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| Middle East |
| Israel's West Bank fence is new Berlin Wall |
| 2002-06-17 |
| The Arab League blasted the Israeli project to build a high-tech security fence that would wall off the West Bank from Israel and Jerusalem. "This fence is a new Berlin wall," Arab League chief Amr Mussa told reporters in an allusion to the barrier that divided the German capital from 1961 to 1989. "It reminds us of practices that the world did not accept," he said. The Commies built the Berlin wall to keep their own people in. Israel's building their fence to keep their neighbors from sneaking into their bedrooms and exploding. Where's the similarity? Further, unless my memory's ossified beyond repair, the Arab League used to think the Commies and their wall were pretty swell, and called the U.S. warmongers for wanting it torn down. Palestinians fear the fence snaking along the West Bank will worsen the Israeli occupation, and have likened it to South Africa's old apartheid system of racial segregation. Apartheid wasn't instituted to keep one people from inflicting mindless violence on the other. Israel "is reinforcing its occupation of the Palestinian territories and the separation between the societies," Moussa added. The Arab League chief called for a "redoubling of efforts to put an end to the occupation, to ... dismantle existing settlements instead of constructing a wall of separation." The settlements are a subject Moussa could talk on. There are legitimate arguments, both pro and con. Adding in Berlin Walls, apartheid, and eventually Hitler, Ferdinand and Isabella, and the time Og the Neanderthal hit Thag the Cro-Magnon, adds nothing and puts any audience he has left to sleep. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |