Sri Lankan civilian deaths: Who cares?

The world’s double standard on Israel is in sharp relief today.

The Red Cross reports that hundreds of civilians have been killed and wounded, and over 250,000 civilians are trapped in the fighting. Aid workers have been hurt as well.

An estimated 250,000 people are trapped in a 250 square-kilometre area which has come under intense fighting. They have no safe area to take shelter and are unable to flee.

Does that sound a little bit familiar to anyone who followed the Gaza war?

So you would expect cries of outrage from the international community, right? The EU, the UN, all of the people who protested the Gaza war—they’re all on the case, as it’s defenseless civilians being murdered by an army with superior weaponry using disproportional force, right?

The AP put out an article, but strangely, it hasn’t been picked up by all the major news outlets. Definitely not by the thousands that pick up every story on Israel when it fights back against Palestinian terror.

At least 300 civilians were wounded and scores feared killed by Sri Lankan army artillery shells fired into a designated “safe zone” for ethnic Tamils trapped by fighting between the military and Tamil rebels, a health official alleged Tuesday.

The shelling comes as the rebels continue to fall back, pulling their forces and civilians into the last remaining areas of dense jungle still under their control and leaving behind ghost towns.

TamilNet, a pro-rebel Web site, said more than 300 civilians were killed by the shelling on Monday. The military denied firing into the zone.

The Red Cross said Tuesday that “hundreds” of people have been killed in Sri Lanka’s northern Vanni region.

“People are being caught in the crossfire, hospitals and ambulances have been hit by shelling and several aid workers have been injured while evacuating the wounded,” said Jacques de Maio, the International Committee of the Red Cross’ head of operations for South Asia in Geneva.

And there’s not a “disproportionate” to be found in the article. And here’s the AP boilerplate to explain the war to its readers:

The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 to create a separate state for minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization at the hands of governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the civil war.

Oh. It’s a civil war. That’s different. It doesn’t matter that 70,000 have died in Sri Lanka, or millions in Darfur. These are civil wars. They’re not wars of “occupation.” So there will be no world outrage. The Stop The War Coalition won’t protest. ANSWER will be staying home. Hugo Chavez won’t break off relations with Sri Lanka. Stephen Walt won’t write articles about the Sinhalese Lobby. President Obama won’t promise to put the crisis in Sri Lanka at the top of his list of things to fix early in his administration. There will not be four op-eds in the New York Times chastising the Sri Lankans for murdering innocent civilians. There will be no op-eds in the Washington Post by the Tamil Tigers, explaining why they’re not really terrorists, but their enemies are.

Dead Sri Lankans? Who cares? Jews didn’t kill them, so they don’t count. Dead Palestinians, now there’s a cause worth shouting over.

Israeli Double Standard Time: It happens every only on days that end with a “y”.