Spot the difference

Truthtriumphs

It's the acceptable face of anti-semitism, nothing more.

Israel has become the collective Jew.

Brian Moshe

Saudi Arabia is building a defensive barrier along its hundreds of miles of border with Iraq. The stated purpose of the fortified barrier is to keep out (Muslim) terrorists crossing from and back to Iraq.

Almost complete silence about it in the mainstream media, no outraged leftist protests or campaigns, no calls to boycott the companies supplying the equipment.

Rob-NY

Anti-Zionism has become acceptable Jew hate for the left and right.

JH

Why is it that Israel builds fences, but other countries build walls?

Steve Bell's cartoon was spot on by the way.

Greg D

You censorious sons without mothers.

Henry Sidgwick

I am not clear. Are we to consider such walls good or bad? And are we to accept as reasonable the comparison between the Guardian and Stormfront?

Augustus

Is it too much to hope that one day the children of Abraham can live in peace without the need for walls to protect them from the horrible acts of terrorists and suicide bombers?

alan stoddart

Fences? Because only 3% is 'wall'....i.e. around 21Km.

This helps stop the attacks which led to 1,184 Israelis killed by palestinians since Sept 2000, and the 8,341 wounded.

Jez

Truthtriumphs.

Then you stick your chin up and tell them collectively to "go to hell"

The unfortunate fact is that the world that the 'Comment is free' crowd wants is one that isn't, in reality, going to be that 'cool' for a great many people right now.

Next time a Guardian apologist tells anyone the moral rights and wrongs of what should be done in these culture clash situations, ask them;

What example can you cite of any culture that's to concede anything to an expanding / hostile adjacent culure, where it has not been to it's eventual detriment?

Adam B.

JH, that's because almost all of it is a fence, not a wall.

Difficult to understand, I know.

By the way, if Mr Bell was "spot on", was Stormfront "spot on" as well? I'd be interested to hear your answer - if you have one.

Simon Denis

What can one say? I do not dismiss the charge of anti-semitism to which many contributors refer, but it is important to stress the broad, current context in which it operates: the strange self-hatred of the modern west. This has gone beyond the "trahison des clercs". Many of the traitors who inspired it are themselves dead. It is now a skein of attitudes, commitments and misconceptions which hugely influences the formation of opinion. What we are dealing with here is a tide of ideas so ubiquitous that it is difficult to avoid getting your feet wet. So what characterises this tide? Above all, hatred of the European nation state, which is seen as merely a soft or embryo form of Nazism. Israel is, in a way, the last of the European nation states. Like Cavour's Italy, it represents precisely that Liberal nationalism which the left regards as a betrayal and a sham. It is even worse, from their point of view, because they see the Jews as convenient martyrs with whom to besmirch the reputation of nationalism "tout court" and whose sufferings are to be used to undermine European culture. That Israel should be one of the homes of this culture and that it should assert the "via media" of Liberal nationalism constitutes the most telling, the most intimate, the most painful rebuke to the pretensions of the modern left. The martyrs refuse to be led to the stake. They refuse to accuse the European past indiscriminately. They assert the right of every society and every individual to a particular, historic identity and that such a right must be given its due weight in the balance of policy. Unless the left can crush this message - which means ending Israel, of course - there is the risk that its broader project will once again founder. I hope and pray that they never succeed and lift my hat to you, Miss Phillips, as one of their doughtiest opponents.

JH

Adam B, why on Earth would I want to read Stormfront? It doesn't sound like the sort of material I want polluting my computer.

What a bizarre question.

Gareth

I hope these articles begin to shift the ground on this issue and people begin to speak up more for Israel and her brave people.
It must eventually - but when?

elixelx

If 16-foot poles supporting vast stretches of barbed- and razor-wire count as a wall, count ME in.
I'm that killing fence-wall that separates Spanish Melilla and Ceuta from the hordes of sub-Saharans trying to make it into Europe, and I've seen as much death in the past 5 years of desperate people trying to cross ME as the Berlin Wall saw in the last 10 years of its existence!
MY constructors and upkeepers, the Spanish Government, contend that it's allowed to forcibly detain or even shoot people trying to cross in order to maintain the integrity of its enclaves in the foreign territory of Morocco from the economically and socially-deprived , yet DAILY excoriate Israel for building a wall to keep out terrorists!
One more "wall" standing for a double standard!

Stephen Fox

Simon Denis,
very well put indeed.
My own short version of what you say is: there can be no 'we', because it is not permitted to conceive of a 'them'.
Cf Thomas Sowell's critique of the 'unconstrained vision' of liberals. Identity becomes unattainable when everyone must be included.
It all sounds fairly abstract, but the social and political consequences are real and threatening.

