Israelis to build wall around west bank

[jannan]

i don't have a news link because i've only heard this via word of mouth and Pacifica News' "Democracy Now". Didn't the Nazis do the same thing in Poland around 1939?

[3boys4us]

Ooohh Are you equating the Israelis with the Nazis NM?

[PinkSunfish]

They are very well into this process now. There is a large concrete wall with barbed wire on top of it stretching for many miles.

I don't quite understand how it will actually help security. To my mind it is a political statement with two purposes:

1: As an attempt to show Israelies that the government is doing something to prevent terrorism (without actually achieving that goal)

2: To psychologically bully and further oppress the Pallestinian population.

[RowansDad]

Re: Israelis to build wall around west bank

Originally posted by jannan
Didn't the Nazis do the same thing in Poland around 1939?

No. Not even close. Didn't do a lot of heavy lifting in history class, huh?

Your analogy is either at best, very lazy, or at worst, a pathetic piece of bait to some of the members here.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, you may want to review some of these links on the security fence to bone up on the issue:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0808/p01s05-wome.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0814/p06s01-wome.html

and

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0905/p01s03-wome.html

Note that most Israelis, progressives and peaceniks included, believe that a security fence separating Israel and the West Bank is needed (Sharon was previously against a fence). Note as well that Gaza and Israel are separated by security fence. Few, if any, of suicide bombers sent by the three major terrorist factions to blow up people on buses, cafes etc. have come from Gaza.

That said, a security fence that lurches so far east to protect the settlements of Ariel et al. (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/345229.html)
will likely (and hopefully) hurl the Bush Administration into a showdown with the Sharon government, not unlike the one Dubya's daddy had with former PM Shamir back in '91.

[captain optimism]

Didn't we discuss this fence in the long thread about Avraham Burg's article?

This fence that has been underway since June, 2002? And you are just learning about it now from, uh, "word of mouth"? This thing that's been in the news for more than a year.

I think it's worth discussing, if you are willing to actually learn anything about it beyond "word of mouth." I'm really surprised you would start a thread with a Nazi comparison without having actually read anything at all about the issue. But maybe you never read anything about the Nazis, either?

[jannan]

wow, you guys are in a really foul mood today. all i said was , does anyone know about this. i don't remember it being discussed in a previous thread. And the last time a wall was build around a population was in poland in 1939. go figure

[RowansDad]

Please. Spare us the innocence act. That is NOT all you said.

First, there was no "wall" built around Poland in WW II.

Second, I seem to recall that the Berlin Wall was built some 20 years **after** the alleged wall. Also, have you ever seen the DMZ that separates North and South Korea?

Seriously, you may want to review the above links or hit the history books before posting on this subject. And maybe don't take for gospel some of the "word of mouth" stuff one encounters at an ANSWER rally.

[crazy_eights]

Just going to post a point - the wall is not "around" the Palestinians. The PA autonomous areas are still open to five neighboring Arab countries that border them. The only people "surrounded" by the wall are the Israelis. Much like the Ghettos of Europe. A point that many Israelis have made in their opposition to the wall.

[captain optimism]

Originally posted by jannan
wow, you guys are in a really foul mood today. all i said was , does anyone know about this. i don't remember it being discussed in a previous thread. And the last time a wall was build around a population was in poland in 1939. go figure

"The last time a wall was built around a population..."

:

Not that Rowan's dad hasn't already pointed out the most famous of the big walls in the Cold War period, but...

Do you ever check facts on anything you say? Just curious. I mean, my browser goes to Google.com with no problem. I can give you about fifty alternative links to stories about the Israeli wall, many of them quite critical of Israel. But yours doesn't, I guess. I suppose you can't get yours to point to Yahoo, Altavista or Ask Jeeves. You can't be bothered to link to any of the hundreds of newspapers, both mainstream and alternative, that carry articles about this topic.

This sort of thing really annoys me. It's not like you are saying something neutral, you are saying something inflammatory and you just don't know what you are talking about. You couldn't even be bothered to find out about the history of the Warsaw Ghetto. (News flash! I hear Warsaw is in Poland! But I can't verify that because I only heard it word of mouth...)

[CanOBeans]

jannan -- you're baiting, you know it, and we know it.

T

FWIW, the Berlin wall was built around West Berlin. Just an aside.

[jannan]

thank you for the links ! that is all i wanted. I'm bailing now.

[oatmeal]

Hi jannan. Sorry to see you got your a** flamed for bringing up this topic without lauding the Israelis for their actions first.

The wall is an insidious and evil act of apartheid which will only inflame terrorist activity and result in more dead bodies on both sides.

I pray every morning when I wake up that it will somehow be dismembered and taken down. It is a travesty against human rights and the worst politics practiced but the Israelis since the assasination of Rabin.

May the Palestinians have their separate state and the opression end and the killing cease.

[Marg of Arabia]

The wall is an insidious and evil act of apartheid which will only inflame terrorist activity and result in more dead bodies on both sides.


ITA!

[me&3]

It is ridiculous to assert that any specific action by the Israelis will "inflame" terrorist activity. When Israel has been "actively" engaged in the peace process the terrorist activities actually stepped up. When Israel retaliates, the Palestinian terrorists continue to kill men, women, children, too. And the Palestinians celebrate their deaths in the streets.

So in my view, anything that puts a barrier between terrorists and their innocent targets is not negative. I won't go as far as to say the fence is "good," because obviously the ideal is to live side by side in harmony and good will. But that doesn't look like it's on the immediate horizon. And meanwhile, saving lives, imo, must take precedence over anything else.

[captain optimism]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by oatmeal
Hi jannan. Sorry to see you got your a** flamed for bringing up this topic without lauding the Israelis for their actions first.[QUOTE]

Nope, that's not correct. She got her a** flamed, at least by me, for making the Israelis=Nazis analogy while not knowing either what the Nazis did nor what the Israelis are doing. Do you? I must say, I totally oppose Israel building this wall but I have NO PATIENCE with people who make these kinds of inflammatory statements.

[quote]
The wall is an insidious and evil act of apartheid which will only inflame terrorist activity and result in more dead bodies on both sides.[/B][quote]

The wall is wrong, yes. But not because it's apartheid or ghettoization. Apartheid, as I understood it, was characterized by extreme racialization, and I don't think this is about race--it's more about national aspirations and the control of territory.

To me, the wall is bad because it's a pre-emptive land grab that cuts up Palestinian territory, so that if and when Israel ever returns to the bargaining table, the Palestinians will be at an even greater disadvantage. If you look at a map of the wall, you will see that it is inside the Green Line (the border between 1948 Israel and the lands Israel conquered in the 1967 war, aka the West Bank.)

How can the Palestinians ever agree to a Palestinian state if it is cut up so that there can't even be economic cooperation between the "cantons"? So the wall ruins the chances for negotiation, because there can't be anything like viability. It is costing Israel a ton of money to build it, and it's totally unenforceable as a barrier to illicit crossings into Israel.

It's also part of Sharon's policies to get Israelis to support this by making it all about suicide bombings. If not for the "security" rationale, there wouldn't be support for it--the majority (generally 70%) of Israelis would rather give up the territory and let the Palestinians be responsible for themselves. (at least they do feel that way unless you survey their opinion right after a big suicide bombing.) You see, all this occupied territory is under military administration, and Israelis have a very full participation in their army. So they are much more likely to want peace than say, we here in the States, where only a small percentage of the citizens serve.

May the Palestinians have their separate state and the opression end and the killing cease. [/B]

From your mouth to God's ear.