Sri Lanka versus Israel

[mord]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34865 










Detention Duplicity  By: Joseph Klein
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, May 14, 2009


A few months ago, the Sri Lankan government detained United Nations staff and their families, holding them against their will in detention camps run as the Sri Lankan government fought enemies it calls terrorists. The UN did not even publicly acknowledge the detention until badgering by the press forced their hand, and the response since then can best be described as tepid.

On the other hand, the UN has just issued the findings of a Board of Inquiry that blasted Israel for alleged breaches of the UN’s “inviolability and immunity.” The newly released “Report of the United Nations Headquarters Board of Inquiry into Certain Incidents in the Gaza Strip Between 27 December 2008 and 19 January 2009” was personally commissioned by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The report focused on nine incidents in which death, injuries, and damage occurred in or around UN facilities or otherwise involved UN personnel during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.       

Although UN Boards of Inquiry are not supposed to be judicial bodies or courts of law and are not supposed to consider questions of legal liability, the Gaza Board of Inquiry operated as prosecutor, judge, and jury. The Board found Israel guilty in most of the nine incidents, accusing the Israeli Defense Force of gross negligence and reckless disregard for the lives and safety of UN personnel and of civilians seeking shelter in UN facilities. It demanded more than  $11 million in “reparations” from Israel for property losses and damage. And the UN board demanded a public apology from the Israeli government for daring to charge that Hamas used the areas within and immediately adjacent to UN facilities for military-related activity. Despite eyewitness reports supporting Israel’s claims and a history of Hamas actions consistent with those claims, the UN Board dismissed them as untrue and said that Israel should never have made such claims unless it was absolutely certain of their veracity – a practical impossibility in the fog of war.

Not only did the demand for reparations appear in the Board of Inquiry Report, but I learned from a highly placed senior Israeli government official that the subject came up during Ban Ki-moon’s meeting on May 4th with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.   

The report cited Hamas just once for launching a rocket aimed at Israel civilians, which apparently exploded prematurely and caused damage within Gaza. Hamas was asked to pay some $29,000 for this damage. When I asked Ban Ki-moon at his press conference on May 5th whether the UN was investigating complaints that it had received regarding Hamas’ use of children as human shields (which could well have happened within or near UN-run schools), he equivocated.

Compare this with Sri Lanka. Its government deliberately detained UN personnel and their families in violation of international law. UN officials said nothing until the press discovered this event, and the UN has not demanded any compensation or other form of accountability. By contrast, Israel did all that it could to minimize collateral injuries and damage to UN personnel and facilities, which Israel had good reason to believe were being misused by Hamas terrorists in the middle of a war, yet the UN insisted on reparations and public apologies from the Israeli government.

Let’s take a look at some facts to put the Sri Lankan and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts into perspective. The number of civilian deaths in Sri Lanka since the end of January 2009 from the intense fighting there has exceeded 6,500. The government continues to use heavy artillery and air power to vanquish the dwindling remnants of ethnic Tamil Tiger rebels seeking their own homeland, without regard to the safety of civilians caught in the crossfire.

Even if we were to believe the Palestinians’ inflated casualty figures in Gaza during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead against Hamas, there were 1,285 Palestinian deaths, among which 895 were civilians - about 14 percent of the civilian death toll in Sri Lanka since late January of this year.

In April 2009, Sri Lanka rejected a call from the UN for a ceasefire, saying that such a ceasefire would allow the rebels to regroup. It has not even acceded to the temporary “pause” that Ban Ki-moon recently suggested. According to Amnesty International, “Even as the fighting rages on, the Sri Lankan government has sought significant international financial, material, and technical aid from various countries as well as international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, without agreeing to international standards or international monitoring.” Virtually no humanitarian aid has been permitted into the Sri Lankan war zone. Thousands of people in the war zone have no access to medical care, according to Amnesty International. Health officials in the area have reported the deaths of starving elderly and children who were denied access to food. The ability of the UN to shelter any civilians, even if it had tried, is zero.

Israel acceded to the UN’s call for a ceasefire, even though arms smuggling to Hamas terrorists and rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians did not cease. During its military operation in Gaza, Israel did what it could to avoid civilian casualties even though Hamas was using its own populace as human shields. UN shelters for civilians were permitted to operate, even though Hamas has a history of using UN facilities to hide its terrorist activities. Some humanitarian aid was permitted to go through, despite the risk that it would be used as a cover for arms smuggling.

