Palestinians tear down chunk of wall

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"Palestinians tore down a chunk of Israel's West Bank separation barrier on Monday in a protest staged to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came down.

A truck was used to pull down the wall section to the cheers of an estimated 150 Palestinian activists and foreign supporters near the Qalandia refugee camp just outside Ramallah.

Israeli troops used teargas and stun grenades in a brief clash with stone-throwing Palestinians who then dispersed.

"Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and marks the first day of a week of resistance to the apartheid wall in Palestine and around the globe," the Stop the Wall campaign said in a statement."

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[tekisui]

1. k and I/P R!

[Lefty48197]

2. This is pretty funny actually.

Of course, if the East Germans randomly lobbed bombs into West Berlin to kill innocent civilians, I doubt the West Germans would have been so enthusiastic about bringing down that wall.

[Recursion]

3. Umm.. the Palestinians are the *WEST* Berliners in this

They didn't build the wall. It's going to take Israelis to tear it down, just like it took East Berliners to take down the wall there.

[Ken Burch]

4. It was never that simple.

Please stop pretending that that happened for no reason.

[Shaktimaan]

5. so many similarities...

Let's see...

in both cases there was a wall. And also...*?
Well, there is the wall. Do we really need any more similarities to draw conclusions that these walls are basically the same thing ideologically?

What about the great wall of china? THAT wall is HUGE! It must be 100x as bad as the walls in Israel OR Berlin.
TEAR IT DOWN!

[Violet_Crumble]

7. It's stretching it a lot to pretend the wall in this case is benign...

Both the Berlin wall and this one are symbols of the oppression of a people. No-one is saying that the situations must be the same to draw that obvious conclusion. You forgot that one similarity is that the walls are built by countries that are carrying out brutal occupations...

Do you support the construction of the wall where it's built inside the West Bank rather than on the Green Line?

[The Magistrate]

8. Neither Were Or Are Symbols, Ma'am

The wall in Berlin was a concrete measure to keep people from voting with their feet against a government so unpopular it needed something like one in twelve of its population on the payroll as informants.

The security barrier is a concrete measure against infiltration by militants to attack directly the civilian population of Israel, that has proved effective for the purpose. It is true that its course has been gerry-mandered to effectively annex a good deal of land, which is not only wrong but illegal.

[Violet_Crumble]

9. The Berlin Wall is definately a symbol now and has been since its fall...

I know it had a concrete purpose, which is why I said in my post that I was saying it was symbolic of oppression. It's fall is one of the major 'moments' of the 20th century, and it's fall symbolises freedom. And it's the symbolism of the Berlin Wall that brings about it being brought up when the security barrier is talked about. As I've said consistantly from the very start of its planned construction, Israel gets my full support to build whatever sort of wall it wants along its border, but it's where the route of the barrier deviates and goes into the West Bank where arguments of protection etc fall completely flat...

on edit: fixed up shocking grammar in order not to attract the attention of any grammar-bots. btw, it's nice to see you posting down here again after giving it a break for so long. I don't always agree with you, but I always enjoy reading what yr opinions on the conflict are...

[The Magistrate]

10. It Has Become A Symbol, True, Ma'am, But Even Symbols Have Particular Meaning

The 'oppression' the Berlin wall is held to symbolize is the confinement of a population which seeks to escape rulers determined to hold them in place. It is not particularly apt for application to a construction undertaken as a military measure meant to keep people who intend harm to others away from their intended targets. It is a sign of poverty in both understanding and honesty that the simple employment of the syllable 'wall' in each instance is taken for license to conflate so broadly.

[Violet_Crumble]

11. But yr not talking about symbolism now...

Yr talking about the motivation you ascribe to the security barrier being built. The route it's taken through the West Bank isn't a protective one, and if Israel wanted it to be seen to be protective, they should have kept it running along the Green Line rather than taking in chunks of the West Bank. The Berlin Wall is symbolic of oppression and there's no way it can be argued that the Palestinian people are being oppressed by Israel, as that really is a sign of poverty in both understanding and honesty...

btw, I refer to the separation barrier as a wall or barrier and tend to alternate, and don't see how you'd find that dishonest. In places it is a wall, and in others it's a fence, so I alternate in what I call it to satisfy any nit-pickers :)

[The Magistrate]

12. Nothing Aimed At You, Ma'am

Merely at people who, because the word 'wall' can be employed in either case, try and claim they have the same symboic meaning; they do not.

On any line, the security barrier has the desired protective effct: as you know, we are in agreement concerning the illegitimacy of its line of placement, which amounts to a de facto annexation of a good deal of prime real estate.

[Violet_Crumble]

13. I think I know what yr talking about...

The people who go 'wall, wall, wall, tear down the wall, wall! wall! WALL! wall walltearitdownwall!wall!! (x1000) and don't add anything else to it. I find them a bit annoying myself, because even if the separation barrier was constructed out of chicken wire, I'd have exactly the same issues with it when it comes to where it's been located and the disregard for the suffering that placement has caused to more than a few Palestinians...

[ConsAreLiars]

14. All walls are built by those who fear and hate.

That is a fact that applies here (and in the US and US-occupied Iraq), and it is pretty often revealed in the subtext of most posts in this forum.

Several computers ago a friend on a listserve posted a photo of some remote village in Afghanistan where neighbors in some sort of McCoy-Hatfield relationship had kept building both the bordering wall and the height advantage of their homes/dwellings ever higher. Might have reached Guinness Book of Records mention for the highest structures in that country. Escalating fear and distrust.

Fortunately neither had massive military superiority coupled with the belief that "kill/butcher/starve/bomb/terrorize the other into submission" was a good plan. Instead it was "Live and let live, and mistrust and keep watch." So both homes remained standing, and their families unharmed. Neither was denied access to to the commons of the surrounding fields or other resources they might have needed or wanted.

The many walls the Israelis have built have had a quite different intent and function. That much is obvious.

(edit a bit)

[Jefferson23]

6. Good for them, and I wish they could post copies of the

ICJ advisory ruling 2004 in its place.