What Are Israelis Still Doing in Sri Lanka?

By: Nuha Faiz

A young tour guide was pushed off a boat by Israeli 'to-be-enlisted-in-a-month' soldiers. No, it was not funny like some of you mention in comments.

Tourist Hub for IDF Soldiers

We Sri Lankans know what war does to a country. We know the checkpoints, the funerals, the families who still don't know where their sons are buried. Maybe that is why this sits so badly with me. In September 2025, a UN Commission of Inquiry led by Navi Pillay, a former judge of the International Criminal Court, concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. How long it took for UN to confirm this is another topic to discuss, but there you have it. It was officially recognized as a 'genocide'. Israel rejected the finding and refused to cooperate. Very Israel of them. You can argue about the word if you like but you cannot argue about the flattened neighborhoods, the starving children or the tens of thousands of dead.

Israel conscripts almost every young citizen. So, when a group of twenty-year-olds arrives in Arugam Bay for three months, many have come straight from service. Some have come straight from Gaza. Locals have described enclaves of reservists resting between rotations under Hebrew signboards.

This is not rumor. In December 2024, a Brussels-based legal group, the Hind Rajab Foundation, found that a soldier named Gal Ferenbook was holidaying here. They pointed to a video in which he appeared to boast about killing a Palestinian civilian. By the time anyone talked about acting, he had reportedly left. In 2026 the same group filed a formal complaint with our authorities against Jake Burkons, an Israeli-American combat engineer accused of demolishing civilian homes. Our police and Attorney General have said nothing in public.

A complaint is not a verdict, and Israel calls these groups politically motivated. Fine. Then investigate and let the evidence speak. Our own Geneva Conventions Act of 2006 gives our courts jurisdiction over grave breaches, wherever they happen. For years the world has demanded accountability from Sri Lanka. We of all people should understand that impunity is not a private matter. Saying nothing is also a choice.

A town inside a town

Go to Arugam Bay in season and look up at the signboards. Many are in Hebrew. Walk into some of the guesthouses, cafés, yoga studios and party venues, and you may struggle to find a Sri Lankan behind the counter. Working on a tourist visa is illegal here. Every Sri Lankan who has tried to work in the Gulf or Europe knows exactly how seriously other countries take that rule. Yet unlicensed Israeli-run businesses have spread from hospitality to nightlife to wellness. More than 50 reportedly operate without proper licenses. A former head of our tourism authority estimated they enjoy about a 30% cost advantage by not paying the taxes and rates that honest owners pay.

Think about what that means for a family in Pottuvil who borrowed to build four rooms and a kitchen. They pay their licenses. They pay their staff. They lose guests to an operator down the road who pays neither, hires his own countrymen without work visas, and keeps the money circulating inside his own circle. In Hiriketiya this year, residents made the same complaints almost word for word. In January 2025, Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya told Parliament that no permission had been given for these places and promised a crackdown. Nearly two years on, the problem has simply moved down the coast. And to be honest, Russian and Ukrainian operators are doing the same thing in the south. Shut them too. The law should not care which passport you carry. But it should not look away either.

The man in the water

Let me go back to the guide, because his story is the one nobody bothered to ask for. We still don't know his name. We don't know whether he really agreed to be pushed, as the tourists claim, because no one has heard from him. But I know the position he was in. When your income depends on tips, reviews and the next booking, you laugh along. You climb back onto the boat and say it's fine, because saying anything else costs you. "He was in on it" is what people always say about the person with the least power in the frame. And it isn't only one boat. In Arugam Bay, Jeevan Hall, one of the best surfers this country has produced, confronted an off-duty Israeli soldier who kept taking every wave. Hall said scenes like that are common. Our own people, in our own water, being made to feel like guests. This is what hurts most. Sri Lankan hospitality is not a product line. It's how our grandmothers raised us: you feed the visitor first; you give him the good chair. When that warmth is answered with contempt, it isn't a culture clash. It's disrespect, and we have allowed it because we were afraid of losing the money.

Who pays the price?

In October 2024, after a warning from the US embassy and Indian intelligence, Sri Lanka sent around 500 police and Special Task Force personnel into Arugam Bay and Pottuvil to protect Israeli visitors. Israel told its citizens to leave our south and west coasts immediately. Other embassies followed, and bookings fell just as the country was crawling back from bankruptcy.

Ask yourself who paid for that. Our taxes paid for the security. Our hotels lost the bookings. An entire Muslim-majority town was put under suspicion. And for what? Israelis made up about 1 percent of arrivals in the first seven months of 2025. We are carrying the risk of someone else's war for a sliver of our tourism income.

Then there is the land question, and I want to be careful here. In 2024 the International Court of Justice declared Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful. That occupation grew one fact on the ground at a time: build first, defend it later. I am not saying a surf camp is a settlement. But people in Hiriketiya have watched a center, businesses and land leases appear without clear approval, and they are right to ask questions. Monks and residents asked authorities to check the permits and close anything operating illegally. Every Sri Lankan landowner lives under those same rules. That is not prejudice. It is the law.

The problem is in Colombo

It would be easy to blame everything on a few rowdy tourists. The harder truth is that our own government opened the door and keeps holding it open.

In July 2025, weeks before the UN genocide finding, the government waived visa fees for 40 countries and put Israel on the list. The Cabinet said the choice was based on arrivals and earnings. For a market of 1 percent, that explanation does not hold.

Then there are the jobs. In 2023, after Israel shut out as many as 20,000 Palestinian farm workers, Sri Lanka agreed to send 10,000 of ours to take their place. A construction agreement followed, with 6,092 Sri Lankans placed. In December 2025 the Cabinet approved expanding the deal into more sectors. By the end of 2025, nearly 30,000 Sri Lankans were in Israel.

I will not judge any family that sent a son or daughter. After the crash, people took whatever work they could find, and remittances kept many homes alive. But that is exactly what makes it shameful at the government level. A country drowning in debt is being used to replace people Israel has locked out of their own livelihoods, and our workers are sent into a war zone to do it. Sri Lanka has broken off ties with Israel before, on principle. Today we cannot even manage to stop offering discounts.

What we need URGENTLY:

Not the bland promises from the parliament. But we want the government to:

1. Revoke the visa-fee waiver for Israel. A state facing a UN genocide finding should not get a tourism discount from us.

2. Investigate war-crimes complaints and report back publicly. Where there is credible evidence against an individual, refuse him entry, as other countries do with suspected war criminals.

3. Close every unlicensed business and deport every visa violator. Israeli, Russian, Ukrainian, anyone. Publish the numbers every quarter.

4. Apply planning law to every religious and community building. A Chabad house should need the same approvals as a temple, kovil, church or mosque. No more, no less.

5. Review the labor deals with Israel. No Sri Lankan should be sent to replace banned Palestinian workers or into an active war zone without independent safety guarantees.

6. Protect our workers. Find the guide, hear his side, and let the tourist police treat abuse of local staff as the offence it is.

And I have something to say to my own side. In Hiriketiya, stones and firecrackers were reportedly thrown at the Chabad house, and visitors were threatened with sticks. I understand the anger. But every stone hand the other side the headline it wants and buries everything we are trying to say. We remember 2019 and what it felt like when a whole community was blamed for the acts of a few. We must never do that to anyone. This fight is won with law, evidence and patience, or it is not won at all.

So, what are they still doing here? The ones who come to surf, spend and respect this island can stay, like any other guest. The ones who come to rest between rotations, run businesses outside our laws, or push our people into the sea for a laugh should find that Sri Lanka is no longer an easy place to do it. We can welcome visitors without welcoming impunity. It is time our government learned the difference.