The Sri Lankan government justifies its actions on the grounds that it is fighting a terrorist organization. In a letter to the New York Times dated May 4, 2009, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United States wrote that the “Tamil Tigers are a terrorist organization no different than…Hamas.”  (Emphasis added.)

The Tamil Tiger rebels are far from blameless, to be sure, and have used civilians as buffers against government forces. But the Sri Lankan ambassador’s comparison of his government’s war against the Tamil Tigers to Israel’s war against Hamas is duplicitous. Sri Lankan officials have in the past shamelessly accused Israel of all manner of human rights violations for protecting its civilian population from Hamas. By their logic, Israel is supposed to sit on its hands and do nothing against a terrorist organization committed to its destruction, while Sri Lanka can do whatever it pleases – causing mass civilian deaths and forced detentions including of UN personnel and their families in the process – because it is supposedly fighting the very same kind of terrorist organization as Hamas. [/u]
The United Nations has bought into this double standard. The UN has done nothing of substance to stop the carnage in Sri Lanka and to hold the Sri Lankan government fully accountable for its illegal detention of UN personnel and their families. However, this same UN has spared no effort to hold Israel accountable for just about anything and everything that has happened in Gaza, irrespective of whom was ultimately at fault. It's only the latest illustration of the higher standards Israel must meet in the world body's eyes to accomplish the most basic of all national functions:  survive.

[zachor_ve_kavod]

So Israel is being held to an impossible standard while every regime that is committing real atrocities (North Korea, Sudan, Iran, Congo, Venezuela, are given a pass by the UN...

What else is new?

[arksis]

So Israel is being held to an impossible standard while every regime that is committing real atrocities (North Korea, Sudan, Iran, Congo, Venezuela, are given a pass by the UN...

What else is new?

Really disgusts me! I wish all the countries would tell the UN to screw themselves.

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

Let's get a few things clear here.

1: The survival struggle of the Sinhalese people (14 million Sinhalese against 80 million Tamil Muslim Nazis) is absolutely analogous to the survival struggle of the Jews, or of the heroic Serbs.

2: The SL government was absolutely correct to compare the LTTE Muslim Nazi mass murderers, which originated the concept of the suicide bombing and taught it to every Muslim Nazi terror group on the planet, to Hamas.

3: The SL government has not been as hard-line against its Tamil Muslim filth as I would prefer, but yes, by and large, it is treating Koranic slime much more properly than Israel does. (There have been many moments where the SL government has bucked to world Nazi pressure.)

4: We must not blame all of the heroic Sinhalese people for the oil-sycophantic, anti-Israel, Muzzie-appeasing behavior shown periodically by the flawed and at times self-hating Sri Lankan government. Even most Serb governments, including the most "hardline" one (i.e. Slobodan Milosevic), have been at least on paper anti-Israel and pro-Muslim, and obviously we know he did not speak for all Serbs. It's a game that every government plays.

5: The United Nazis have not been pro-Sinhalese. They have been spreading every imaginable blood libel against this heroic and longsuffering "infidel" people. I don't see how anybody with half a brain could think that. The United Nazis have been doing everything in their power to get the heat off of the Tamil butchers so that they can regroup and restart their jihad.

[t_h_j]

Let's get a few things clear here.

1: The survival struggle of the Sinhalese people (14 million Sinhalese against 80 million Tamil Muslim Nazis) is absolutely analogous to the survival struggle of the Jews, or of the heroic Serbs.
that would be true if apples were analogous to oranges
2: The SL government was absolutely correct to compare the LTTE Muslim Nazi mass murderers, which originated the concept of the suicide bombing and taught it to every Muslim Nazi terror group on the planet, to Hamas.
you have yet to provide any evidence that they are muslims.  Others here have told you that they are not muslims.  The ETA and IRA worked with the PLO.  Does this mean those two groups are also muslim groups?  According to your "logic" they must be
3: The SL government has not been as hard-line against its Tamil Muslim filth as I would prefer, but yes, by and large, it is treating Koranic slime much more properly than Israel does. (There have been many moments where the SL government has bucked to world Nazi pressure.)
it's interesting that you call a people that are mostly not muslim "koranic slime"
4: We must not blame all of the heroic Sinhalese people for the oil-sycophantic, anti-Israel, Muzzie-appeasing behavior shown periodically by the flawed and at times self-hating Sri Lankan government. Even most Serb governments, including the most "hardline" one (i.e. Slobodan Milosevic), have been at least on paper anti-Israel and pro-Muslim, and obviously we know he did not speak for all Serbs. It's a game that every government plays.

