Barriers, Real and Imagined

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• Reader Comments (7)

  Page 1 of 1 pages

  The incidence of terror attacks has dropped precipitously where the wall has been completed.

  Does anybody want to get rid of metal detectors at airports and high crime schools because it interferes with free movement?

  Posted by Nus on Mar 10, 2004 at 10:13 PM

  Nus,

    How does it feel to have internalized the dictats of a perpetually crisis-ridden, security state? Just curious

  Posted by Stephen Dedalus on Mar 10, 2004 at 10:37 PM

  Please explain yourself - I don’t know what you mean.

  I think you are including untrue assumptions in your question.

  Posted by Nus on Mar 10, 2004 at 11:13 PM

  My assumption was that it appears you see nothing wrong with being frisked at airports or sending our children to facilities that bear more resemblance to prisons than healthy learning environments (Having taught at what you call “high crime schools,” I can assure you that there is nothing more that I would like to see than the removal of metal detectors. So long as I’m dreaming, it would also be nice not to have the teenagers herded into the schools like cattle…but then how else to instill the herd-like mentality that allows our democracy to denigrate to the point of an oligarch’s wet dream?). So your initial rhetorical question, to my mind, suggests you’ve internalized certain values concerning “security” and “readiness” that are by no means innate.

  And to return to the general point of this article, if the Israelis insisted on building a wall around their territory, no one could conceivably blame them…HOWEVER, this barrier is consciously being built to separate and appropriate internationally recognized Palestinian lands. To return to your example, Nus, how would you feel if those airport metal detectors were installed in your home?

  Posted by Stephen Dedalus on Mar 11, 2004 at 5:12 AM

  The main point that I try to make is while the Israeli Government claims it is not a judicial issue but rather political, where would civil rights be if the Supreme Court accepted similar claims regarding de segregation in the US south?  The issue is whether or not a law is being violated.  In the case of Israel’s so called security wall the answer is obviously yes.

  Posted by Lou Frankenthaler on Mar 11, 2004 at 11:36 AM

  “So long as I’m dreaming”

  Apparently you have “internalized” the need for security in this world as well.

  I think internalized is completely the wrong world.  I have externalized the need for such security measures and have in fact brought them into being.

  yes, it would be best if children needn’t undergo weapons security at school.  They don’t have to everywhere - only where children bring weapons to school.  It cannot be ignored.

  “being built to separate and appropriate internationally recognized Palestinian lands” you leave off ‘from Israel’.

  Do I want the metal detector at my house?  No.  Do I want my wrought iron fence that serves as a barrier between criminals, trespassers and salesmen?  You betcha.

  Lou, what law?

  Posted by Nus on Mar 26, 2004 at 9:56 PM

  Nus,

  Regardless of our differing interpretations of the words “internal” and “external,” it seems that you do agree with the Palestinians. Just as you don’t want metal detectors in your home, they don’t want a wall that sections off and reappropriates their land. And as I said previously, you, like Israel, are fully justified in wanting that fence around your property. But what if that fence were to suddenly jut out and claim for its own your neighbor’s favorite apple tree, that is (or was) clearly on his property? This, in effect, is what the Israeli barricade does.

  I believe the “law” that Lou was referring to was the U.N.-established Green Line of the late 1940’s that has been internationally recognized (even by the United States) as the legal boundaries of Israel and Palestine. To ignore this line, as the barricade explicitly does, is to break international law, just as certainly as if the United States were to suddenly build a wall that annexed parts of Canada.

  Posted by Stephen Dedalus on Mar 31, 2004 at 11:18 PM

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