San Francisco Protests Israel's Apartheid Wall

ISRAEL’S WALL

Editors, Daily Planet:

Becky O’Malley’s editorial on the Israeli wall construction cartoon brought up some interesting questions, like “Why do so many Americans, and people in Berkeley in particular, care about Israel?” Because Israel is on the forefront of some many crucial issues, and in many ways, is a test case for the future of western democracy and the socialist state. Israel depends and depended to a great extent on socialist idealists who set up network of kibbutzim which dot the country. These are collectives which many of us raised in the spirit of the left aspire to and hold in high esteem. Israel itself can be considered a socialist country. My numbers may be off, but I believe up to approximately 10 years ago, some 70 percent of the economy was owned by government controlled industry. Privatization is taking its toll there too, however. Health care and education are still free. Also, the country has a very high literacy rate and produces an amazing number of scientists.

This is the kind of place a lot us would like to live in if it weren’t for the violence. So we are angry because that one glimmer of hope is fading, and we are striking back, blaming Israel, now the bully, the well-armed helicopter-flying tank-driving military machine picking on the Palestinians. Once the underdog, Israel is now the top dog, at least militarily. But the reality is that the Israelis can not bring peace to the Middle East. They don’t have the resources, either economical or political. Arms dealers from around the world are making billions selling weapons to all those involved. Most of the 6.5 billion the U.S. gives to Israel is spent on arms, which prompts all the other countries in the neighborhood to make similar expenditures. Then all that equipment has to be kept up, people trained to use it, and on and on. The Middle East is a cash cow. Only disarmament will free enough resources to end the violence. Meanwhile, we hold Israel to a very high standard.

Daily on our local left radio station we hear the atrocities committed by the IDF; the houses destroyed, the wall, shootings, and assassinations. Who are we to criticize? The U.S. has an annual military budget of 400 billion dollars. The U.S. is the largest arms exporter in the world. The U.S. has killed thousands of innocent civilians in the “war on terrorism,” killed half a million children as a result of the Iraqi sanctions. Maybe we see a lot of ourselves in Israel, we see our own failings, we feel guilty because we are living the life of luxury at the expense of our socialist dreams.

Andy Hicks

Oakland

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=07-23-04&storyID=19310

Suicide attacks on Isreal are already massivly down. The barrier is working and the wails of protest going up from the Arab terror aparatus and its useful idiots in the West are deafening. Terrorism will soon be locked out as a means of political leverage, and with the Arab dictatorships beaten in three wars, the USSR sugardaddy bankrupt and America's heartland full of hatred for Muslim fanatics due to 9-11, Arafat is running out of options.

The barrier WILL go up.

Without Jews to kill, the savagry and depravity among many of the Palestinians, cultivated through more than 50 years of ignorance and indoctination by the neighboring thugocracies and their own worthless, terrorist leadership, will turn violently on itself. We are already seeing the beginnings of this coming Palestinian 'civil war', the tension in Gaza, the violence now directed at Arafat's organization itself, the posturing and threats of the new factions.

Arab will begin to kill Arab, as they have done for millenia. And no-one will care. If the carnage can't be blamed on Jews or Americans the UN, the regional dictatorships and our own wonderful compassionate left will simply drop the Palestinians like a useless toy and move onto something else.

A black day is coming, but not for Isreal. Sharon has nearly won the war of the python and the barrier's coils are tightening on what's left of the glorious 'intefada'. As for the barrier itself, you peace creeps don't like it? Then why don't you tear it down? What's stopping you? Oh yes, the entire armed might of the IDF.

Good luck, idiots, you're too dumb to know it, but you've already lost.

but at the price of the israeli soul, your post is fine proof of it,

welcome to the historical rogue's gallery, take a fuckin number.