5: The United Nazis have not been pro-Sinhalese. They have been spreading every imaginable blood libel against this heroic and longsuffering "infidel" people. I don't see how anybody with half a brain could think that. The United Nazis have been doing everything in their power to get the heat off of the Tamil butchers so that they can regroup and restart their jihad.

and again, here is evidence you have continually ignored.

Ethnic Tamils are united to each other by their common religions beliefs, and the Tamil language and culture. Some 80 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamils and 90 percent of the Indian Tamils are Hindus. They have little contact with Buddhism, and they worship the Hindu pantheon of gods. Their religious myths, stories of saints, literature, and rituals are distinct from the cultural sources of the Sinhalese (see Hinduism , this ch.). The caste groups of the Tamils are also different from those of the Sinhalese, and they have their rationale in religious ideologies that the Sinhalese do not share. Religion and caste do, however, create divisions within the Tamil community. Most of the Indian Tamils are members of low Indian castes that are not respected by the upper- and middle-level castes of the Sri Lankan Tamils (see Caste , this ch.). Furthermore, a minority of the Tamils--4.3 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamils and 7.6 percent of the Indian Tamils--are converts to Christianity, with their own places of worship and separate cultural lives. In this way, the large Tamil minority in Sri Lanka is effectively separated from the mainstream Sinhalese culture and is fragmented into two major groups with their own Christian minorities.

source-http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+lk0061)
make sure you read the parts that are in bold, italics, and underlined to your self over and over.  I'm probably wasting my time, since you're going to spew the same ignorance over and over in subsequent threads, but the proof is here.

go here and click on "Tamils" if the above link is not working
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/lktoc.html

[TheCoon]

They're HINDU, NOT MUSLIM. Start banning people who deny reality.

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

They're HINDU, NOT MUSLIM. Start banning people who deny reality.

How about we ban you for being a peckerhead?

Tell me about Hindus that not only practice suicide bombings (but that ORIGINATED them), that have exclusive private audiences with Yasser Arafat, that talk about "intifada" and "jihad" and call their enemies "infidels", and that are receiving the sympathies of all the Muslims in the world. Tell me about that.

[t_h_j]

They're HINDU, NOT MUSLIM. Start banning people who deny reality.

How about we ban you for being a peckerhead?

Tell me about Hindus that not only practice suicide bombings (but that ORIGINATED them), that have exclusive private audiences with Yasser Arafat, that talk about "intifada" and "jihad" and call their enemies "infidels", and that are receiving the sympathies of all the Muslims in the world. Tell me about that.

and again, by your "logic". the japanese in WW2 are all muslims as well, since they practiced suicide attacks.  Once again, the IRA and ETA collaborated with the PLO as well.  Does this make them muslim groups?

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

So, you never answered me, how's The American Conservative coming along?

[t_h_j]

So, you never answered me, how's The American Conservative coming along?

yes i have, i've never heard of that website (as i've told you before).  Anyway, nice try at deflection

Ethnic Tamils are united to each other by their common religions beliefs, and the Tamil language and culture. Some 80 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamils and 90 percent of the Indian Tamils are Hindus. They have little contact with Buddhism, and they worship the Hindu pantheon of gods. Their religious myths, stories of saints, literature, and rituals are distinct from the cultural sources of the Sinhalese (see Hinduism , this ch.). The caste groups of the Tamils are also different from those of the Sinhalese, and they have their rationale in religious ideologies that the Sinhalese do not share. Religion and caste do, however, create divisions within the Tamil community. Most of the Indian Tamils are members of low Indian castes that are not respected by the upper- and middle-level castes of the Sri Lankan Tamils (see Caste , this ch.). Furthermore, a minority of the Tamils--4.3 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamils and 7.6 percent of the Indian Tamils--are converts to Christianity, with their own places of worship and separate cultural lives. In this way, the large Tamil minority in Sri Lanka is effectively separated from the mainstream Sinhalese culture and is fragmented into two major groups with their own Christian minorities.

source-http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+lk0061)

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

All that you have is a petrosycophantic State Department link?

