Please..Gaza cannot be compared to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka was battling a terrorist organization within it's own borders. Hamas is an elected government.

The bottom line is that the US tried to airlift the Tiger leadership out of the country by force if necessary at the end of the siege and the allegations of war crimes significantly from those countries trying to orchestrate it. The resulting massacre of the 200 or so, Tigers at the end was a direct result of these machinations.
Our SL Secy of Defence is an American citizen and if he was guilty of war crimes he could have been arrested when he visited the UN six months ago.
The Gaza situation is completely different to what was happening in SL at the end of our so-called ethnic conflict when in fact more people of other ethnicities live and continue to live outside the N & E. People like Qadri Ismail who made the original comparison to Gaza are misleading disinformationists in the pay of Western elites.
Our govenrment has been moving closer to China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela all the time, because the Western powers have been in the pay of rich Tamil billionaires whose sons never fought in this war.
There are civilian parts of Colombo still with open sewers, in this instance the IDP camps are much more comfortable than those places.
Overall this was a fake war, because as you know the Tigers were apparently fighting for govt jobs, places in universities etc. etc. all of which are middle class that any peasant, sinhala muslim or tamil could never aspire to. In Lanka if you are poor you are damned. It does not matter your ethnicity.
As I wrote to Arundathi Roy in response to her http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4331986.cms:
Dear Ms. Roy: I am surprised that some one like you who has shown a basic understanding of the roots of poverty has not grasped that peasants are dieing for middle class aspirations in this fake war funded by a diaspora that in the main have not visited the island for long time or not at all. It is inaccurate to claim that the LTTE started as a peaceful non-violent protest when in fact it started with the assassination of the democratically elected Mayor of Jaffna Alfred Durraiappah. Further when the late S Nadesan met Prabhakaran by accident at Madras Airport prior to the calamity of 1983 and told him you must be careful because when you do things in Jaffna we get affected in Colombo, Mr. Nadesan told my Dad Ashroff Mansoor the Big Pee said: "Why should we care about you, you have never cared about us."
According to the LTTE's own figures 8000+ people were murdered in 1983 in a government pogrom which is something of much shame to us, but nevertheless it has never been acknowledged that more than a million Tamil people were protected by their fellow citizens against the government and the mobs.
You have in your article failed to acknowledge that the LTTE themselves are using the civilian population as a human shield, which is a war crime, and that suicide bombers have been deployed at crossover points. Obviously one holds a government to a higher standard than a terrorist organisation and without denying the possibilities of excesses in a war of attrition, it nevertheless stands to reason that a full documentation must be made of civilians coming out of a war zone especially in light of the recent suicide bombing on Prophet Muhammed's birthday in the deep South of the island.
The tragedy is that the Sinhala people themselves do not seem to realise that the forces that set about destroying their way of life 500 years ago with the advent of the Portuguese have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams when crackers are lit to celebrate 'victories' instead of the recital of pirith for the dead. In fact I argue the Sinhala peasants have been more victimised than anyone else in this country simply because the Tamils and the Muslims are mindful of community and support each other, while successive central governments have continued the extraction of resources despite local protests. Our railways and roads are much the same as when the British first built them, village electrification has been piecemeal, while massive industrial parks manufacture goods that no one has the money to buy. Basically in this country it does not matter what your ethnicity if you did not go to certain schools, if you do not speak English, if you do not come from a middle class background your options are very meagre indeed.
At a recent briefing for US nationals in the country the Security Advisor to the US Embassy and its staff, said that satellite pictures showed approximately 30'000 shelters in the not-so "Safe Zone", which would indicate the numbers being held hostage by the LTTE to be somewhere in the region of 90'000 to 150'000. He also said the LTTE are firing at the army from the Safe Zone.
Maybe the Indian political leadership and the Tamilian population of the world would better serve those trapped in the Wanni by demanding that the LTTE release them sooner rather than later.

There should be room in our heads here in America for outrage about both Sri Lanka's slaughter of noncombatants and Israel's assault on noncombatants. Yes, Sri Lanka's government killed more civilians in the past 18 months. But this is not a competition.
There is an important difference, which has been pointed out already by many commenters on the Mondoweiss entry that links to this page. The difference is, we Americans are partially responsible for what Israel has done and is still doing. America is far less complicit in what the Sri Lankan government does. How so? Israel is our biggest recipient of foreign aid, about $3bn a year in weaponry and materiel. Most readers of this comment will know this, but most Americans do not know this. We single out Israel for diplomatic support and military support. This makes us in some measure responsible for Israel's outrages against human rights like the Gaza assault. America has far more leverage over Israel than we have over Sri Lanka. (Yes, both liberals and conservative foreign policy elites in the US like to think that our country is omnipotent in its powers to solve the problems in other nations, but this is a fantasy, and it often leads to disaster.) Crimes against humanity that we are responsible for are problems that we should single out for our attention. And no, this does not mean ignoring or even downplaying outrages elsewhere, it simply means we take responsibility for our actions, and recognize the limits of our powers.
I suppose this doesn't answer your question Bill about the double standard re charges of hypocrisy against both the Israeli and Sri Lankan relief efforts in Haiti, but I do think it puts things in perspective a bit.