July 15, 2004

Walls

Israel is building a “separation barrier” (aka Wall) through the West Bank. I suppose it’s no surprise that their Supreme Court said that, with only a few exceptions, it’s okay for them to do that. It seems to be a pattern to get around almost anything you want approved if you happen to have some friendly Supremes in your pocket.

On the other hand, the International Court of Justice in The Hague thinks otherwise and says the whole idea is mostly “unlawful,” a fact that Israel, having had a few examples set in this sort of thing, just chooses to ignore.

The irony of all this is that the Israelis, of all people, should know more than a little bit about walls. They’ve even got one reserved just for wailing. But perhaps they’ve forgot that a while back, Jericho also had a wall they were probably pretty proud of and that even did double-duty as a space-saving condominium. Then along came these current wallbangers who, together with God and a few unemployed trumpet players, busted it up pretty bad.

If the Palestinians would employ more cultural anthropologists in their diplomatic corps, they might could return the favor and, in the interest of international relations, just hire the Canadian Brass.

No Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.