The State Department also denies that the PA is an Islamic terrorist organization, calling them "Palestinian freedom fighters", as I believe you do too.

[t_h_j]

All that you have is a petrosycophantic State Department link?

The State Department also denies that the PA is an Islamic terrorist organization, calling them "Palestinian freedom fighters", as I believe you do too.

so, in other words, since you have no rebuttal for the source, you'll just attack it.  Here it is more simply for you.  Demonstrate that the majority of tamils are muslim, or that LTTE is a Muslim organization.  Provide irrefutable evidence.  You have yet to do this.

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

so, in other words, since you have no rebuttal for the source, you'll just attack it.  Here it is more simply for you.  Demonstrate that the majority of tamils are muslim, or that LTTE is a Muslim organization.  Provide irrefutable evidence.  You have yet to do this.

I posted a stack of links on this subject a bunch of times, and you had no rebuttal to it when I did. I will be honest and admit that I am frankly too lazy to dig up those threads just right this moment, much like you are too lazy to provide proof and evidence for any of your knee-jerk pro-Muslim claims in general here either.

[t_h_j]

so, in other words, since you have no rebuttal for the source, you'll just attack it.  Here it is more simply for you.  Demonstrate that the majority of tamils are muslim, or that LTTE is a Muslim organization.  Provide irrefutable evidence.  You have yet to do this.

I posted a stack of links on this subject a bunch of times, and you had no rebuttal to it when I did. I will be honest and admit that I am frankly too lazy to dig up those threads just right this moment, much like you are too lazy to provide proof and evidence for any of your knee-jerk pro-Muslim claims in general here either.

yes, links that say they collaborate with the hamas or some palestinian group, none proving they are muslim. As I've tried to explain to you before, other groups such as the IRA and ETA worked with muslim groups as well.  That does not make them muslim.

and again, here is my proof.  Still waiting on a shred of evidence from you.

yes i have, i've never heard of that website (as i've told you before).  Anyway, nice try at deflection

Ethnic Tamils are united to each other by their common religions beliefs, and the Tamil language and culture. Some 80 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamils and 90 percent of the Indian Tamils are Hindus. They have little contact with Buddhism, and they worship the Hindu pantheon of gods. Their religious myths, stories of saints, literature, and rituals are distinct from the cultural sources of the Sinhalese (see Hinduism , this ch.). The caste groups of the Tamils are also different from those of the Sinhalese, and they have their rationale in religious ideologies that the Sinhalese do not share. Religion and caste do, however, create divisions within the Tamil community. Most of the Indian Tamils are members of low Indian castes that are not respected by the upper- and middle-level castes of the Sri Lankan Tamils (see Caste , this ch.). Furthermore, a minority of the Tamils--4.3 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamils and 7.6 percent of the Indian Tamils--are converts to Christianity, with their own places of worship and separate cultural lives. In this way, the large Tamil minority in Sri Lanka is effectively separated from the mainstream Sinhalese culture and is fragmented into two major groups with their own Christian minorities.

source-http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+lk0061)

[✡ Hindu Zionist ॐ]

Sri Lankans think they are superior than Tamils because they still believe in Aryan supremacy Myth.

The Sinhalese are known liars and excel at the art of propaganda. They will try anything to claim superiority over the great tamils. I've read sources saying them come from bengal and even from gujarat. Each time they have a different story. They certainly wouldn't have come from gujarat but they do have some blood from modern day bengal region.