Tit for Tat is getting us nowhere, as proof you can see there is still conflict after thirty six years. So you have to look at the problem as it stands today, and do the right thing so both people can live in peace and with freedom.
If only one side has freedom, the other side will always be seeking it, in anyway they can. That is why there have been wars as far back as we can remember.
Thirty six years of war should be enough for such a small number of people, when you consider the World Population.
You can save Israel by allowing the Palestinian People to have their small state in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza.
There are 1,200,000 or so Arabs living inside Israel Proper.
There are 400,000 or so Jews living inside the West Bank and Gaza.
Trying to remove all the settlement can be an almost undoable task.
So Set the Borders for Israel to it Pre 1967 Border (Green Line) and have the State of Palestine inside the West Bank and Gaza.
If the U.N. can decide the Borders of Israel in 1948.
The U.N. can decide the Borders of Palestine in 2004.
You would end up with Israel with a majority Jewish Population and Palestine with a majority Muslim Population.
This would allow for the Israeli Military to Guard and Control the Israeli pre 1967 borders instead of confiscating Palestinian Land and Demolishing Palestinian Homes in the West Bank and Gaza that only goes to fuel the need for the Palestinian People to fight for their Freedom.
The Jews who do not like living in the new Palestinian State can feel free to move to Israel if they so choose.
The Arabs living inside Israel can feel free to move to the new Palestinian State if they so choose.
Almost every nation on earth has more then one ethnic group or religious group. So why not Israel and Palestine?
It would sure be better then the never ending conflict we have right now.

If you have real, bona fide concerns about the collective Israeli soul (provided there's even such a thing), apportion guilt correctly -- put it first and foremost on Arafat (who left the negotiation table and launched the intifada) and all the Palestinian terrorists whom Arafat allowed to loose hell on Israelis since 1994, at what was considered by many the zenith of the Oslo "peace" process.

Israel is only considered rogue because of your likes who repeatedly fail to acknowledge who is *basically* in the right, -- Israel -- and accordingly neglect to throw *most* of their support behind the worthy party -- Israel.

I hoped the cardboard boxes used to construct your "demonstration wall" were recycled. If they were new, that is just a waste of cardboard and borders on hypocracy. Addtionally, i hope you recycled your boxes after your demonstration for some useful purpose.

Further, The "wall" is not a wall, it is a fence. Only small portions of the structure are actually a concrete wall, generally near cities. Unfortunately, the wall has proved a neccessary means to quell the stream of suicide bombings occuring within Israel proper. If there were no bombings, there would be no wall. Above all else, Israel must protect its citizens.

Anti-Israel ideologues have a well-worn tactic of taking the latest world outrage and foisting it upon Israel, no matter how absurd the comparison or epithet. So in the 1960s Israel was branded a "colonialist power," in the 1970s Israel became an "apartheid state," in the 1990s Israel practiced "ethnic cleansing," and at the Durban conference in 2001 the Jewish state was called "genocidal."

The latest is a throwback to the '70s: Israel is accused of constructing an "apartheid wall" ― a term gaining currency in world media coverage of Israel's security fence.

Since the South African apartheid system was dismantled over ten years ago, many today are unaware of what exactly that nation's racist land policies were. The South African government established nine bantustans ― sectors for black segregation ― in the 60s and 70s, in the effort to separate non-white South Africans from whites, and from each other. To demonstrate just how fallacious the comparison to Israel's security fence is, we summarize South African apartheid policy here, alongside the facts of Israel's anti-terror security fence:


Apartheid South Africa
Israel's Security Fence

Goal of separation
The explicit goal of bantustans was the elimination of rights of the majority South African black population, to ensure white hegemony.
The explicit goal of the security fence is preventing surreptitious terrorist entry to Israel, which has caused the murder of hundreds of Israeli civilians.


Citizenship
A central goal of official apartheid "separate development" was to strip black South Africans of their citizenship.
West Bank Palestinians were never citizens of Israel. (Arabs, meanwhile, constitute 15% of the Israeli citizenry.)

Forced transfer
Between 1950 and 1986, about 1.5 million Africans were forcibly removed from "white" cities to rural reservations.
The security fence causes no transfer of population.

Opposition to nation
South African blacks, cordoned into bantustans, did not seek the destruction of South Africa, but rather the removal of the apartheid regime.
The majority of Palestinians in the territories dispute Israel's very right to exist; this has bred terror, and ultimately, the need for the fence.
Permanence
South African bantustans were an effort to force a permanent international status on lands, and the black population living there. The security fence is a temporary defensive measure, not a border; inconveniences caused by the fence are reversible.

Colonialism
South African "separate development" was an outgrowth of imperialist, colonial policy.
Israel is "colonial" neither with regard to the source of its population (mostly refugees), nor their deep historical relationship to the land
The Israeli security fence, therefore, differs from South African measures in its rationale, its goals, its effect, and its historical context. A far more appropriate comparison can be made, therefore, between Israel's fence and other democratic nations' border fences, such as the British "peace line" in Ireland, or the US border fence with Mexico.