Jez

Simon Denis;

(the reason why the Liberal Left / Centre are against Israels right to it's own independant survival) "Israel is, in a way, the last of the European nation states."

Bingo!

Someone has finally hit the nail squarely on the head.

Alex Bensky

Actually, there is nothing inconsistent about squawking about Israel's barrier while saying nothing about all the other ones. All you need to do is realize that such statements are covered by what I revealed a few years ago on Meryl Yourish's excellent website (www.yourish.com). Meryl calls it the Exception Clause but with due modesty I refer to it as the Bensky Corollary to Everything.

I can't lay my hands on the precise document establishing this but it surely exists in the same way that astronomers knew that planets orbit other stars although until recently they hadn't actually seen one: The theory fully explains phenomena that are otherwise inexplicable.

Briefly: Sometime in the 1920's the League of Nations promulgated a resolution that provided that any statement by anyone, anywhere, at any time, no matter what the subject, contains the tacit proviso "except for Jews."

Not only does this explain why no one gets exercised about all the other walls, it explains why, for example, trade unionists in the UK support the Arabs, among whom quotidian union activities are felonies, as opposed to Israel, which has a strong union movement. It explains why feminists support the Arabs over Israel. And so forth.

Such people and groups are not being hypocritical or inconsistent; they hold their views and ideology firmly "except for Jews."

It's really very simple when you understand it.

mcmrjp

Oh and don't forget the Mexican Border wall erected by the USA.

Adam B.

JH, the reason I ask is because you are in agreement with it. Bell and Stormfront hold the same view.

You're right, it is trash.

De Rigueur

Simon Denis:

"...the strange self-hatred of the modern west."

Oh, Oh, indeed!

Editor take note:
I think this is a subject worthy of a long, full enquiry and investigation by the Spectator. Throw the subject, a palpable truth, at all your contributors, present and former and get them to write a piece on the subject. Devote one whole issue to it.

Be dynamite methinks.

ahad ha'amoratsim

JH, Steve Bell was spot on ONLY if the Berlin Wall was built to put an end to years of bombing and shooting attacks by West Berliners walking into East Berlin to murder as many East German civiliansas possible. As I recall, that is not what happened.

John Edwards

This posting rather misses the point. Any country is free to build a wall along its own borders, as in the majority of these examples. A wall obviously makes border incursions more difficult.

The Wall Israel has built however, is inside the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the route virtually cuts off the parts Israel most covets including the putative Palestinian capital, Occupied East Jerusalem.

JH

Just for the sake of balance, and in response to Alan Stoddart, 6348 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli action since 29 Sept, 2000. I don't have figures for injuries.

Source - http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/deaths.html

Joshua

70 Years Progress

1939 - Der Stürmer

2009 - The Guardian

Adam B.

JH, it may have escaped your notice that Israel is in a war. Presenting figures without any kind of context (or list of Israeli casualties - including a breakdown of such casualties) is utterly meaningless. Tell me JH, how many people have been killed by British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? I can tell you it's a lot more than the figures you quote. Does this mean we should delegitimize Britain, hold UN enquiries into the conduct of its soldiers and boycott the UK?

What a silly schoolboy argument.

Adam B.

JH, I have one question for you: did Stormfront get it right?

Alex Bensky

Now, JH, it would be interesting to know such things about the death toll on each side as the age and sex distribution.

For example, if most of the Palestinians were young and male, and the Israeli dead tended to fall along the country's demographic spectrum, that might indicate that the Palestinian dead are mostly fighters and the Israelis ordinary civilians.

And,of course, by the body count determination, the Allies were more evil than the Nazis because the number of civilian German dead under Allied bombing in World War II is about ten times the number of British.

Curious, isn't it, that from 1949 until 1967 no one referred to the Jordanian-annexed areas as "occupied," even though those areas were supposed to be part of the Arab Palestinian state?

Les Hardie

Don't forget the 15' steel wall separating Egypt from GAZA. I think Hamas blew a section of it up last year, but who would know? The government-run press didn't mention it.

Mike

The fact that Shiraz is quoting from the BBC website makes the claim that these other walls are totally ignored somewhat overstated. The other point is that all of the walls he quotes with the exception of the Saharan one, are on recognised borders, and the country that built the wall is not claiming sovereignty on both sides of the wall. Thw wall between Israel and Gaza is never disputed, or criticised, because it is a border fence and Israel has withdrawn from Gaza

Vandoren

Melanie thanks for this post.Yesterday I made video about separations barriers in the world,hope you like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0sawJGxj3k

Adam B.

Vandoren, great film! No media spotlight on any of these! I wonder why?