Due to all the proganda work by the sinhalese establishing their true origins might seem confusing. The Sinhalese are mostly Tamil genetically. Vijaya the pali immigrant from India married a Pandya princess(Tamil) and all his exiled half breeds also married Tamils from India thus the Tamil blood is alreay 50%. Now what happened to all those native Tamils in the interior parts of Eelam? They along with Vijaya's crew mixed and would later about 1000 years ACE would form the sinhalese. The situation can be seen in all south east asian countries ruled by Tamils. The Thais and Khermas are majority buddhist because the king converted and then forced the rest of the population to convert in the same way the Tamil king Devanapiatissam converted to buddhism after Asoka sent his missionaries and so most of the island followed. The present day North, East and the western coast line remained as Hindus and therefore continued to be pure Tamil spreakers whilst present day sinhalese is a dialect of Tamil with some pali words.
Throghout history Tamils from India have been comming down and mixing with the 'sinhalese' as recently as the 17th century large numbers of Tamil labourers were absorbed in the sinhalese caste. The area aroun Colombo up till Negombo in Sri Lanka was Tamil until the last century when a process of sinhalisation took place so now the population is 50/50. Even the last 7 kings of Kandy were from South India and the kings who defeated the Jaffna kings aka Alakoteshwara and his father were not sinhalese but from South India.

Ancient King Ravana's Lanka had palaces all over Eelam but his main ones were in the interior and in Trincomalee(east coast). His brother Vibeshana later ruled from the interior and this is where many thousands of years later Ashoka's missionaries came to convert the king. Therefore most people would have converted to buddhism but of the 5 Eeshwarams in the country 4 are in exclusive Tamil areas while the last one Thondeshwaram(Dondra head) is in an occupied sinhalese area. The present day Tamils in Sri Lanka(except the ancient 'migrants' from India) are the Tamils who didn't convert to buddhism, which is the same situation with the Balinese Malays who remained HIndus while the rest of Indonesia converted to Islam.

Therefore sinhalese are mongrels mixed with native Tamils, indian Tamils and Pali immigrants(small percentage).

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

Link for all this propaganda, please?

[Mishmaat]

I posted a stack of links on this subject a bunch of times, and you had no rebuttal to it when I did. I will be honest and admit that I am frankly too lazy to dig up those threads just right this moment, much like you are too lazy to provide proof and evidence for any of your knee-jerk pro-Muslim claims in general here either.

I'll save you the trouble.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Muslim --Existence of Actual Tamil Muslims (these are the kind that primarily belong to the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress, the main rival to the LTTE)

The "expulsion" and conflicts with other SL Muslims were a result of an internecine feud between the LTTE and the SLMC (the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress, or SL's "moderate" Muslim political party). It was no different between the civil war between Hamas and Fatah.

How much evidence do you want that world Muslims support their brothers in jihad in the LTTE?

http://www.tamilcanadian.com/page.php?cat=23&id=30 --Malaysian Muslims Support "Eelam" Struggle

http://www.indianexpress.com/ie/daily/19990424/ige24094.html --Tamils Enthusiastically Cheer on KLA and NATO Bombing Campaign Against Serbia

http://senthil-jihad.blogspot.com/ and http://www.tamilnet.tv/index.php/suicide-bomber-in-idp-camp?blog=1 --Tamils Calling Their War a "Jihad" and Calling Sinhalese "Infidels" (warning, some strong language)

http://sangam.org/taraki/articles/2006/07-15_Eelam_Intifada.php?uid=1842 --Tamils Calling Their War an "Intifada"

http://www.ict.org.il/Articles/tabid/66/Articlsid/277/currentpage/4/Default.aspx --The LTTE's Extensive Alliances with Worldwide Muslim Nazi Jihadists (especially Fakestinian ones)

[Mishmaat]

As a Westerner, or someone who is committed to the Western way of thinking and Western ideals, I find the acts committed by the LTTE to be deplorable. But I absolutely do not believe that this is a Muslim organization or that the vast majority of Tamils are Muslims.

"The next largest ethnic community is the Sri Lanka Tamils, who trace their ancestry to the same period as that of the Sinhalese arrival and challenge the Sinhalese version of the historical origins of Sri Lanka. They are religiously and culturally related to the Tamil community of south India and speak the same Dravidian language, Tamil. Most of the Tamils practice Hinduism, although significant numbers converted to Christianity after the arrival of Europeans."

Government And Politics in South Asia: Sixth Edition (2009), pg. 315

[t_h_j]

As a Westerner, or someone who is committed to the Western way of thinking and Western ideals, I find the acts committed by the LTTE to be deplorable. But I absolutely do not believe that this is a Muslim organization or that the vast majority of Tamils are Muslims.

