Tear Down This Wall

Very nice job indeed. I really like how you portrayed the artwork on the western side of the wall. However, the Berlin Wall was build in 1961 and came down in 1989! It was build by the German Democratic Republic itself which was of course a Soviet puppet government.Keep up the good work!ThatOrangeGuy.com

Another convenient misrepresentation of the truth by ‘Transparency’; Israel did NOT build the wall to ’separate’ the the two sides however, the Israeli government built the security barrier to stop the horde of Palestinian terrorists from blowing up and killing civilians in Israeli cities. Before the massive suicide bombing campaign of the Second Intifada, there was no barrier between the West Bank and Israel, NONE. Now, because Palestinian resistance since 2001 has included suicide terrorism as a weapon of choice, the barrier has been built  (only 5% is a wall, another mistake made by ‘Transparency’ by showing half and half, the rest of the 95% is reinforced fencing, also only 12% of the barrier’s route deviates from the 1949 ‘Green Line’). The barrier was built  in response to HUNDREDS of suicide bombings which resulted many Israeli casualties and injuries. Since the government of Israel built the barrier miraculously the suicide bombing rate has dropped 99%.

Another convenient misrepresentation by ‘Transparency’; they leave out the many other barriers in the world that result from blatant land grabbing or racism. A partial list of barriers in:- Melilla and Cueta “Spain” where Spain annexed these lands from Morocco and set up a separation between the two peoples – Yemen and Saudi ArabiaNorth Korea and South Korea- Nothern Ireland where there are ‘religious’ separation barriers between neighborhoods.- Between areas of Western Sahara and Morocco- Turkey’s occupation of the Hatay province of Syria and consequently set up a barrier- Between parts of Pakistan and India

I’m not trying to be overly critical; however, I didn’t think this was all that informative, considering that most of these borders and walls are so well known. allenb brings up an interesting and important point, with so many other walls and borders world-wide, why exactly, focus on the above? This one feels like, tell me something I didn’t already know. . . . must we now? — go there? the reasoning behind the walls? — The Gaza Strip has long been a source of burning discontent due to both sides refusal to allow a parcel of land to act as a free space and not intenting to get into any sort of debate; there is a wall now, a very large and protruding wall, because both parties simply will not agree on boundaries; tunnels, bombers, violence and chemical intrusions aside (this would be both parties mind you); it all comes down to a line drawn in the sand that both sides continue to cross time and time again (big guns vs. suicide bombers, bullets vs. rocks). Now, we have one country that has bullied its way to the top monetarily and is suffocating the life out of the little country. Apparently, because the little country is trying to rise up and protect itself somehow some way, that sort of thing just isn’t allowed. Its distateful, its ugly, its not pretty. Watching people suffer and die is never pretty. Henceforth, the wall. I find it so interesting that a country made up of people who were persecuted and who died from genocide, are actually now persecuting and killing people who are suffering all because they won’t allow them their religion or their land. It makes no sense. How much blacker can the pot and the kettle get?  Personally, I don’t see this issue as ever being resolved. This is just from an outsiders point of view. Not only that, but both countries seem to be pulling the rest of the world into this debate because no one will put down their toys and just play nicey nice. Yes, its much more intricate than that; though they do seem to be a microcosm for how two countries never learn to just get along. Here in the US, many of us have walls and little mazes we deal with on a daily minute by minute incremental basis with two fifteen minute pellets of freedom and one sixty minute in between so as to break up the monotany of the mundane; these walls are built to keep out the sun and deprive people of any sense of nature, or their whereabouts; they are supremely successful in encouraging a person not to think: we call them cubicles.

Few things,First – Israel didn’t build the wall around Gaza, that was done by their ‘brothers’ in Egypt.Second – Israel never used illegal chemical agents against Palestinians, these are allegations that have not been corroborated by evidence, I think it is better to respect evidence over allegations, any allegation is just media hype meant to vilify Israel. However, Palestinian terrorists (notably Hamas) have on a few occasions tried to poison the Israeli water supply with Chlorine, or attack Israeli restaurants, fruit and food sources with chemical agents. Third – Palestine is not and has never been a country so why she refers to it as a country is beyond me. The PLO has an observer status in the UNGA and can see and review UNSC resolutions and minutes from meetings.Fourth – It is not so much an issue of agreeing on borders it is more an issue that the Palestinians will not relinquish the idea of ‘right of return’ which would in a sense kill the Israeli state as a Jewish state. Israel on the other hand does not agree to relinquish parts of Jerusalem and recognize a Palestinian capitol in Jerusalem.There are a few more points of contention. Fifth – You make a disgusting reference to the Holocaust and compare it to the situation in Israel and Gaza / West Bank. There are not comparisons, there are no gas chambers there are no torture camps and 6 million Palestinians have not died, in fact, IRC estimates place the death toll of Palestinians by Israelis at 20,000 – 30,000 since 1967 (this includes civilians and combatants), however, many more Palestinians have been killed by their Arab ‘brothers’. there is no genocide going on, the Palestinian population has exploded from 700,000 in 1948 to almost 10 million 60 years later.