A Wall in Israel

I read with interest the recent comments regarding the lecture of Hedy Epstein and comments posed about the establishment of the Wall in Israel.

Walls around a city or region in history are nothing new: they were always a first line of defense and intimidation against an enemy seeking to overthrow a municipality or threaten safety. While this may be seen as a civil liberties issue among those decrying division between Jews and Arabs, particularly Arab Muslims, there are issues left unaddressed.

We live in an era beyond the Shoah, or Holocaust which has not only not seen an end to genocide but has seen dozens of brutal continuing massacres since. While ideals of tolerance and peace must always be upheld as primary, tolerance in a violent world must be tempered with reason and wisdom. There is already an unseen wall there of violence, and of blood; a move of the building of a Wall may hopefully only define a border and may add to the ceasing of bloodshed, with only a slight decrease in immediate civil rights in favor of longterm civil rights for all. It is not the "Berlin Wall" designed to divide a country among spoilers, it is a wall of defense, an aid in increasing not decreasing peace.
The defense of Israel is not something that must always be debated: why does the world have to argue over whether Israel has the inherent right of self-defense? Every other nation on earth uses the most practical of military measures to create peace with protection of its citizens. The decrying of the 'violence' of the Israeli police is almost always accompanied by cries of Palestinian rights: once again, while claiming tolerance and seeking world peace in a naive belief it is man-made, there comes a subtle anti-semitism which denies Israel the same self-protection given other civilizations, denied to them for 2000 years of exile.

The Land Belongs to Israel: they did not take it by force: it was not a spoil even of war. The British legally gave it to Israel: at the time both Jewish and Arab persons lived there---it followed almost 100 years of discussion about the creation of a Jewish Homeland by many countries. The British legally owned the land they gave. Arab-Muslims were not forced off the land, only forced to live in peace, which they have chosen not to do.

I do not condemn the building of a wall of defense and protection in a battle scarred region. I think only we need to look through the veiling of what appears to be tolerance and cries for unity between Jews and Palestinians, which is a great hope but highly improbable, and see rather a political point of view which gives the land to a violent people who are not tolerant and do not want civil liberties for all or peace.

A wall, yes, with civil liberties, that peace and tolerance might find a practical way in a violent world. ekbest

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