"The next largest ethnic community is the Sri Lanka Tamils, who trace their ancestry to the same period as that of the Sinhalese arrival and challenge the Sinhalese version of the historical origins of Sri Lanka. They are religiously and culturally related to the Tamil community of south India and speak the same Dravidian language, Tamil. Most of the Tamils practice Hinduism, although significant numbers converted to Christianity after the arrival of Europeans."

Government And Politics in South Asia: Sixth Edition (2009), pg. 315

lets see if he calls you a troll as well

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

"The next largest ethnic community is the Sri Lanka Tamils, who trace their ancestry to the same period as that of the Sinhalese arrival and challenge the Sinhalese version of the historical origins of Sri Lanka. They are religiously and culturally related to the Tamil community of south India and speak the same Dravidian language, Tamil. Most of the Tamils practice Hinduism, although significant numbers converted to Christianity after the arrival of Europeans."

Government And Politics in South Asia: Sixth Edition (2009), pg. 315

Mishmaat I know you mean well, but any recent source is going to be extremely politically-correct and pro-Tamil, just like any modern "academic" source from within the past 30 years is going to only present the fraudulent "Fakestinian" side of Israeli history. The fact is that there are virtually no practicing Hindus in Sri Lanka Tamils and only a relative handful in Tamil Nadu. I don't have anything against them, or the equally small number of real Tamil Christians, but their numbers are a drop in the bucket.

At the most, the majority of Tamils practice a syncretism of Hinduism and Islam. However, many are actual, genuine Sunni Muslims.

[t_h_j]

"The next largest ethnic community is the Sri Lanka Tamils, who trace their ancestry to the same period as that of the Sinhalese arrival and challenge the Sinhalese version of the historical origins of Sri Lanka. They are religiously and culturally related to the Tamil community of south India and speak the same Dravidian language, Tamil. Most of the Tamils practice Hinduism, although significant numbers converted to Christianity after the arrival of Europeans."

Government And Politics in South Asia: Sixth Edition (2009), pg. 315

Mishmaat I know you mean well, but any recent source is going to be extremely politically-correct and pro-Tamil, just like any modern "academic" source from within the past 30 years is going to only present the fraudulent "Fakestinian" side of Israeli history. The fact is that there are virtually no practicing Hindus in Sri Lanka Tamils and only a relative handful in Tamil Nadu. I don't have anything against them, or the equally small number of real Tamil Christians, but their numbers are a drop in the bucket.

At the most, the majority of Tamils practice a syncretism of Hinduism and Islam. However, many are actual, genuine Sunni Muslims.

What a ridiculous cop out.

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

It's a copout to say that mainstream government and academic sources have a pro-Islamic slant? Of course it is to you, because I suspect that you yourself are a Muslim and think the whole world is in a conspiracy against you.

[t_h_j]

It's a copout to say that mainstream government and academic sources have a pro-Islamic slant? Of course it is to you, because I suspect that you yourself are a Muslim and think the whole world is in a conspiracy against you.

Now you're being obtuse again, since most tamils (for the thousandth time) are not muslim.  It is a copout when you make a ridiculous statement in order to get out of an argument that you already know you lost. 

Ethnic Tamils are united to each other by their common religions beliefs, and the Tamil language and culture. Some 80 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamils and 90 percent of the Indian Tamils are Hindus. They have little contact with Buddhism, and they worship the Hindu pantheon of gods. Their religious myths, stories of saints, literature, and rituals are distinct from the cultural sources of the Sinhalese (see Hinduism , this ch.). The caste groups of the Tamils are also different from those of the Sinhalese, and they have their rationale in religious ideologies that the Sinhalese do not share. Religion and caste do, however, create divisions within the Tamil community. Most of the Indian Tamils are members of low Indian castes that are not respected by the upper- and middle-level castes of the Sri Lankan Tamils (see Caste , this ch.). Furthermore, a minority of the Tamils--4.3 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamils and 7.6 percent of the Indian Tamils--are converts to Christianity, with their own places of worship and separate cultural lives. In this way, the large Tamil minority in Sri Lanka is effectively separated from the mainstream Sinhalese culture and is fragmented into two major groups with their own Christian minorities.

source-http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+lk0061)

[t_h_j]

well, this thread demonstrates that serb avenger can't debate his way out of a wet paper bag