting a similar approach to their own conflicts with insurgents.
These countries were listed as Israel, Myanmar, Thailand, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Colombia and the Philippines. This same list of countries appears in a recent ICG report, ‘War crimes in Sri Lanka’, which describes them as considering ‘the Sri Lanka option’: ‘a tough military response, a refusal to countenance a political solution, the dismissal of international concerns and a willingness to kill large numbers of civilians’.
As documented in Just Journalism’s ‘Guardian relies on NGO report claim with US graduate student as sole source’, the only cited evidence for the claim that Israel was considering ‘the Sri Lanka option’ was an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post by an American graduate student with no known ties to the Israeli government. When queried by Just Journalism as to how a single opinion piece by a non-Israeli could constitute proof that Israel was indeed weighing up ‘the Sri Lanka option’, ICG responded:
‘Our report does not suggest the Israeli government has adopted or is considering "the Sri Lanka option" as a matter of policy. Our report simply lists countries in which "the Sri Lanka option" "has been discussed as an answer to insurgencies and violent groups". At issue is the public debate in those countries, not government policy. The fact that an opinion piece in support of "the Sri Lanka option" was published in one of Israel's most distinguished and widely read newspapers is enough to substantiate this point in that case.’
This response shows that the ICG does not consider its usage of a single opinion piece to characterise the level of public debate in Israel to be a misrepresentation. Nor does it accept that by including Israel in a list of countries that have considered ‘the Sri Lanka option’, a casual reader might be left with the impression that the Israeli government had seriously considered using overwhelming military force irrespective of international concerns in order to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians.
By this logic, U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul’s recent comment on MSNBC that he would have opposed certain elements of the 1964 Civil Rights Act implies that the United States is considering repealing or amending that landmark piece of legislation.