BCT Editorial – 4/27/07

This page was last updated on April 27, 2007.

Walled in; Editorial; Beaver County Times; April 27, 2007.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“Sometimes symbolism of an object is more potent than its substance.

“A three-mile, 12-foot-high concrete wall that U.S. officials had thought about building around a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad as part of its strategy to secure the Iraqi capital drives that point home.”

[RWC] The editorial failed to note the reason for the wall was to protect the Sunni neighborhood from bomb attacks by people in the adjoining Shiite neighborhood.

“The symbolism for the Middle East should have been obvious. Just think of the wall that Israel built on the West Bank to contain the Palestinians. To Palestinians and others in the Middle East, the wall symbolizes Israel’s occupation of their land by force.”

[RWC] The “wall that Israel built on the West Bank” was not built to “contain the Palestinians.” If this had been the reason, the wall would have been built after the 1967 Six-Day War. Instead, construction was started in 2002 in response to increased terrorist attacks that began in 2000 (Second Intifada). The reason was to keep homicide bombers from having free entry into Israel. Many of the Palestinian bombers were kids sent to die by their parents.

Regarding the “Israel’s occupation of their [Palestinian] land by force” comment, the West Bank belonged to Jordan before it – along with Egypt and Syria – attacked Israel in 1967.

“In more general terms, think Berlin Wall, the barrier that stood for decades as a symbol of a failed ideology.

“Enough said.”

[RWC] In what warped world can someone draw equivalence between the Israeli/Iraqi walls and the Berlin Wall? The Israeli/Iraqi walls were intended to protect innocent civilians from proven killers. The Berlin Wall was built by the Soviet Union and its satellites to keep their citizens from fleeing.