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July 23, 2015
Who Knew? Israeli Security Fence Part of Region-Wide Trend
Israel has been vilified for building a security barrier (mostly fence, with walls in urban areas) to keep terrorists emanating from Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza from infiltrating into Israeli communities to carry out attacks.
Anti-Israel activists on university campuses, in church conclaves and in the media refer to Israel's barrier as the "apartheid wall" pretending that its main purpose is to keep Palestinians penned in to so-called "bantustans", when in reality it was a last-choice solution to stem escalating terrorism against Israeli civilians.
Well, it turns out that while Israel's barrier may be an unforgivable offense to those whose vantage point is hundreds or thousands of miles away from the danger, in the region itself, security fences have become commonplace, stretching thousands of miles along insecure borders.
An article appearing on Bloomberg News Web site, provides maps and a chronology of fence building in the region. It turns out that the first and still longest security fence was built by Morocco. After 9-11-2001, Saudi Arabia and others followed suit. Even terrorist-flagship Iran has built a fence to keep out unwanted visitors from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
At the UN and among activists in the West, only Israel's fence is seen as a problem though. For the others, protecting oneself from terrorist infiltration is ample justification.
Posted by SS at July 23, 2015 12:03 PM
Comments
This unidimensional focus on Israel implies that antisemitism is again legitimized, no longer as a racist ideology but as a widely accepted democratic form of antisemitsm, also named antizionism. But antisemitism it still is.
Posted by: wim van rooy at July 25, 2015 05:03 PM
Barriers to keep the undesirables OUT (Not fence them in) are a time honoured tradition. Classic examples are The Great Wall of China, completed 2200 or so years ago to keep bandits and thugs out of China, and Hadrian's Wall, nearly 2000 years old, which attempted to minimize the predations of the Northern Pictish barbarians on Roman Britain.
Such measures are simply the rational response of governments tasked with protecting their citizens from external attack by hostile neighbours.
Posted by: Peter Lusby at July 25, 2015 05:19 PM
'Them Again'
Everybody sees the sense
In staying safe behind a fence.
But no one's fence is seen as news
Unless, of course, it's built by Jews
by YerActualStan
Posted by: YerfActualStan at July 25, 2015 06:11 PM
Why not mention, also, the barriers that are going up to protect against migrants trying to get into the EU? Hungary is building a fence to keep Serbs out, recently announced. Ditto, Bulgaria.
Details here: http://www.ibtimes.com/some-eu-countries-are-building-fences-walls-keep-migrants-out-1978765
Posted by: UR at July 26, 2015 07:55 PM
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